Wes Clark video blog

While doing some research on video blogs, I stumbled across the “New Hampshire Video Blog” on Wesley Clark’s campaign Web site. (Figures I find this one day after the NH primary … so much for timeliness!) It’s a nice feature for the site, if you have a broadband connection. The content is engaging, giving a different perspective of the campaign trail. While the videos themselves are kind of slick, the delivery mechanism is poor at best. Viewers have two format options to view each clip, QuickTime or MPEG. Fine, but both options are HTTP downloads not streaming media or even progressive downloads. So, the 20-plus megabyte video files take a bit of time to show up on screen, even on on our sturdy T-1 connection here at the office. The general election will be over if you attempt to view these on a dial-up connection. At least Clark’s techies are using Akamai to serve the files and not some central server in a small campaign office.