Here is an example of an excellent home made video, re: a visit to Barcelona.
I was most impressed with the imaginative nature. The angles are amazing.

Just goes to show what a person can do with a camcorder, music and film editing software.

We’re surprised that not more travel based organisations are taking advantage of video podcasting!?

Check out the latest in the world of new media…The latest in YouTube’s insight analytics! Many thanks to Google for introducing a new feature called “HotSpots” which actually tells you what all is the hottest in an uploaded video and what all is not. As shown in the figure, the “Hot Spots” tab in Insight plays your video alongside a graph that shows the ups-and-downs of viewership at different moments within the video. Now isn’t that great!

Now the question which comes up in our mind is that how does this feature actually know which areas of a video are hot? Google determine “hot” and “cold” spots by comparing your video’s abandonment rate at that moment to other videos on YouTube of the same length, and incorporating data about rewinds and fast-forwards.

To add more to accurate results…when the graph goes up, your video is hot: few viewers are leaving, and many are even rewinding on the control bar to see that sequence again. When the graph goes down, your content’s gone cold: many viewers are moving to another part of the video or leaving the video entirely.

The grapical representation of the subject gives you a clear picture for any video like the one shown in the example. As seen in the graph, many viewers are not impressed with the dancing moves of Michael Rucker, Associate Product Marketing Manager at YouTube, and they’re leaving the video at a faster than average rate almost immediately after the video begins! But gradually as the video goes on, the more people tend to stay which creates a “hot spot” at the end of the video. Now isn’t this a wonderful way of analysing each section of a video in terms of its viewership!

This feature which surely be inculcated as a new media tool by many organisations in planning the marketing strategies to know how to produce quality videos thereby keeping people more engaged to their websites!

The following diagram shows in our view a well structured team approach to developing eLearning or corporate content.
Interestingly, although Corporate Podcasting is not shown as an exclusive element, it should be considered as part of the mix for collaborative learning. We have to assume that there will be elements of the team accomodating its development.

1. Shows a local (De-militarised Zone - A secure internal computer operations / development area) DMZ Web Farm.
2. Shows a Co-located Web Farm.
3. Using a Staging Server. This is an internal server on which the eLearning (eL) modules are assembled and usually tested (although in some cases an independent host is used for testing). Also acts as a back-up
4. Here eLearning Developers and Content Authors work on their individual workstations (a PC or MAC) and at some point will upload their finished products to the Staging Server.
5. Shows the Administrator replicating master content from the Staging Server to each and every content Server.
6. Acts as Web operations (e.g: User Interface)

There is also a need to provide an additional layer, i.e: The quality assurance for each production, whether it be a piece of multimedia or text. One more thing, what about taxonomy standards and control (inc: standards) for meta data - We should think about who is considering this essential area especially in the context of controlling incoming content based on learner or listener interaction.

1.