Tag: vidcast

Podcasting, Search Engines, video

Google's windfall for copyright claimants

In case you haven’t heard (where have you been?) Google announced that the rumours were true after all and that they have agreed to buy YouTube for $1.65bn.

Yep. You read that correctly, $1.65bn.

Unsurprisingly, this is the top story on TechMeme.

It looks like Google believes video on the web has a real future and YouTube’s legal troubles (they are being threatened with litigation for copyright infringement) are a price they are willing to pay.

For the people thinking of suing YouTube this has got to have them down on their knees thanking their deity of choice! Instead of suing YouTube – a company with no significant assets, they now get to sue Google – one of the world’s wealthiest companies!

Blogging, Business blogging, video

Oh no! Scoble Show launched

Robert Scoble’s video show was launched this morning. The delay in the launch was due to the PodTech.net site’s re-design apparantly.

The Scoble Show

There are some fascinating interviews there. One of the videos is of a photo walk with Thomas Hawk. Thomas is a photographer in San Francisco and works with photo sharing site Zooomr.

I did a podcast on PodLeaders with Thomas a couple of months back and it was an engrossing interview but Robert vastly improves on my podcast by interweaving photos Thomas was taking as they were walking along by the Golden Gate bridge (and by being a far better interviewer!).

The interview with Sun CEO Jonathon Schwartz was a compelling insight into why Sun still matters!

And I love the wide screen format of the video.

I can’t wait to see the JotSpot video and the Shai Agassi interview – jeez, now I’m never going to get any work done!

[Update] I see Robert has blogged about it too

Mac, Podcasting, PodLeaders, video

Blip.tv enable in-browser video recording

I have mentioned Blip.tv previously but I didn’t mention their in-browser video recorder.

Today I decided to try it out and I have to say, apart from a few minor quibbles, I am well impressed. Especially since this function is still in Alpha.

Blip.tv's browser based video recorder

What quibbles did I have? Well

  • The counter counting off the time on-screen isn’t very accurate. On my first try, I finished after what the counter told me was 30 secs only to find that the recorded video was 99 seconds!
  • There is no pause button – a pause button is very handy in any recording medium and this is no different. It needs one.
  • The file sizes generated seem inordinately large (one minute 29 seconds – 324mb)
  • I failed to get the video to upload to the site! I had to upload it using UpperBlip (Blip.tv’s free upload tool) and most disturbingly
  • You can now see how far my hairline has receeded!

As I said, this functionality is still in alpha but it is indicative of the great spirit of innovation at Blip.tv. I recently published an interview with Mike Hudack, the CEO of Blip.tv, and you can tell from that interview that Blip.tv are going places.

[Non-disclosure] – I have absolutely no affiliation whatsoever with Blip.tv, I just happen to think they are cool!