I've been looking at video blogs and thinking about vlogcasting -- that is, wrapping video in an RSS feed. It is not difficult at all. But first, a little explanation.
I think the idea of vlogcasting is that one does the sort of discourse one sees on a blog but records video. So if someone has a personal blog and takes a trip from Newark, Delaware, to Baltimore, the blogger writes about the experience. Getting the car gassed up, stopping at a convenience store for H2O and a box of TastyKakes, driving down I-95, stopping at the Ikea at White Marsh, arriving at the Inner Harbor, and so on. With a videoblog, or vlog, it is an a-v experience instead of text and images.
The "casting" part comes in with the RSS feed. Let's say the video is recorded in a format that iTunes can read, such as QuickTime or MPEG-4. [read what Apple says about MPEG-4] Merely by putting the video on a webserver, editing an XML file for the RSS 2.0 feed -- this means putting the URL to the video in the enclosures element -- you can set it up as if it is a podcast. In iTunes just do the usual Advanced < Subscribe to Podcast and paste in the URL to the XML file. You can then click its listing in iTunes and it will play in a little window in the lower lefthand corner of the iTunes window. Very cool!I was remarking to someone last night how these technologies are merging. She had said, "sounds like a podcast." Well, it is in a way, only it's video so my iPod isn't going to play it like a podcast MP3. Still it encompasses the features of a blog, video, and podcast. Now, what to do with it at the U?
