My review for today's class is CameraPlanet. Differently than JenniCam or AnaCam, it is not run by an individual, but by a team of producers that try to somehow mix the TV and web paradigm. I don't know if they're doing it well though. In their press section there's a review from Netsurfer Digest with which I agree quite a lot.

When you enter the site you notice it requires a lot of bandwidth and the latest Flash plug-in. Not a very democratic interface! Then you can choose between different channels like "meat market" or "planet pets". The stories and videos are suggested by people and the public gets to vote on stories descriptions to help the site producers choose the featured stories.

The idea seems very interesting, of a channel for independent web video productions, but I'm not sure about the way it's being edited right now. I think in the end this mix looses the naivity and unedited, free characteristic of personal cams, and yet doesn't reach the quality of editorial TV. Maybe a huge user-searchable database would be better. Something like a IHMDB (Internet Home Movie Database :) So I would fire the producers and hire some programmers and interface designers instead.

I think Naz is right to the point saying that most personal sites and weblogs are works in process rather that finished products. And while one may argue that they're "rough" and don't have an "ending" I think it's one of the reasons why they are so popular. And I don't think it necessarily has anything to do with interactivity. Soap operas are works of fiction, but they are also a form of "neverending" story. And they're not very interactive. What makes blogs a bit more interactive are the links to other sites commenting upon them. From quizes about hair color to intrincate love affairs there are different degrees of influence the "public" can have in this people's real life stories. And I'm sure the soap opera marketers also conduct quizes to see if the public would like the story to develop in certain ways or even if the main actress should dye her hair!

So I'll try this table of comparison between blogs, traditional documentaries and soap operas:

DOCUMENTARIES             SOAP OPERAS              BLOGS

mostly "real"             mostly "fiction"         mostly "real"

finished products         works in progress        works in progress

low interactivity         low interactivity        higher interactivity (?)

low to high budget        high budget              very low budget

What other characteristics we can add? And what kinds of other traditional media can be useful comparisons in this case?

Ok, I've made my little stortrooper icon, it's in the links section to the left.