I’ve been wondering why I watch comparatively little video online. And I think I’ve hit on the answer.

From a recent blog from Robert Scoble:

What was really fun was having raclette cheese dinner with famous author Bruce Sterling. Of course I intruded on the dinner with my cell phone camera. It’s a 40 minute video … it doesn’t get interesting until about 13 minutes when Bruce tells us the difference between a blogger and a novelist.

I note Scoble’s joining Fast Company, which apparently (from their metadata) “covers the new economy and workplace for people who believe in fusing tough-minded performance with human values.” I hope one of the tough-minded performance issues that Scoble sorts is his expectation that people will willingly sit through 13 minutes of dull, badly-shot video before anything “interesting” happens.

He comes across on TWIT as a nice guy - but since he believes editing is just too-cool-for-school, I’m sure he won’t mind that I’ve just edited him out of my Google Reader list. I’d rather read stuff from people that respect my time, and yours.

Photo: Finn Pröpper. Used under licence.

Picks from my Del.icio.us links, except looking halfway decent:

Apparently, DRM is dead, evidenced by a statement that “7Digital says DRM-free music sales now outnumber DRM-enabled music 4-to-1.” Meanwhile, shhhh, but illegal peer-to-peer downloads have a positive effect. “Our analysis of the Canadian P2P file-sharing subpopulation suggests that there is a strong positive relationship between P2P file-sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file-sharing increases CD purchasing.”

Wowsers. A wind-up MP3 player. All the better for playing BBC’s podcasts (now including music). If only they’d do a wind-up video player, I could use it for the really rather excellent Channel Flip range of video podcasts. (Yay! British video podcasts! Well-made! Excellently done! Yay!) Also, highly recommended, Mahalo Daily, where Veronica Belmont shows that online video shows needn’t be formulaic, can be produced with good production values, and with humour (even though they’ll spell it ‘humor’, incorrectly). So, so much better than Robert Scoble’s long yawnfests.

Talking about humour, if you’re going to put your content behind a registration wall, at least be careful about how much of the story you give away…

Photo: Stefan. Used under licence.