Joost in time, it's vlog 8

Hi welcome to the (transcript of the) latest videolog featuring various bits of web video journalism from around the net. I'll start this week with serious plaudits for a serious piece of work from the Guardian. The newspaper's Katine Project is a highly ambitious attempt to transform the lives of people living in one of the poorest places on the planet, a village in rural Uganda.
It contains, as you would expect, news and blogs from the village highlighting different areas of its life. But there's also a fantastic rich interactive map - the virtual village - which brilliantly brings the sights and sounds of Katine to life.
It's probably the best piece of convergent journalism I’ve seen from a UK newspaper – or any newspaper for that matter - so far.

I've also been taking a look at Joost, the video on demand service from the people who brought Skype to the world. Now for a start I'm wary of anything which requires me to download a new application – my desktop's cluttered up with enough redundant rubbish as it is – but I bit the bullet with this one in the name of journalistic exploration. Joost has signed deals with some major journalism organisations, including Reuters and ITN. No sign of any ITN stuff yet, but Reuters is providing weekly entertainment and technology bulletins. Joost has a nice interface, but so far lacks enough really compelling content. Until there’s more to watch, any further visits will be hard to, er, joostify.


The Bristol Evening Post is part of an interesting new video project. It's streaming live video footage of meetings of the city council in a brave attempt to bring local democracy into readers homes. The Post reckons around 200 people tuned in for the first one, and the video remains available to watch afterwards on the site. But at 3 hours, I suggest you nip out for a packet of pro plus tablets first. Now what would really help is a Post journalist to edit it down into highlights so Bristoleans could find the bits that really interest them.

Ustream is a network that allows you to publish live streaming video on the internet.
So instead of producing this brilliantly crafted and immaculately edited videolog, I’d be able to talk to you in real time and you could contact me live to tell me what you think. Don’t think I’m quite ready for that yet – but I can certainly see some applications – conferences, for example – where it might come in handy.

Incidentally, new viewer Joshua pulled me up last week for not giving Kyte.tv a fair crack of the whip and opting instead for a cheap banana joke. Fair point. And actually I found myself watching some footage by tech blogger Robert Scoble on Kyte this week. So there is clearly more to it than fruit, and it is worth keeping an eye on.

Speaking of Scoble, I see that reports of his company’s demise were not just premature but downright falsehoods. I'm glad about that, not just because it shows there is a market for the one-man blogger and videoblogger, but also because it gives some great insight into technology that’s coming our way. Like this example:
That's Stanford Professor Marc Levoy who is working on a camera that allows you to refocus pictures long after you’ve taken them. I know a few Fleet Street snappers who'd pay good money for that.

Finally, here’s a couple of earnest young men debating the modern problem of information overload on Google Video (at about 8 mins 40)...
That's Marshall McLuhan and Norman Mailer, filmed in 1968. They should go far.