As outlined above, the early webloggers were basically techies who updated their weblogs by manually editing the HTML code. And it's been techies who have pushed the envelope for Blog sophistication and converged different media with the Blog format. Just as Internet radio stations converge broadcast radio (typically over the airwaves) with the Internet, a media player (Windows Media Player, Real One, Winamp, Quicktime) and a URL list of internet radio stations, so bloggers have converged such media as:
- Speakable blog entries. update - Sept 11th 2003
Dane Carlson posted totally cool instructions for making weblog posts speak. Chris Pirillo's blog - motto : "Getting Screwed While Everybody Else is Getting Laid" implments this and it really works! On my machine I have to manually tell the Netscape downloader to open the file in Winamp, but that's only because I set Netscape up that way. Yours may be a little more smooth.
- images. Photoblogs dot org is the
place to check out Photoblogs. It lists all known pbs and allows visitors
to vote for or against any Blog listed. It's a good example of the New
Wave of "styled" blogs/websites with the added bonus of having
German subtitles. Top of the Photoblogs.org list, Sean McCormick's Digiteyesed
Photography moulds the "traditional" Blog look with cool
pull down nested menus.
- audio. Audblog provides a service
that allows the webloggers to dial in via their mobile and record a Blog
entry. The Reverse Cowgirl
however shows that the results are often mundane.
- video. A great article
in the techie Webreference Update (March 6th 2003) discusses video weblogs
or "vlogging" in depth. The author, Andrew Beach, posits a worthy
future for video weblogs and judging by demand
media this opinion is justified. Demand media should be of interest
to any activist oriented blogista with it's activism/ labour / music (punk)
topics. The layout of the blog with it's play-media icon which denotes
the media format is likewise user-friendly although it would be very helpful
to present the duration of the media clip.
- Mobile phones? Well, not exactly. The T-Mobile Sidekick is a multipurpose phone / camera / wireless web surfing device which has already spawned assocaited blog sites
The biggest breakthrough, however, has been recently (4/24/03) with the announcement of a service which will allow anyone to build a top-quality weblog. Six Apart , the husband and wife team who produce the open sauce Moveable Type weblog software, "today announced the upcoming release of TypePad™, a hosted service providing powerful tools for creating full-featured weblogs".
What's the big deal? Although we are not going to delve into the realms of how to do a blog, suffice it to say that while the standard Moveable Type Blog software is easy to use once set-up (and most of the work has already been done for you) the fancy-smchancy features are only possible for html/style hackers. Moreover, if you are dependent upon a hosted web service then you would have to download the Moveable Type stuff and set it up yourself; not a insurmountable task but one likely to put off the less technically oriented proto-blogee. So the prospect of a blog service what does it all for you is mouth watering indeed!