University news service through video podcasting keeps students updated on the School's activities.  

Video podcasting has been taken to a new level with the UK university using the facility to launch a unique news service.

The School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University has set up ECS News – a service providing information about research, people and events in the department, via video podcast.

By visiting the School's website students and visitors can download each edition and view it on an i-Pod, laptop or desktop screen. Alternatively, it can be listened to as an audio podcast on MP3 players or i-Pods.

The first news edition included an interview with Professor Michael Luck on agent-based computing. Also featured was Professor Neil White, who spoke about intelligent sensors, and Dr. Les Carr who talked about Edinburgh's World Wide Web conference.

Video podcasting involves some of the latest video compression streaming techniques. Through using advanced encoding algorithms we can produce a greatly compressed high quality video.

The service developed at ECS is not just being used for news broadcasts. They can take video from any source and enable lecturers and students alike to create a video, either of a lecture, a seminar, or to record an experiment or presentation. The great benefit is that this can be downloaded to be watched or listened to at any time and in any place.