Audioblog.com lets bloggers include sound, video files

An article on Eric Rice's Audioblog.com which is perhaps the best damn, or at least the easiest to use, audio blogging and video blogging service around. Only $4.95 a month too.

You might think I'm just pimping this service at this point, and you'd be right. It appeals to me because of it's excellent attention to usability. You can not only audioblog through a web browser interface anywhere there's a computer and a internet connection, but you can also call in and audio blog over the phone.

Not only does Eric pay attention to ease of creation, but he also pays a tremendous amount of attention to the end user experience using Flash, the most widely distributed multimedia technology to play back both audio and video in the browser interface. There is tremendous attention to detail in these playback interfaces including full controls and an playback indicator to show you how far through playback you are. The overall experience is top notch ignoring needless frivolities of interfaces like Real Player and Windows Media Player.

These playback widgets really rival Apple's renowned QT playback interface with the exception of a pre-cache indicator to let you know how much of the video/audio has been downloaded. As I said the they lack of ability to skip around using the scrubbing bar, fast forward, and rewind, but I find these little items aren't much missed given that most audio/video bloggers use short quick segments to express themselves.

Also, let's not forget the preferred method of the AV experience which is to simply subscribe to an RSS syndication feed with an aggregator like ANT or iPodder which allows you to take that audio with you on your mp3 player, or watch all a vloggers videos in a seamless stream.

Full Article: Yahoo! News - Audioblog.com lets bloggers include sound, video files

Alternate Source: MercuryNews.com | 02/09/2005 | Audioblog.com lets bloggers include sound, video files

Via: Peter Van Dijck's Guide to Ease