The media business in general and punditry in particular are currently seeing an explosion of clever new ways to deliver content. One of the most intriguing is bloggingheads.tv, a “diavlog,” meaning a blog featuring videos of pairs of talking heads. For example, my friend Will Wilkinson had a fascinating discussion with BH.tv founder Robert Wright about libertarianism and what’s wrong with Ron Paul. (Incidentally, everything Will says about Paul is true, but he’s still head and shoulders above the other candidates)
What prompted me to plug them here, though (aside from the shameless hope that sucking up to them will land me an invitation to participate) is that they’ve recently had a significant technology upgrade. They ditched the irritating WMP-based format they had before and replaced it with a Flash-based video player. Meaning that at least Mac users can watch videos without having to install proprietary plugins. (Linux users might still be screwed). They’ve also introduced “dingalinks,” which are permalinks for video. Awesome.
But best of all, they’ve added a feature that lets you watch videos at 1.4 times normal speed. That means I can watch Bob and Will have 75 minutes of conversation in 54 minutes. It’s absolutely fantastic. The biggest flaw with video-based blogging is that it takes so long to watch videos. I can read faster than most people can talk, so it’s an incredibly wasteful way to consume punditry. However, it turns out that people are perfectly understandable speaking at 1.4 times their normal speed. So I saved 20 minutes at the cost of Will’s voice being slightly squeakier than normal.
They post interesting discussions from insightful people several times a week, so I encourage you to check them out.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.