We are starting to experiment with “new” media on our website. For starters, we’ve added two short promo videos (not done by us!) on our website – find them on these pages:

1. Fringe Festival
2. Summer Reading program

And they’re available via RSS, since both pages have related RSS feeds. No, they’re not RSS 2.0 with enclosures, so no video casting by us (yet). But it’s a start! We plan on adding other “locally-produced” video (meaning us with a camcorder) later on… so stay tuned!

The TeleRead blog is talking about video blogging, and featured the screenshot of my video blog post… so an unexpected outcome of me posting a video blog? My head is now being aggregated… 🙂

Thought it was funny… !

I said I might do this… and I have made my threat a reality! I have just done my first video podcast (well, technically, it’s my second one. The first one’s a little silly, and was not posted here :-). Complete with the proper RSS 2.0 feed with enclosures. Of course, you’d need to have a video podcast aggregator (ANT for Mac, or mefeedia for a web-based version) at the other end to make this complete, but…

Ok – so what is this again? A Video podcast is like an audio podcast – you’re just downloading a video file to your aggregator.

Why did I do this? I explain myself fully in the video – but here’s the scoop: I was interested in trying it out, so I did it. Well, and my library might be messing with video this next year, so this was a good excuse to play around with the format some.

What am I doing in the video? Explaining how to make a video podcast, starting with software and hardware used, through posting it on the web. Then I talk about possible “useful” uses for aggregated video. For those that want a text version, I’m basically following the instructions found on Freevlog.

Observations? It was fun to make. I made it at work, and we have a farily open cubicle setup, so I’m talking sorta quietly – and probably feeling a little self-conscious at first, too. You have to think about movement and positioning a little more than normal (no moving quickly, pausing, etc). I think this type of thing could be pretty useful in the right settings (more on that in the video).

So please – watch the video, and tell me what you think of the “Video Blog” format! For those who want to know; the video is in Windows .wmv format (important, because in the video, I say it’s in Quicktime mov format – I changed my mind after making the video), it’s 11:38 minutes long, and it’s a pretty large file (13 MBs) – if I continue to do this, I’ll have to talk less and compress more!

Another one from the comments –

Paul says: “Hi Dave, you might be interested in the links on this post: http://infocult.typepad.com/infocult/2005/02/digital_bicycle.html”

This post leads to some great websites that focus on videoblogging and aggregating those video feeds! The sites mentioned are:

• Digital Bycycle – this is a “peercasting” community. Looks cool.
• Freevlog – step-by-step instructions for setting up a free videoblog!
• videoblogging.info – website for a group of people interested in videoblogging.

Also, Steven Cohen posted some links to video-related sites last week. Here they are, as well:

• Boogieplay – a search engine (still in beta) for searching video, audio, and text blogs.
• mefeedia – an RSS aggregator for videobloggers.

It’s exciting to see so much expansion and excitement about stuffing different types of content into RSS aggregators. So this is just a heads-up on yet more stuff to check out!

I was just thinking about podcasting (’cause it’s been coming up alot lately in the “li-blogosphere”). And it dawned on me – “well heck David, if you can audio podcast, why can’t you video podcast?”

So I poked around on Google, and believe it or not, that’s the “next big thing” in podcasting (well, at least according to the video dudes).

Here’s some info to check out about Video Podcasting – first, a couple of quotes:

on this page – “Wouldn’t it be cool to sync video to a PMC or Smartphone? Instead of just podcasting, it’s video-podcasting. PT just sent me an RSS feed to a video cast. Newsgator sends it to a monitored folder on the computer which auto syncs to any WM10 device. I can even play it back on MCE. Now what we need is to add channel nine and take it all on the go automatically.” Posted by Michael Gartenberg…

Another quote – “Where audio leads, video follows. We are already seeing the beginnings of video podcasting. Video podcasting, of some form, to some device is almost certainly going to be a major influencer in the way people consume media. Think about it. The programs you want to watch will be automatically delivered to your media server ready for consuming on your schedule. Should ever Apple do a video iPod that would be a logical place of consumption, but failing that, a Mac Mini as home media server has got to be on the horizon. Already video podcasts are being directed at video-equipped 3GPP cell phones.”

And a whole article from Wired News – Video Feeds Follow Podcasting.

Think of the way cool possibilities for video podcasting! Automatically downloadable classes, seminars, book review sessions, visual and audible training on finding info, online story hour, downloadable when (or soon after) it happens…. how cool is that?

I’m actually tempted to try this out – I have a webcam installed on my PC… hmm… we’ll see.