MULTIMEDIA IS THE MESSAGE (June 27, 2007)

Talking Points
•    Photography online
•    Moblogging
•    Podcasting
•    Video blogging

READINGS
•    "Flickr site helps photographers develop skills, connections (with photo gallery)," http://www.madison.com/tct/mad/topstories/index.php?ntid=133203&ntpid=0
•    "Weblogs Get Upwardly Mobile," http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/webwatch/story/0,12455,858719,00.html
•    "What Is Podcasting," http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmedia/2005/07/20/WhatIsPodcasting.html
•    "Blogging + Video = Vlogging," http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2005/07/68171
•    "The Vulnerable Video Blogger: Promoting Social Change Through Intimacy," http://www.barnard.edu/sfonline/blogs/lange_01.htm

Photography Online

Photography itself is a relatively recent development -- 1839 (http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/) -- but digital photography is even newer, roughly as old as blogging itself. The first digital camera for professionals was offered by Kodak in 1991, and the first consumer cameras came out in 1994. (http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bldigitalcamera.htm) The introduction of digital cameras that could be connected to computers using serial cables hastened the move of photography online. Previously, images had to be created electronically -- or scanned into a computer using a flatbed scanner. The first desktop scanner was introduced in 1984, about a decade after the first personal computer.

Photoblogging took off in the early 2000s, roughly in step with blogging itself. Several notable photoblogging services launched soon after. Fotolog -- http://www.fotolog.com/ -- launched in 2002. Photoblogs -- http://www.photoblogs.org -- a popular directory of photoblogs, formed as a list of just 15 photoblogs, also in 2002. Photobucket -- http://photobucket.com -- launched in 2003. And Flickr -- http://flickr.com/ -- was founded in 2004.

Examples of photoblogs (courtesy of Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/ebusiness/2004/02/10/cx_pp_ii_0210photoblog.html)

Utata (Catherine Jamieson)
http://www.catherinejamieson.com/

Ten Years of My Life
http://www.tenyearsofmylife.com/

Daily Dose of Imagery
http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/

Interesting projects

New York City Photobloggers
http://nyc.photobloggers.org/

JPG Magazine
http://jpgmag.com/

Noah K. Everyday
http://everyday.noahkalina.com/

The Sweater Project
http://www.buriedlede.com/projects/sweater.html

Photojojo
http://photojojo.com/

Moblogging

Moblogging is the practice of mobile blogging, or posting to a blog from a portable or mobile device, such as a mobile phone. According to Joi Ito's history of moblogging -- http://joiwiki.ito.com/joiwiki/index.cgi?moblog -- the first mobile content was posted by researcher Steve Mann in 1995 -- http://wearcam.org/eastcampusfire.htm. The first post from a mobile phone was made by Tom Vilmer Paamand in May 2000 -- http://tom.paamand.dk/moblog.htm.

Widespread ownership and use of mobile phones were necessary for moblogging to flower. Portable devices such as the Danger Sidekick hiptop led to the advent of services like Hiptop Nation -- http://hiptop.bedope.com/. The first Sidekick was released in 2001. Soon afterward, blog tools such as Radio Userland began including mail to post functionality. Adam Greenfield coined the term moblogging in 2002.

Moblogging introduces other ideas: mapblogging, geocoding, and other geographic approaches to photography and blogging.

Example

TextAmerica
http://www.textamerica.com/

In general, given that photography has worked its way into Web sites and blogs in a widespread way, the idea of moblog-specific blogs is less appealing. Often, you cannot tell whether something is moblogged unless you can identify by the image quality, size -- or camera device used to take the picture.

Conferences

First International Love Hotel Moblogging Conference
http://www.tokyotidbits.com/lovehotel/

Podcasting

Podcasting began in 2000, when the ability to include enclosures in RSS feeds was introduced. First demonstration occurred in 2001, but it wasn't until about 2004 that podcasting as a term was coined -- and the practice began to reach critical mass. Early adopters included Adam Curry and Christopher Lydon. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_podcasting)

At it's most basic, podcasting is grassroots radio-style broadcasting. I think a more accurate term might be audioblogging because not all podcasts follow broadcast formats and structures. Also, much like "blog," podcast might be too tool dependent a name. Not all MP3 players are iPods, and the term "pod" is relatively meaningless outside of that context.

Podcast directories like Podcast.net -- http://www.podcast.net/ -- Podcast Alley -- http://www.podcastalley.com/ -- IndiePodder -- http://www.indiepodder.org/ -- and Odeo -- http://www.odeo.com/ (founded by some of the folks who brought us Blogger) -- were once going business ideas, if not concerns. Then Apple and iTunes got into the mix.

In 2005, Apple added podcasts to iTunes, and the way podcasts were distributed changed drastically. http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2006/06/71257?currentPage=all is a good article on the impact of iTunes on podcasting. More than 1 million podcast subscriptions were made in the first two days of the offering. (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jun/30podcast.html) Distribution is still important, but the role of exclusive podcast aggregators is much less so.

Anecdotally, it seems that podcasting has been most widely adopted in the technology, education, and music worlds. Many radio programs are repurposed and called podcasts. The primary difference between podcasts and Net radio is that podcasts are resident files, not streaming audio.

Notable podcasts

SXSW Podcasts
http://2007.sxsw.com/coverage/podcasts/

This American Life
http://thislife.org/

Stanford on iTunes U
http://itunes.stanford.edu/

Conferences

Podcast and New Media Expo
http://www.newmediaexpo.com/

Tools

Podcasting Tools
http://www.podcasting-tools.com/

Video blogging

Video blogging represents the intersection of two practices: video diary making and blogging. Video diary making began in the '80s when consumer-grade video cameras became widely available. The BBC aired a series of programs featuring video diary segments. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlog) The content was drastically different than the fare on "America's Funniest Home Videos."

Steve Garfield, of Boston, was one of the first video bloggers. He began experimenting with the form in 2002 and started his own videoblog in 2004. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Garfield) Rocketboom -- http://www.rocketboom.com -- perhaps the most publicly visible videolog, was launched by Andrew Baron and Amanda Congdon in 2004. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketboom) Rocketboom received most of its attention when its host, Congdon, decided to leave in 2006. She has since become a correspondent for ABC News and was replaced by former MTV Europe VJ Joanne Colan.

YouTube, which has perhaps done the most to accelerate video online, launched in 2005. It was acquired by Google in 2006. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube) While most of YouTube's content is arguably not videoblog-related, some serialized content might fall within the realm of videoblogs.

Lonelygirl15 -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonelygirl15 -- is perhaps the best known example. Strongly inspired by video diary making, which I mentioned earlier, the serial was initially thought to be nonfiction. Turns out that it was a fictional work by several filmmakers. Soup of the Day -- http://www.livevideo.com/soupoftheday -- is another example of indie film-quality videoblogging.

Blip.tv, a leading videoblog hosting service, also launched in 2005.

Examples of videoblogs

43 Best Videoblogs
http://43best.weblogswork.com/pmwiki.php?n=Main.43BestVideoblogs

Conferences

Vloggercon
http://vloggercon.blogspot.com/

VON
http://www.von.com/web/index.php