Why I’ve Joined SplashCast

Today’s my first day here at SplashCast and I thought I’d take the opportunity to share a little bit of my thinking about why I decided to join the company. There are general considerations like the appeal of working with a group and gaining more real world experience working in a startup, but most important to me are a few things about SplashCast itself.

When it’s complete SplashCast will be a media aggregation and distribution platform powered in large part by RSS. I think RSS is magic. The quick flow of text and media has never been easier than it is now and RSS has increased our access to information by orders of magnitude.

Embedded media is also a very important development in the history of the web. The ability to embed a single video in any website made online video, especially user generated video, the incredible force that it is today. YouTube got big in large part because you could embed a video in MySpace. The ability to embed and update channels of multiple files of all types of media on any web page will be the next big step. I think SplashCast could nail that big step.

The interface that SplashCast is developing will make it very easy for nontechnical users to use RSS to deliver multiple related media items together through distributed SplashCast players. What’s more interesting than a single cool video, photograph, text feed or audio file? Creatively bundled, easily updated, thematic groups of all these media types delivered over a network of sites around the web. That’s what SplashCast will make easy. The company has a great vision and is already taking care of many details that will make that vision a solid reality.

As soon as the SplashCast player is ready to show off, I’ll be using it to publish channels of media on a wide variety of topics here on this site. I’ll also be bringing guest editors onto the site to put together channels of their favorite media on their topics of expertise. Until that time I’ll be using this space to participate in conversations emerging online about new media. I hope you’ll join us while we highlight the best on the web and work to create an infrastructure to take online media to the next level.

-Marshall Kirkpatrick

Director of Content

SplashCast

Welcome, Marshall!

Today is Marshall Kirkpatrick’s first day at SplashCast! 

Just a few days ago Marshall was writing for TechCrunch.  Today he is our Director of Content.  Indeed, this past week has been an especially busy one for us.

We are absolutely delighted to have one of the most talented, resourceful, and influential bloggers spearhead our ambitious agenda for covering the wild, wild west of  user-generated content (see yesterday’s New York Times article on UGC).  Marshall will not only be the voice of SplashCast, he will act as executive producer, folding in the best writers, podcasters, and vloggers in our industry.  We have big ideas for “SplashCast Media”, and can’t wait to integrate these ideas into the SplashCast syndication network for all your publishing desires (public beta coming soon, I promise!). 

I hope you will join me in giving Marshall the warmest of welcomes.

Welcome aboard, Marshall! 

A Tough Day — James Kim, May You Rest In Peace

Background: CNET Senior Editor James Kim and his family went missing eleven days ago. They were stranded in the Oregon wilderness on remote forest service roads while trying to get to Gold Beach on the Oregon Coast. James body was found yesterday. His wife and children were rescued on Monday.

Yesterday was a tough day. I had been watching the reports about James Kim. Then the email arrived from a colleague. Rescuers had found his body. I did not want to believe it. I felt hope when I went to CNET and read that nothing had been confirmed. I checked Google News. There it was. James body had been found by rescuers at the bottom of a ravine.

I choked up. The news really hit me. I felt it somewhere deeper, more so than ever before have I had this kind of reaction to the death of someone I did not even know.

I have a feeling I know why this one hurts so much. James worked for CNET. He covered the digital audio space. He worked in the tech community. He is one of us.

I am part of the tech community. I have colleagues who knew him well. On a personal level, James got lost in the Oregon wilderness trying to save his family. I live in Oregon. I am a Dad. I’ve traveled in that area with my children over forest service roads.

In some ways, Kim’s death makes me realize how many friends I have in this world of bloggers, podcasters, videobloggers and all the others in this new media world. The bummer? It’s such a sad way to be reminded.

James Kim, may you rest in peace.

Friends of the Kim family are accepting donations at: http://jamesandkati.com/