primary sources . please improve this by adding secondary or tertiary sources . june 2011 learn how and when to remove this template message bloggingheads.tv screenshot of bloggingheads.tv type video discussion founded november 1 2005 founder s robert wright mickey kaus key people robert wright mickey kaus john horgan george johnson david corn james pinkerton glenn loury will wilkinson services video audio owner robert wright employees less than 10 paid ; over 250 volunteer website http bloggingheads.tv type of site video sharing video blog podcast registration optional required to comment available in english launched november 1 2005 current status active bloggingheads.tv sometimes abbreviated bhtv is a political world events philosophy and science video blog discussion site in which the participants take part in an active back and forth conversation via webcam which is then broadcast online to viewers . the site was started by the journalist robert wright the evolution of god nonzero the logic of human destiny the moral animal and the blogger and journalist mickey kaus on november 1 2005 . 1 kaus has since dropped out of operational duties of the site as he didn t want his frequent linking to be seen as a conflict of interest . 2 most of the earlier discussions posted to the site involved one or both of those individuals but since has grown to include a total of over one thousand individual contributors mostly journalists academics scientists authors well known political bloggers and other notable individuals . unregistered users are able to view all of the videos which are contained on the site while free registration is required to comment on the individual discussions or participate in the forums . contents 1 format 1.1 regular segments 2 history 2.1 media recognition 3 site terms features and technology 3.1 diavlog 3.2 direct video linking dingalink and embedding 3.3 visual aids 4 contributors to bloggingheads.tv 5 see also 6 references 7 external links format edit bloggingheads discussions are conducted via webcam between two or more people and can be viewed online in flash format or downloaded as wmv video files mp4 video files or mp3 sound files . 3 new diavlogs are generally posted daily and are all archived for future viewing . the diavlogs are generally broken up into a series of topics and subtopics a few minutes in length links to which are placed below the video window to allow viewers to navigate to a given topic if they do not wish to view the whole discussion . most of the discussions posted to bloggingheads.tv involve well known or semi well known journalists bloggers science writers scientists philosophers book authors or other specialists in segments of current world events . many of the discussions are of a political nature or are related to the current political environment . those with differing points of view are often matched against one another . 4 diavlogs involving guests appearing for the first time often take the form of an interview more often than that of a discussion with a longtime bloggingheads contributor playing the role of interviewer . regular segments edit although most episodes and matchups do not occur on any kind of a regular basis there are a few notable exceptions to this . there is a frequent previously biweekly and weekly but now less frequent diavlog matchup between the two co founders of bloggingheads.tv robert wright and mickey kaus generally related to politics in some form that usually occurs on either wednesday or thursday . while some of the other diavloggers are frequently matched against each other e.g. david corn & james pinkerton there is usually not a regularly scheduled time at which they take place . john horgan and george johnson in a discussion on a science saturday episode of bloggingheads.tv . science saturday is the name given to the weekly episode appearing on saturday that is always science related ; it usually but not always involves either one or both of the science writers john horgan and george johnson . many well known people in the science community have been a part of science saturday including michael shermer of skeptic magazine 5 biologist pz myers 6 craig venter of the human genome project 7 aging researcher and biogerentologist aubrey de grey 8 and philosopher david chalmers 9 among many others . however in september 2009 four high profile science bloggers who had previously participated in bloggingheads.tv discussions publicly distanced themselves from the site and stated they would no longer agree to appear in bloggingheads.tv segments . the scientists sean carroll carl zimmer phil plait and pz myers all criticized what they claimed was a policy by bloggingheads.tv to provide a platform for the anti scientific ideology creationism without an opposing point of view for balance . pz myers said bloggingheads.tv was setting up crackpots with softball interviews that made them look reasonable because their peculiar ideas were never confronted . 10 aubrey de grey being interviewed by eliezer yudkowsky on bloggingheads.tv . 8 the week in blog is a weekly segment which normally appears on the site on fridays . the format is to discuss what has showed up on the past week on both liberal and conservative blogs from both a liberal and conservative viewpoint . the three regular hosts of twib are bill scher of liberal oasis kristin soltis of the winston group and matt lewis of the daily caller . original host conn carroll of the heritage foundation stepped aside in early 2009 . guests who have appeared on the show are armando llorens of daily kos 11 amanda carpenter 12 and nate silver of fivethirtyeight 13 among many others . history edit on november 1 2005 the site launched with robert wright and mickey kaus as the only two initial participants in the video discussions . 14 the site has since featured more than one thousand other diavloggers . on october 18 2006 a site redesign was launched with a revised home page and improved functionality ability to comment on diavlogs was added and to participate in forum discussions . 15 in january 2007 it was announced that cable tv pioneer and c span founding chairman bob rosencrans with a loose network of others would become an angel investor of bloggingheads.tv . the infusion of cash 2 kicked off a dramatic expansion of the site s content and a corresponding growth in viewers . on march 24 2007 in a diavlog between garance franke ruta and ann althouse althouse became quite animated and angry to the point of yelling over a comment franke ruta made in reference to an earlier controversy involving jessica valenti and former us president bill clinton 16 17 18 referred to as an on air meltdown by some . 19 this led to many blog posts and news stories in the following days on both the initial controversy and althouse s on air behavior . 20 21 22 23 on october 13 2007 a conversion to flash format from the initial windows media format took place . 24 on october 24 2007 bloggingheads.tv entered into a relationship with the new york times whereby selected video segments from the bloggingheads site would appear in the videos section on the times website under the opinion subsection . 25 26 on december 13 2007 a site redesign took place which removed the familiar green pages in favor of a more web 2.0 look featuring more user generated content new navigation new forum software for the comments section and other updated features . 27 in 2008 several new segments and diavloggers were added or made more regular including free will this week in blog and un plaza . other updates and tweaks to the site such as the addition of the mp4 video format were also gradually phased in . media recognition edit traditional media outlets such at the new york times 4 and others 28 have written mostly favorable reviews of bloggingheads.tv . stories are also often written about individuals who take part in the video discussions 29 as they are often well known individuals in the scientific academic journalism or blogosphere community . the majority of coverage of the site however has been in the form of blog coverage citation needed sometimes on the form of the blog of the person participating in the bloggingheads discussion and sometimes in the form of other blogs . some events and personality appearances on bloggingheads.tv have led to larger than usual amounts of media coverage such as the march 24 2007 ann althouse controversy described above and the appearance of andrew sullivan on december 26 2006 and january 1 2007 when he discussed in the most clear terms up to that point his reversal of viewpoint on the iraq war and his plea of apology for supporting it in the first place . 30 31 site terms features and technology edit diavlog edit the term diavlog sometimes written dia vlog by some bloggers 32 means a type of video blog or vlog generally in which two people participate as contrasted with a mono vlog in which one contributor is featured . the word diavlog is a portmanteau of the phrase dialog video weblog or alternately video weblog dialog . the diavlog format is most popular for political world events or other types of conversational video blog discussions in which two or more people are actively participating in a real time give and take discussion of ideas . the term diavlog was first adopted and put into wide use by bloggingheads.tv contributors initially by robert wright and mickey kaus though its original coinage is subject to debate . 33 the term is widely used both by people on air as well as commentors refer to a specific conversation . although initially coined on the bloggingheads site the term has come to be used in other parts of the blogosphere and among journalists who frequently or infrequently participate in the encounters . 33 34 35 36 the term is sometimes spelled diavlogue by those outside the united states . 37 see american and british english spelling differences direct video linking dingalink and embedding edit button used to direct link to a relevant part of the video or to embed video in another website . dingalink is a direct link to a specific place in a video . a beginning time and an end time dingalinks have the ability for users to direct viewers directly to a relevant part of a video without the viewer having to watch the video in its entirety . they are used with video blogs when others who write blogs articles emails etc. have the aim of discussing only one segment of an entire video post . the term was named after bloggingheads.tv s technical advisor greg dingle who initially developed the technology . on bloggingheads.tv direct linking is often useful in the discussion surrounding a specific diavlog to refer to a particular point or points in the discussion to clarify what is being commented on . the direct linking can be automatically generated from the bloggingheads flash video player through the adjustment of the beginning and end of the video that one might want to display . start end time can also be manually edited once the code is generated . embedding of video is a feature that was added to bloggingheads.tv in 2008 as a consequence of converting to flash video . it allows for bloggers and other websites to embed the video player into their blog or website so that the content can be viewed locally instead of the need to visit the actual bloggingheads.tv site . this feature is similar to the youtube and google video among others feature which had previously become prevalent on the internet . visual aids edit wright and kaus compare stuffed moose visual aids . due to the fairly limited medium of using webcams to record the video used in the bloggingheads.tv episodes a variety