More on C-SPAN’s innovative Convention Hub

Bill Beutler writes to fill in some of the blanks I left yesterday on what makes C-SPAN’s Convention Hub particularly interesting and unique:

• C-SPAN is putting a spotlight not just on national bloggers, but on state-based bloggers, which never make Memeorandum — delegates, credentialed and uncredentialed bloggers. And we’re working in shifts 18 hours a day (6a-12a).
• The point is to not just “cover the coverage,” but cover what happens in between. We like to say, the story isn’t being told every few hours; it’s being told every few minutes.
• C-SPAN will augment its TV coverage with flip cams for more TV coverage, while using Qik cameras to stream video on the web.
• All C-SPAN convention video goes online within minutes of airing, and it can be searched (using the closed captioning), video can be clipped to what bloggers need, and for the first time, embedded.
• We’re aggregating all Twitter postings that use #DNC08 and #RNC08 hashtags.

Here’s the C-SPAN press release. Here the TechCrunch post from Friday when the project was still in beta. On his blog, Beutler gushed about his client.

The editable embeds are the coolest feature to me. For example, Steve Benen notes that former Rep. Jim Leach (R) of Iowa got short shrift from the media. I searched for the video library for Leach (the video was the top hit), clicked on it for program details, clicked the watch flash video link, picked an “in” and “out” point, and here is my clip (pop-up blocker should be off on your browser). I did it all during my lunch break. I’ll work on embeds later…