Vloggercon: Dina Kaplan Talks About Blip.tv and Her TV Career - With Some Proding By Me

Vloggercon: Dina Kaplan Talks About Blip.tv and Her TV Career - With Some Proding By Me

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I always say that some people bring out different sides of others for whatever reason. This is certainly true with Dina Kaplan and myself. Dina's the head of Business Development for Blip.tv, the digital video distribution and sharing system I now swear by. Dina brings out the "Woody Allen" in me in much the same way as a friend of mine in Chicago..Hmm....

But that written, behind her almost constant smile is the active brain of a good business person. Always thinking and directing traffic -- in this case, the other Blip.tv staffers. Trying to determine who's best to talk to about this or that, and so on. She's perfect in her role at Blip.tv and as I said in the video, the best business people are confident women. I discovered that while growing SBS and have seen little to discourage my opinion.

As Dina explains, Blip.tv is one year old and the result of a collaboration of five friends in New York City. It's like YouTube, but has features that are vastly different than that or any other similar system. For example, my Blip.tv video posts have been automatically installed in this blog. Plus, the final video in Blip.tv is much closer to the quality of the original than is true for YouTube.

Now back to Dina.

All Dina has to do is get over seeing herself on any computer or TV screen. In the video, she looks at a computer video of her and -- like Frankenstein seeing his own reflection (I'm gonna get killed for that comparison! LOL) -- points to herself and says "that's scary." I totally disagree.

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov), Flash Video (.flv)

Vloggercon: Irina Slutsky and Schlomo Rabinowitz Give Review

Vloggercon: Irina Slutsky and Schlomo Rabinowitz Give Review

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Vloggercon 2006 was held in San Francisco June 10th and 11th. Two of the organizers, Irina Slutsky of Geek Entertainment TV and Schlomo Rabinowitz, vlogger and educator, give their take on how the event was progressing to that point in time Saturday evening, June 10th

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov), Flash Video (.flv)

Zennie's Video Format Change Note

You may have noticed that some of the Vloggercon videos play in the window on the blog page and others refresh to a new page with a larger video. Well, it's the latter that I wanted. I'm using IMovie to record the video content and make clips, Quicktime to review the new clip and now Blip.tv to upload the clip to the web and SBS' blogs.

Blip.tv's vastly superior to YouTube in producing quality uploaded video. And after much experimentation, I've found a codec -- H.263 at a large format size and 30 fps frame rate updated every 24 frames per second but restricted at 6400/ kbits a second and set at 640 x 480 size. In Blip.tv this causes the new window and large video, which is what I want to have for our next set of plans in the growth of the SBS system.

I wll continue to use YouTube, but more as a distribution device for our videos and of course as a great source for video content. But Blip.tv and Dabble are great to use as standards for any vloggers web tool set.

Rocketboom At Vloggercon: Andrew Baron and Amanda Congdon Talk About Their Happy Accident

Rocketboom At Vloggercon: Andrew Baron and Amanda Congdon Talk About Their Happy Accident

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The undisputed stars of Vloggercon were Andrew Baron and Amanda Congdon, the producers of the wildly popular daily vlog called "Rocketboom." If you've not seen Rocketboom, it's worth a look. The show's a quirky view of the news and cultural topics of the day, or at times that interest them. On Vloggercon's first day, Andrew and Amanda talked about how Rocketboom came to be, what Rockeboom is from a technical standpoint, their interview style, and how Rocketboom has grown.

What I -- and some others I talked to -- took from their presentation was how it seems Andrew and Amanda plan "incrementally." For example, there's no business plan as of this writing. And their presentation itself seemed to move along in a collaborative "What do we show them next?" fashion. The result is what I call a happy accident that commands $85,000 in sponsorship revenue per week due to Rocketboom's huge audience of eyeballs.

This video only captures the first 15 minutes of their presentation. I deliberately edited it to stop where Andrew and Amanda are working to determine where they should go with the presentation. It's a great view of how they work together and why Rocketboom is successful: it's the result of a true collaboration between two people.

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov)

Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger May Be Ready For Season Opener After All -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

God wasn't ready to take Ben Roethlisberger. He's really blessed. It wasn't his time at all.

Roethlisberger's injuries only on face, should be ready for opener

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

By Ed Bouchette, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The injuries to quarterback Ben Roethlisberger were confined to his face and the Steelers are confident he should heal and be ready to play in the season opener Sept. 7 against the Miami Dolphins, sources told the Post-Gazette today.

Roethlisberger has a broken jaw, a broken nose and some injuries to his teeth but otherwise came through his motorcycle accident on Monday with nothing else but some scrapes and bruises. Published reports that detailed injuries to his knees and shoulders are untrue, sources said.

One source said that the surgery on Roethlisberger's face took so long -- seven hours -- in order to assist in a faster recovery time. Roethlisberger also should be ready to participate in training camp, although he may not play in the first preseason game Aug. 12 in Arizona.

The quarterback had seven hours of surgery yesterday afternoon and evening to repair facial fractures caused when his motorcycle struck a car on Second Avenue at the 10th Street Bridge.

After the surgery, doctors said the facial fractures were successfully repaired but they would not elaborate. They did say that there appear to be no brain, spine, chest or abdomen injuries.

More details in tomorrow's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Steelers President Art Rooney’s Statement Regarding Ben Roethlisberger’s Motorcycle Accident - NFLMedia.com

This is from the Pittsburgh Steelers Press Release on NFLMedia.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 12, 2006
Steelers President Art Rooney’s Statement Regarding Ben Roethlisberger’s Motorcycle Accident

“On behalf of everyone within the Steelers organization, I want to express my concern for Ben Roethlisberger. I am sure
Ben knows that we are praying for his complete recovery. So far, we have been encouraged by the early reports from the
medical team at Mercy Hospital.

“Our public relations staff will pass along any additional updates as we receive them from the hospital.”

Vloggercon: Mary Hodder and "Dabble"

Vloggercon: Mary Hodder and "Dabble"

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I met the wonderful Mary Hodder at Vloggercon Saturday in a most unusual way: she was sitting at the Peralta sponsor table where I was after I returned from a video walk; poor thing was just looking for a place to park her computer. Fortunately for me, I had enough presence of mind to make her stay a comfortable one. I was rewarded with an introduction to and an account with her new product, the website "Dabble."

Dabble is a terrific web device that can download videos placed on a website just by listing that webpage's URL. The program then develops a kind of video database. It's really a cool and useful tool. How do I know this? I tried it out on my blog, Zennie's Zeitgiest and with great success. Dabble's a great system to use; check it out.

In the video Mary takes us on a brief "tour" of Dabble and tries to upload my blog; something I did later. I've got to admit, it's a gas. (I also take this time to thank Mary for turning me on to Blip.tv

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov)