Vlogging Web Development

The web site I've been working on, Vloggerheads, will be opened to the public tomorrow. You can view the videos and blogs but you won't be able to comment or post videos unless you request membership and are approved. You might want to check out the video of the shrine that was built to me or the many videos thanking me for adding much needed features to the site. LOL

Vloggers make so many videos that it is not unusual for them to make a video about the site itself. I get a lot more feedback and appreciation for my work on this web site than I get on any other project. This alone makes it very worthwhile. If you are looking for recognition from users than you should definitely consider a video sharing site project.

I've added several features to this Ning site which everyone was used to having on YouTube or LiveVideo. Leaving comments on videos is an important aspect of the communication in the community so I added comment threading and comment replies. I also implemented email notification for comment replies. Working with the Ning platform is painfully difficult. Just sending an email proved to be a major hassle because Ning does not give me direct access to a member's email address. I have to use their built-in classes to send emails. And I cannot query for more than 100 content items at a time so I need to write a loop to get all the comments. Ning fights me every step of the way and frustrates me with its caching system and poor error reporting tools.

Ning is dropping the old version of the Dojo JavaScript library they were using and replacing it with jQuery. So I'm glad that ASP.NET will officially support jQuery as I'll be using it on all my projects. I've already included jQuery in my two remaining ASP.NET projects and I imported it into my Ning sites. I even use jQuery in my help files that I use for documentation.

I wrote some very complicated JavaScript to handle the comment pagination so I've been using every tool available to me to troubleshoot my JavaScript. Since the Ning platform caches JavaScript on the server side I've found it useful to load my recently changed scripts in Firebug to double check the version downloaded by Firefox. I've even resorted to using some console.log("string") lines in my code to avoid annoying alerts. My JavaScript is loading and manipulating XML so I've had to view my JavaScript objects in the DOM pane to carefully review available properties and methods. However, I haven't neglected the new debugging tools in Internet Explorer 8.0 Beta. I even have to use Opera to get an error message for a Dojo library error that won't show up in Firefox or Internet Explorer. I was uncertain as to what values the Ning platform was expecting for a POST request so I learned how to use Firebug to view what was being sent in a typical POST request.

During a recent Skype conference I was surprised to learn that both YouTube and LiveVideo were more disinterested in the vlogging community than I suspected. This surprises me because I think the social networking potential of vlogging is obvious. Vlogging is clearly more effective than blogging and other forms of text in fostering a genuine sense of online community. You can form real friendships through vlogging that would never take place among bloggers. Unfortunately, too many Web 2.0 entrepreneurs focus on valuations and numbers and neglect to consider the most important factor of business value, providing a service that meets real needs. You can never go wrong betting on a business that meets the needs of the general public. Vlogging clearly meets many crucial needs. It provides social interaction for the socially isolated. It provides recognition for creative people. It provides entertainment and communication that is more interactive than the mass media can offer. To dismiss vlogging as something that will never catch on with the general public is as stupid as it was two years ago to dismiss blogging as a fad.