I just listened to the video blogging session at BloggerCon.

In the discussion it was clear that there is a coming conflict between people who "do it for love" and those who are doing video to build an audience, which presumably they are doing so that they can sell advertising or get sponsorship. In other words there are those who believe in production values and those who think that the production values advocates are missing the point: that everyday people can now use video to communicate in a new way.

It's interesting, but at Microsoft the Channel 9 team built an audience without doing much production. Very little editing. Very little enhancing of audio. Very little audio beyond just using the on-camera microphones. Most of my video was shot on cheapo cameras.

It's interesting that they didn't discuss why that worked: we're tired of committee-based marketing.

Look at a typical Superbowl Commercial. I'd bet that to do one of those requires at least three committees.

So what that my audio wasn't the ultimate 5-channel surround sound that the World Cup has? Or that my camera work is a bit shaky at times? I didn't do it to win an Emmy: I did it to get you a look inside Microsoft offices in a way that'd be impossible to do if we had "production values." 

Why? Production values require committees, or at least a lot of time and money. Committees generally strip the soul out of things. It's why we end up with names like "Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005." Or worse.

Dave Winer made the point that by making it seem like you need to spend eight hours to do a few minutes of video that you're scaring off just the people who'll come up with something innovative. He said he doesn't do that and he has an audience of thousands who watch and listen to his various vlogs and podcasts.
That is so true.

Why do I like videoblogs? Cause I don't need to pitch a committee to get them distributed. That's a huge change.

Yeah, it means that there will be a ton of video that you won't want to watch. That's OK!

We have plenty of "professional" content out there. There's 150 channels on my Comcast and nothing is on.

Now I'll have 150,000 videoblogs a day to choose from. I'm sure that the really good ones will get pointed out.

I'm actually probably going to get two cameras: a cheap one and an expensive one. There's some content that just requires a better quality. But there's a whole lot of things that I'd like to do that doesn't require hours of sitting in front of an editor, or a $6,000 camcorder with a $600 tripod.

Speaking of which, the New York Times has a new blog that's tracking the new videoblogging world. Wow. I thought it'd be a year or two before NYT would jump in. Oh, and there's a good blog that shows how to do your own videoblog.

To get this back into a geeky bent, anyone have good videoblog tutorials that teach you how to program?

Two videos that got my eye. They won't change the world. They don't really communicate anything important. They won't get on Memeorandum or Digg or even on Google Video or YouTube. But, what the heck, neither will a flower.

Daniel Liss: Begin here. Great homemade music and visuals. Inspiring!

Michael Verdi is in a post Vloggercon funk.

Oh, Michael, I know what you mean. Sometimes I just get in a funk and don't know what to write. It gets worse after conferences cause I realize people are listening. Damn, it's so much easier to create and do weird shit when you know no one is listening.

It's a totally terrifying time in my life. And thrilling, too. So many changes coming that it's hard to just soak it all in. It's hard to get to sleep, to tell you the truth. Which is why I'm watching videos at 4 a.m. Thanks for making my 4 a.m. a little more fun than what's on the Discovery Channel at this time of morning.

I do feel naked, though. I gave my camcorder to Charles the other day so can't send video back. Can't wait to get a new one. Which one should I get? I want HD, but don't want to spend $6k for the Panasonic one, so probably will go with the Sony I had before (FX1).

I've been playing for a few hours with Opera 9 tonight. Nice browser. But not sure I'll switch. IE 7 and Firefox serve my needs well and don't leave a lot of room for a new browser. 

Will Langford, though, did a nice writeup of Firefox vs. Opera. I don't share his concern with RAM usage, my main thing is speed of opening a new window and completely rendering a Web site. Firefox is fastest here on my computer (which is running beta 2 of Windows Vista). I love the Bittorrent integration, I wish everyone would build that into their browsers. That's going to be how we're going to get HD video from my camcorder onto your screen, so I care about that a lot.
One other thing I care about: I'm going to be using both Mac and Windows OS's in my new job and I want a browser that's as close to the same on both OS's as possible. That leaves me with Firefox. 

On the other hand, Opera has a nice browser for cell phones that I'm using more and more. So, it makes the choice hard. 

Anyway, which browser do you like best, and why?