Sunday, August 21, 2005

Gunfire Heard & Seen at News Sentinel KnoxNews.com has staff members shooting -- both video and handguns. The results are at "Random This: Our Lens on Life," a video blog or "vlog" by Web producers at the News Sentinel's online edition. Why they chose a trip to the shooting range as a first video topic isn't clear, but now that they're armed, I may hesitate about pointing out glitches in their Web code the way I did yesterday. The creators describe themselves as "four Web producers on a mission: to tell a great story with our dinky little camera and to put your video stories online." Their video blog or "vlog" features moving pictures shot with what most consumers think of as a Sony snapshot still camera, one of the many digital cameras that have limited video capability. I discovered that my shirt-pocket-size Canon could do the same thing just a year ago at Boomsday. (Hmm. Fireworks for me, gunfire for them -- what is it about noisy things as first videos?) Like Al Gore's current.tv on a much smaller scale, the KnoxNews vloggers are inviting viewers to send in their own videos. (And if they want a tutorial first, they could always borrow Al's--I mean current.tv's--Survival Guide, although it's aimed at users of higher-end equipment.) So far I don't see an RSS feed for the video blog, which would make it possible to let larger video files download at lower traffic times -- and viewers could subscribe with an aggregator like FireAnt, maybe even iTunes. Thanks to bloggers Glen Reynolds and Terry Heaton for pointing to the "Random This" site in the first place. I'd also missed Instapundit's earlier essay on video blogging, which is worth a look. Heaton, whose blog is headed "over 30 years of television news, Internet and New Media experience," says the KnoxNews vlog should be a wake-up call for television stations: "The local newspaper is beginning to compete with television stations (and lots of everyday folks) for the video news niche in your market. TV executives simply cannot overlook what's happening here." Broadcast TV is one thing... I think it will be interesting to see if the KnoxNews crew can compete with Rocketboom. 12:12:24 AM    comment []

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