The nominees for the Deutsche Welle’s 2005 international Best of the Blogs competition — the BOBs — were announced today. More than 100 Weblogs will be judged by the Internet community in 13 categories.

BlogHer co-founder Lisa Stone was on the jury that narrowed the list of 2,500+ nominated blogs to a list of about 100 finalists in various categories, such as:
• Best blog overall
• Best podcast
• Best multimedia blog
• Best journalistic blog

Ourmedia is nominated for Best Multimedia Blog. So, please vote! If you’re online, you can vote.

Some of these are sites that maintain group or individual blogs (like Ourmedia, New West, Global Voices), others are solo blog efforts, like Zadi Diaz’s Karmagrrl. Congrats to all the nominees.

You can vote through Nov. 20. I’m not crazy about the idea of displaying the voting results as they come in, but there you go.

Thursday morning, I bought a wickedly cool video iPod (black, 30gigs), after drooling over Steve Garfield’s Sean Gilligan’s new gadget (white) on Wednesday night. When the original iPod came out, a national columnist wrote that it looked like a device beamed back from the future.

Well, this baby looks like a toy from the 23rd century.

People keep guessing that it cost around $500 — nope, $299. The video iPod stores video, photos and music. The battery died in one of our original iPods, and I’d forgotten Apple’s trade-in offer: 10% off if you turn in an older model for recycling.

I don’t have time to do a full review here, so here’s a mini-review:

First and foremost, the video is sweet! The quality really rocks, with a bright screen that lets you watch video from almost any angle and no pixilation in the videos I uploaded. “Lost”? “Desperate Housewives” for a buck 99? No way, baby! So far, I’m watching only my videos and videos downloaded from Ourmedia.org.

As we say on Ourmedia, Steve Jobs, we’ll take your call now. We’ll give the iPod crowd free content.

Second, the iPod package just keeps getting cooler. Minimalist, sleek, matchbook-thin, it’s the first iPod you really can stick in your shirt pocket and not notice it’s there. An amazing job of engineering.

A few quibbles: After using FireWire for three years, it’s a large step-down to have to resort to USB 2.0. Instead of a 10-minute process to load music it took me over three hours the first time I sent the video iPod on its maiden voyage with video and music. I suppose they did it because a FireWire port would be wider than the device itself.

The new software that came with iPod seems incomplete. A folder for video, but none for photos, and no way to create one (I kept trying to create a Playlist, but it would only create one for music). I finally figured out how to load videos (Add to Playlists), but a lot of the software seems version 0.9. No photos folder in iTunes? Instead, you have to point to a single folder on your computer, remember which one you chose, and file all your iPod photos there.

Another quibble: You need to recharge the battery by plugging it into your computer’s USB 2.0 port. That’s just a pain in the neck. What happens when you’re on the road and nowhere near your desktop or laptop (if you have one)? Also, the charging process either takes longer or there’s a bug in the software. After my iPod was connected to my Powerbook for two hours last night, it said “Do Not Disconnect” because it was still charging. I did anyway — and the battery seems fully charged.

I haven’t figured out how to turn the dang thing off after playing a video. I’ve been having to go back to the Music folder, double-clicking the bottom touchpad, which needlessly launches a song before it shuts down the device. After three years they still can’t find a way to add an “off” switch?

I also haven’t figured out how to create video playlists — guess I’ll have to do further reading.

The directions that came with the iPod said that when you’re playing a video, you can click the right button to play the next video. Nope. That brings you back to the video directory.

The biggest irritation — solved only today — has been with the codecs. The video iPod supports H.264 (the wonderful new compression technology) and MPEG-4 and, apparently, QuickTime .mov files. I spent two hours encoding more than a dozen videos in H.264, loaded them into iTunes — and none of them showed up on my video iPod. Only the files I encoded in regular MPEG-4 showed up.

What the heck? Couldn’t find any information about this at first on the Apple site.

Today, Steve of Elbows on the Yahoo Videoblogging mailing list held out the answer:

The easiest way to make ipod compatible h264 is to use the export option in qt7.0.3 and select ‘Movie to ipod’ option. This will create a file that ends in .m4v but if you want to put it on the web, you should be able to rename it to whatever.mp4 rather than whatever.m4v and it will still work on web and ipod.

If you made the h264 that doesnt work using qt7 mpeg4 export option, rather than ipod export, here is the posible explanation:

ipod only supports baseline h264, qt7 probably set to do main & baseline, which won’t work. Try this….

Export to mpeg-4 in quicktime
select h264
set res to 320×240 or lower
set bitrate to 768 or lower
click video options then untick main and tick baseline
set audio to AAC
try encoding and see if it works.

Talk about obscure solutions! It worked for me — both by exporting from QuickTime 7.03 and by sharing from iMovie HD. It was the advanced “video options” that did the trick — something I never would have considered as the problem. Thanks, Steve!

Later: I came across this video iPod tutorial page on the Apple site, which instructs users using Quicktime 7.03 to Export “Movie to iPod,” which simplifies the process a bit.

And the iPod specs page says this: H.264 video: up to 768 Kbps, 320 x 240, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats. MPEG-4 video: up to 2.5 mbps, 480 x 480, 30 frames per sec., Simple Profile with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats.

Meantime, Mark Cuban had this recent blog entry about how Disney’s embrace of the video iPod may be a turning point for network television.

Technorati tags: iPod, video iPod, HonorTagJournalism

The headline of Mike Langberg’s column in today’s San Jose Mercury News says it all: ‘An Internet fed mostly by amateurs is frightening.’ He cites author-blogger Nicholas G. Carr, who doesn’t seem to understand Web 2.0 very well, and then goes off on a rant against the amateurization of the Web and the rise of collaborative media efforts like Wikipedia:

I’m very much on Carr’s side of the fence. I don’t want to read blogs by political extremists, listen to podcasts recorded by droning amateurs, or watch videos produced by talentless would-be directors — even though the Internet makes all that possible.

I want to get my news from highly skilled professionals, listen to music by the world’s most brilliant performers and composers, and be entertained by big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas.

Of course, I’m biased. I make my living writing this column, and my paycheck is threatened if everyone decides freely available blogs — even at lesser quality — are an acceptable substitute.

Carr concludes: “The layoffs we’ve recently seen at major newspapers may just be the beginning, and those layoffs should be cause not for self-satisfied snickering but for despair. Implicit in the ecstatic visions of Web 2.0 is the hegemony of the amateur. I for one can’t imagine anything more frightening.”

Amen.

For years, Mike’s former colleague, Dan Gillmor, and I have been saying that the emerging mediasphere is to be celebrated for the wealth and diversity of viewpoints and reportage that amateurs bring to the table. We’re always click to add that this does not herald the downfall or marginalization of mainstream media, but rather the elevation of a new media form.

This kind of us-against-them rhetoric only exacerbates the increasing irrelevance of like-minded voices in the mainstream media who are trying to hold back the tide.

Wow, just got out of the Open Media Developers Summit at NYU in Greenwich Village. About 70 developers, filmmakers, citizens media advocates and other creative people came together, exchanged ideas, and agreed to continue the conversation.

Ourmedia received an extraordinarily warm reception there.

I’m in a taxi as I write this (don’t think it’s wired for wifi), but should be able to file from the JetBlue hub at JFK.

Among the people I finally had a chance to meet in person: Clay Shirky (finally!! — especially given the fact that he’s quoted on at least eight pages of “Darknet”), Lucas Gonze (the playlist king — see Webjay), Kent Bye (the Echo Chamber Project, which I blogged about below), Jim Vinson of DivX, Peter van Dyk (MeFeedia), Kenyatta Cheese, and Drazin Pantic. Also was great to see Mary Hodder, Jay Dedman, Ryan Hodson, Elizabeth Osder, and a host of others.

I showed the flag for Ourmedia and reminded folks of the project’s original name — Open Media (open-media.org) — before we changed it when I discovered that “Open Media” was a trademarked term. Also mentioned that I sponsored a Citizens media summit in San Francisco in May that had very similar goals.

I came to this gathering with three goals in mind. One was to look for a CTO for Ourmedia — we’re in the process of getting funded and have a six-figure salary set aside in our 2006 budget for a kick-ass getting-your-hands-dirty-with Drupal tech nerd and open-standards evangelist. So if you know of anyone who fits the bill, send her or him my way.

The second goal was to connect with forward-thinking folks on the open-media front lines of corporate America, and I had some good conversations with reps from Nokia, Reuters, DivX and Yahoo! about how they might be able to support and work with citizens media efforts like Ourmedia.

The third, perhaps most important goal was to explore ways to bring these open media projects together in real terms, both on the development side (code and content) but also with the goal of creating real interoperability between these open media repositories. During the closing summing-up, I cited three opportunities for collaboration between the attendees. And we hope you, dear reader, will also volunteer to hop aboard these projects:

1. Learning Center: One of the key new initiatives dead ahead for Ourmedia is the creation of a digital media learning center and open knowledge base. The idea is simple: Ourmedia has been focused on creating a community space around sharing personal media. Now we want to get involved in helping people create media.

Want to learn how to create a podcast? Boom, here’s a quick tutorial. How about creating a videoblog and getting it syndicated and hooked up to iTunes? We’ll tell you how. Want to learn about digital storytelling? We’ll provide a step-by-step process.

The Learning Center will begin with links to existing efforts in the field, such as vblog and Node101 and FireAnt and other grassroots efforts. We’re currently forming a discussion group and wiki to bring professors and students at educational institutions into the process (we hope Stanford, NYU, USC, Harvard, Duke and others become involved).

We’ll also be calling up experts in various areas (know your mpeg4 codecs? know how to take a great digital photo? we want to hear from you) and calling upon the wisdom of the community in creating user-generated content. Everyone who contributes will be recognized and credited for your contributions (unless you insist on anonymity).

2. Remix Center: I’m passionate about the idea of creating an area for people to come to legally download video, audio and photographs that can be downloaded for remixing. I believe there’s a creative ferment and energy just waiting to explode around this idea. We’ll be collaborating with Creative Commons, Drupal developers, open-source code jockeys, artists, content creators and others in the coming weeks and months to make it happen. If you support Remix Culture, please join our effort.

3. Open registry: Marc Canter and I have been talking for some time about creating a global registry project to interconnect open media repositories, so that users can easily access hundreds of thousands and soon to be millions of grassroots media works — our content, not the inaccessible stuff locked away behind DRM and paid archives.

Charles Nesson, founder of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, has a lofty vision of a Digital Library of Alexandria — and wants to hold a conference or summit next year to start hammering out a game plan for interoperability. Charles wants to help forge a massive mirrored database that interconnects not just citizens media repositories but hundreds of major libraries as well — making nearly all the world’s knowledge available at the click of a mouse. It’s an extraordinary opportunity and challenge.

In the short run, I told the group, let’s begin the journey. Let’s take a few strides down that road by building a modest glue factory so that we can start bonding these repositories (Ourmedia, NowPublic.com, Undergroundfilm.org, etc.) to each other so that users can access personal media and create media jukeboxes and image albums and directories regardless of what servers they’re located on.

Interested in climbing aboard the citizens media bandwagon? It’s still early. Let me know.

There. Not bad for a taxi ride.

Technorati tags: openmediasummit, omds, HonorTagJournalism

I just received an email from the wonderful Micki Krimmel of Participant Productions, the organization behind the release of the new George Clooney movie “Good Night, and Good Luck,” and this week’s release of “North Country,” starring Charlize Theron (above). I saw a preview screening of “North Country” in Berkeley last night and liked it, though I wonder if reviewers and audiences may find it too didactic and dark. The Berkeley crowd was certainly appreciative, with a couple of call-outs from the audience during key scenes.

Participant has set up a first-rate group blog about the two films and is trying to use the blog as a vehicle for social change, so all of you are invited to head over there and post comments and observations. (I’m guest-blogging at the See It Now blog.)

As much as I admire Participant’s work, I don’t think, however, that it will become a place where people upload works of citizen journalism, as they’re trying to do here with citizen audio reports. Maybe I’m wrong — time will tell — but it strikes me as more realistic to build a Participant Productions area within an existing citizens media framework, like Ourmedia or NowPublic. We hope to work with groups and causes like this in the months ahead.

It’s also interesting to see Participant link to the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics — I’m heading up the standards committee of the Media Bloggers Association, and we’ve found the SPJ code isn’t really applicable to bloggers or citizens media. (I’ll be writing more about this in a couple of weeks.)

Finally, Participant also links to Journalism.org, an estimable site run by my friends at the Project for Excellence in Journalism. But if you call up their Tools for Citizens, you get:

- How to Talk to the News Media

- How to Write a Letter to the Editor

- How to Find the Right Person to Contact [at a news organization]

- Getting Stories on Local TV News

… and so on. This just isn’t good enough in the year 2005. We need tools for people to create their own media, their own TV shows, their own podcasts.

We’ll be doing that at Ourmedia. Let me know if you want to help.

I cornered Daniel Meadows, one of the icons of the digital storytelling movement, a week ago at the Digital Storytelling Festival at KQED in San Francisco. Daniel talks about his personal journey from journalism ("doing media to others") to storytelling ("enabling people to tell their own stories").

If you’re wondering what digital storytelling is all about, you can do no better than checking out Daniel’s homemade stories at his photobus.co.uk personal site and at the BBC’s Capture Wales site.

Here’s the 9-minute video (30 MB in MPEG-4 — sorry for the size but I hate crappy quality). (Ourmedia page | watch video)

Technorati tags: digital storytelling,  Daniel Meadows, BBC, Wales, HonorTagJournalism