Vlogs – video blogs explained

What are vlogs exactly? The general term refers to a number of web pages that choose to use videos as journal entries instead of articles. Presented in a reverse chronological order, they find a great support in the use of photos and text; depending on the nature of the videos, there may be need of additional comments to make information relevant. The great part about vlogs is that they perfectly meet the present-day tendency of communicating via the Internet on a very familiar basis: when you see the person behind the text, the blog seems to actually live in from of you.

Most video blogs use some form of web syndication in order to upload and spread the videos online and at the basis of every transmission lies the RSS technology or format. Presently, vlogs, may even be accessed on mobile devices such as pods and mobile phones. Though, the very vlog phenomenon started as a collective attempt, there are many individual video logs that are authored by people who make a hobby out of it. It is a good thing to know that content contributors can get to be paid for their share in the process: on the sole condition that they upload viable material.

Let's take the case of the Google video blogs that enjoy massive success all around the world, it is a collective effort of keeping in touch with people that are thousands of kilometers away from you. Uploading and sharing videos is an instant procedure on http://googlevideo.blogspot.com/, not to mention that Google also provides a directory of vlogs where you may find whatever you're looking for. A similar example of a vlog collection that is also administered by Google is the very popular YouTube, which has attracted thousands of users ever since its beginnings in 2005.

The vlog working principles are less complex than those specific to a regular blog, though the basics are alike. For instance, if you join a video blog community, you'll need your own channel, and signing up is usually required in order to be able to follow the rest of the necessary steps. Once you have a channel, you can simply organize the favorite shows, videos or podcasts from everywhere in the world or simply load and send them across the web. Ipods, iPhones and iTunes are perfectly compatible with vlogs, so that you can pretty much take the web with you everywhere you go.

Photo blogging

Just like vlogs, photo blogs are born from the need to communicate and integrate in a community that has reached international dimensions. A photo blog mainly relies on photo sharing and publishing, while also using textual support as well. Nevertheless, when you visit a photo blog you'll understand where the focus really lies; the phenomenon deviated from blogging with the advent of the cameraphones that allow the instant photo sharing between web users. The big advantage of such pages is that they are very dynamic in nature as compared to traditional sites. There are photo blogs that belong to individual domains and others that use larger collective services such as Blogger.

Widely accessible all over the web, photo blogs are managed with the help of specific software systems that enable content control. Thus, photo bloggers are able to upload materials and manage all posts without any restriction; the same unrestricted form is maintained for the access to photo blogs, since all that is required is a browser and direct online access. There are cases when the transition from text to photo blogs is made with the use of plugins and even code rewriting; thus a combination of text and image is possible when a blogger selects a daily entry option.

Usually photo blogs have a single author, nevertheless it is not uncommon that two or three people contribute to the same web page. The posts display depends on chronology, with the main page showing the most recent entries, but you may go back to the archives any time you want. Photo blogs are highly interactive too since users may leave any comments they want for a special entry. The presence of friendly links is also important in the photo blogging community, given the fact that creators come to move freely between sites.

It is totally incorrect to take pictures galleries for photo blogs; while the former is a simple collection images, the latter is a chronological log that uses categories allowing the user to navigate among them from older to newer materials and vice versa. It is not uncommon to also have photo blogs and moblogs as one and the same unit; though they may also function separately as well. A photo blog that can be updated from a mobile location such as camera phones could be labeled as mob logs. Nevertheless this latter concept could well function without pictures as well. In a nut shell, the composite character of the Internet allows the happy existence of hybrid blog types that enrich the puzzle even more.

RSS – what's it all about?

Before creating a blog as such, it is most advisable to learn what type of helping tools you may need to design and update the pages when necessary. One fine example is the famous RSS, a group of web feed formats that are mainly used to keep the blog content new and fresh as often as possible. Why is RSS the first choice of a large number of users? Simple, an RSS document includes the very text you have on the blog or a summary of the content in some other cases; thus, one can keep a close watch over the blog without checking the pages in detail.

To give you a further glimpse into the utility of the tool, we should mention that the abbreviation RSS stands for Rich Site Summary. Therefore, besides the advantage of delivering fresh web content, RSS allows many Internet users who need to stay informed; thus you can easily retrieve whatever item of information you are interested in from a specific site. From this perspective, RSS comes as a great alternative to subscribing for email newsletters since it doesn't require your giving away the email address. Presently, RSS has become the choice of many sites that need to keep a permanent contact with their visitors.