Usually these days I don’t blog about new websites that much, but I wanted to drop in a note about the new kid on the block: sketchcast.
Yet another surrogate of blogging, you say. Oh-no just a mash-up of blogs, podcast and screencast, you say.
Well, yes… and no.
There is an interesting difference: if you ever tried to record a podcast, you’ll know that it requires a lot of effort (well, at least at the beginning); it needs to have a good rhythm, you’ll probably need a background music, eliminate the “blanks”, adjust the volume swings and your own pitch. All of this because, despite the fact that the audio channel has a broader bandwidth than text, only a minimal part of it is used to actually transmit the content (the rest being filled of different types of signals). So what happens normally when we need to explain a concept to an audience? We switch to (or, better, support the audio with) visual: gestures, video, drawings.
That’s where sketchcast stands: broadening the communication channel between source and audience, without requiring the technology (and effort) needed for producing real video.
And yes, I know that a screencast with a paint program in the background would have been the same, I’m not praising the website, but the media (and it’s a media I haven’t seen exploited so far).
That said, it’s clear that the right formula for a “portable” solution is yet to be found, since sketchcast, as you can see below, is pretty unusable on a laptop :)