Talk is going on about "podcasting" and video blogging as being the next big thing, but I'd have to disagree with some estimates of how big they are going to be. Personally I can't spend an hour listening to a podcast. Listening is much more time consuming than reading. I suppose that the advantage is that you can "take it with you" - thus the term "podcast", but serious listening does take attention and time. Right now (OK - up until I started writing this) I was reading a transcript of an hour long forum. I'm about halfway through and it has taken me about 5 minutes or so. Video blogging is even more time intensive. And of course, the time it takes to produce and edit video is substantial as well. I just wonder how this is going to be an effective way to get ideas across. I'm not alone either. Seth has a couple of recent posts describing his thoughts on podcasting.
Granted both audio and video can convey things which words can not easily do, but things such as ideas are more efficient in text.
