Our man at CES

David Pogue, technology columnist for The New York Times (registration required), has yet another plum assignment. He's covering the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where 2,500 companies are exhibiting new gadgets and toys. Pogue writes in his Times blog (January 4):

"I'm a man with a mission. The Times has sent me with an assignment that, I'm fairly sure, it hasn't given anyone before: to go forth, armed with a camcorder and a laptop, and post a video report each day, along with as many typed daily blog entries as I can muster."

Expect Pogue's video to have a certain ... um .... perspective. Here's a frame from his recent review of inexpensive digital cameras, which he cooked up in the style of Julia Child.

Covering CES is nice work, if you can get it. But Pogue is sure to be plumb tired when it's over.

Tony Blair's (almost) vlog
The Cooltech headline calls Prime Minister Tony Blair's P.R. piece a vlog, but it's really an online "day in the life" video on the Web site of the U.K.'s top elected official.

"Featuring unprecedented footage of an otherwise closed-door cabinet meeting, the Internet snapshot charts Blair's daily challenges as he pays visits, makes speeches and faces his weekly grilling in parliament," Cooltech reports.

The video is available in Real and Windows Media formats.

Bumper stickers, yard signs ... and vlogs
Boston City Councilman John Tobin, who produces a vlog with the help of vlog pioneer Steve Garfield, says there'll be no such thing as future politicians without vlogs.

Quoted by the BBC in a story headlined "The Year of the Digital Citizen," Tobin says that "by the 2008 presidential elections, "most politicians in the US will vlog or die in the public eye."

And this: "It's going to be mandatory. People are going to have to do it. Voters won't accept that they don't have it," the BBC continues, attributing the quote to the Boston Phoenix.

Political blogging (not vlogging) was one of the topics at last fall's ConvergeSouth conference in Greensboro, North Carolina, which is also home to City Council Member Sandy Carmany's widely acclaimed blog.

That vlogger in Minnesota
Chuck Olsen is the man behind Minnesota Stories, one of the most dynamic and well-known vlog sites.

The former TV station Web producer also has a personal vlog, Secret Vlog Injection, and he's just launched a new vlog that concentrates on technology. That one is Tech Evangelists.

This and a lot more good background on Olsen appears in a feature published by the Pioneer Press. What it doesn't say is where he gets all the energy to keep three vlogs going.

Make mine BathTubYoga

You heard it here first: BathTubYoga is the funniest vlog of 2006.

Launched in November as a vlog about two professional vloggers, BathTubYoga parodies the Web 2.0 world and hits the sweet spot with every episode.

The vlog stars two innocent and rather geeky British guys out to make it (and you can take that any way you like) in the good old U.S.A.

If content is king (and it is), BathTubYoga will find a huge audience. The scripts are tight and clever, and performances by the four regulars are stage-worthy. Satya Bhabha plays Mark, and Stefano Theodoli-Braschi is Henry, the housemates turned vloggers.

Lacy Gattis (above) plays Sarah the downstairs neighbor who runs an eBay business. Austin Allen plays Everyone Else, which includes a rather convincing corpse.

If you're only going to watch one episode, No. 16 ("Churchillberg") is highly recommended.

Before going on holiday break, BathTubYoga produced 20 episodes. Let's hope the producers don't tarry, as there's now actually something to look forward to in 2006.

One more thing: BathTubYoga is shot in widescreen format (16:9). You gotta wonder if the producers have something bigger in mind down the road.

TimesCast debuts

From Southwest Virginia comes a bona fide vlog called TimesCast. It’s produced daily by The Roanoke Times, the leading newspaper in the region and a property of Landmark Communications, the good folks who give us The Weather Channel.

TimesCast offers a fresh upload at 3:30 p.m (Eastern) each afternoon. Even though The Roanoke Times is definitely what some would call Mainstream Media, TimesCast has indy flair.

The producers have done this one right with smart copy, a loose attitude, and in-house talent complete with downhome, cornbread and buttermilk accents. It’s music to our ears.

TimesCast is likable, fun to watch and in touch with its community. The presentation is state-of-the-art. Major media markets and brick-and-mortar institutions -- newspaper and broadcast -- will be lining up to copycat what they're doing in the hills and hollers of Roanoke.

And the Emmy for Best Vlog goes to ...

The first Emmy Award for a video blog will be presented April 28 at the 33^rd annual Daytime Emmy Awards. The New York-based Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, which administers the daytime awards, made the announcement December 21.

Awards also will recognize original content produced for podcasts and for viewing on mobile telephones. The awards are open to material distributed between January 1, 2005 and March 1, 2006.

Get the official Daytime Emmy Rules (PDF) here. Then fill out a nomination form (PDF). FYI: There's a fee, which should dissuade slackers.

The Academy stressed that the awards are for original entertainment content specifically produced for new media distribution. That means no repackaged network TV, no regurgitated terrestrial radio shows.

New means new, so Steve Garfield and every other vlogger has a shot at making history.

Start composing those acceptance speeches now!

What you shoot is what you vlog

That's the headline on a story about vlogging that appears on DNA, or Daily News & Analysis, an Indian Web site.

The December 19 article cited home videos made of the December 2005 Asian tsunami as proof of the "true potential of the medium."

Most vlogs, however, are much more mundane, as the headline implies.

Said DNA: "Sceptics of vlogging, and of blogging and podcasting before it, will argue that while the video weblogs are a pleasant diversion, they will never be able to offer the heft, resources and analytic weight of established media. Vlog devotees stubbornly say that, that is exactly the point."

Vlogging on the run

Talk about instant vlogging! Using a Nokia 90 mobile phone, a vlogger attended a Finnish rock star's news conference and fed video to a Web site in near real-time.

Tarja Turunen's press conference, where she talked about being fired from the band Nightwish, was big news to Finnish fans. The gossip magazine Seiska hooked up with tech company Fromdistance to manage the logistics. A reporter on the scene captured the video as MPEG-4, which went straight to the magazine's Web site so fans could follow it all. It's now posted as a Flash conversion. (You'll have to handle translation duties on your own).

NYT discovers Rocketboom

The venerable New York Times has discovered another media sensation in the Big Apple. Reporter Robert Mackey's piece on vlogging and Rocketboom appeared in the Sunday, December 11, edition (registration required).