Jeff Jarvis on Current TV and the new iPod

For a different perspective on Al Gore’s recent speech and cable TV network, Current TV, head on over to the BuzzMachine to read what Jeff Jarvis has to say.

While I won’t go into his critique of all things Al, other than to say he’s critical of the former Veep for not embracing the Internet more, he did make one suggestion I’ve meant to blog about:

Finally, at the end, Gore returns to the internet.

Indeed, Current TV relies on video streaming over the Internet as the means by which individuals send us what we call viewer-created content or VC squared.

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Not to nitpick, but streaming is usually outbound, not inbound. And I find it odd that you still call these people “viewers” if they’re supposedly programming the network. Aren’t they your journalists and programmers? Aren’t you supposed to be the viewer now?

And he still complains about the internet because there’s not enough bandwidth for full-motion video. Try Bittorrent, Al. Try video iChat. Try video on those new iPods.

For those who did not hear the latest news, Apple is now selling a video iPod. If you’ve been toying around with the idea of participatory journalism, your potential audience just got a whole lot bigger.

Now wouldn’t it be interesting to have someone make a clip about the iPod’s non-replaceable battery, which destines it and its constituent toxic heavy metals for a premature trip to the landfill, to play on said iPods.