University Channel begins 'vodcasting'

The University Channel expanded the Apple technology services it provides to subscribers Thursday by adding vodcasts — shared videos to be watched using iTunes — to the podcasts, or downloadable sound files, it already offers.

Apple recently introduced vodcasting technology in conjunction with the video-enabled iPod as a way of sharing video files over iTunes. Subscribers are notified when podcasts and vodcasts are available directly on the website or for downloading onto a computer. Both options are free of charge.

Podcasts and vodcasts take advantage of "the Internet's potential for distribution to a bigger audience for fantastic content not [previously] going anywhere," University Channel Executive Director Donna Liu said. She added that the technology's ability to "contribute to democratic discussion in public and international affairs and promote this kind of discussion in the public sphere" is a significant benefit for the Wilson School.

The Wilson School launched the University Channel this summer in an effort to grant widespread access to academic events for a broad audience. Liu said she first added podcasting because "commercial media doesn't put out full-length presentations" of interesting lectures and speeches, using only short clips during news broadcasts instead.

While podcasts and vodcasts involve Apple technology, Liu explained that there is "not a specific relationship between Apple and the University."

Participants register with Apple, but the media files are obtained directly from the University Channel website and can be accessed without an iPod.

Since the University Channel's first podcast — computer science professor Ed Felten's talk from the President's Lecture Series in October 2004, entitled "Rip, Mix, Burn, Sue: Technology, Politics, and the Fight to Control Digital Media"— more than 80 podcasts and the first vodcast have been made available to the public on the website.

"In a world in which everything is increasingly privatized (Stanford has just put its lectures up on iTunes, but for a price), sharing the wealth both nationally and internationally is very consistent with the role Princeton aspires to play as a great university," Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter '80 said in an email.

Liu credited Slaughter and the Wilson School for supporting her initiative and the University's Office of Information Technology for providing technical solutions.

"[I am] pleased with having achieved a fair number of short-term goals" with the University Channel," Liu said. "It's not only iTunes, also community access TV, Internet protocol TV, and of course, standard webstreaming."

Now, her plans for the burgeoning program include extending membership overseas, streamlining technical solutions and "simply getting the word out."

Slaughter added that the University Channel is also looking for five charter members, "which will allow us to form a Board and then apply for further funding from foundations and other sources," she said. "We expect to have those members in place within a month."