The ability of current technology to whip up cool, potentially useful stuff far outstrips the ability of the economic distribution system to develop and offer that that stuff to the general public in the form of products. However, when the panorama is ripe for a particular piece of software or hardware, it will burst forth from this fecund petri dish of innovation in many seemingly simultaneous and splendiferous manifestations.
Such is the case with Video Aggregators, an idea whose time has clearly come. Thursday’s New York Times brings news of Wejay, a free, on-line composing tool allowing anyone to collect and remix video, add and synch music, still graphic images, soundtracks and voiceovers. This sounds like a DreamMedium to the Dowbrigade, and we can’t wait to try it out…..
A HANDFUL of Web users are programming their own virtual TV newscasts and eclectic collections of video clips using a free media-sharing tool called Webjay (www.webjay.org). The site makes it easy to build, share and watch playlists of audio and video links culled from around the Internet.
Webjay, developed by Lucas Gonze, a programmer who lives in Brooklyn, has already built a following among music lovers. They have used it to assemble sets of legally available music links from all over the Web and then play the whole list with one click, using Windows Media Player, RealOne, Winamp or QuickTime. Now some people are creating video shows using Webjay and streaming Web video.
from The New York Timesvia Andrew Grumet
Michael —
Using Webjay to do all the things you mention still requires a fair amount of unpublished lore. The authoring tool is only really smooth for audio playlists. It *does* work, but there’s some obscurantia to pick up via email and the discussion boards.
– Lucas