Videoblogging

Blogs are the perfect mechanism for easily sharing video. I've been working for almost six years on making it as easy as possible to put video on the Internet. When I discovered blogs and blog technology, I eventually realized that it was an essential part of the solution. If you're not familiar with blogs, I wrote a short introduction to blogging.

I originally called videoblogs “vblogs” for short, but now I call them “vlogs”, like most everyone else. A few people call them vidblogs, or vogs. Yancy and I had a discussion about what the best name for popularizing videoblogs would be, and we chose vblogs. The reasoning was that many people have not even heard of blogs, yet, so we wanted the shortest name that contained the complete word “blog”. That's why we originally chose the name vBlog Central for the videoblog hosting service.

	Note
	“Vlog” has become the dominant shorthand name for “videoblog”. The momementum started around Vloggercon 2005. As of June, 2006, we have renamed vBlog Central to Vlog Central, giving in to the prevailing name.

It really doesn't matter what you call them, I'd just like to see more people making them. If they're hosted on Vlog Central, that's great. If they're not, that's fine too. The point is that as more people produce and share video, in addition to consuming it, the world will become a more interesting and better place.

To learn more about videoblogging, you can join the Yahoo group, or visit the videoblogging.info site. I highly recommend the book Videoblogging for Dummies by Stephanie Bryant. (Disclosure: I was the Technical Editor for the book, but am not making any money from book sales.) To get started videoblogging you'll first need to get a blog. I use the free Blogger.com service provided by Google for my personal vlog and I created the Vlog Central site using Movable Type software. The TypePad.com hosting service uses the same software as Movable Type and has a 30-day free trial. Movable Type and TypePad offer many features that Blogger lacks, and if you get serious about either blogging or vlogging, you may decide those features are worth paying for. Vlog Central has a Getting Started page that shows how to start videoblogging with the Vlog Central service.

I'm very interested in how XML-based technology powers the “blogosphere” and how it can be used to make video on the Internet easier to create, share, and consume. Some of that technical work, particularly when it is based on Open Source technologies, will be discussed on this site.