This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one of the transitions for the new year. I've started it This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004
Captain Video and the Video Rangers. Remember them? If you do, you were a kid when I was, back in the 1950's. In those days there was an American company called Dumont, who manufactured a television set of the same name, and started a TV network. One of their shows, broadcast live in what would become the early prime-time slot, was a science fiction/adventure serial named after the good captain and his sidekick. A full hour of the program has been salvaged, and can be seen here on YouTube. But cowboys? Yes, there were cowboys in the show, because reruns of Westerns could be used for filler. Advertisements were frequent, long, venal, and aimed at children. The captain and his Ranger dressed in military-style uniforms and flew a spaceship resembling a propeller-driven World War Two aircraft. But that was not important; what was, besides the ads, was the video. The captain, most recordings of the show, Dumont televisions, and the Dumont network are long gone (they passed into oblivion in 1955), but their legacy is more prevalent than ever on today's Internet: the advertisements, of course, and the video.
Today is a good time to celebrate the memory of Captain Video because a new use for video has just emerged over the past few days, and today Jonathan's Coffeeblog will add the feature: video commenting. On blogs. Commenting itself has been a bone of contention, because it is vulnerable to spamming, trolling, and ranting. Some bloggers resist a comments feature. Others open commenting to registered readers, then close registration to new commenters. Most blogs that do accept comments have a system built in to moderate comments, filtering out unwanted communications. Now that video commenting has become available, someone will still have to moderate the comments, but instead of mere text, tone of voice, facial expressions, sounds, motion, and visual props can now be part of the commenting process.
In the days of Captain Video, the closest imaginable thing to video commenting would have been a letter to the local newspaper editor. Now video commenting is available, and, I predict, will soon be widely used throughout the Internet.
Video commenting is now possible due to a collaboration between two Internet start-ups. One is the web commenting service, Disqus, founded in 2007 by Daniel Ha and Jason Yan. The other is Seesmic, the brainchild of Loïc Le Meur, a powerhouse entrepreneur who helped pioneer blogging and political podcasting in France, after a start in advertising and web hosting. Seesmic, which one might call a video version of Twitter, the social microblogging hub, makes it easy to record short videos as a means of conversation. Now a Seesmic video, using the Disqus commenting apparatus, can be attached as a comment to a weblog item.
The science fiction film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, featured a realistic-appearing conversation between a space station officer and his child. Since then that kind of two-way videophone talk has been available for a while over Apple's iChat, the Skype Internet phone service, and other systems. (I just talked with my mother this morning over Skype.) She and I agree, being able to see someone's face makes a big difference.
What is special about the new Seesmic/Disqus collaboration is that two-way video, blogging, and mainstream media online magazines and "blogs" are getting closer to being fully integrated. Now, instead of writing a letter to the editor of one the dwindling number of local newspapers, you can make a few mouse clicks and give the guy the raspberry.
Every page now has Seesmic/Disqus video commenting. Scroll to the bottom to see or post video comments. There are also Haloscan comments at the end of each separate blogpost article. To read a text-only version of Jonathan's Coffeeblog on your iPhone or other mobile phone, click here. Or to see the graphics with less text, click here.
