Pros and cons of pencasting
October 22nd, 2007Unsorted considerations about pencasting.
Pros:
Pencasting
- gives a personal touch but is still much less personal than podcasting and infinitely less than video-casting
- requires much less bandwidth than podcasting
- protects what you write from content theft
- keeps content more private, as it is not searchable — you can use taboo keywords without fear of invasion by Google-misled mobs (see cons)
- makes it much harder to include hyperlinks (some may try image maps).
- requires fewer multimedia skills than podcasting (some may think otherwise)
- makes readers feel as if you were sending them letters
- makes you feel as if you were sending letters to your readers
- offers you an analog hardcopy of what you publish, whatever happens to your hosting provider or your computer
Cons
Pencasting
- makes your content not searchable: it will not show in search results for requests in your blog search box
- makes your content not search-engine friendly: it will de-optimize your rankings in search engines. The associated page will not show up in search results. If your readership comes in majority from search engines, you might reconsider.
- represents extra work to write text down and to scan it.
- requires that your handwriting be reasonably legible
- allows people to expertise your handwriting and conclude that you are lefthanded, or that your handwriting stopped evolving after high school, or other things less scientific and less nice.
If you feel that the pros weigh more than the cons for you, I’ll be happy to welcome you in the very narrow pencasting community.
(click on the ‘pencast’ category link below for a list of all pencasts or pencasting-related posts here).
I think pencasting is quite interesting, but I struggle with reading people’s handwriting — it’s not that I can’t do it, I just get a bit tired doing it. It takes more time to read, which can be good in that it slows the reader down and gives the reader more time to think, but it also perhaps increases the likelihood the reader will simply stop reading. So I feel ambivalently about pencasting — and certainly my handwriting is no pleasure to look at, so I won’t horrify the internet with it! But I do like the intimacy of seeing other people’s handwriting.
I’ve wanted to do a pencast ever since I tried to create a blog header in something resembling my handwriting. To me, writing would be a tad less embarrassing than having my voice heard on a podcast (I like the sound of it when I am hearing myself speak, but it sounds horrible to me when I listen to a taped recording of my own voice.)
I love pencasting and plan to experiment more with it in the future. One of the great benefits is being able to write a blog post in, say, the airport, when you don’t have your laptop with you and knowing you’ll be able to post it later without having to type it. The only downside for me is having to make sure my handwriting remains legible.
Dorothy: I will try to write as clearly as I can.
Polaris: contrary to what your ears do to your voice, your eyes do not distort your handwriting. However, it seems that does ot prevent people from hating their handwriting when others like it.
Emily: I could not do that. I am not an inspired writer. I have to type the post first, then edit it, and then write it down.
I want to try a pencast but my handwriting is illegible these days. Sometimes even I can’t read it. So I need to practice first.
I’d enjoy pencasting because I love writing by hand. As long as people write legibly, it might keep the art of handwriting alive. With keyboards taking over our lives at younger and younger ages, legible handwriting is no longer as important as it once was.
You are quite right. If I did not have pencasting, I would hardly use my fountain pen anymore.
[…] solution I’ll try in a moment is pencasting, the solution found and advocated by Mandarine. But I’m not sure you’ll be able to read as I wrote in my personal notebook for no other reader […]