This morning I tried out a new service called Kyte.tv which lets you create and watch video channels on cell phones and the web. It is launching tomorrow, but you can try it out early by using the trial code gigakyte, thanks to Gigaom.

Creating a Kyte.tv channel from the web
Using Hmmcast #100 I created a Mobile Hmmcast channel. The process was fast, smooth and I was able to easily drag a transparent poll option to the Hmmcast. Just select Produce from the top Kyte.tv menu, choose your video or picture content and upload from your computer. The generated channel page kyte.tv/tdavid contains an embedded chat (nice) and a familiar video option a la YouTube to transfer to your website and special embed code for MySpace:

A sound that plays every time someone visits your channel page or says something in chat, which could drive you to look for the volume slider. Shortly after publishing my mobile Hmmcast, an anonymous Kyter stopped by and said hello.

A relatively small list of supported cell phones work with Kyte.TV. I wasn’t able to see how Kyte looks there because our son’s phone isn’t on the list (I haven’t had a cell phone since December 2006).

Email producing channel content
An alternative to adding video and/or pictures to your Kyte.TV channel is by using email. E-mail shows can contain pictures and text. This page provides instructions:

* E-mail address: channelname@kyte.tv
* E-mail subject: creates kyte show title
* Attached pictures: turns into kyte slide show
* Attached video file (20MB max): turns into kyte video show
* E-mail text: turns into kyte show text

You can choose to let others contribute to your channel either without an access code or with one. I left the Mobile Hmmcast channel open so feel free to send something along as a test if you don’t want to create your own channel.

Hmm thoughts
Anybody agree or disagree that there are way too many video sites out there? I think it’s time to find something new to clone, er I mean create. The ability with Kyte.TV to send video and pictures along by email is somewhat interesting but how easy would it be for Google to add these features to YouTube? What about Twitter adding video and pictures (something that comes up a lot)? This one leaves me feeling a bit ho-hum. What do you think?

Download Hmmcast #84 mp4

Creative Live Camera IM Pro, mikull.com, Samsung SC-D365 MiniDV Camcorder with 33x Optical Zoom (affiliate), Kodak EasyShare Z760

Behind the Hmmcast
Only video from two cameras was used in today’s Hmmcast, can you guess which cameras were used? Most pictures at Hmm these days and some of the Hmmcasts have been shot (almost all outside video) with the Kodak camera. The video files are converted to AVI using Quicktime Pro and pictures are edited, cropped and compressed using Adobe Photoshop.

Have a question you’d like answered on a future, Hmmcast? Just ask in the comments below, youhmm never know!

Download Hmmcast #83 mp4

Visual Communicator, beginnercode, define:chroma key

Apparently your opinion on what you’d like to see in a conference only matters if you buy a ticket to Gnomedex, which thank you for clarifying Chris Pirillo, because it’s comments like these that help turn me off to attending Gnomedex:

AGAIN, the opinions of registered Gnomedex attendees hold infinitely more weight with us than those who have (a) not signed up for Gnomedex, or (b) won’t sign up for Gnomedex, no matter what.

Guess the “no matter what” part saves me somewhat because I don’t rule out attending any conference by anybody. I do look for a few main components of a conference in order to sign up.

I’m burned out on 95% of the conferences being offered these days. There are too many of the same people — let’s call them conference whores — doing primarily the same things, forming in the same cliques, patting each other too much on the same backs. I can hang at my office, save money and time by covering the blogs, vlogs and podcasts of said events without having to go out and hear nice folks like Scoble for the umpteenth time brag about how many feeds he reads. We know Robert is a people magnet, now if only he would sit down, please be quiet, and let somebody else claim the microphone.

A friend who is part of organizing a conference asked me recently what type of conference I’d like to attend and I figured why not share this list below with others. Although Chris Pirillo might not value my opinion (as much?) because I’ve never attended Gnomedex (I have donated for the Gnomedex stream, however) — and again I still might attend a future conference he’s behind — conference planners might appreciate a list from a geek who has been around the web doing business for awhile, doesn’t suck from the teat of the corporate machine and has attended (and spoken at a small few) conferences over the years:

1. Avoid speakers who have spoken at more than one conference within the last couple years, unless they have something really new and fresh to offer the audience. There are a notable few exceptions like any of the Google founders, Bill Gates, Phil Harrison from Sony and so on, but try best to avoid the conference regulars. The reason we see a lot of the same people speaking is because the organizers want these big names to come and hope they’ll promote to their respective audiences. It’s an old, tired tactic that works.
2. Schedule people to speak that you don’t see speaking or attending many conferences. Don’t wait for them to submit proposals to you, conference planners, seek these people out. Invite them! People like Jon and Heather Armstrong, Wil Wheaton has crossover appeal as an actor (Stand by Me, STNG), writer and a geek. Shelley Powers is outspoken, heck I’d just like to see a picture of what Ms. Powers looks like (Flickr? Google, anyone?), somebody book her now. Dori Smith doesn’t speak very often and she’s got a ton of JavaScript knowledge. With the surge in AJAX popularity why isn’t she being booked to more conferences?
3. Provide tested, working broadband internet and a pre-established backchannel that can scale. Even though more folks have EV-DO (myself included recently) this has been a major drawback of almost every conference I’ve been to the last few years. If one drops a couple hundred dollars or more to a conference these days then they expect to get internet that works.
4. More audience interaction. The old formula of go, sit and listen just doesn’t work any more. Dave Winer has tried to push more audience participation and I think that’s a good idea (he’d be one of those people not to get speak, BTW). There is also something to the hall having the most interesting conversation. Maybe you get reporters and coverage of the halls outside the sessions? I remember demoing StumbleUpon way before it was as popular as it is now for Chris at a conference out in the hall of a Northern Voice conference. There are many other early adopter conversations happening in the halls and corridors of these conferences.
5. Don’t forget the virtual worlds. Consider simulcasting the event in Second Life (again, bandwidth needed) and let others have mini events with the stream and send some master list to the people on the stage to address. Dean Koontz did this last night with Bantom Books and it worked well. Since Pirillo doesn’t seem to like Second Life I doubt you’ll see anything like this at Gnomedex and it’s too bad. Chris, you (and others) should look at it again as having good potential to supplement your conference and make the sessions more interactive.
6. More Ice breakers to ease communication between attendees. We hear all the time how the reason to go to the conference is the crowd, the conversation, not necessarily the speakers. Assuming that’s true then why not do more to facillitate more conversation between attendees? Perhaps randomizing the list and selecting five or ten buddies to meet during the event. Meet them and get them to sign your nametag with a code or something and redeem at the end for a free t-shirt.

Time for me to use that dirty “T” word.

The most sensible use of Twitter I’ve heard thus far is for locating other attendees at conferences (thanks Eric). For those who can’t or don’t get into IRC, this is an additional benefit that should be utilyzed. Sounds like this happened at SXSW recently and that’s pretty exciting. When you’re at an event with hundreds of people, how to do you get involved? Some designated places to say “hey, I’m the dude with the brown hat by the ___” or “I’m wearing the green dress in the corner” could be valuable to attendees, especially first timers.

I’ll stop here, but I’m sure others can add to the list in the comments below. The truth is I’d like to go to more conferences, but would like to experience something fresh, exciting and new, whether it be a unique format, setting and/or an unusual but interesting collection of speakers and attendees.

Wait, the not enough female geeks thing
To briefly touch on the not enough females discussion, I think that’s bogus and yes, I’m a man so consider the source. Women have the same opportunity to sign up for these conferences as men. The same opportunity to adopt technology and blog, videoblog and podcast about the pros and cons. Maybe there is some discrimination in the selection of speakers, I don’t know because I’ve never been part of any committee that selects them, but I can say this: I’m personally most interested in hearing from people you don’t normally hear from: women, men, aliens, pet rocks, whatever.

The major disappointment I have in most conferences is a lack of creativity in the scheduled events.

What do you look for from a conference?
I like to meet new people as well as converse with past contacts, but as stated in the beginning of this post too many conferences are filled with basically the same group of people which actually detracts from making the overall event fresh and new. The same group over and over again isn’t likely to produce different results, are they? Perhaps it’s time to drop the whole tired conference versioning (conference 2.0, 3.0, 7.0, etc) and come up with a slogan instead of a number?

Geographically placed conferences like Gnomedex here in the Seattle area are most compelling of course (no travel time), but that’s not enough alone. I want to go there and feel like I’m going to get something additional out of the experience that doesn’t filter up through the exterior coverage from the attendees. More creativity!

You’ll note that I didn’t mention pricing anywhere in this post. Sang that sour note of conference pricing in the past. In this case I wanted to talk about value. Even free conferences aren’t worth attending if it wastes the most valuable resource we have: time. Conversely, a $1,000+ conference plus travel expenses could be worth it if the creativity factor and value is high.

What about you? What do you want to get out of conferences? Who would you like to hear speak? What would make you buy a ticket and attend? Can you add to my list above? Agree or disagree with something I’ve listed? The microphone is yours.

MTV owner Viacom is suing YouTube now owned by Google for 1 billion bones over an alleged 160,000 infringing clips on YouTube. I own Google stock and will be monitoring the impact on Wall Street.

In a statement, Viacom lashed out at YouTube’s business practices, saying it has “built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others’ creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google.”

So far Google’s comment is “no comment” but I wouldn’t be surprised to see them post something on their official blog in the coming days. Google has faced legal friction on many fronts since their IPO and it makes me wonder how long before the good ship takes on too much water? YouTube has been a copyright infringement haven that they overpaid to acquire. I wrongly believed they had — or would quickly develop — a revolutionary algorithm that could filter out the copyright infringement.

It’s easy to find copyright violations on YouTube. I found the David Lee Roth band concert which said video and pictures could not be taken and yet YouTube had almost every song they played on it from different venues taken by fans and uploaded without permission. Months later, the videos are still up on YouTube. Not good.

When news of Google overpaying $1.65 billion for YouTube became official I wrote back in October: “Now that Google has bought YouTube it has put a gigantic bullseye on Google’s back. One thing is certain, Google sure has mammoth family jewels.”

Viacom just kicked those jewels. This has already made the top story on TechMeme.

It’s creative videos with funny lyrics like the following that deserve to be linked far and wide and sure enough it’s weighing in at #6 on the viral video chart. Over 300,000+ view on YouTube and counting. Maybe it’s so popular because … it’s true?

My favorite parts:

- Kill Zone sucked and you made more (Killzone 2)
- “now you’re getting your ass kicked … by the Wii”
- The PS3 grill mod!
- the break where Phill Harrison Executive Vice President of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) is edited to repeatedly say “uh, ah, ummm.”

What are yours? Whare are all those eerily silent Sony fanboys that was mocking those who doubted the logic in an overpriced system with proprietary video six months ago?

Download Hmmcast #69 mp4

Check out that ‘fro, Zamzar, Tori Amos piano only (Youtube clip), Tori Amos official website, breathe!

Mr. 1938 Media Loren Feldman reports that he had all of his YouTube accounts nuked over including some content that MLB didn’t like. He didn’t come out and say “copyright infringement” but it sounded that way to me. Why he had all his YouTube accounts tied into the same email address is also a bit mystifying, but what’s done is done.

Looks like I only had one of his YouTube videos embedded here and to locate I conducted a search for “Loren Feldman.”

This has been one of my ongoing concerns with embedding third party content using third party hosting: that the links will be broken at some point in the future, thus impacting our archives. It sucks.

This is why I’m not a big fan of short posts with links to third party videos and nothing else. Add some context around third party content and don’t just say: here’s this cool video, check it out. If the third party gets their account nuked like Feldman did, then there goes the value in your archived page. Fortunately, the one post I used for his video, it was more like window dressing than main course, but I’ve used other video embeds in shorter posts here and it’s something I’m trying not to do any more.

Loren is working on a solution and will convert the links but again he’s going with PodTech.net and not his own hosting? Loren, pony up for some hosting already. Libsyn can host your 300-500 videos as a first party option and that’s what we’ve been doing here with our Hmmcasts. At least this way people can reliably link to your content going forward. You have to think some people are going to think twice about embedding anything from you going forward that isn’t first party hosted.

And what happens if your gig at Podtech goes haywire? What if Scoble or Furrier decide they don’t want your content there? What if they run out of money (more likely)? Then everybody’s links are broken again? Shame on us once, not twice. No more 1938 Media video embeds here until Loren and company get some type of first party hosting.

You know how much we pay for Libsyn hosting every month for the videoblogging and podcasting? $10 per month. It’s $120 a year to have a first party system in addition to the third party video streaming shared in posts. Sounds like 1938 creates more content than here and maybe they’ll pay a little more, but we’re not talking about that many dollars for peace of mind.

Almost every time I link up a third party hosted video the thought that the content could go away skitters across my brain. It’s like linking up some newspaper stories where they employ dynamic links. When/if I come across these types of links I do not link to them again until they provide static links.

In the web world built on links the most reliable content out there to link is usually your own.

I’ve held off reviewing Podtech.net and more specifically ScobleShow, one of their flagship videoblogging shows (”A PodTech original”), primarily because I wanted to give Scoble a chance to get over there, situated and start cranking out the quality stuff. Also, wanted to wait until CES was over and see what kind of coverage emerged.

For those who don’t know, Robert Scoble did some clunky but informative amateur videoblogging for Channel 9 at Microsoft. That gig led to a job offer for both he and his wife to create ScobleShow at Podtech.net in July 2006. His video skills were constantly criticized at Channel 9. He’s fixed the video quality by buying a more professional camera but the audio still needs a lot of work.

If you don’t want all the details then here’s what you can expect: better video quality, slightly better audio quality, very good quality subject matter and total underutilyzation of video editing.

Before we get too far, a disclaimer: I’m new to regular videoblogging and most criticism offered here is based from a viewer perspective. I’m sure anybody reading could disembowel my weekday Hmmcast videoblogging– and I hope some will do exactly that — telling me what they think is good and what sucks so that I can improve. My advice that follows for Podtech and Scoble is meant constructively, even if it gets snarky at times. Don’t confuse writing style with intent. I’m not worried that Scoble and Podtech’s John Furrier (is it pronounced “fury-er” or “furry-er”?) will take this wrong, but if they do, then they have the comments below and/or their own blogs to be heard.

I enjoy offering detailed feedback out in the open and letting others critique that feedback. Sure, I could drop these guys a personal note, but Scoble is always complaining about having too much email, and more importantly nobody else would see the feedback and have the chance to weigh in with their own feedback. Use the medium.

That would be my three words of advice to Scoble: use the medium.

Hats off to Scoble for continuing to find interesting people to talk to and share with the rest of us. He’s managed to parlay his connections while working at Channel 9 into access that many other videobloggers either don’t have or cultivate as successfully. Scoble is fast to offer up these connections when criticized:

Regarding my videos being “bad.”

OK, I’ll bite.

Where’s a better video of the 45nm Intel fab?
Where’s a better video interview of the people who built it?
Where’s a better video explanation of what the new technology does and how it let Intel build a new series of chips that’ll run our computers (Google just announced it is switching back to Intel)?

A little humility, Robert, please. With a video editor all the videos you mentioned above could dramatically be improved.

Don’t get me wrong, ScobleShow raw footage is very strong. I’ve been leaving comments here and there on the ScobleShow videos and overall have been impressed with the raw subject matter. Scoble can brag about who he’s talking to, but it’s a shame to get this footage and then just dump it on the internet without any further treatment. No summarized edited video, just the entire sometimes laborious offering.

Time is not on your side — when making video
Now let me point to Om Malik’s advice to Scoble in one of the Scobleshow videos: don’t waste people’s time. Nobody — even Bill Gates — is interesting all the time being shot with raw video.

48+ minutes for Ed Saenz, the guy who named WiFi? If there was ever a case for editing, then this video is the poster child. I know it takes away from your time finding and organizing who to talk to, Scoble, so maybe hire somebody to do that for you? You’ll do your audience a huge favor shaving off boring parts of conversations. The signature goofy laugh can survive the editing process if you want.

Cue the Om Malik video, another interesting conversation damaged visually by an unmoving camera shot with subpar audio. Another example is the one with Scoble’s wife Maryam talking to the hotshot Zuma player. Better camera movement on that one as Scoble seems to become the cameraman for (all/many?) his wife’s video interviews.

Not all ScobleShow videos are too long but looking at the front page as of this writing I saw the following running times: 40:21, 42:40, 2:01 (audio only), 41:16, 33:52, 42:02, 13:11, 22:34, 26:32, 18:52, 5:50, 7:59, 10:24, 9:03, 23:20, 14:59.

Quick math tells us that’s over 350 minutes worth of video. That’s almost six hours of ScobleShow recently. Divide by five and it could be watched in an hour which would be more realistic time-wise for regular viewers to follow. Maybe that’s not the ScobleShow target audience? Regular anything? I’m not being saracastic here, I’m simply wondering aloud.

Loren Feldman gave Scoble sound advice, and wasn’t just goofing on him, about doing something about the length of these videos. What did Scoble and Furrier do? Hire him to go off and create his own edited videos. They should actually put Feldman’s advice on video editing for ScobleShow in play.

Scoble has pointed to other heavily edited videoblogs like Rocketboom and Ze Frank as being a fan. It’s not accidental that these shows share a common trait: good editing.

I’m certainly no video pro, and definitely lacking the pro hardware, but even a videoblogging amateur like me understands the importance of editing and so far have spent more time editing than shooting raw footage.

Raw footage must be edited.

While nothing is stopping somebody from just just uploading raw, prerecorded video it isn’t very respectful of viewer’s time. If the video is live that changes the landscape, but when it’s prerecorded and over a few minutes, it demands editing. Scoble seems not very interested in editing through his actions, choosing to just give us raw conversation with the camera rolling and expecting us to edit out what we think is worthwhile.

People don’t have that much time.

To make matters worse during the Saenz interview Scoble jokes about the only problem being the tape as far as length. That’s a silly admission to viewers that he doesn’t think our time is very valuable. With every five minutes of raw footage one would be fortunate, I think, to get one minute of visually compelling footage. Does ScobleShow care about the viewer’s time? I think Scoble does, but the finished product seems to say otherwise.

If I’m not being clear here: you don’t use video to record podcasts or use podcasts to read text (blog) posts. Each medium is unique and has strengths and weaknesses.

Attack of the color bars
The video quality with Robert’s HD cam is very good. It’s got me thinking about buying a more expensive camera (damn him) but I did notice several distracting color bars in some videos:

These color bars weren’t unique to ScobleShow videos they showed up in several different sampled Podtech.net videos and could be a result of the compression scheme. I left a comment about this issue on January 15 and haven’t received a response either privately or in the comments area about this issue. Perhaps I’m the only one seeing this?

(doubtful)

More podcasts than videoblogging
I’m finding myself with most ScobleShow videos just listening to the audio. Why not just make them podcasts and skip the videoblogging if there is nothing more interesting to watch than two guys talking and drinking water? Yeah, we get to see what the people look like, I get that. Use the digital camera and take a few photos instead, perhaps?

Possible solution: social editing
Here’s a suggestion: make a community-friendly license for the ScobleShow videos (Creative Commons), encouraging others to mix, match and edit them for you. Release and promote them as “raw ScobleShow videos” so that people know not to expect something polished that takes full advantage of the video medium.

I don’t blame Engadget for not linking en masse to the ScobleShow videos. Unsurprisingly, Scoble disagrees. What are they going to say? Here is a 45 minute conversation with XYZ where there’s maybe 5-10 minutes worth of interesting visual information? I think ScobleShow would be better having podcasts of the videos and Engadget linking to that and let the listeners visualize a much better video experience than is being provided by the raw footage. Also, those guys can’t have the time to mine through ScobleShow videos trying to pick out the good parts.

ScobleShow could benefit greatly from a Google video permalinks feature and would become more link-friendly.

The interviews could be a lot more visually interesting and watchable as video if edited down to 10-15 minutes max and using multiple camera angles. Only have one camera? Stop the interview, move the camera around to another position on the tripod, and continue the interview. Better yet, bring a cameraman. Bring two.

A skilled editor could make ScobleShow much more watchable, entertaining and worthwhile. In the current form, the ScobleShow feels a little bit like watching Robert’s RSS aggregator with almost no filtering. Cherry picking or audio-only strongly recommended.

If I was basing this review off raw footage it would get a B+ (audio quality hurts it being an A), but sorry Robert, you are at best barely using the strengths of the medium. Video is about more than good subject selection, point, shoot and share. Time is extremely important. Just because you have 40 minutes of source doesn’t mean every — or even most — viewers will want to see all 40 minutes. Grade: C-.

I was invited to an earlier version of The Venice Project, the TV-related project from the wizards behind Skype. An NDA has prevented me from writing about any details of the experience including screenshots, but I can and will admit that I didn’t spend much time with it. Sort of an in, check it out, look around, and get out experience.

I’m very interested in TV on the web. I just tried using my login to checkout the new version of Venice Project, strangely name changed to Joost and it didn’t work, so not sure if my beta status is still valid (anybody else able to get in?). Whatever the case, I know two things I don’t like that carry no NDA.

The name and the design.

How do you say it? Juh-ooo-st? Joooost? It doesn’t have the appeal that Skype had. Who wants to be a Jooster? Is the name easier to remember than The Venice Project? Perhaps, but it’s not very appealing.

And what’s with the psychedelic color scheme? Doesn’t work for me. Why not something that better represents it is a TV-related project? Do you like the name Joost better than The Venice Project? Premature name and design change and breakaway from the Venice Project linkage. Why not start out with Joost?

Not sure when Joost will offer a public beta, but their best move would be waiting as long as it takes to polish and perfect the software, not changing names and perpetuating the clubbiness of an invite only with NDA marketing strategy.