… I’m going to start videoblogging. The reason: because I love independent media, and an iPod video may become the best possible vehicle to get indie media in the hands of people (if it happens, that is). I remember a few months ago when I got back to blogging, I was paying a lot of attention to the emerging podcasting market (this was when I first posted about Odeo) and wondered about whether vidcasting / videoblogging would ever pick up or how fast that would happen.

Now, it’s a (growing, sure) reality. There’s a growing number of videoblog aggregators, and people creating small videos (some of them, really good). For me, and apparently for Peter Van Dijck (of mefeedia and who wrote a very good book very good book on information architecture) agrees, the video ipod will ultimately be a vehicle for independent media and not necessarily blockbuster movies (even if they obviously play a big role in the media market).

Will the indie media revolution happen? Well, it’s already happening with podcasting. Will it happen in the video market? That, we’ll have to see. But the iPod video sure would help. Not that I’m unhappy about the PSP, though.

Every once in a while, I get to have fun. Fun, is how I describe a little (very little indeed) project that I, Nivi and Dave Horner worked on for a few days some time ago (it was actually built for Foocamp). So, slawesome is out there - I know, the name isn’t easy. Blame Nivi.

Anyway, Slawesome is all about allowing people to send notes, email, love mail, hate mail, or anything else they can do with a microphone, to someone else or themselves. It’s about allowing people to express themselves in ways email doesn’t really allow, because you know how voice can be powerful. Would you rather write a 10 lines text, or speak for 30 seconds? If you’d prefer to speak, you’d probably like slawesome.

We did it for fun. It’s not a full-blown web-application. Nivi had a good idea and we decided to get it out there. We hope people have fun using it. We’ll be having fun adding new features to allow you to express yourself. You know, with voice! Now, go on and send me some voice-mail: my email is “hello@webreakstuff.com”. Use it, amuse me. And turn your messages public, share the fun. Email <3’s voice.

Update: TechCrunch, SolutionWatch. and UneasySilence are talking about it.

Every once in a while, the podcasting world slaps you in the face with the glove of wisdom. The guys at Typeradio have been filling the void for the lack of design-oriented podcasts on the web right now, with an awesome line of interviews with typographers and designers. While this isn’t the regular topic around WeBreakStuff (I know), I thought some of you who keep visiting this site because of design issues may be interested in it.

So what I mean by all of this is: go listen to Typeradio if you want a podcast that is design / typography oriented. They’re doing a terrific work covering Typecon in New York City, and have already done some interviews with people I admire in the design word like Stefan Sagmeister and Peter Saville.

One thing their example over at Typeradio got me thinking about is the possibility of me starting a podcast feed on the Web 2.0 (remember there’s already a couple of great ones on that), usability, web standards (and technologies), and whatever else interests me and my readers. When there’s a will, there’s a way, or so they say. I’ll give that some thought.

Evan (you know, one of the people at the oh-neato Odeo) has an interesting blog post about how people have been using a combination of Del.icio.us and their service in order to create an ad-hoc podcast. That’s interesting indeed, and one of the best uses of the “remix” paradigm that the web 2.0 empowers.

The part of the blog post that I find even more interesting, though, is when evan mentions the inumerous possibilities to put the content out there for users to consume. I quote:

For odeo we’ve been debating how to display feeds for the user which allows flexibility, yet also makes sense. It’s easy to generate atom, rss 2, rss 1, opml, oml, pcast, m3u, smil, xspf, asx, etc… but how to present it to the user. So far we’ve been burying these in the sidebar.

Here’s a thought, Evan. All those formats fall basically into two distinct categories: subscriptions (atom, rss, opml, the new pcast) and playlists (mru, pls, asx, etc.). Instead of using all three, why not give the user these two choices (subscribe / listen now) based on his preferences at odeo? It seems to be the most logical thing to do, interaction-wise. Here’s a practical example:

I have a mac, an ipod, but I also listen to a lot of content on my laptop mp3 player. So, Odeo would ask me first, my mp3 player of choice (you know, from the usual list: winamp, windows media player, itunes), and second, how I usually subscribe to podcasts (itunes, a news reader, a podcatcher like ipodder). According to my choices, Odeo would “customize” the “subscribe / listen now” experience by making each button (or link) produce the adequate filetype for my preferences. In my case, that would be a pcast so I could get it into iTunes and from there to my iPod (this on the Subscribe end) and a “standard” .m3u for the “Listen Now”.

Considerations:

What the method I describe above makes odeo transparently accomodate all sorts of users and formats without compromising sidebar space or user frustration levels (something I preach about when consulting on usability). You transparently create 2 options (again, “Subscribe” and “Listen Now” - your mileage may vary) and instantly give users the possibility of using any of their sofware players, news readers/podcatchers, mp3 portable players, etc.