Top Ten Video Blogs

There's some great original video content on the net, if you know where to look. Wikipedia currently defines video blogging as "a form of blogging for which the medium is video. Entries are made regularly and often combine embedded video or a video link with supporting text, images, and other metadata." TV and film director Joss Whedon recently called attention to the phenomenon of video blogging with his Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, although to be fair, this was actually an episodic TV mini-series made available through the internet, and maybe not technically a proper blog. For that reason, it hasn't made this top ten list. For this list of top ten video blogs, the criteria was simple:

• It had to contain original videos created by the vloggers (video bloggers). No compilations of other people's content gathered from YouTube (although some compilation blogs out there have some great stuff). It also couldn't be merely material recorded from TV, although occasional clips of news events was OK.
• The site had to appear as if work was ongoing, not a project someone had started, but abandoned a while back.
• As one of those annoying everyday practical matters, it had to be a site I was able to find while I was researching this article.

The entries here are entertaining and often informative. Please note, some of the content on some of the sites may not be appropriate for children. Please use your own judgement.

Here they are: the top ten video blogs!

1. The Green Children are a musical duo from Norway and England, who decided to use their talent to do something good for the world. Milla Sunde and Tom Bevan use their music to raise awareness of microcredit and help the world's poor. They started The Green Children Foundation. They have a video blog on YouTube, which features their wonderful music.

2. It's Jerry Time! bills itself as "true tales from the life of Jerry." It's an innovative series of short animated videos, depicting humorous or frustrating events in the life of unlucky everyman Jerry. The videos are created by Jerry Zucker and Orrin Zucker. The series won a 2007 Emmy Award in the Broadband Variety category.

3. Epic Fu aims to be "the owner's manual for the web." It's a hip, informative video magazine of all things cool on the web, created by anchor Zadi Diaz and Steve Woolf. A recent episode, titled "Back to School Deathmatch," discusses angry professors and also follows up on a recent report about pro-Tibetan video bloggers detained in China during the Beijing Olympics. I found out about at least one of the sites in this list by watching Zadi's show.

4. MobLogic.tv presents an informative web show with Lindsay Campbell. Recently, they've been covering the Democratic Convention in Denver. They often do whole episodes on single topics, such as in "Dude, Where's My Electric Car?"

5. Rocketboom is a daily news blog of internet culture. A recent video covered early video games and Mayan ideas about the afterlife.

6. Ill Doctrine, created by Jay Smooth, is a hip-hop opinion blog featuring insightful video posts by its creator, such as "How To Tell People They Sound Racist." He also has a great blog roll, where I found some of the other sites featured here.

7. Doogtoons features cartoons by animator Doug Bresler. They also produced a new retro 80's-style music video, "Indian Jones," featuring L.B. Rayne.

8. Brave New Films is the brainchild of political video producer Robert Greenwald. It is a group blog where Brave New Films posts its own videos, but videos by others are featured as well. A recent Brave New Films video interviews filmmaker Michael Moore.

9. Operation Itch, created by Davis Fleetwood, is a funny, irreverent look at political activism. A recent entry exhorts us to help Obama girl change the world.

10. Quiet Library is a comedy troop, posting videos of their silly sketches. They have received an Emmy nomination for outstanding comedy for broadband. Recent entries include "Famous Artist Pictionary."