Carol and Steve go to the Wine Expo

Carol and I went out to the Boston Wine Expo yesterday where they gave out samples of 100's of wines from around the world.

Of course we took the opportunity to film an episode of the Carol and Steve Show.

Meet people!

The Boston Weblogger Meetup Group meets tomorrow.

S.M.A.R.T. status: Failing

MacWorld has a timely article: Prevent Mac Disasters: Eight Simple Steps You Can Take Now to Keep Your Mac from Falling Apart.

The SMART hard drives in newer Macs diagnose their own health, and they note any problems they find with internal drives on an IDE/ATA or SATAbus.

There are two ways to check the status of your Mac’s SMART indicators. If you’re using the machine locally, launch Disk Utility (Applications: Utilities) and click on the top-level indicator for your drive in the left-hand column. In the bottom of the window, you’ll see the words SMART status, and next to that, you’ll see the word verified. If you don’t see SMART status, your Mac doesn’t have the technology. If you see the phrase but it’s not accompanied by verified, you should back up your hard drive and then replace it—it will likely experience a failure soon.

Oh oh. My drive is failing.

A Blog for Baby Boomers

It's a Boomer Blog!
via [ Dan Bricklin ]

How To: Add a Feedburner RSS 2.0 Feed to your blogger blog

At feedburner.com you can create a link for your blog that will allow people to subscribe to your audio/video feeds.

Update 9/23/05 : Feedburner has updated their pages so some of this might be a little different.

Feevlog has a video tutorial on how to add an RSS 2.0 feed.

1. From blogger, grab your RSS or ATOM feed and copy it.

To do this, sign onto your Blogger account, click on the Settings tab, and then click Site Feed.

Then where it says, "Site Feed URL", you'll see something that looks like this:

http://offonatangent.blogspot.com/rss/offonatangent.xml

Copy that.

2. Go to feedburner.com and paste it into the box that says, "Enter your feed's address to start improving it now!"


3. SKIP THE SMARTFEED option and FIND THE SMARTCAST choice.

Choose the SmartCast™ option. Choose any other options that you might want and then click, "Update Feed."

Make sure that SmartCast is enabled in FeedBurner, not SmartFeed.

They're different:

- SmartCast helps enable podcasts by adding the enclosure element.

Repeat this to your self five times beofore clicking anything over at Feedburner.com:

SmartCast
SmartCast
SmartCast
SmartCast
SmartCast

4. Next, under the "Actions" menu on the left, choose "Publicize..."

5. Choose, "Start the Chicklet Chooser »"

6. Select the Feddburner Feed link you want to display on your site and copy that code:

<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SteveGarfieldsVideoBlog" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="enclosure"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/xml_button.gif" style="border:0"/>.</a>

Which will display as this:


Site vistors can then control-click, or right-click on this image to copy your RSS 2.0 feed, and paste that feed into their feedreader, to subscribe to it.

7. Got back to blogger and click on your "Template" menu tab.

8. If you scroll down to the bottom, there probably some code in there for a blogger tag.

Just after that, paste in the feedburner code and click "Save template Changes."

Note: It's a good practice to put this 'Chicklet' on your sidebar.

9. Then click where it says, " You must [ Republish ] your blog to see the changes. "
10. Now the last step to make sure feedburner picks up your video blog enclosures is to put a special HTML tag, rel="enclosure", in your posts that include video.

If you directly link to your video from your blog post, you use this:

<a href="http://www.website.com/video.mov" rel="enclosure">My Video</a>

If you link to another page that has your video in it, you add a SECRET link for Feedburner to use and it should look like this:

<a href="http://www.website.com/video.mov"" rel="enclosure"></a>

The address for the QuickTime file needs to be absolute, like in this example with the http://www.website.com/ in front of your movie name.

All this really means is that you need to add [ rel="enclosure" ] to the link to your video.

Note:
Even though this is the 10th and last step, it's important, and can mess everything up if you don't type in the HTML code for the enclosure tag in the exact way as shown above.

Please, take a deep breath and take the time to do it right. Even long time web coding experts have typed things like enclosures instead of enclosure.

Good luck.

NOW visitors to your site can subscribe to your videos by control-clicking, or right-clicking on the Feedburner chicklet image, copying your RSS 2.0 feed, and pasting that feed into their feedreader.

That sounds like another lesson. ;-)

Reality TV is not real: Part IV

In the recent Advertising Age article, Science Guy almost gets girl, Eric Hagerman tells us that The Bachelorette has little to do with reality:

It's not just 25 guys scrapping for her attention," he says of the elaborarely orchestrated cocktail party, which was crawling with producers and went from 10 pm to 6 am.

Too young to be murdered

Aspiring actress shot and killed in NYC:

Witnesses told investigators that one of the men grabbed for the other woman's purse and duFresne intervened, asking, "What are you going to do, shoot us?" A man then fired one shot at her, police said.

Nicole duFresne website.

Video Media Matters

Overnight my new video aggregator, ANT, downloaded new videos from the feeds I'm subscribed to.

One of those was a video from Media Matters. It closely examined part of President Bush's press conference.

While watching the clip, I was able to click a button to go to the Media Matters website and read the associated blog post.

This is an exciting new way to keep up with video, news and criticism.

Free Web Hosting

At vloggercon, people were asking me what I use for web hosting.

I'm all over the place, .mac, vblogcentral, TypePad, Blogger, BlogHarbor and 1and1.

1and1.com
If you're looking for web hosting at a good price, with a lot of bandwidth per month, 1and1 has a special offer for a 6-month free trial of their businesspro web hosting.

Right now they give you 2,000 MB of Web Space and a Monthly Transfer Volume of 50 GB for $9.99/month.

If you like it and end up staying with them, I even make a few bucks.

.mac
I like the drag and drop interface of .mac for putting graphics on the web, and their interface with iPhoto is an amazingly easy way to post a photo album to the web.

As for the other services, I use them all as blog hosts.

blogger
Blogger was my first blogging tool. I signed up with them even before I had web hosting anywhere. I still let them host this weblog over on blogspot.com for free. Since Google bought them, I've been anticipating improvements. Hopefully they'll be rolling out new features soon, but for someone who wants to try out blogging, blogger is a good place to start.

TypePad
TypePad is a nice all in one solution for an intermediate blog solution that includes image, audio and video hosting.

I really like their ease of adding lists and photos. Their blog entry interface is the best. I've got my video blog hosted with them.

BlogHarbor
BlogHarbor, a blogware reseller, is good for a multi-page web site . A unique feature of the underlying blogware solution, is that you can also create web pages along with your blog pages. Blogware makes creating an integrated blog/webite easy. Take a look at a new blogware based website I'm developing for Boston City Coucillor John Tobin.

vblogcentral
vblogcentral is a video hosting service that I am Alpha testing. vblogcentral lets me drag and drop my QuickTime video onto their application, then they convert it to Windows Media and Real, AND post it to my blog. It's a cool tool.

If you've got any questions about creating your own blog, drop me an email or leave a comment.

New Banner

Time for a new banner on the site.

There's me and Amanda Congdon from Rocketboom, me and Jerry Seinfeld in Times Square, and me and Chuck Olsen from blogumentary.

Your photos in a little book

Small softcover: $3.99.

Hook me up with video

I read that RCN is charging $10/month for WebWatch, a service for customers who want to have a Wireless-G Internet Video Camera hooked up from their home.

Can I just buy one and hook it up with Comcast?

Dan Gillmor talks about everything

Here's an audio program with Dan Gillmor being interviewed by Halley Suitt:

Don't miss Dan's thoughtful answers to Halley's question about which of these technologies are "politically disruptive" -- Blogs, Wikis, IRC, IM, SMS, Digital Cameras, Camera Phones and of course, our favorite -- the iPod. They discuss citizen's journalism and where the blogosphere is headed.

Very interesting and worthwhile.

Dan Gillmor's New Blog.

Walk down Centre Street

These are not your average yellow pages.

Amazon's A9.com had totally blown my mind. They've allowed you to virtually walk down Centre Street in Jamaica Plain and look at all the businesses.

How they did it.

The most powerful technology A9.com invented for Yellow Pages is “Block View,” which brings the Yellow Pages to life by showing a street view of millions of businesses and their surroundings. Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, and proprietary software and hardware, A9.com drove tens of thousands of miles capturing images and matching them with businesses and the way they look from the street.

Mac Users: Get ANT

ANT is out. It allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds that automatically download video.

"Now I'm watching more ANT than TiVo."
--Steve Garfield
via [ Fimoculous ]

I'll take what's behind the curtain

Weekly Dig Girl.

I dug it

Boston's alternative newsweekly, The Weekly Dig, had a relaunch party last night.

It was held at Avalon, just behind Fenway Park.

We were lucky to get a space right outside the front door.

Once inside, there was free food and drinks, music, and nude people being painted.

Yup, nude people.

Hmm. Are you allowed to take pictures of nude people. Would they mind?

After I saw a few people taking pictures, I took one. Not really a big deal.

Much more interesting was the act on stage. Up there was a girl who opened up a beer bottle with a sword, layed down on a bed of sharp swords, and swung around on a rope by her ankle.

New Steve and Carol Show

There's a new episode of The Carol and Steve Show Episode 4 - New York.
This week, Carol and Steve travel to New York.

iPhoto Flip Book

The iPhoto Flip Book - why not?

Is this the dawning of a New Era ?

CyberTelly, ByteTornado, CyberSky.

I Love NY

What's not to love?

The only thing not to love is when you're in the middle of one of the biggest blizzards of the century and down in Tribeca at 2:30 AM trying to get on the train, when the MetroCard ticket machine says SEE AGENT, but you're in a station with only automated machines, so you have to fight your way through the blizzard to search for another uptown train.

You know how the MBTA says that they are going to do away with toll collectors in the subways. You'll still need them to handle all the ticket misreads. I paid $8 for (4) trips, after using (2) trips the card wouldn't work anymore. (see above) So I had to buy (2) more trips. The next day when I brought the tickets up to a real person at a ticket window, she told me that the ticket was blank and never had any fare added to it.

Hmm.

She was wrong, but adamant.

Now I have a souvenier of my trip to NYC.

Blizzard Journalism

In Blizzard 05: Citizen Journos come of age, Steve Safran Executive Producer, New England Cable News, NECN.com writes:

This is the watershed moment for me. Our coverage of Blizzard 05 was viewer-driven. We had so many pictures from viewers that my inbox crashed.

He gives a link to my NYC Times Square blizzard coverage too.

I'm down

stevegarfield.com is down:

At this time we are experiencing DNS problems which are affecting all of our domain services. Our engineers have been notified of the problems and are working diligently to resolve them. Unfortunately we have not been given a time frame as to when the DNS problems will be resolved however we expect it to be soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused and appreciate your patience.

What's up with that?

Not much.

Is Logan Airport Open?

General Edward Lawrence Logan International Airport (BOS) Real-time Status:

Due to SNOW, the General Edward Lawrence Logan International Airport (BOS) was closed as of Jan 23 at 05:30 AM EST. The date/time when the airport is expected to reopen is Jan 24 at 08:00 AM EST.

Go Pats!

Reebok 04 AFC Conference Champs Locker Room Tee.

Poetry about vloggercon

Ryan shares her feelings about vloggercon in The LOVE:

it's sunday 10am.
vloggercon is over and it was perfect.
we couldnt have asked for a better day.

We shared an amazing experience!

Boston.readthisin10seconds.com

I'm stuck in NYC, so I went to boston.com to see what's happening at home.

A message gets displayed on the top of the page that reads:

BLIZZARD UPDATE: Logan Airport is closed and the National Guard has asked drivers to stay off the road in coastal areas in case they have to evacuate people from shore towns. There is a moderate coastal flood warning.

But before I could finish reading the message, it got overwritten with a news slideshow.

That's disconcerting.

The Globe explains it here: changes their homepage.

The slideshow feature rotates on its own every 10 seconds. However, you can control the frames by using the back arrow, next arrow, "Play" and "Pause" keys located at the bottom of the feature box. A frame will also pause automatically if you interact with it.

The user interface on this new feature is jarring. It took me a while to figure out that I could click the arrow to scroll back to that story.

I think the blizzard warning shouldn't be part of the slideshow. Warnings like that for breaking news should remain on the page, and not go away after 10 seconds.

Keeping it real

Dave Winer says:

In blogger-land, we don't work at being real because we are real, we never weren't real.

Jay Dedman calls it being authentic.

Blizzard of '05

From Times Square in NYC this is Steve Garfield reporting. [ Windows Media Video ]

A local weather reporter was reluctant to get on camera with me but I did get her to tell me the name of this blizzard.

Do you know your online rights?

Chilling Effects Clearinghouse.

Chilling Effects aims to help you understand the protections that the First Amendment and intellectual property laws give to your online activities.

Vimeo is an anagram of movie

Vimeo shows you clips of Jakob's life in little movies, set to music, that you make in real time.

Vimeo selects videos based on keywords that you suply.

When Vimeo opens up to the public, to upload their video clips, you'll be able to ask to see "all clips from vloggercon."

That'll be sooo cool.

Not TV

ANTnotTV.org beta is out today.

Find Public Access Wi-Fi Hotspots

Wifinder.com

Free WiFi! Yay!

Random Video

Random live webcams from the Net.

Now featured on c-span

My video blog is now featured on the C-SPAN Blogs Page.

Hi C-SPAN.

Hello From NYC

Steve in NYC!

Icy Aftermath

Here's a video, Icy Aftermath, from my visit to the site if the local church fire.

I made a post about this story earlier.

It's like one of Adam Curry's sound seeing tours, but with video!

Forbes: Videoblogs are it in 2005

Forbes: Three Trends for 2005:

This year video Weblogs are sure to be the "it" thing.

Once again the major media just skims the surface of what it happening in the video blogging world, but this time a blogger sets them straight.

Forbes names VideoBlogs as a Top Tech trend for 2005 (and why they are wrong):

In justifying the decision he sites a number of Tsunami video blogs and the clip of comedian Jon Stewart on CNN’s Crossfire in October as examples where Video Blogs are making an impact.

Which is true, both examples demonstrate where blogs utilising video saw large amounts in traffic.

However, two examples do not equal a tech trend.

via [ Unmediated ]

It's like a hype machine. The media grabs onto a meme and then it just multiplies.

Hey, it's a fun story to cover AND it has video!

Watching it happen is very interesting. It's like we're living a chapter of The Tipping Point.

We, videobloggers, are meeting in NYC this weekend at vloggercon to look at what we've accomplished over the past year, where we're going in 2005.

I'll be smiling when I get to vloggercon and see a fleet of satellite trucks outside. ;-)

They'll have to stay outside though because there's no more room inside, right Jay?

We are radio producers

Tod Maffin is letting us help him produce his next Technology Column for CBC Radio at Open Source Radio Project:

Here's what I propose. On this blog, I'll post all aspects of the production of the piece as it comes together -- from the pitch meeting with my producers, to script iterations, to the final piece. Here's where you come in: As I post script versions, I'm hoping the community (that's you!) will weigh in with your own suggestions for the piece: people to interview, suggestions for music beds, factual error corrections, and so on. And together, online, we'll prepare the piece. It will air nationally the week of January 31.

I already think it needs more cowbell.

Welcome to Blogville

A friend of mine just set up shop in Blogville.

He's got some funny t-shirt designs for bloggers. Check it out.

I'm gonna pump some air

I canceled my health club membership this summer after I injured my leg. The doctor told me, no exersise for a month. So I quit the health club and after a month started walking around a local pond. It's 1.4 miles around and recently I've gotten up to going twice around.

But it's been so cold out and we've gotten so much snow recently, I decided to check out a local health club that my friend Ravi suggested.

It's called Express Personal Fitness. It's in West Roxbury across from the Home Depot, next to the Stop and Shop.

Their web site doesn't show up on Google, so I had to resort to talking to Ravi to find out where it was. [ Worst website ever ]

I went over this morning to check it out.

The cool thing about it is that you don't lift weights over there. They use Keiser Pneumatic Technology.

I'm always someone who likes to try something new, so I joined and got a free T-Shirt. Yipee.

I'm gonna pump some air. Ha Ha.

Here's the information for anyone trying to find it in Google:

Express Personal Fitness
1208 B VFW Parkway
West Roxbury, MA 02132
617-363-0044

Harpoon Brewing at Logan

The Globe reports in What's in store at Terminal A? that Harpoon is going to open a Brewpub at Logan.

I'll have to get there really early for my next flight, after they open up this spring.

Verizon 30, Comcast 4

Verizon to roll out super-fast Net access

Verizon is preparing to offer Internet access at speeds of up to 30 megabits per second

Whoa!

The article goes on to say that the Verizon speeds are actually 5, 15 and 30 megabits per second, with 30 costing $200/month.

Comcast is going to bring everybody up to 4 megabits:

Comcast... plans to offer another round of free speed upgrades to customers in all 343 New England communities it serves during the week beginning Jan. 26. Its most popular service, which offers 3 megabit downloads and 256 kilobit per second uploads for $43 a month for customers who also take cable TV, will be upgraded to 4 megabits down/384 kilobits up.

Since I'm paying an extra @10 a month right now for 4 megabits, I wonder if I'm going to go to 5?

Here's the church

Today's Boston Globe has the story about yesterday's big church fire: Blaze damages historic church.

WCVB also has this Church Members Stunned By Blaze.

But that's today.

Last night when helicopters were buzzing overhead and sirens were blaring, we all went to these websites to see video. It was 6:45 PM and the local TV stations were showing the national network news.

We wanted local video on the web but were dissapointed to only get a small screen shot of video from WCVB.

Why couldn't they have the video up on the web sooner?

My friend Ryan gave me a call saying there was a breaking story going on if I wanted to film it for my website. I was on my way out, and didn't have time to get over there. I told her that it was ok since all the tv stations were going to cover the story and they didn't need a citizen reporter over there covering the same thing as everybody else.

I guess I was wrong. If I'd gone over there, I'd probably have had the first video on the web from that fire.

It's funny that the first place I turned for news and video of the fire was the web vs. TV.

Some day that intital search for video on the web will prove more fruitful than it did for me last night.

Take a look at the photos I shot this morning.

Top Bloggers: Today's Leading Innovators

WIRED Magazine Announces Nominees for Sixth Annual Wired Rave Awards:

BLOGGER
-- Ana Marie Cox, Wonkette.com
-- Mark Cuban, Blogmaverick.com
-- Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.com
-- Kevin Sites, Kevinsites.net
-- Rex Sorgatz, Fimoculous.com

TECH INNOVATOR
-- Adam Curry, iPodder
-- Mark Fletcher, Bloglines
-- Bill Healy, Hitachi Mikey microdrive
-- Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia
-- Zhang Zuoyi, INET

You'd think the Rave Awards site would have clickable links.

Big Dogs

Dog Riding.

Smart mobs are podcasting

mobcasting: An untamed experiment in mobile podcasting for smart mobs.

When Mobile Podcasting Leads to Mobcasting.

Tiger, "Hit The Camera."

On the second take, they told Tiger to hit the camera….

153 inches of flat-screen television

Funny Boys: A look at the guys behind CollegeHumor.com and Busted Tees.

Plowable!

Ha!

I heard that last night on the news. I thought it was very descriptive of that we were supposed to get here in Boston, up to 8".

But, alas. Just a dusting. Dustpan-able. Sweep-able. Shove-push-able.

What I want to know is why these Boston Meteorologists feel they have to go out in the snow without a hat!

Please.

Same goes for football coaches.

See Dick and Jane shvitz. Shvitz, Dick and Jane, shvitz.

Primer Spoof With Yiddish Faces Suit (in English) [ NY Times ].

The people who made that funny Yiddish book are getting sued.

They emailed me and told me that, "as a result of this legal action, VidLit has
relaunched the YidLit. You can see Yiddish With Dick and Jane: The Lawsuit Version at http://www.vidlit.com/yidlit/."

Oy vey.

Congratulations -- the RSS feed validates!

I just got the Seal of Approval for my RSS feed. I got it over at the RSS Validator.

RSS is a Web content syndication format.

Its name is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication.

If your website has an RSS feed, people can subscribe to your site and get updates automatically.

Have you ever wondered how people know you've posted something new on your weblog within minutes?

They know because they are subscribed to your website's RSS feed.

They way that they subscribe to your feed is by using an aggregator.

They come in two varieties: programs that you can run on your computer and webpages you can sign up with.

One more flavor of aggregator is one that is aware of enclosures. These are computer based aggregators that know about media files such as audio and video. They are smart enough to know when a site that you have subscrubed to posts new audio or video, and downloads that content for you so that when you check your aggregator, there could be new podcassts or videos to enjoy. I use iPodderX on my Mac.

I just revised my RSS Feed links over on the left.

I used to have this over there:


[ RSS 2.0 Feed ]

It was confusing because it had XML in the image, yet I'm asking people to subscribe to my RSS Feed. Simply, XML is the language RSS Feeds are written in.

People are talking about doing away with the RSS notation too, and just calling the RSS Feed something more straight forward like Website Feed, but we'll stick with RSS for now.

So here's my new RSS Feed link:
RSS 2.0 Feed

Unlike my old link above which relied on using an image, this link's image is generated on the fly. It's also better because it combines the test I was using to explain the button, directly inside the button, so instead of having a graphic and an explanation of the graphic, I'm just using one graphic.

I found this new code over at Web Feed Central.

That link can be copied into your aggregator.

Two other RSS links I have are for website based aggregators.


The first is for My Yahoo! This one's very easy to use if you have a Yahoo! account. Click on this button and you'll be promted to add my feed to your My Yahoo! page. When you do that, the most recent posts will be displayed on your My Yahoo! page.


The second web based aggregator that I use is Bloglines. I've just recently started using it and like it a lot.

Dave Winer has identified this growing variety of 'Subscribe to my Feed Buttons' as a problem, and is asking people to join him to find a solution.

If it's not solved, you'll visit my site some day and see 120 'Subscribe to my Feed Buttons' down the side of the page.

The Carol and Steve Show: Episode 3 - Workout

The Carol and Steve Show: Episode 3 - Workout
A change of scenery for Carol and Steve as they drive to the health club in the Beetle.

That's Not Right: Verizon Wireless

Verizon Wireless sends me an email each month.

It says:

Your current Verizon Wireless bill statement is now available for online viewing. You can conveniently view your bill statement at www.verizonwireless.com. The online bill is a copy of your paper bill.

That's not right.

It'd be much easier to view my bill if they included it with the email.

I hear delicious is popular

del.icio.us/popular

Us.ef.ul - A beginner's guide to The Next Big Thing

bookshelf meme

"Copy the list from the last person in the chain, delete the names of the authors you don't have on your home library shelves and replace them with names of authors you do have. Bold the replacements."

1. Stephen Covey
2. Michael Wohl
3. Woody Allen
4. Jerry Seinfeld
5. Peter Farrelly
6. Richard Neer
7. Stephen King
8. Walter Murch
9. Dr Wayne W. Dyer
10. Jon Stewart and the writers of the Daily Show
via [ Tony Pierce ] [ from annika ]

A real community

Zack Rosen: My Advice for the News & Record

Sweet

Apple's Tipping Point: Macs For The Masses Infographic:

The Sweet Spot. Until January 2005, Apple had no iPod or PC products that served the mass market. With the launch of iPod Shuffle and Mac mini they have finally converged two product paths with the mass market in mind. This will not only drive more iPod sales (via the Shuffle), but also fulfill the promised "halo" effect of the iPod products as PC users jump to the Mac mini.

Text Version.

MIT Mystery Hunt

The MIT IAP Mystery Hunt is an annual puzzle competition held at MIT.

It start at noon on Friday, January 14, 2005.

Gotta Have More Cowbell

More Cowbell - The T-Shirt.
via [ blumpy ]

Look at the new pics from California

mappr- Uses Flickr API to map out recently uploaded photos.
via [ fimoculous ]

Free Music Videos for your blog

Now I've got the U2: It's a Beautiful Day music video over on my test video blog.

It's a free service I found on flickr. It actually looked like a flickr service because the ad was embeded on their home page so well. Same colors, type style and everything.

So I tried it out.

I'm opening it up in a new window because when you are done watching the video, it stays on your web page when you navigate to new pages. That's lame.

Also, it's an autoplay video, so I added a control that allows you to stop it. If you know the code to kepp a windows media video from autoplaying, let me know and I'll add it to the page.

Kiki (Video Toaster) Stockhammer

Remembering Kiki Stockhammer.

Now she's in a band.

Jeff Jarvis: Exploding TV

Jeff Jarvis writes on his blog today:

Exploding TV fraternity grows

He cites:

"See also Vloggercon. See often RocketBoom, a vlog. See Unmediated.org every day."

Then he goes on to say:

Last week, when there was much talk about what the tsunami videos mean to the future of citizens video online and on TV, I said outlined to both the Wall Street Journal and On The Media (transcript here) why I think the elements have come together for the explosion of TV. I've said it before but it keeps getting truer:

1. Cheap equipment. The cameras are getting better and costing less while the audience's tolerance for quality (thanks to warfront satphones) is decreasing and those lines are crossing so yuou can produce video that's good enough for not much money.

2. Easy tools. See Visual Communicator, above. See Mac tools.

With cheap and easy equipment and tools, anybody can create credible video inexpensively.

3. Distribution. Bandwidth and hosting are expensive. Bandwidth costs are coming down. But BitTorrent solves the problem by spreading the cost of serving across the audience and it will soon be ready for prime time. Add RSS (a la podcasting) and the ability to subscribe to a show and get it in the background. Add ubiquitous wireless broadband, coming soon. Jon Stewart's Crossfire rant is the proof of the pudding: It got a few hundred thousand viewers on big, old CNN -- and if you missed it, you missed it -- but on BitTorrent and iFilm, it got at least five or six million viewers.

The new, distributed network is far more powerful that the old, closed network. And note well that this is the network nobody owns.

4. Search. The last problem was finding the video. But thanks to metadata on blogs, among other things, you'll be able to find video. The tsunami videos are the proof of that.

In the old days of TV, a few months ago, if you wanted to make a show you had to have expensive equipment and expertise and if you wanted the show to be found, you had to know a guy named Rupert and have a fortune for marketing.

In the future of exploding TV, a few months away, anybody can create video programming and do it inexpensively with new equipment and tools; they can distribute it online and they can "market" it (that is, it can be found) thanks to metadata and search and links. All this levels the playing field.

I feel the need for a Death of Networks summit. Coffee's on me.

The Squirrel Hunting Channel

Hey! They're going to have a "The Squirrel Hunting Channel."

This is great. I hate squirrels.

Frequent readers know that they keep coming back to my house every year and eat their way through the outside wall of my house into my attic.

I've posted the whole story before, but that's not important right now.

Kevin Maney has written an article in USA Today called "Tech show expects video to flourish on Net the way words have."

In it he says:

"Everything that has happened to words and photos the past 10 years will happen to video in the next 10."

It's a fun read except for the part where he says, "These days, any schmoe can publish a blog or put up a Web site."

I liked hearing about this:

"the trend of allowing anyone to create media is happening to music. An example was unveiled at CES: UmixIt, which is being hawked by Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler. It lets artists release songs with every sound — vocals, guitar, bass, etc. — on a separate track. Fans can then alter the mix, or even take out, say, Tyler's vocal and insert their own."

Walk this way...

Apple mini: No Audio In

Steve Job's Keynote: No audio/video out.

Apple's bite out of free speech.

Boston Globe: No Links

I just read the globe story, Metro executive apologizes for joke.

NO LINKS
Frequent readers of this site know that one of my pet peeves is how the big media companies hardly ever provide outgoing links. I've contacted the Globe a few times about this, and written about it. The first time I contacted them, I got a response back telling me that they would "make sure it doesn't happen again". Then it happened again, and I reminded them of their earlier response.

Things have not changed.

Today, the Globe story says:

"The apology came in response to a story reported yesterday by a New York website, mediachannel.org."

They don't provide a link to the story or a clickable link to mediachannel.org, even though they type out the URL.

It easily could have been posted like this:

"The apology came in response to a story reported yesterday by Rory O'Connor, on a New York website, mediachannel.org."

WHAT'S THE JOKE?
I contacted O'Connor and asked him to explain to me why the Boston Globe does not reprint the joke in it's story? It's the main part of the story and you don't really understand how bad it is until you read O'Connor's story.

Rory replies, "easy to explain--the globe is trying to put the best face on the story, as they are now partners with metro."

Schni Schna Schnappi

4-Year-Old's 'Snappy' Hit Is No. 1 In Germany

The hottest thing in German music right now is a 4-year-old girl's made-up song about a crocodile.

Joy Gruttman's song, "Snappy the Little Crocodile" ("Schnappi, das kleine Krokodil"), is the No. 1 song on the German charts.

Schni Schna Schnappi!

Joy Gruttman's Schnappi Website.

Update - 1/13/05.

The new phone book is garbage

Back in the old days when the new phone book came, we were as excited as Steve Martin in his seminal work, The Jerk, when as Navin R. Johnson he exclaimed,

"The new phone book's here. The new phone book's here. This is the kind of spontaneous publicity I need. My name in print. That really makes somebody. Things are going to start happening to me now."

Now with the power of the internet and Yahoo! People Search, there is no excitement when the new phone book is delivered to our door. Now the new phone book is just garbage.

We're just sad. Sad for the trees. Sad for the advertisers that spend their money trying to drum up a little business. And sad for those of us without internet access.

That link you sent me is broken

Have you ever sent an email to someone, only to have them email you back saying, "That link you sent me is broken?"

Use TinyURL and you'll never get an email like that again:

Are you sick of posting URLs in emails only to have it break when sent causing the recipient to have to cut and paste it back together? Then you've come to the right place. By entering in a URL in the text field below, we will create a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires.

Use Minilien if you like French:

Renseignez le champ ci-dessous par l'adresse de la page Internet à réduire.

Use HugeURL and links you send in email will always break:

Join the fight against brevity.

The Carol and Steve Show Episode 2

Watch The Carol and Steve Show: Episode 2 - Oatmeal over on my video blog.

It's just us sitting in the kitchen and talking. It's real.

Music Provided By Quaker Oatmeal

Music Provided By www.freeplaymusic.com

Barely Legal

Today's Globe features this story, Wry Fidelity, about Ford Shacklett and his Kiddie Records Weekly website which:

...once a week for the duration of 2005 will present free MP3 downloads of such forgotten musical story records from the 1940s and `50s

Interesting.

But then it goes on to quote Ford about the legality of what he is doing:

Is he worried about Disney, RCA, or Capitol cracking down on his operation? "I understand sharing online music is illegal," he hedged. "But I would try to defend myself by pointing out how sites like this are keeping the memory of these recordings alive and exposing new generations to them."

It's a fun site and all, but it's still illegal.

Sumiko: The Ultimate Turntable

The ultimate turntable. The Model 30 is compact and incredibly dense, weighing in at 90 lbs. The Model 30 employs an ingenious suspension system, using a combination of elastomers and silicone to achieve an almost zero Q suspension. The main bearing which supports the over 15 lb. platter has such tight tolerances it requires a diluted watch oil to be properly lubricated!

SME Model 30 - $28,499.
via [ engadget ]

Season Pass: The Carol and Steve Show?

It's all coming together! TiVo is going to let video creators provide downloadable content for TiVo!

TiVo announces new developer tools:

The TiVo news just won't stop, and frankly I'm starting to get a little giddy. The latest bit of information to come out is that TiVo is going to be opening up more to developers. The three new tools are TiVo Video Publisher, TiVo Multimedia Web Services API and TiVo Service Integration.

TiVo Video Publisher will allow video creators to provide downloadable content for TiVo. They talk about how content providers will be able to package and protect their video, but I hope that the amateurs won't be left out of the party. It would be great to be able to pull up my mom's vacation video as easily as a movie from the big studios. If they play their cards right they could make a killing off of long tail videos.

Hanging out with himself

Test Shot, originally uploaded by Donald Andrew Agarrat.

I'm on TV tonight!

I'll be on Manhattan Neighborhood Network tonight during Jay Dedman's 11:30 PM call in show.

Watch on the web at http://www.mnn.org - CH. 56

We'll be talking about citizen journalism.

I'm on the radio tomorrow!

I'm on WZBC 90.3 FM in Boston, tomorrow, Friday 1/7 from 3-5, and 5-6 PM Mass Ave and Beyond - The Local Show

You can listen on the web too.

I'll be playing all new music! Tune in.

Why do we all become anonymous?

Tessa Wegert has a new article on video blogs up at ClickZ Network.

Vlogs: Richer Rich Media?

She writes:

In 2005, a new type of blog may emerge on center stage, marrying blogs with online video. It's called the video blog, or "vlog."

Anyone who ever studied English surely knows the expression, "Show, don't tell," commonly used to encourage students to better illustrate their essay points. When it comes to vlogs, I doubt a more appropriate mantra could be found. Vlogs are exactly what you think they are. Instead of using text and the occasional graphic image to express opinions, rant, and share information, some bloggers now opt for video as their online medium of choice.

In a recent BusinessWeek article, the author tracks a number of current vlogs, including one belonging to a film editor, another run by a video producer, even one by a common citizen who assumed the role of Web journalist by shooting and uploading amateur video news reports.

All the above video bloggers belong to a Yahoo Group devoted to video blogging. A TV station employee formed the group last June.

What I want to know is why we all become anonymous in her article, when in the BusinessWeek article that she references, we all are named and given links?

It could have looked like this:

Ryanne Hodson, a film editor, another run by Chris Weagel, a video producer, even one by Steve Garfield, a common citizen

Common citizen?

a Yahoo! Group devoted to video blogging.

Jay Dedman, a TV station employee

I wrote her and her editor an email to ask.

Tessa writes back:

Hi Steve,
Thanks for your message. Since I link to the article in the column, I didn't think it necessary to repeat everything Business Week had already written. The purpose of the piece wasn't to rehash, but to offer a new and different point of view.

I think what you're doing is great.
Cheers,
Tessa Wegert

Cool, I get it.

Professional secrets from those in the know.

Tricks of the Trade:

Professor: If you have to give a poor grade to a student you know is going to object, put a lesser grade beside it on the paper and then scribble it out (but not so much that the student can't make it out). It will make them think that you originally gave them the lesser grade but then raised it after some thought. 99.9% percent of the time this will prevent them harassing you.

via [ J-Walk ]

Call your Senator to support Rep. Conyers

Michael Moore and Wes Boyd emailed me today, asking me to call my Senators to see if they'll stand up with Rep. Conyers to ask for an investigation into the Ohio vote.

Michael Moore's email didn't give me my Senator's phone #'s, but MooveOn's email did. It said:

It's time for Congress to grapple with the issues of voting rights, un-auditable computerized voting, and the suppression of minority votes. Call your Democratic Senators today and ask them to join Rep. Conyers in challenging the 2004 voting process.

So I called.

Senator Kennedy's phone answerer was very informed and said my call would help him decide.

Senator Kerry's phone answerer asked me to hold, then played classical music for me to listen to for 10 minutes. Then I hung up.

The MoovOn email had this graphic on it:


Should be "I Called the Senate"

I'm not saying the results of the election should be overturned, just that the voting irregularities in Ohio need to be looked into so they don't happen again.

Chuck Olsen is Crazy Guy

Chuck Olsen's new videoblog, secret vlog injection, shows us how to have fun with fabric!

It's 2005-01-05

Join the Campaign to get the Internet World to use the International Date Format ISO 8601.

ISO Date and Time Format.

And while we're at it, let's adopt the Common-Civil-Calendar-and-Time: C&T.

NewScientist is all over the issue.
via [ Michael Feldman ]

Take 1, Take 3, Take 2

LiveCut is a multi camera editor for Final Cut Pro.

Subscribe to On The Media right now

Tod Maffin wrote this last week:

Yay! One of my favourite radio shows, On The Media (from NPR via WNYC) is now podcasting! Their feed url is http://www.onthemedia.org/index.xml . This is a great, great show and I strongly urge you to add it to your regular listening. They also post a downloadable MP3 each week of the show on their web site at OnTheMedia.org.

I followed his advice and I'm glad that I did.

There are so many podcasts out there. How do you decide what to subscribe to? Trusted sources, that's how.

I already subscribe to Tod's podcast and love reading his blog, I Love Radio, so I trusted his suggestion.

Thanks Tod.

Don't bother me

Introvertster is an online anti-social non-networking community that prevents people from ever bothering you while you're online.
via [ mediacrity ]

It's better bad news

A political satire "video blog" from Berkeley, BetterBadNews, launches today that uses text based blogs as play scripts.

Watch Gracie.

Getting Dooced

BBC News had this article called Looming pitfalls of work blogs.

The article is about people getting fired for their blogging.

I read it, and thought about looking into this portion:

A new term has emerged as a result. According to UrbanDictionary.com, to be "dooced" means "losing your job for something you wrote in your online blog, journal, website, etc."

I knew that there was a weblog with that name, Dooce, but was busy and didn't give it another thought.

I just got an email from a friend with a link to that same article so I took another look at it.

Then I went back to the Dooce blog and read about it's author, Heather B. Armstrong, who was fired for her blog:

I started this website in February 2001. A year later I was fired from my job for this website because I had written stories that included people in my workplace. My advice to you is BE YE NOT SO STUPID. Never write about work on the internet unless your boss knows and sanctions the fact that YOU ARE WRITING ABOUT WORK ON THE INTERNET. If you are the boss, however, please don’t be a bitch and talk with your hands. And when you order Prada online, please don’t talk about it out loud, you rotten whore.

Dooce is up for Best Big-Name Blog in the Best of Blogs Awards 2004 and is in the lead.

I wonder why the author of the BBC article didn't do further research on the term dooced?

It's easy enough to find.

When you search Google for dooced, you find this.

Do-It-Yourself Television

DIYTV is a working television station that you can make all by yourself, at little or no cost. By "station", I mean stationary -- not a studio that broadcasts signals over airwaves, but rather, a kiosk that screens slideshows of still images.
via [ unmediated ]

Citizen Journalism gets the real story

9:37 AM
I post this message to the Yahoo! Videoblogging Group regarding today's Wall Street Journal story on video blogging:

I found it interesting that the newspaper got the $20k
instead of the original videographer. Probably because he just gave
the video away without any Creative Commons license on it.

"The video, which shows an elderly couple overpowered by a wave, was
filmed at the Kamala Beach Hotel near Phuket on Sunday morning by a
31-year-old factory worker from Sweden named Tommy Lorentsen.

Reached in Thailand, Mr. Lorentsen said he salvaged the tape from his
camera after it was soaked and gave a copy to Fredrik Bornesand, a
Stockholm police detective who appears in the footage trying to rescue
the couple. Mr. Bornesand handed a CD of the clip to journalists with
Norway's Dagbladet newspaper who then uploaded to their Web site on
Monday.

...

Dagbladet editor Oliver Orskaug says once the clip began circulating on
Web blogs and forums "suddenly the networks were calling from Japan,
Spain and France and everywhere to buy the video." He says within 12
hours he sold rights to CNN, ABC News, and others for a total of about
$20,000. Mr. Orskaug was not surprised bloggers grabbed the video
without paying. "That's the Internet. We expect that would happen," he
says."

10:02 AM
R. Kristiansen sends this email to Oliver Orskaug:

"Hei Oliver Orskaug,
/ Hello Oliver Orskaug,

Jeg leste i dag denne saken på Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB110470611254614746,00.html

hvor du siteres.

/ Today I read this story in the Wall Street Journal
... where you are quoted

Jeg lurte egentlig bare på om Tommy Lorentson som var den som egentlig
tok den filmen fikk en del av de 20.000$ som nevnes i artikkelen.

/ I basically wondered whether Tommy Lorentsson who was the guy really
shooting that footage got a piece of the 20.000$ mentioned in the
article.

Spørsmålet er altså om Dagbladet "overtok" rettighetene da dere fikk
dem fra Bornesand. Dette er nemlig et spørsmål som sirkulerer på
nettet i disse timer..

/ The question is then whether Dagbladet "took over" the copyrights
when you received them (the movie) from Bornesand. This is a question
circulating on the net in these hours...

mvh
Raymond M. Kristiansen
blogger og politisk aktiv og som selv så langt har diskutert saken her:
http://dltq.blogs.com/dltq/2005/01/the_vlogging_er.html

/ best regards ... blogger and politically active and who so far has
discussed the case here ...

2:27 PM
R. Kristiansen gets permission to post the full story behind the story.

This is an amazing example of Citizen Journalism getting the real story.

How to delete every instance of an iTune

If you delete a file from one of your iTunes playlists, it doesn't get deleted from your iTunes library.

That's not a good thing if you want to keep your disk from getting filled up.

But you can delete the file from the library too if you use the [ OPTION ] key:

Hold down option when deleting the file and it removes it from the library and gives the option to remove from your drive.

via [ Jonathan Greene of atmasphere.net ]

Video Bloggers Getting Together

vloggercon 2005, a gathering of videobloggers, is happening in NYC on January 22nd.

The blog just went live.

The Youngest Videoblogger In The World

Michael Verdi tells us how his daughter became The Youngest Videoblogger In The World:

Well, it's been a crazy week and half at our house. I put this video together yesterday to quickly sum up how Dylan went from anonymous 11 year old blogger to "The Youngest Videoblogger In The World."

Is that Linux on your iPod?

The iPodLinux Project.

The Carol and Steve Show: Episode 1

The Carol and Steve Show: Episode 1 - Reality TV.

Reality TV puts real people in artificial situations.

It's time for a show featuring real people in real situations.

2005: The Year of Real Reality



Music Provided By www.freeplaymusic.com

Times Square QTVR

Hans Nyberg just sent me this:

The new fullscreen panorama from Times Square is now online at panoramas.dk.

Jook Leung has made it again. It's fabulous.

You can also see several other panos from the 12 o'clock enter into 2005

Happy New Year
Hans