Converting bloggers to vloggers

Have you ever watch a YouTube video on a computer with a slow connection and after playing three seconds the video freezes. And you have to restart the video twenty times just to get past the first thirty seconds?

According to this article Internet providers will soon give more people the ability to explore the vast library of videos that are available on the Internet without wondering if their Internet connection can handle it.

Faster Internet speed has already made huge leaps in e-commerce and how people get the news.

With faster Internet people who used to organize social gatherings and debate issues on MySpace to take the next step by watching and creating videos on YouTube.

It is also giving bloggers a chance to step out from behind the current of anonymity and show the world what they are really talking about through vlogs.

While you can already buy a cheap web camera at Best Buy for under $50 Sony has created pocket size web cam that allows you to publish videos directly to web file-sharing sites or to your personal vlog that will only set you back $200.

While YouTube already allows you to upload video from cell phones this camera will allow vloggers to store up to five hours on a 2 gigabyte memory stick Pro Duo media card.

The GC1 Net-Sharing CAM will be available in September.


"Comcast is reportedly working on technology to provide broadband speeds of up to 160 megabits per second, roughly 26 times faster than its current 6-megabit service."

Maybe in five to ten years it will reduce the time it takes to download a movie from several hours to a day to a matter of minutes.

Right now faster Internet connections are allowing more people to watch videos on YouTube, catch up on old episodes of their favorite TV shows and watch streaming TV channels through services like Joost.


It is not only opening more eyes to the power of the Internet superhighway but it is giving them a chance to interact and use it to get their individual message out there. It is pushing inter connectivity to its limits and it is letting us access information on any subject we desire in a matter of seconds.

The more people use the Internet the better of a tool it will be in helping people to connect and take part in the global debate.

Google understands this and has made a bid of $4.6 billion in the upcoming federal auction of spectrum to break the strangle hold that phone companies and cable companies have had over high speed Internet access.

"That would be revolutionary," said Bob Williams, director of Consumers Union's HearUsNow.org, a website that promotes telecommunications competition.

"If you want high-speed Internet service, you basically have a choice of two, and in a lot of places you don't have any choice ... and that situation has to change."

Google wants to stop cable and phone companies from continuing to raise their rates because they have virtually no competition.


Wireless companies control all access to the spectrum they license from the government, which is why Apple Inc.'s iPhone can't be used on any network other than AT&T's.

Under Google's plan, people could connect any device to any network and run any software they want on their phones, including free Internet-based calling systems such as Skype.

This is what we need to make the Internet cheap enough so more people can use the Internet to its full potential on all their electronic devices from home computers to cell phones.

As the Internet becomes cheaper more people will use it when more people use it ad rates will go up way way up and maybe just maybe people will stop telling us that print media is a dying industry.

Google is trying to speed up this process. Adding competition to the high speed Internet market could free millions from slow Internet connects and give them the power to interact with the information superhighway instead of just observing it.

Third World PCs

Nicholas Negroponte is still trying to bring cheap wind-up laptops to third world children the only catch is now he says they will cost $175 instead of $100 and production may not start until October.

The former director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab who now heads the not-for-profit One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project said that project has been set pack from their original goals by the rising price of materials and changes in the design.

At least seven countries Uruguay, Nigeria, Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil, Thailand, and Libya have expressed interested in buying the Laptops that have a crank so they can be wound by hand.

Quanta Computer, the Taiwanese manufacturer which will assemble the machine has agreed to take a profit of about $3 per laptop and the laptops will work on a low cost version of Windows.

Mr. Negroponte also said that the project was considering shipping the machines to poor schools in the U.S.

While the U.S. is second in the world for personal computers per capita.

There is still a major gap in internet access between the rich and the poor according to the pew research center.

While 82 percent of those living in households with more than $75,000 in income now have internet access only 38 percent of households earning less than $30,000 have internet access.

Only 34 percent of Internet users have logged on using a wireless connection.

We need to close the income gap in internet access by making it cheaper and easy for people to get high speed Internet access at least school if they are unable to afford it at home. More teenagers are using the internet to learn more and research topics but they are also adding content and videos.

According to a recent study by Pew Internet and American Life Project, 57 percent of teenagers who are online, create content for the internet. Another study determines that more than 79% of U.S. broadband Internet users watched video in 2006.

The U.S. has a long way to go to provide the next generation with internet access so they can use the internet to its full potential.

According to a report in the Economists Intelligence Unit Asian and African nations are catching up to their European counterparts in affordable broadband.

The best way to truely connect the world is to increase the amount of broadband available so that people in third world countries can communicate and add content in the same ways at first world countries. AS the internet connects the world in brand new ways the media is looking at new ways to work with citizen journalists to cover world events. Citizen Journalists can cover events from the perspective of a witness who has lived in the area and knows the people rather then an outsider reporter who is throw into a war zone with little first hand knowledge of the conflict or the people involved.

MySpace is launching a new site for China last Friday. There are already 7.7 million blogs in China with 17.5 million active bloggers. MySpace China will face competition from similar sites like WangYou.com which has 11 million users.