DISQUS

Whoa. This is horrible. It's good that it was caught on video, but that won't bring back the murdered pilgrims.

I remember I was on a panel with Steve at the Apple Store in NYC when he talked about a new little project he had started working on--YouTube. I didn't pay that much attention. A year and change later and----whoa! YouTube has changed our culture in a significant way. Props to YT for making it easy for people to share video and make it a focal point for conversation.

I've had a lot of problems with Dreamhost, where I host my personal site. Lot of downtime lately, not just this summer.

They have good features---lots of one click installs of stuff, low prices, lots of space and bandwidth, but it seems like maybe they have gotten too big to handle their infrastructure or something.

Even though it would be a pain, I'm thinking of jumping ship before they sink.

I don't know if it makes sense for you to mix up the photog segment up with some other creative, arty tech people---like James Powderly of Graffiti research labs:

http://research.eyebeam.org/people/james-powderly
http://research.eyebeam.org/
http://graffitiresearchlab.com/?page_id=17#video

Or like Mikey Sklar, one of coolest geeks I know

http://www.hackaday.com/2006/08/24/mikey-sklar-...

Comment # 4 is worth noting.

Eric Rice. Always entertaining and sometimes surprisingly lucid.

I echo Steve's commments. FireAnt is still better. I spent hours the other night watching videos, and leaving comments via FireAnt. A really pleasant, easy experience.

LayZ, Josh has certainly been noticed by many people seeing as how major news outlets like Time, the NYTimes, and Fox have covered his case. Whether you agree with his stance or not, he certainly has gotten plenty of attention.

Blip is great, but Wordpress.com can be a litte funky with embedded video.

I'm digging the podcast from your San Jose State appearance. Good stuff.

I messed up the URL to the historic home restoration site, here it is.

Video is also excellent at conveying visual information, so, for example, if you want to show someone a home restoration technique, video works great. That's not a strictly entertainment thing.

Web video production processes will keep getting cheaper, easier, and higher quality, and I predict an accelerating adoption by regular folks who want to make media. Fact is, a little education goes a long way in producing compelling videos.

People learn by doing, so if someone does have a dream about making media, I say, go for it. They probably already have a point and shoot digital camera. Play around and see what happens. You don't need to be Francis Ford Coppola to make something folks will want to watch.

Now if only my spelling had more functionality....

Another blatant plug:

I think you might be able to find what you want with my company, Phovi. For more precise info, email my boss at: peter at phovi dot com and he'd be happy to give you the full on specs of our free WordPress blogs which have way more functinality than wordpress.com affords.

Liza,

Reading your comment made me want to eat a vat of lard drizzled fried icecream.

Yes, Abe, photos are indeed permissable. But it wouldn't have captured the bit at the end with Maryam smiling. Or at least not in the same way. Text, photos, video, it's all good stuff. Do whatever you want. But don't be scared of video. It doesn't have to be a big production.

Robert, I'm sure the barrier to some people is that they just don't know a good process for getting video on the web. Might be helpful if you took them through how you got the meat vid online, step by step.

I had pancakes for breakfast too, sans butter. Of course they fry it in butter, but what happens in the kitchen, stays in the kitchen, right?

Nothing satisfies like butter.

Hey, thanks for the link Robert! But if you get a chance, can you change the link to go to my post so people can leave me comments instead of linking to the actual video file?

Here's the link to the post:

http://www.jonnygoldstein.com/2006/09/16/why_al...

Wasabi!!!!

Oskar. Yes. You can embed the in a blog post. That is what videobloggers do. Videoblogging is not necessarily an alternative to text blogging; it's just an expansion of it. You aren't throwing out text just because you want to link to some video.

Somethings are best expressed with video. Here's my video response to Alec Saunders called Why Alec Saunders Should Vlog.

Podesta, you are mistaken in the case of the California Shield law. Under this law, the state cannot compell handing over of unpublished notes or media from a journalist. It's not required that he be protecting confidential sources or information. It covers the following unpublished information (I copied this from hefirstamendment.org/shieldlaw.html)

* Specific information obtained during newsgathering but not disclosed to the public
* Includes "all notes, outlines, photographs, tapes or other data of whatever sort"
* Includes newsgatherer's eyewitness observations in a public place
* Applies even if published information was based upon or related to unpublished intormation


As to whether Josh should be considered a journalist, he has contributed to a couple of newspapers and sold
his footage to news programs, including some of the footage in question. The law includes freelancers, so
under it, he's covered....if the jurisdiction is the state of California.

It's true that Josh is currently being
held in contempt by a federal court, and there is no federal shield law, but there is a lot of debate as to whether the feds should have juridiction here.

So whether Josh "Has a leg to stand on legally" depends on whether the Feds remain successful in asserting their jurisdiction.

Brent, the thing is, people can do great journalistic work without having credentials. And they can do lousy work with credentials. Many newspaper reporters don't have a journalism degree, and no one makes a fuss about it. There are no formal government or industry guidelines as to who is a journalist.

Still, If you need some kind of institutional certification that he's a journalist, he was labelled such in recent New York Times and SF Chronicle stories.