Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen | solitude.dk

Earlier today I finished reading Michael Verdi and Ryanne Hodson's new book Secrets of Videoblogging. I didn't learn much, but I didn't expect to.

Let me say this right away: Secrets of Videoblogging is a fantastic introduction to the world of videoblogging. I've been wanting a book to recommend starting videobloggers and it's finally here. In these eight short chapters a complete newcomer will learn everything they have to in order to get started:

1. Exploring Videoblogs
2. Finding Your Story
3. Checking Your Toolbox
4. Shooting Video
5. Editing for Vlogs
6. Compression 101
7. Vlog
8. Attracting an Audience

Generally speaking the book is a very easy read. Even those without strong English skills will have no trouble understanding the book, a huge plus for me since everyone around me is Danish! Secrets is also light on text in general and generously use large illustrations. That's especially a plus in the chapters that deal with screenshots from various software and websites (like iMovie).

I was particularily impressed with the chapter on shooting video which has simple, practical and clever tips on working with your camera and the chapter on editing which managed to make a very complex issue manageable without sounding patronizing.

It takes only takes an evening to read through the book, but you can get a better use of the book by reading the later chapters at the computer while following along. I'd recommend reading the first five chapters before shooting any video and then return to the book when you're ready to edit your first video.

Two minor things annoyed me about the book. First off none of the URLs in the book are highlighted, so they are hard to find when skimming the text and it's sometimes confusing to figure out when a URL ends if it spans over a line break. It wouldn't have hurt to bold or underline URLs. Secondly the terms videoblog and vlog (and vloggin/videoblogging, vlogger/videoblogger) are used interchangeably in the book. It's annoying to read and I think they would have been better off picking one term and sticking with it.

Existing videobloggers don't have much to gain from this book. The chapter on compression can function as a reference, but other than that there's little value. I warmly recommend this book to anyone starting their first videoblog.

Shortly before noon the postman arrived with my brand new camera. I've been giddy as a little school boy since, but the weather has been particulary cloudy and not very photogenic. I only posted one photo at 23, but more will come when the sun comes out.

I have of course been turning it on and off all day during my breaks from reading the massive manual. My impression after a day of light use and heavy experimentation is that this is a camera I'll be very happy with.

I am digging the full manual control from aperture and shutter speed (my old camera has that too) to focus and white balance (which my old camera doesn't have).

I am not digging the neck strap. It's almost impossible to adjust the length and it would quickly become annoying against the skin. I think I will be buying a new one. I am also not digging the manual, it's just as bad as all other technical manuals.

I am digging the joystick on the back. It controls the most often used settings. In P, A, S, M modes it controls aperture and shutter speed and when using manual focus you use the joystick to control focus. If you click it you can change white balance, ISO, image size and compression. Even with my large fingers it's possible to use the joystick and the viewfinder at the same time — a big plus. The user interface is really well done on this camera.

I am not digging the camera bag selection at my local photo store. In the end I bought a Lowepro Edit 100. It was the smallest bag in the store that would fit the FZ7. The bag won't fit the lens adapter and lens shade which sucks. I wish there was a bagsize between “it just fits” and “damn huge”.

I'm ambivalent about the video features. I am digging the 848x480 widescreen video at 30 frames per second, but I am not digging the fact that I can only get 4.5 minutes of that video on a 512 MB memory card. My old camera compressed to MPEG-4, but the new one uses Motion-JPEG. The video looks great, but it takes up a lot of space.

I've been using 23 for a couple of months now and I figure it's time for an update to my initial review. First things first, Anders and Raymond have both put up photos from our workshop on 23:

• Anders' photos
• Raymond's photos

I have to admit that I'm becoming a real fanboy. My personal favourites are the Subscription viewer and the Conversations page. On Flickr I can also view a page with my contacts' photos. It's all fine, but 23 gets the feature right. Here photos aren't mashed together in one big pile, they are seperated by each contact for an easy overview. Furthermore 23 remembers which photos I have already seen so I don't have to view something twice. Flickr also only shows the 5 latest photos from each contact. What's up with that? I've missed good photos more than once on Flickr because I thought I could stay up-to-date by viewing the contacts page. There is no such sillyness on 23.

The Conversations page is where 23 really shines. It serves as an great overview for… well, conversations. Here I can view:

• Latest comments to my photos
• Latest comments on photos I've commented on
• Latest comments from my contacts (on any photo)

The last item is pure genius. I have found so many great shots and new people by having my contacts work for me. Whoever came up with that feature needs a serious raise. I'm really addicted to the Conversations page. One thing I wish is that fotonotes would show up on the Conversations page along with regular comments. They are used as comments, so they should be treated like comments. Less than 24 hours later fotonotes now show up on the Conversations page. 23 kicks ass and Steffen is my new best friend..

One final thing I've come to enjoy is the way you upload photos. When I go to upload a handful of photos there's usually a lot of waiting involved (photos are big files), but on 23 it's not so bad. When I've uploaded the first photo in a batch I can immediately write a description and add tags to it while I wait for the next photo to finish uploading. That way I don't have to wait five minutes for all photos to upload and then spend additional time writing descriptions for each one afterwards. Clever thinking.

If you take photos I recommend checking out 23. My username is andreas and I'd like to subscribe to your photos.

My photos from Bloggforum are online. Raymond beat me to it, but I have more photos than him. I was delayed partly because the Swedish winter made me sick, partly because I wanted to take the opportunity to check out the photosharing service 23. I first noticed 23 in Jonas' sidebar and when I met Thomas Madsen-Mygdal — one of the creators of 23 — at Bloggforum I figured it was time to try it out.

23 has some really nice features — it's especially in the small details that the service shines. Uploading a batch of photos was easy. 23 accepts zip files, so I could create a zip file on my desktop and drop photo files into the zip archive. The downside seems to be that there is no way to control the order of the photos. Right now my Bloggforum photos appear in random order and not reverse chronological order, that's too bad because the zip upload was really nice.

The limitation on the free account is 20MB/month, otherwise it's identical to the plus account (€29/year; no upload limit). This gets rid of my main problem with Flickr where free users are only allowed 200 photos total making the free account next to useless. A 20MB/month limit seems reasonable, bandwidth is after all not free. Flickr also has a limit on the amount of photosets (albums) for free accounts. Photosets are virtually free for Flickr to maintain. 23 has no such artificial limits on the free accounts, so you can actually share a large amount of photos with 23 for free (provided you scale them down prior to upload).

But like I said the value is in the details. For example the tag pages (e.g. snow) contain links to tag pages at other services like Technorati, Flickr and Del.icio.us. This is great because the tag page on 23 can serve as a hub. It's what Technorati could have been, but chose not to be. Another nice feature are stories where you can mix photos and text (example). 23 seems to really have thought about different ways to present photos — you also have a calendar to browse photos. It's nice to see some real thinking being done in that area.

Other random small items:

• 16 photos on each page is nice.
• No easy way to go from your own tag page to the global one is not nice. I just didn't see the link
• Likewise not being able to go to a global tag page from any photo is not nice.
• Links to other users on tag pages is nice.
• Having contacts and subscriptions seperated is nice.
• Pages written in Danish is nice.
• Half-translated pages are not nice (especially the FAQ is lacking).
• “Can't read” is a bad error message. It should've said “You've reached your monthly bandwidth limit, pay up”.
• Being able to see “more properties” without a page reload is nice for a guy like me who's trying to learn how to take pictures.

Update

I've posted additional thoughts on 23.