video services & RSS & ads
two new video services have come to my attention recently:
* cbc video (vids from CBC archives and current shows)
and
* mediascrape (a collection of news snippets from around the world).
Both make their videos available through embedded windows media players, and neither has an RSS feed of new vids.
I suspect the reason is to force watchers to go to the webpage to watch, which allows the site owners to generate ad revenues on their web pages. But not having easily downloadable media files, and not having an RSS feed means people like me won’t spend much time watching these files… especially since almost all my media consumption now is generated through collectik. I don’t like to go to a web page to check if there is something interesting for me there - I want it to turn up in whatever RSS aggregator I use (say, ahem, collectik), so I can decide if I want to watch/listen or not.
Here’s a proposal for video makers who want ad revenues: find a way to stick banner ads on the bottom or side of a video image - embedded in the vid, so that if I want to watch the vid I have to watch the ad. Then do everything you can to get the video all over the internet - torrent, RSS, and get it in collectik.
