Freyburg

I’ve been working like a madman on various projects of late, so I haven’t had a chance to post much here. Two video projects, moving all our stuff out of our condo, going to Edmonton for a wedding, and an impending shift to Tokyo for a while have meant a dearth of bon mots on the site.

But rest assured I have some ideas waiting in the wings. Radio Free Skaro and Fruitygamer continue to crank out the content, and I have a few Japan related ideas I’d like to integrate into freyburg.com as well. So patience, gentle reader, and my apologies.

Recently I was contacted by StudioNow to create an author video for Random House about “The Tiger,” a new book by Vancouver author John Vaillant. It’s an interesting story about a poacher, a Russian game warden/badass and a very smart, very deadly tiger, and the violent maelstrom all three find themselves in while pursuing their own goals. Check out the video below.

Been busy this week, mostly with boring but necessary paperwork and moving concerns, but I’m still trying to hammer out exactly what I should do for online video regarding Freyburg.com. If I can come up with a way to do something quick, dirty, and simple, I will, and I suppose it should involve me blathering at the camera. But for some reason talking to the camera fills me with dread, unlike my Gen Y counterparts who seem to revel in the attention a webcam brings them.

So I’m asking you, dear readers…what do YOU want to see in a weekly or daily show centred around this site?

Check out the inaugural episode of the Fruitygamer Podcast over at fruitygamer.com. I’ve ben working for a while on the Fruitygamer website, and I think it’ll likely be a showcase for weekly audio podcasts, along with less frequent but higher-end video segments.

I’ve been working through various ways to create compelling internet content, and I’ve explored various options including scripted material and making elements for FInal Cut Pro so I can film, drag and drop. All off this comes from the idea of minimizing the inputs while maximizing outputs…but it would still involve a lot of work. Putting together the two Fruitygamer pilot episodes required about half a day of work for each segment, in addition to being down at E3 in the first place and filming the interviews.

That’s all well and good, and there’s no reason I can’t use that same methodology for special episodes. But if I want to create a lot of content quickly the way to do it is live and streamed. So I looked at BoinxTV as a viable option. I got Boinx when I bought one of the MacHeist offers for $40 a while back, and as the program is normally $299 I got a pretty decent bargain. But since I had no use for it at the time, Boinx sat on my computer unused, until now.

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Haven’t given you an update on my professional work in a while, so here’s a sampler of what Freyburg Media has been up to:

Vancouver Sun tech reporter Gillian Shaw interviewed myself and several other technology enthusiasts on the day of the Apple iPad announcement, and you can check out my thoughts online on her blog (as well as in yesterday’s dead tree version of the Vancouver Sun.) Techvibes.com also reposted “The iPad cometh“. Neat!

Vancouver music legend Chris Peterson sat down for a chinwag with EVP host Jonny Vancouver to talk about his music, the internet’s effect on the music industry, and how he manages to work on multiple projects while keeping a day job. Shot with the JVC GY-HM100U, cut in Final Cut Studio, and graded with Magic Bullet Suite.

Andrew Warner runs Mixergy, a show consisting of Skype interviews with entrepreneurs building startups that are changing the way people do business. His latest show features Leo Laporte, who worked for Tech TV for years before being laid off. Rather than take that lying down, Leo moved right into podcasting and in a few short years has built up something of a new media empire starting with This Week In Tech, also known as TWIT. In this episode of Mixergy, Leo explains how he delivers well-produced niche content at a lower price than the networks are capable of, and what other new media producers can do to emulate his success.

Full disclosure: I worked with Leo on-air and behind the scenes last year on “The Lab with Leo Laporte,” and still maintain occasional contact with him. I also met and had a great conversation (and a few beers) with Dane Golden, Leo’s right-hand-man at TWIT, at Macworld 2008. But before any of that happened, Leo’s move into podcasting made me think that it was possible for myself and fellow nerd @legopolis (and later, @dubbayoo) to start Radio Free Skaro, my own podcast devoted to all things Doctor Who, as well as concentrate on web video as the dominant growth area for my own company, Freyburg Media.

Just a little something I put together for Launch Party 7, a Vancouver event where startups strut their stuff for the tech community and VC types.