Talking Head Video

To go along with my previous posts on non-text web media: Why podcasting is a waste of time and Video blogging also being a waste of time I thought I'd cover this topic, which is almost an intersection between the two. Oddly enough... if it's done right it's more useful than both.

I was watching several videos over at http://www.bigthink.com. Most of the videos are -- as the title of this post implies -- talking heads with audio. They're short (itself a blessing) and to the point. They're not tremendously dependent upon the visual aspect of the media, but I suppose if facial clues are your thing that's very handy. But the lack of dependence upon watching the video means that it can be pushed to the background while I have something else up on my monitor.

There's very little online video that can keep my attention long enough to watch it: Ill Will Press and Zero Punctuation are among the exceptions, because the visuals are actually entertaining and not useless filler.