SOMEWHAT FRANK

Video: BlogTV Now Streams To Mobile

BlogTV, the personalized online TV platform which I use for streaming live split-screen video interviews, has just made it possible to watch all those videos from your mobile phone while on the go. Now with BlogTV offers all its live streams for free, without any installation of software for all major mobile carriers. But they are still waiting on the iPhone to be able to play these types of videos. 

Israel Startups To Tour Silicon Valley

Israel is known to be a hotbed for Internet startups. Though I have never visited Israel thanks to the California Israel Chamber of Commerce 15 Israel companies will be visiting Silicon Valley starting February 4, 2008 as part of a week long road show called the IsraelWeb Tour.

Seesmic Looks To Be A Video Twitter

Seesmic, a startup founded by European entrepreneur and blogger Loic Le Meur, has been in closed alpha since October 2007 has hopes of creating a video conversation platform online. Seesmic creates an dashboard for anyone with a web cam to quickly create a video. Videos can then be published to a website or social network as well as responded to within the Seesmic community.

My first impression of Seesmic was that is reminded me of slimmed down version of BlogTV which I use regularly for video interviews. But it appears that Seesmic is aimed at creating more a short form or Twitter-like video community where people can interact around both user generated and professional content.

Tjoon For Split-Screen Webcam Video Jams

Looking to record split-screen multi-user videos via your web camera? I am. While there are a number of video platforms that offer single web cam video recording, I recently set forth on a quest for find the ultimate online video product for recording multi-user web camera videos. I came across a site called Tjoon. Tjoon, a startup created by Suite75, offers an easy way to record split-screen multi-user videos via a web camera. 

Video Interview With Greg Cangialosi Author of The Business Podcasting Book

I got a chance to chat with Greg "The Trend Junkie" Cangialosi, CEO and President of Blue Sky Factory, today regarding his new book "The Business Podcasting Book." The book is a great guide for any corporate executive or other party interested in better understanding podcasting. Greg and I chatted about a number of topics related to podcasting and social media which ranged from discussing our podcasting pal Gary Vaynerchuk who has been changing the wine world to a quick getting "how to get started with podcasting" step-by-step.   

BlogTV For Personalized Live Web TV

BlogTV is an Israel-based company that enables people to create their own live broadcast channel on the Web. Similar to UStream.tv, BlogTV empowers anyone with a webcam to create a destination channel for broadcasting live episodes.

I got a chance to sit down with BlogTV Vice President of Product & Content, Nir Ofir, at Supernova 2007 and got a live demo. While demonstrating the features of BlogTV, Nir showed its unique ability to connect two broadcasts together as co-hosts. The screen-shot (shown below) displays the live broadcast in which Nir connected us (Frank Gruber and Jen Consalvo) with Jeff Pulver on PulverTV. I do not believe UStream.tv or other services offer this type of service but would love to hear if there are other services out there that do something similar.

A BlogTV channel includes live chat collaborations tools and user contributed ratings. Users can record broadcasts or stream them live with the option to embed the show into other sites and blogs. In the short demo we saw, BlogTV appeared to work well, however we did notice a bit of a delay between the two co-hosts on the show. I am not sure if that was due to the poor Internet connection at Supernova or if it was the actual application itself - it could have been attributed to a number of things.

Bottom-line: BlogTV is a platform that enables users to create live broadcast channels via a webcam with ease.