My iPhone is broken!
Here is a screenshot of my iPhone: 
It looks right. And in fact it is. The problem with it is that there is no flash video support. Maybe that’s a good thing and maybe not, but it got me thinking about videos on the web.
I just watched a one hour video with about two minutes of content. I could have scanned a PDF and pulled it out in about two minutes total. I could even have pasted the valuable parts into some note taking software so I could access it again. It is pretty hard to do that quickly with a video.
Lots of sites are using video to convey a message. It feels good and videos are easy to make and upload. The presenter gets her camera-time, there is no need to proofread, and in general videos can be fun to watch.
But the downside is pretty big. My iPhone can only play some videos. Videos take a while to load and on my 1Mb connection, some vids start and stop making them pretty annoying. On top of all that videos tend to be a very slow way to deliver most content. Most people read much faster than normal speech rates. Sure you can speed up plain audio with FasterAudio, and some videos can be sped up, too, but in general web videos play at “natural speed”. This means that the meat of the content is much slower to access than if it had been written down.
There are times when video is not only appropriate, but wonderful. If there is something to show the viewer, and still pictures are not enough, then video is great. Some examples might be: how to fold oragami, how to use some software package, how to paint, and so forth.
So, should we think more about how we present information? You bet. Video is cool (or hot), but it needs to be used appropriately. What do you think?
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