Voxmedia Wire

There’s a new kid on the blog who is taking Web communications — and ultimately the way we communicate — in a compelling direction. I’m talking about the video Web log — vlog for short. The potential for vlogs has existed since the late-1990s advent of blogging itself. But only with the growth in fast Internet connections and the willingness of Internet service providers to host fat video files for a reasonable fee has vlogging become practical for general users. Don’t enter the world of vlogs expecting TV-like quality or anything near it. Still, vlogs bear watching (in more ways than one) for a couple of reasons.

Vlogs not there yet, but keep watching (The Seattle Times)

Predictably, like personal websites and blogs, the quality of amateur videos ranges from the inspirational to the abysmal. “Anybody who has watched public-access TV will know that not all viewer-submitted content is good,” said McLean Greaves, executive producer of ZeD. “You need to filter content.” Greaves, a former AOL Time Warner executive who has worked with Spike Lee and P. Diddy, said ZeD’s mission is to democratize media production, but filters must be put in place… So ZeD employs a team of online editors to sift through the content, check it for copyright issues and either publish it on its website or pass it along to a producer who will give it a lick of professional polish.

Gore’s TV Seeks Northern Insights (Wired)

The Google Video Upload Program is now in public beta at https://upload.video.google.com/. This is a quick tour of what’s inside, in case you don’t want to click through or sign your soul over to Google. All images and related content are copyright Google, Inc., and are presented here merely as a public service of Voxmedia. You are invited to comment on the service in the Voxmedia Video Forum.

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Although Google is accepting videos, it is not making them searchable yet. The plan is to eventually let users search, play back, and purchase videos stored in Google Video. Owners will have the option of giving their videos away for free or charging for them. The upload program is available to all types of video content owners, from individuals to corporations, according to Google.

Google Lets Your Upload Your Own Videos (PC World/IDG)

A cable channel recently acquired by an investment group led by Al Gore is to relaunch Aug. 1 under the name Current, hoping to generate much of its content from viewers… Messrs. Gore and Hyatt say they hope young people will use the channel as a forum to express their opinions on news and current events. Viewers will be invited to submit short films, documentaries and home videos to be aired on the channel. Mr. Gore’s group also has struck a deal with Google Inc. to use information from Google in its programming.

Gore Group to Start Cable Channel as Youth Forum (Wall Street Journal)

While there’s no formal announcement yet, Google co-founder Larry Page said Monday that the well-known search engine concern would soon let the general public upload self-produced videos to Google’s servers, partly in an effort to learn more about how to more efficiently search and display information about video-based data… Google, which already offers the Picasa service for storing and sharing digital photos and the Blogger service for blogs, wants to learn how to better sort and search video to improve the user interface for finding video data, Page said. “It’s still a long way [today] from an ideal experience,” he said.

Google To Host Home-Video Uploads (InternetWeek/Advanced IP Pipeline)

In little more than the time it takes to write and post a new diary entry to a traditional text-based blog page, anyone with a camcorder and the right $99 software can now become a “vlogger,” or video blogger — the latest advancement in the 4-year-old weblogging phenomenon that Forbes recently proclaimed as “the ‘it’ thing” in tech trends for 2005.

The ME Show (Phoenix New Times)

The current range of vlog content on the Web varies as widely — perhaps even more widely — than its text counterpart. The oeuvre ranges from some very slickly-produced material (the daily rocketboom.com starring an actress who previously appeared on NBC’s The Restaurant) to a wide range of personal idiosyncrasies: a vlogger eats a grapefruit; video of a 1999 Silicon Valley pool party; a vlogger goes jogging; some guys in L.A. meet for coffee. And there are already lots of kids: kids learning to ski, learning to mow the lawn, even learning how to vlog.

Ready for your close-up? Here come the vlogs (MSNBC)

Imagine that happening to TV. A suburban woman gets a handheld digital video camera and editing software and creates a version of Desperate Housewives about her own cul-de-sac, posting it for an audience around the world. A high school could post football games so alumni anywhere could watch. Everything that has happened to words and photos the past 10 years will happen to video in the next 10. “It’s going to open up creativity — the same kind we’ve seen on the Internet, but for TV,” [Bill] Gates says.

Tech show expects video to flourish on Net the way words have (USA Today)

Welcome to the latest Net phenomenon: video blogs, or what some folks call vlogs. Thousands of ordinary (and some downright nutty) people have begun posting a cornucopia of video fare online, from self-indulgent art clips and earnest citizen journalism to sly political commentary. Experimentation is the rule, and eccentrics outnumber serious practitioners.

Online Video: The Sequel (Businessweek)