Why is Podcasting so popular right now? Apple adding Podcasting support into ITunes 4.9 helped Podcasting “Cross the Chasm”, but what brought Podcasting to the brink of the Chasm? How were those early adopters hooked into it? Real easy answer: The IPod and other portable digital audio devices. They took Internet audio (which previously could only be heard on a computer) and brought it into a context where people can enjoy it: Their IPod in the car, on the walk to work, at work, on the subway, etc. You no longer had to be tethered to your computer or open up your 15lb laptop, you just had this tiny little device to carry with you.

So what is Video Blogging (or vlogging? sigh…) and what does it need to be as popular as Podcasting? Video Blogging is using a video camera of some sort to record a “broadcast” and then to use some Podcasting technology (RSS/bittorrent) to syndicate it to people podcatchers. Very much a “seeing” analogue to Podcasting.

But Video Blogging doesn’t yet have its IPod. There are currently no devices on the market that can take a syndicated (RSS) video feed and allow the user to watch it in a good context. For watching video, this context usually means the sofa. There are a few products that this kind of feature could be added to. KiSS(recently acquired by Cisco/Linksys) has a line of networked PVRs that this kind of VideoCatcher feature could be added to. Gateway used to have a (pricey) networked DVD player that could stream video off a PC that could do VideoCatching. There is also a Linux based HD box with an extensive API that can do it (I can’t remember what it is right now. We have one at work so I’ll check on it tomorrow).

But all those products have one thing in common: Nobody owns one. KiSS probably has the best chance, as they have a strong non-US market share, but they currently only have one US distributor and the box runs $300! But I don’t think Gateway even sells their DVD player anymore, and I can’t even remember the name of the last product in my lineup!

Somebody needs to design and sell a reasonably priced (like $200) box on which VideoCatching can be implemented. But for $200, I would expect a hard drive and to not involve the PC at all to use it. At $100, I could get by with the device having no hard drive and always needing the PC to serve up content.

A media adapter like I described could really set fire to Video Blogging. Just like Podcasting brought niche interests to people who are interested in hearing about them, imagine whole TV shows not picked by TV executives to cater to the lowest common denominator, but rather shows that are intelligent and entertaining. You don’t need a PVR anymore, because you just subscribe to the 24 feed and the program shows up on your device every week. But of course, people would still be complaints about there being nothing on…