vlog 4.0 [a blog about vogs]

A Different Google

From my referrer stats I found this other Google. I’m sure it’s been around a while and I’ve just missed catching up. As far as I can tell it is part of the whole Google move towards users having Google accounts. Log in with your Google id, personalise the page, drag elements around, and even “create a section” where you can subscribe to an RSS feed. (Now that’s nice.)

LifeType

Is another open source blog engine. Worth keeping an eye on, seems to be early development days (and WordPress has an enormous user community) but I like what it describes.

Holá

Via my referrer stats I see that I got linked from a Chilean blog. From Valparaiso no less – location of a fine Marker essay film, and I also once worked with an IT guy from Valparaiso. I like how the world weaves you into its fabric. Being a dully monolingual Australian, I must admit how much I admire anyone who has more than one language.

Research Is

There are lots of definitions of what constitutes research. I think most of them get bogged down into disciplinary differences, or minutiae that let academics muse and fuss. This might matter because in our Media department we are making a commitment that all staff will produce ‘research’ (this is a big step for a former institute of technology), which has begged the question regarding what is ‘research’. So:

Research is the activity of creating and distributing new knowledge within a community of practice and it is this community that legitimates this new knowledge.

Tautological? Yes, but as I think Derrida pointed out, reason provides its own court.

Blog Hui 2006

A blog conference in New Zealand, with friends Mark and Torill in attendance. OK, thinking caps on… (via James)

BlogTalk Prototypes Popping Up Again

The third vog prototype that I made for BlogTalk Downunder, that selectively dips into and quotes from Michael’s video and has 14 audio commentaries from me, is being shown by Singaporean academic Tan Yuh Huann next week at the International Conference on Computers and In Education. Since the one available has to download over 5MB of video from my server before it plays, I’ve packaged it up into a standalone version that you can run off your desktop.

BlogTalk Prototype 3 (Verdi Quote) [12.4MB zip archive]

Forthcoming Blog Book

I’ve just contributed a chapter to a new anthology on blogging. Axel Bruns and Jo Jacobs are the co-editors. A page is up at Axel’s place, with links to table of contents, contributers, etc. It’s only just gone to publishers so be a bit before it hits the shelves.

Nice Collection

Russell Smith from the Australian National University, has an excellent collection of links relating to new media art. As too many now forget, the Web is as much about giving back as it is about getting.

Ways of Showing QT

Mikeronen is using javascript to show QuickTime clips in his vlog. There is a ‘click to play’ button which when activated discloses and gets the video. The button changes to a ‘close’ button and then if you close the video it becomes a ‘show’ button. This is nice, and an elegant solution to embedding video because many still embed the complete clip in their blogs which means to view the homepage could produce some ridiculous download (because the video is being downloaded by the browser in the background whether you want to view it or not). One solution is to use poster movies, but this is also of interest. The problem with this, though (if it is a problem) is that there is no visual indication of the sorts of content you will be seeing. Often a poster frame or some other image provides a very good (and effective) and efficient index of what you will see when you chose to view the video.

I think a solution is microns. Mini movies that, for example, automatically take a frame every 15 seconds to make a mini movie of the complete entry and which autoplay (looping) when you mouse over them.

Google Does Webstats

Google Analytics provides webstats for your site. Unlike most of the free counters, you can stick the code on as many pages in your site as you like to track it all.