Podcastplayer.org news

I’ve been having some fun downloading and watching a whole bunch of video blogs (a.k.a vlogs, a.k.a video podcasts, a.k.a videocasts, a.k.a “vogs") over the last few days. Some are wierd, some are personal, some are arty, some are funny. All in all, well worth doing - a lot like podcasts, really.

There are a few strange things about the “vlog” culture, though.

Most significant to me is the way that the videoblogging world seems so separate to the podcasting world. To my naive understanding they have much more in common than they have differences, and yet, I only stumbled on a cluster of vlog feeds pretty much by accident, despite studying podcasting for several months.

Another strange thing is the apparent reverence for the “ant” catcher/player tool - among many vloggers it seems that “ant” is the only way to find and watch vlogs. Unfortunately, ant is Mac-only, cutting off the majority of computer users. Use of this tool seems so entrenched that (even though there is a set of feeds included with ant) they don’t bother listing any interesting feeds on the ant site for us poor Mac-less.

I can only guess that some of these strangenesses are due to the lack of a charismatic centre figure to hang it on. No vlogging “celebs” yet, not even a crusty old ex MTV dude.