Doc’s Harvard blog, a mainstay of the post-blog-boom blogosphere, is about to go away. I started the service that hosted Doc’s blog. You know how they say in startups, will the last person to leave please turn the lights out? Well we both lived to see the end of the dream, Doc and I. Our blogging service was the first such service at an American university, possibly in the world. Of course the ideas seem obvious in hindsight, but they weren’t obvious then. I went to Harvard hoping to bring intellectuals to blogging and vice versa, and as a bonus we got podcasting. It worked. Anyway, Doc wrote a final post today, have a read, it’s a typically beautiful Doc memoire. And here’s the archive.org listing for the original location of his blog, part of the original group of Harvard blogs, started in 2003. #
12 Nov
Scripting News Annex 
Posted by Rusty Hodge on November 12, 2006 at 12:00 pm
YouTube caught on not just because of the free storage, but the easy access to that content that was stored and notable the easy of embedding that content into other pages. While some video sharing services would discourage embedding or “in-lining” content, YouTube encouraged it, and got tons of free promotion that way.
Posted by eas on November 12, 2006 at 12:24 pm
FYI, apparently Danny Hillis is behind Sun’s intriguing and in-the-news “datacenter in a box.”
Posted by Bob Boynton on November 12, 2006 at 1:23 pm
BBC found that if it takes more than 4 seconds to download a page we all leave.
How long does it take to download a 15 minute podcast or a 15 minute video blog? More than 4 seconds. After two or three minutes I give up.
YouTube succeeds because most of what they have is small enough to wait for.
Posted by Paul on November 12, 2006 at 4:12 pm
Video and audio content cannot be consumed in the immediate way words and pictures can, and that will always be their shortfall, and why words and pictures will always haver their place, if not the majority of mind share (I say this, but look how TV took over Americans’ minds–I suppose with widespread cheap mega-bandwidth, video consumption could rival words and pictures). However, I made a comment on Scoble’s blog the other day, because of this very issue (I would like to see more of his video content in his blog). I don’t have the time in the middle of my day to ‘check out’ for a video, but can take a couple minutes to read an article between tasks, calls, etc., anytime to read an article or blog entry. However, Generations X, Y and Z may prefer the video (over the radio star?).
Posted by William Grosso on November 12, 2006 at 4:44 pm
Not free storage. Free bandwidth.
Posted by Philip Miseldine on November 12, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Interesting topic, though I think maybe YouTube gained so much traction from viewers because of Macromedia’s/Aodbe’s technology that allowed for pretty much instantaneous playback of videos. They kept them small, low-rez and auto-loading to give you action in that 4 second time window. Also, YouTube had/has an awful lot of MSM streaming from it’s servers which is great to consume; a podcast / video blog isn’t so enticing than a South Park episode 🙂
Maybe the real challenge is that with a photo, it’s easy to produce the content: click, plug in, upload. It’s solved. It’s also easier to produce an interesting photo…not to belittle the David Bailey’s of this world, but a photo is immediate and interesting. A podcast needs a lot more time, dedication, technology and of course, nerve to produce to any type of high standard. It’s one thing to type, or shoot a photo, it’s another thing to become a radio DJ 🙂 And the truth is, most people, including me, would suck as a DJ.
Posted by eas on November 12, 2006 at 7:38 pm
Podcasts are things people listen to in the background (like Radio), and often they do so on devices that provide no back-channel for interactivity. Both Flickr & YouTube are the users primary focus when they are “consuming” the content hosted on them, which creates opportunities for further interaction beyond simply choosing to view another item.
Posted by scott penton on November 12, 2006 at 8:09 pm
http://dailytalkshow.blogspot.com/2006/11/ed-bradley.html
Posted by Carl Weisbrod on November 12, 2006 at 11:16 pm
I’m an old Goldwater/Eisenhower Conservative. I’m sure you know, Dave, that Goldwater became very angry at the direction the Bush (41) NeoConservatives were moving and would have gone ballistic had he lived to see the mess Bush (43) made of the political system and the country in general. Your commentary was right-on. I vote for more on the same topic. We’re not out of the woods yet and your voice is needed.
Posted by Kosso on November 13, 2006 at 6:07 am
Re: ‘social media networks’ – it’s all media – not *just* images – or text. It about distribution, organisation, ‘connections’ and filters. With *just* OPML and RSS you can achieve this for any media you like. In fact, (we know) it doesn;t ave to even be media. It could be the human body, an engine, your family, software api documentation. It makes no difference about the ‘type’ of enclosure an item might contain.
*tester* – i finally got my OPML editor and management system (you saw a concept demo last year) fully working over the weekend. Now it;s time to pretty it up 😉
I am also finding that the experience of building the Second Life blogging community (for it is becoming just that) at bloghud.com has been amazing. Building a blogging tool for a virtual world, testing it, shipping it, supporting and developing it – and making money in the process – is an experience any coder/builder with a passion for scripting could do. I reccommend it.
I recently made it possible for a single bloghud post (with a photo) to get posted to bloghud.com, your own blog (WP, Blogger etc) AND flickr in ONE go. All with their own rss feeds to boot!
When an incredible moment that was, when it worked. But the *experience* of doing that, and feeding and organising ‘stuff’ using opml will really show what ‘opml plus rss to the power of users’ can do! 🙂
thanks Dave.
Posted by Kosso on November 13, 2006 at 6:08 am
*tester* should have said *teaser* – sorry bout that
Posted by Koz Farina on November 13, 2006 at 7:30 am
YouTune also got huge attraction due to freely trancoding all incoming video to the Flash Video format – FLV. Thus making the uploaded media playable on nearly 90% of all desktops, with the appropriate Flash player installed.
I just wrote an app that does a very similair thing, to convert movies and audio from my archos (now with ‘headcam’), my mobile phones, and some screencapturing apps – after uploading or emailing them. 😉
I hope to be able to openly test and demo this lot pretty soon – after I make it look less like a geeky test app 😉
Also, we might need to find somewhere to host it all and pay for bandwidth etc etc ;P – Hmm Libsyn just got bought – maybe … hmm… ;P
Posted by Koz Farina on November 13, 2006 at 7:30 am
YouTune!? LOL. Tube!
Posted by Susan Kuchinskas on November 13, 2006 at 8:53 am
“If a reporter wants to plant a foot in the future and burn some bridges with the past, a simple project would be to build a network model for who gets quoted by which reporters at which publications.”
Dave, you don’t think bloggers are every bit as bad about quoting the same group of bloggers over and over?
Posted by Akshat on November 17, 2006 at 11:12 pm
You are dead right about Flickr becoming popular because it does not consume time. I think YouTube has succeeded for precisely the same reason. It has been associated with really short clips which last for a couple of minutes and are pretty much guaranteed to entertain you. On top of the entertainment value, you add simplicity and we have a winner. Unlike Youtube, Odeo depends on long duration of user attention, which has become its prime reason for downfall. Podcasts unlike music cannot be consumed while multitaking, as they provide a plethora of information.