New Media Expo 2008 Report: The Future is Videocasting

Known as one of the world's most popular conventions for podcasters, online video creators and bloggers, the 4th annual New Media Expo, took place in Las Vegas last weekend. In years past, the Expo was was primarily focused on audio podcasting but this year saw a rise in videocasting. Founder Tim Bourquin said that now it's 50/50 audio and video.

As Ben Parr of Mashable writes in, The Death of Podcasting and the Rise of Videocasting? No, It’s About Options, that, "We hear less about podcasts and and more about video shows such as Epic Fu, Pop17 and even TWiT live (now streamed by StickAM). The trend seems clear - podcasting is going by the wayside and videocasting is taking the helm."

Videocasters are big and with personalities like Gary Vaynerchuk leading off with the first keynote address it helped set the tone that you can be your own new media brand, and with 60,000 daily viewers of his Wine Library TV, you know Gary Vee definitely means business. He's a hero and celebrity in the videocasting and blogging community and is one the first to reach mainstream success crossing over to TV audiences with his appearances on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and The Ellen Degeneres Show. His blog says, "Gary’s fame can be attributed to his pioneering, multi-faceted approach to personal branding and business building."

With over 2000 attendees, Tim Bourquin calls the Expo "a fantastic weekend of education and networking!" and the conference program describes it as "a hands-on, exciting, "how-to" event with practical conference sessions about how to produce high-quality online audio and video content, grow a loyal audience, and even make a few bucks with your content in creative ways."
Steven Hodson of Mashable wrote about this last month in his post, Video Blogging Is Not The Frontier You Might Expect, where he made the point that video blogging is not the same as traditional text blogging and that it's evolving into the next new territory of social media communication.

So who attends the NME? Audience demographics can be viewed here, and the graph below charts the main reasons why they attend.


While I didn't attend the Expo myself I managed to view a few videos around the topic of the video blogging boon. Along with Gary Vee's keynote another favorite was an amazing live demonstration by Will it Blend.


Gary Vee was also later joined by iJustine and Walt Ribeiro for panel session on what's the direction of online video. Ben Parr moderated the live session which was streamed live on Ustream and covered topics like mobile, live mobile streaming, Nokia N95 and Qik are the catalysts, life streaming and privacy vs. meeting everyone is the world.

Gary Vee said that in the mainstream world nobody knows the Internet celebs but give it time, we are the early adopters, live video, Twitter, Friendfeed, lifestreaming - people who have content will rule! You can read Ben Parr's post here
or click on the photo to link toview the video below.

Live streaming video by Ustream
Also, David Tamés of Kino-Eye.com sat down with Steve Woolf (Epic Fu), Zadi Diaz (Epic Fu), Steve Garfield (SteveGarfield.com), and Walt Ribeiro (Ustream.TV), for a conversation which was planned to be an audio podcast as he says below but turned out as video. Recorded on Saturday, August 16, 2008 topics discussed included "what was best about the show, issues as the big-players enter the space, and Net Neutrality."


The video is 19 minutes and David Tamés shared this about producing the video,

"I had originally planned this to be an audio interview, but when Steve Garfield gave me the video he shot video with his N95, it became a video. When I combined his video and my audio, I was impressed that the audio sync drifted less that a frame from start to end. The N95 is an impressive little camera, suitable for minimalist double-system sound with a digital audio recorder as we used it here."

This video features Tim Bourquin talking about how the NME evolved and where it's going. Watch more videos here.

I read some mixed reviews from some of the attendees which I've listed below and Bourquin himself went on record saying that he may quit the Trade show business altogether. But it doesn't change the fact that many attendees and presenters alike saw video becoming more of niche player in the blogosphere.
Related:

• What’s the Future of Online Video? Time to Ask the Leaders (Live Stream)
• Social Media Events Are Fragmenting | chrisbrogan.com
• Tradeshow Startup » Blog Archive » 5 Reasons Why I’m Thinking About Quitting The Tradeshow Business
• PeckPack.com » Blog Archive » The New Media Expo 2008 …Not So Much
• Mike McAllens Real Visions: Review and takeaways of the New Media Expo 2008 in Las Vegas
• New Media Expo 2008 Wrap up & Ideas : Bare Feet Studios
• New Media Expo 2008 | Robin's Roost
• next2friendsblog.com » Blog Archive » Vloggers, Podcasters, and The New Media Expo 2008
• Video Blogging Is Not The Frontier You Might Expect

Mashable: How to Live Stream Your Life: 20+ Tools and Resources

Mashable writer Sean P. Aune published a new list of video lifestreaming applications in a post titled, How to Live Stream Your Life: 20+ Tools and Resources. He identifies the 20+ popular video platforms used for lifestreaming and live broadcasting into three categories: mobile single platform, webcam, multi-platform streaming and others. I've used a number of these tools and services and have found that many of them have similar features and options for syndication.

Sean writes, "Video lifestreaming has become more and more popular with the increasing availability of mobile video recording technology and the decreasing price of webcams. So why not try it out?"

The following is written by Sean P. Aune for Mashable and originally published on July 15, 2008 as: How to Live Stream Your Life: 20+ Tools and Resources

Mobile single platform

• CometNow.com - Allows you to stream using your Windows Mobile device to other cell phones or to computers by going to your streaming page. Works with Windows Mobile devices.
• Flixwagon.com - Allows you to stream video live from your phone, save it for later and even alert Twitter to who you are recording. Works with Symbian based phones.
• LiveCastr.com - Works with any 3G enabled phone and requires no download to work. Stream can be embedded into social network pages and all videos are automatically archived.
• Vox.com - The Vox blogging community also allows you to upload video directly from your N Series Nokia phone to your account. The service is Symbian based.

Multi-streaming platform

• Justin.tv - Made famous for the fact that the founder, Justin, streamed his life 24/7 when the site started up, and was followed by iJustine spending six months streaming her life. The service can be used with webcams and mobile devices.
• Kyte.com -Kyte can be used from webcams or mobile devices, and allows you to brand your channel as well as monetize it.
• Livecast.com - Formerly Comvu, Livecast lets you broadcast your life from a wide-range of mobile phones from carriers all over the world, as well as using your own computer.
• Mogulus.com - A video streaming service that focuses on desktop services, but does have a complicated looking workaround for mobile streaming.
• Qik.com - Qik is available on multiple mobile platforms, including the iPhone, with more planned to come. Stream live from your phone to their site, allowing you to broadcast from anywhere.
• Shozu.com - Shozu enables several models of mobile phones to upload and tag photos you take to over 30 social networks including Facebook, YouTube, Blogger and more with just a couple of clicks.

Webcam

• BlogTV.com - Allows you to broadcast live or pre-recorded shows, embed them on your blog, download favorite shows, and more.
• Live.Yahoo.com - Yahoo’s live streaming service that sends messages to Twitter, embeds selected videos on MySpace, and offers an API for those who need it.
• NowLive.com - Features personal channels as well as a heavy focus on scheduled shows and live coverage from events like movie premiers.
• Seero.com - Mixes video streaming with geo-tagging to show you where the feed is coming from as well as factoids from that location.
• Seesmic.com - Referred to as “the Twitter of video”, Seesmic is a micro blogging video service for use with webcams.
• UStream.tv - Popular with people wishing to do personal webcam shows as it also provides an embeddable chat room you can put into your own site.
• Yaika.com - A European streaming service that makes your streaming page look like a blog

Others

• EarthCam.com - More of a repository of old school webcams. People also use the service for shows.
• HelloWorld.com - HelloWorld charges for their streaming service, but offers a lot of other services like private video IMs and more.
• Icecast.org - Allows you to set up your own live streaming system, but is for more advanced users.
• RantTV - Scheduled live streaming shows with a heavy focus on music.
• ShoutCast.com - Allows you to set up a video stream just like you do with audio over the ShoutCast system.
• Stickam.com - Focuses a bit more on a scheduled show format than other services, but

Google Videoconferencing Killer App on the Way?

I'm in deep with Google. Not from a financial investment but from a content publishing and productivity work investment. My blog is Google, my documents are Google, my gmail, videos and search are through Google and it seems all my transactions have some sort of Google effect. It would seem likely that live interactive video would be next combined with translation and language detection.

Kristen Nicole from Mashable noted in her March 26th post, Hosted Google Apps to Get Translations and Video Tools, that, "According to a Computerworld report, Google plans on enabling electronic language translation to be applied to several other hosted Google applications, including email and instant messaging chat. That’s handy for all you global communicators. And if that wasn’t enough, Google also plans to release interactive video tools as a hosted alternative to other videoconferencing services out there. Both the video and the language translation options are set to be part of the hosted Google Apps suite"

The Computerworld report Google developing hosted translation, video tools was written by Brian Fonseca and based on a recent Computerworld interview with Matt Glotzbach, Google's director of product management for Enterprise. Glotzbach said, "researchers at the firm are working on technology that would enable rapid electronic language translation... (Google is) also looking to develop interactive video tools to augment internal training programs and to serve as a hosted alternative to pricey videoconferencing software."

The language and translation application would work in real-time and across the suite of Google Apps. Glotzbach added that, "What you need for real-time automated machine translation is large amounts of compute power, which we have, and large amounts of data, which we have... Imagine a system that can do on-the-fly translation of things like e-mail, documents and IM chat. That's a feature of [Google Apps] you can see on the horizon."

Regarding the introduction of an interactive Google video application, Brian Fonseca noted that, "the popularity of YouTube prompted many users to ask Google officials about whether it plans to offer hosted video business tools. Google will initially focus its tools on collaboration and videoconferencing applications."

"But what about the video?" asked Kristen Nicole, "Aside from presenting the video service as a set of videoconferencing tools, Google may in fact expand on the video offering in order to integrate video with email and chat as well."

Google hasn't set a date for when a language translation tool for video would be available. But the idea of an instant translation service for real-time video communication is not only incredibly cool but a positive step in bridging the linguistic boundaries of our global communities.

Related:

• New Google AJAX Language API - Tools for translation and language detection - March 20, 2008, Official Google Blog by Brandon Badger
  

Mashable - 12 Screencasting Tools For Creating Video Tutorials

Here's another great list of software tools compliments of Sean P. Aune of Mashable who has assembled a dozen options for you to create a screencast. Screencasts are commonly used to demonstrate software features since you can directly record your computer screen activity and publish it as stand alone video. The benefit is that you don't have to use any external hardware and it's done using a software application which gives you a high quality non-scan converted video capture.

Sean intentionally left industry standard screen capture program Camtasia off the list and commented that, "I didn't feel it needed inclusion since I do believe every one knows it." He's right too, because if you're on Windows and have had to produce any screen recording projects then you probably have heard of Camtasia. He added that, "Perhaps we should have called it "Forget Camtasia", but I admit that particular idea didn't cross my mind at the time I wrote it."

So here's the list, some are free and some are commercial products, and you can see his original post for more details along with comments from readers. (Thanks again Sean!)

The following is written by Sean P. Aune for Mashable and originally published on February 21, 2008 as:

12 Screencasting Tools For Creating Video Tutorials

1. AviScreen - As the name would imply, this capture program records the video into AVI files, but can also do BMP photos. It’s Windows only and does not record audio.
2. CamStudio.org - An open source program for capturing your on-screen video and audio as AVI files. Windows only, and absolutely free.
3. Copernicus - A free program for Macs that focuses heavily on making quick and speedy films by recording the video to your RAM for quicker access. Does not include any support for audio.
4. JingProject.com - Beyond recording video, Jing allows you to take a picture of any portion fo your desktop, draw on it, add a message, and immediately upload your media to a free hosting account. You are then given a small URL that you can give to whomever needs to see the image or video. Works with Macs and Windows machines.
5. Screencast-O-Matic.com - A Java-based screencasting tool that requires no downloads and will allow you to automatically upload to hosting. According to their site it works well with Macs and Windows machines, but does have some issues with Linux.
6. Wink - Screencasting software that focuses on making tutorials with audio and text annotation abilities. Outputs to Flash, PDF, HTML, EXE files and more.
   
7. Adobe Captivate - While Adobe is almost always synonymous with quality, it also always means it’s going to be expensive. Pricing starts at nearly $700.
8. AllCapture - Capture in real time, add audio during recording or after completion. Can output to Flash, EXE, ASF, DVD, SVCD and VCD. Free trial available, Windows only.
9. HyperCam - Windows only system for recording screen activity to AVI files along with system audio. Free trial with $39.95 for full version.
10. iShowU - Offers a wide-range of presets that allows you to record directly into Quicktime and up to 1080P in both NTSC and PAL formats. Also does audio and the file is ready to be published as soon as hit stop. Mac only.
11. ScreenMimic - Software for the Mac that offers transitions, audio dubbing, can output to HTML, Quicktime and Flash. Free download and $64.95 for the paid version.
12. ScreenRecord - Outputs to Quicktime directly and can record your clicks and all on-screen activities. Offers a free trial and then $19.95 to purchase.