Category: Thought of the Day

Until Audio Hijack Pro for Video, Videoblogging Won’t Take Off

Before I made my first videoblog, I assumed there were 2 challenges video-blogging had to overcome before it could be as be as hot as podcasting

  1. File size for video are a magnitude larger than audio, so bandwidth is that much more precious. Without something like BitTorrent, each additional download is money out of the producer’s pocket.
  2. Videoblogs aren’t portable. Unlike podcasts, I can’t catch up with my videoblogs while on the bike or in the car. For video, I’m tied to my laptop. Less fun for me.

Both of those are somewhat strawmen arguments, I was able to compress my 17 minute video down to something acceptable even by podcast standards. So the bandwidth is less of a concern. The second point will be mute as soon as more portable digital video players get on the market (any day now really…yes, really…holding breath).

The biggest challenge facing videoblogging is the production effort. In podcasting, if I don’t feel like doing any post-production, I have Audio Hijack Pro handle everything for me; recording, ID3 tags, mp3 conversion, and FTP uploading (via an Automator script).

When I’m done recording, the podcast is up.

Over on the video side it was 36 hours from when I shot the video to when I uploaded it. Much of that waiting for the laptop.

I’d love to see something like Audio Hijack Pro for video.

The Mass Market Mentality vs Individual Customer

Doug Kaye states Mark Ramsey doesn’t get podcasting.

Mark Ramsey replies that Doug doesn’t get broadcasting.

Yes, podcasting is a great opportunity for broadcasters to experiment and create a farm team. Yes, podcasting is a no-brainer for a broadcasters to connect with their audience on their audience’s terms. Finally, Yes, podcasting is the easiest way to share audio on a very specific, niche topic with self-selected people.

Mark is right, podcasting and videoblogging can’t be shoehorned into traditional distribution channels:

“But ask your local movie theater how much they care to show a movie only a few people see, ask the local bookseller how much they want to stock a book only a few folks buy.”

No, it doesn’t make sense for a movie theater to show an extremely niche production. Though perhaps if they did, it would help solve their current attendance problems. Mark Cuban suggests focusing on the customer also. Though, perhaps even movie theaters are already catering to niche audience; those that don’t find DVDs from Netflix good enough.

On the Silicon Valley Gillmor Gang, Robert Scoble complains that while Adam Curry’s early Daily Source Codes were addictive (that’s why I started podcasting), Curry’s PodShow on Sirius Satellite Radio isn’t interesting in the least. Proving that podcasting is unique from radio, just as blogs are unique from newspapers, and videoblogs are unique from television.

Nothing in podcasting requires it to be a stepping stone to mass appeal. It could be, and this is a benefit – especially to broadcasters. But podcasting can in-fact be the end game. Independent and ignorant of broadcasting’s constraints a podcaster could build a small (less than 10,000), loyal, and passionate listener base by fulfilling an extremely specific niche. A successful podcast – though a failure by broadcast measures.

iTunes Top 100 Podcast list (counting the number of times in 24 hrs the ‘subscribe’ link was clicked), the Feedster Top 500 list, and every other Top X listing is an attempt at shoehorning. As Dave Slusher eludes, these rankings assume all blogs and podcasts are competing for the exact same audience. If you’re looking for a blog or podcast on gardening in the Upper Midwest or learning Japanese, these lists don’t help. More on the “Evils of Head-ism” at the Long Tail including the fantastic, “Nobody cares if bananas outsell soft drinks.”

Ultimately, I’m talking about 2 very different mentalities:

  1. The market is a mass of nameless, faceless consumers with the same basic needs and the goal is to make advertisers happy.
  2. The market is made of individual customers, each with very specific needs and the goal is to build a deep, unique relationship with them directly.

Considering customers now regularly blog about their market experiences, I recommend option number 2. As does Seth Godin in his recent ‘Clueless’ post

RSS is the Molecular Unit of the Internet

Strip the web of all the graphics, all the CSS, and all the AJAX, and you’re left with a list of things, their detail information, and the forms to add more items to the list.

RSS is the list. The web browser is simply a presentation of it. Same as my feed aggregator, my email client, and my instant messaging client.

As such, the list as RSS should come first, it’ll be needed anyway, with all the various presentations simply parsing it out. The RSS file is the molecule of the internet, made up of atoms, er, items.

To add to the list, Web Services. The create, read, update, delete functions offered through web services are always needed by Web developers. Seems like the site itself should simply be another customer of its web services.

Winning on a Level Playing Field

Competitive bowling is an interesting game. Each player throws a ball the same distance to 10 identical pins. A player becomes a professional by knocking over all 10 pins consistently. This level playing field makes bowling one of the few sports where winning is screwing up less.

Watching some back episodes of the Amazing Race, I was reminded of bowling. For the unfamiliar, the Amazing Race pits a dozen teams of 2 against each other in a race around the world. At any moment, a multi-hour lead could vanish as all teams await the same train.

It doesn’t take the Bowling Moms to see the similarities between the two games. In the world of economics and game theory, it feels like complete information.

Seems to me, there’s 3 lessons for winning on a level playing field:

  1. Believe in the strength of your competitors.
    If all the competitors weren’t equally skilled, they wouldn’t be playing and the game wouldn’t be any fun. If Joy’s Law (“the smartest people work for someone else”) applies, then the most talent players aren’t even in the game. I remember a college football coach (though not his name) known for praising the losing team.
  2. Sharing is better than not.
    Bowlers and the Amazing Racers operate in parallel with each other, one player’s progression doesn’t necessarily mean a competitors recession. The next gutter ball or compass mis-read could even things out again. It’s actually in the players’ best interest to share information. The value of information is subjective – so sharing garbage and sharing wisdom costs the same. Sharing puts the focus on the game, not sharing puts the focus on what an ass the non-sharer is.

Tying 1 and 2 together, it’s nice to double check the competitors are trying to win the same game. Rob and Amber were trying to win Survivor a second time. Apple went for simplicity, Microsoft for ubiquity.

I should dust off my game theory books.

What I Read in the Sunday Paper

Jen and I have subscribed to a Sunday paper as long as I can remember. In Chicago, it was the Chicago Tribune, here in Minnesota on the west side of Highway 280, it’s the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Leisurely reading the paper over doughnuts and coffee is a tradition I’m quite fond of.

In an effort to determine what I’m getting in return for my $1.25 per week, I offer the following list of what I paid attention to this Sunday, July 31, 2005:

  • Money & Business; paged through, nothing interesting. Ironically, I’ve found it less compelling since they added Wall Street Journal articles.
  • Variety; Only read horoscope – predicts a decent day. For sure, I’m having powered doughnuts for breakfast.
  • Arts & Entertainment; Fringe Festival starts this week. Right, I added the Fringe Fest podcast to PodcastMN
  • Metro; paged through, nothing interesting
  • Comics; Opus, Get Fuzzy, Doonesbury. Looks like all the comics are larger this week. They probably pulled a couple and didn’t replace them.
  • Opinion; The headline said it was going to compare Minneapolis and Vancouver, cool. It didn’t (double checked to make sure I wasn’t in the Travel section). Paged through, nothing else seemed competent.
  • Best Buy weekly ad; Nice price on a 300GB hard drive
  • Circuit City weekly ad; Nice price on a 1GB SD card.
  • CompUSA weekly ad; Nice prices on USB flash drives
  • Office Depot weekly ad; Color laser printers are falling in price nicely.

I actually feel pretty good about the time paging through the weekly flyers. The newsprint, on the other hand, left me unfulfilled (could also be the doughnuts). Nearly all the newspaper articles I’ve read in the past year left me wondering a) where’s the story? or b) where’s the editor?

Did I get $1.25 worth. For sure, and I’ve easily ignored 50% of the paper – and most of the locally written articles. I’m even cool advertisers subsidizing the remaining costs. I make a commitment each Sunday morning to this local paper, it’d be nice if I got more out of it than hitting refresh on my RSS reader.

The New Phonebooks are Here, Please Recycle

The Jerk

Growing up, I always looked forward to the new phonebooks. Visiting my grandparents, I spent hours exploring the big city via their encyclopedic yellow pages. Steve Martin’s classic Jerk only amplified my enthusiasm and provided a chorus.

“The new phonebooks are here! The new phonebooks are here!”

Today, unexpected as always, a new phone book lay on my front step. As I look to Google and a company’s own website for phone numbers the massive yellow tome wasn’t welcome. It went straight from the front steps to the recycling bin at the back of the house.

Steve Borsch seconds.