Category: Tech

ScobleFeeds A-Z: The E’s

This is part five of my A-Z review of Scoble‘s feeds. The rules and criteria are here.

I found a great one I didn’t know about in the E’s:

eHomeUpgrade (RSS Feed)

eHomeUpgrade is a collaborative blog that focuses on “the connected home and the digital lifestyle.” That is a perfect recipe for a blog I want to read every day.

Honorable Mention:

Ed Bott (RSS Feed) (ineligible because I already read it every day)

Engadget (RSS Feed) (ineligible, same reason)

Ernie the Attorney (RSS Feed) (would be HM based on funny name alone, but good stuff too)

Evil Genius Chronicles (RSS Feed)

Technorati Tags:
, ,

Yahoo Buys del.icio.us

delicious

As the blogosphere and related community sites continue to consolidate under the large and wealthy banners of the Yahoos, Googles and Microsofts comes news that Yahoo has acquired social bookmarking service del.icio.us.

I use del.icio.us for a couple of things. I use it to bookmark pages I want to go back and read later, and I use it to list and summarize the feed for my (now discontinued) Comments on Other Blogs page. While the site has been somewhat of a work in progress, it has become a useful and integral part of my web experience.

I suspect that the acquisition by Yahoo will be a positive thing- as long as Yahoo allows the service to remain mostly separate- like Flickr, and does not try to tie del.icio.us to Yahoo’s My Web 2.0 service. Flickr has only gotten better since Yahoo bought it and I see no reason the same can’t happen here.

A good day for Yahoo. And probably a good day for Technorati too, as Google’s price for Technorati probably just went up. My advice to Google- buy and buy now because if Yahoo gets in front of you again, Yahoo plus Flickr plus del.icio.us plus Technorati will be a huge lead in this race for web dominance. Technorati is definitely the jewel left on the board.

Technorati Tags:
, ,

ScobleFeeds A-Z: The D’s

This is part four of my A-Z review of Scoble’s feeds. The rules and criteria are here.

We have another tie for the best of the D’s:

Dare Obasanjo (RSS Feed)

Down the Avenue (RSS Feed)

Dare Obasanjo has exactly the kind of blog I love to read. There’s a lot of tech stuff, some current events, a little music. Good stuff, and going onto my every day reading list.

Down the Avenue is about PR, marketing, blogging, VC and other interesting stuff. I’m not all that interested in VC stuff anymore, having lost a lot of money back in the dot.com bust, but I find this site interesting.

Honorable Mention:

Doc Searls (RSS Feed) (ineligible because I read it every day, but most of the time I have no idea what he’s talking about)

Dan Gillmor’s eJournal (RSS Feed)

Technorati Tags:
, ,

Yahoo Does VOIP, But Will I?

Om Malik reports that Yahoo is about to launch a big VOIP initiative. eBay buys Skype, everyone’s favorite VOIP service and now everybody has to get in the game. Here’s my experience with VOIP and a list of what I would have to have to make the switch.

voipI used VOIP in my office for about a year. My setup was via a Cisco phone and a service out of Dallas that was hoping I’d love it so much I’d talk my firm into switching to VOIP. I didn’t take up the banner and no one at my firm gives a hoot what I think anyway, but I did note some benfits and some drawbacks to VOIP.

The Good: the sound quality was excellent; it was cheap (it was free to me, but the regular rates were cheap; I could take the phone home, plug it into my network and use it just like I could at the office; and the phone had a lot of neat (but complex) features I never got around to learning.

The Bad: I had to use a new phone number, while everyone in the world still used my regular office number; even with VOIP there was very little computer/phone interactivity (I’ve longed for years to be able to dial from Outlook by clicking on a number); the phone was a corded phone and I hated being tethered to a phone (I use a wireless headset with my other phone); and it was too big to lug around with me (making me think Skype or some computer based service might be a better fit for me).

I like the idea of computer/phone convergence, so what would it take to get me to switch? I would have to be certain of these things:

1) That I can port my existing number there and if I later want to I can switch it back, easily and quickly.

2) That the 911 thing has been completely and permanently addressed- I need to be completely convinced that if I call 911 I will always get someone who knows where I am.

3) That the loss of service when the power goes off is not as big of a problem as I think it is. My power goes off several times a year. My phone service has never been off.

4) That the computer and the phone are effectively converged without me having to install a bunch of extra software on my computer. The Skype (or competition) program is fine- but I don’t want to have to rely on add-ins to dial from Outlook, etc.

5) That I could find a bluetooth headset/headphones that work and are durable and reliable. Make them double as headphones for listening to music, and make them work with my cell phone too- all without a dangle. My laptop and my cell phone are bluetooth-ready- just connect to them the way the Motorola earpiece connects to my cell phone.

6) That email, voicemail, text messaging, IM and file sending would be seamlessly incorporated into the program.

7) That the service would be cheaper and stay cheaper than regular phone service.

Give me this and I’ll give VOIP a whirl. Otherwise, the potential gain is not worth the hassle. At least not yet.

Technorati Tags:
,

More on MPEG-4

hdsat-716668HDBeat has a concise summary of the status of DirecTV’s MPEG-4 conversion that will soon turn my $1000 a pop HD TIVOs into restarting, jittering doorstops (they already restart and jitter, but the doorstop thing will be new to them).

Of course we still know next to nothing about when the HD recorders will be available.

I can’t believe I’m about to type this, but I have started thinking about considering the possibility of returning to cable.

Technorati Tags:

ScobleFeeds A-Z: The C’s

This is part three of my A-Z review of Scoble’s feeds. The rules and criteria are here.

Here is my choice from the C’s:

Conversations with Dina (RSS Feed)

Conversations with Dina is an interesting mix of tech, blogging, travel, philosophy, etc. Most of it’s interesting, but what put her over the top is her take on Plaxo. Her experience with Plaxo sounds like mine when I stupidly signed up on Classmates for one day, which was a piece of cake compared to when I signed up on Ancestry during the only 10 minutes of my life when I wondered about my ancestors. People from Ancestry called (yes called) me at my office more than my wife until I screamed at them to stop.

Honorable Mention:

Cyberspace People Watcher (RSS Feed) (Very enjoyable social computing, blogging, etc. resource)

Chris Brooks (RSS Feed) (Great game content and a very well designed website)

Technorati Tags:
, ,

Windows Live Mail Update

I received an email invitation to join the beta test of Windows Live Mail (the pending overhaul of Microsoft’s Hotmail service) today. Having poked around a bit, it looks like my outside-looking-in impression may be correct- it looks like the easy winner in the three horse race for online email domination. Of course since, unlike Gmail and Windows Live Mail, I have not wrangled a Yahoo! Mail beta invitation, I can’t really compare all of them. Enough whining- here are my impressions.

1) It looks a lot like Outlook, which I and a zillion other people use for our email. This familiarity will give it a head start in getting people to use it over the other less familiar applications.

2) In addition to the usual email folders along the left side of the window, there are tabs for Calendar, Contact and Today at the top- again similar to Outlook (though in Outlook these tabs are at the bottom left of the window below the email folders). The Calendar tab doesn’t work in my account, but this is a beta version so that’s not unexpected. The Contacts tab works, though I could find no import feature to import my contacts from my desktop Outlook application. That may be a feature reserved for the paid upgrade version (Outlook Live)- I don’t know. The Today tab shows links to a tutorial and a feedback page. In sum, the look and feel is an improvement over Hotmail and more intuitive than Gmail’s conversational structure.

3) You can add topical folders to store mail by clicking a link at the bottom of the standard email folders. I didn’t see a way to create rules to direct email into chosen folders, but that may be coming.

The issue in my mind is how many features will be added to this free version and how many will be held back for the paid upgrade. Clearly, it’s a work in progress, but add some features (RSS functionality, perhaps) and Windows Live Mail will replace Hotmail, its predecessor, as my web based email of choice.

I’m going to use Live Mail and Gmail regularly over the next few weeks and I’ll report my impressions from time to time.

Technorati Tags:
,

Technorati Blues – Again

Technorati

It took me about forever to get Technorati to index this site. After much angst, a few emails and the inclusion of bookmark links, indexing began and my tags were picked up. That was months ago.

Now, suddenly, for no reason and after no substantive changes to my template, Technorati simply will not index this page. It just doesn’t happen. Based on my prior experience and the recent experience of others, I doubt emailing tech support will work and I’m not going to bother David Sifry.

My individual post pages will get indexed if I ping Technorati from them, but that’s not the preferred way to do it because it creates bunch of messy links back to Newsome.Org and it messes up my link count.

Granted, there are a lot of markup errors in my template, but, but, but:

1) Most of them are in the sidebars, where I have to rely on third party javascript, etc.

2) I have fixed most of the errors in the actual post template.

3) Most importantly (to the exclusion of everything else, at least in my frustrated mind) this page was being indexed for months without a problem.

I am really frustrated by this. I think Technorati is a great site and I use it as a de-facto category system here. But when it won’t index this page, it really screws me up.

Technorati Tags:
,

Exactly How to Make a Podcast

podcastingNow that I’ve moved from doubter to cautious believer with respect to podcasting, it’s time to pull back the sheets and show non-geeks exactly how to make one. I have tried several ways and this is what I’ve settled on.

Step One: Gather the songs you want to include in your podcast.

Always be aware of the elephant. I tend to pick songs by new bands that, hopefully, will appreciate the exposure or songs by artists that I hope are cool enough not to care if I use one of their songs. I also add links to places listeners can buy the records and encourage them to do so during the podcast.

I pick songs by browsing through my MP3 collection and adding potential choices to a Playlist I cleverly call PC (for podcast, not personal computer or political correctness). I have tried all the major and many minor music players and the one I use for my large music library is Media Center. I’m sure others will work too, but I haven’t used them for this purpose. After I have selected some possible songs, I go back and weed the list down to 6-8 songs, less if I’m going to talk more and more if I’m going to talk less. That way, the podcast will be around a half hour long, which is what I currently shoot for.

Once I get the PC Playlist down to the number of songs I want, I copy those songs to another folder on my computer (I call this folder PC Holder and keep it on my Desktop for easy access). I do this because I don’t want to accidently edit or delete a song from my music collection when I am creating my podcast. Media Center makes this very simple: Open your Playlist, select all the songs with your mouse (press shift and page down from the top song) , right click on the highlighted songs and select Library Tools>Copy Disk Files (not Move Disk Files). In the pop-up box navigate to the target folder (in my case, the PC Holder folder) and click OK.

If you use another music player, you can figure out your own system for selecting and relocating the MP3s you want to include in your podcast. The important thing is that at the end of Step 1 you have selected the MP3s you want to play and copied them into your podcast folder.

Step Two: Import your MP3s into your podcast program.

Once we have the MP3s ready, we have to combine them into a single sound file and add the voice files (announcements, discussion, etc.) that will be part of the podcast. I use and highly recommend Audacity for this purpose. It’s free and relatively easy to use. If you don’t have it, download and install it.

Once you’ve installed Audacity, open it and select File>New (see the menu near the top of the program window) to start a new podcast project. Now let’s import the MP3s from our folder. Select Project>Import Audio, then navigate to the folder where you stored your MP3s, select them with your mouse (again, press shift and page down from the top file to select them all) and click Open. The MP3s will be imported into Audacity and will show up as sound files in the program window. On the left of the Audacity window is a column that shows the name of the MP3 song file and has several buttons, including Mute and Solo. The Solo button allows you to listen to the files one at a time to be sure the file imported correctly and sounds good (Click that button and then the Play button near the top of the program window).

Step Three: Record the voice files

Now it’s time to record the talking part of the podcast. I record a voice file to open the show, a separate voice file discussing and introducing each song (except that the opening voice file doubles as the introduction for the first song) and a voice file to close the show. You have to to separate files so you can move them to the correct place in the sound file (more on that below).

Once you have your microphone connected and turned on (here’s a help page for that), recording the voice files in Audacity is as simple as clicking on the red Record button near the top left of the program window and talking into the microphone (be sure to click the Stop button when your done). The first time, you’ll have to experiment a little by recording test files and then playing them back (click the Solo button to the left of the voice file and then the Play button near the top of the window) to get the right volume on the voice files. Audacity has an amplify feature- select the sound file with your mouse by left clicking at one end of the sound file (the blue wavy lines, 2 per song, in the middle of the window) and moving the mouse to the other side of the sound file, then select Effect>Amplify, choose the desired level of amplification and click OK. This works sometimes, but it’s better to get the microphone levels right from the start.

I record all of the voice files at one time- by clicking the record button, talking and then clicking the stop button. If you mess up (and you will, often) simply delete the voice file (see the little X in the button area to the left of the song file) and start over.

Step Four: Put the songs and voice files in order

Once you have the song and voice files completed, you have to put them in order. This takes a little time (I wish there was a way to do it automatically, but I haven’t found that feature if it exists). To do this, left click and drag the files into the correct order. Think of the files in the Audacity program window as a ladder, with the first file (normally the introduction voice file) at the top and the last file at the bottom. If dragging the files with your mouse it too hard, you can move a file up or down via the little downward pointing arrow in the button area to the left of the sound file.

Once you have dragged the files to their proper spot on the ladder, you have to move all of them after the first one to the right so the files play sequentially and not all at the same time. To do this, click on (to the right side of, if you have to move it a long way) on the sound file you want to move at the location where you want that file to start and select Project>Align Tracks>Align with Cursor. Normally the location you click is even with the end of the sound file immediately above (so this file will play immediately after the one above it ends).

Again, this takes a little time, and it should be automated, but once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty quick and easy.

Step Five: Test the soundfile

After aligning the files vertically (for which ones play first) and horizontially (so they play in sequence and not at the same time) click at the beginning of the first (i.e., top) sound file and click the Play button near the top of the window. Listen to the music and voice files and make sure everything is in order and sounds good. If not, reorder or rerecord the necessary files.

Step Six: Save the Audacity project file

Save the project file by selecting File>Save As and navigating to the folder where you want to store your podcast project files. I store mine in a folder in My Documents called RanchoCasts.

Step Seven: Export the combined soundfile

Select File>Export as MP3, name the file (I use ranchocastmmddyy) , navigate to the folder you want to use to store the combined sound file (I use the same one I previously moved the MP3s to) and click Save.

Step Eight: Upload the combined sound file to your server

I have a folder on my server called ranchocast where I upload the combined sound file, which will shortly become my podcast. If you don’t have a server, there are some podcast hosting companies, but I haven’t used them so I can’t comment on how well they work. I use CuteFTP to upload my files, but any FTP program will work.

Step Nine: Create your RSS feed

In order to be accessible by the programs that download and manage podcasts (such as Juice, formerly called iPodder), an RSS feed has to be created. This can be the most difficult part of creating a podcast, but thanks to ListGarden it has been made easy.

ListGarden, which is both brilliant and free, takes the location and name of your sound file and creates, saves and uploads the necessary xml file that will support an RSS feed.

Here are step by step instructions on how to set up a podcast using ListGarden and the sound file you just created and uploaded. ListGarden has some advanced features (like the ability to generate a web page about your podcast) which you may or may not use. The process of setting up ListGarden is easy if you follow the step by step instructions closely- the hardest part is knowing the location of your podcast folder on your server and your name and password for server access. If you forgot your password, you can probably get it from your FTP program with Behind Asterisks. I have to do that all the time.

Step Ten: Publish your podcast feed

Once you have uploaded your music file and used ListGarden to create and upload an xml file, all that’s left is to publish your RSS feed so people can find and access your podcast. I use Feedburner for this and it does a great job. Add the URL to the xml file that ListGarden created and uploaded in Step Nine to the blank on the Feedburner page and you’re on your way.

The URL is different from the server location address you used when configuring ListGarden. The URL is the “http” address that a browser would use to locate that file (for example, http://www.newsome.org/ranchocast/ranchocast.xml)

Once you get your Feedburner feed set up, Feedburner gives you a link- and this is the link you use to direct people to your podcast. My Feedburner podcast page is http://feeds.feedburner.com/ranchocast. One of the cool things about using Feedburner to publish your podcast is that your listeners can click the Listen icon on your feedburner page and listen to the podcast right from that page (without having to install Juice or another podcast manager).

That’s it. If you do a podcast, leave me a note in the Comments. I’ll check it out

Technorati Tags: