In my brief tenure as a co-host for the (now-ended) Lab with Leo, I was able to pimp my own podcast, Radio Free Skaro, while explaining the dreaded Red Ring of Death on the Xbox 360. Many thanks to the intrepid Third Guy, my RFS co-host, for tracking down this clip.
Yes, an Apple IIgs in laptop form. I think I’m in love.
A little recursive, but apparently someone figured out how to emulate Palm apps on the iPhone. Sorta pointless but oddly compelling.
Besides all the other stuff I’m doing, I’m also going to be co-presenting a “VideoBlogging 101” session at Northern Voice, Vancouver’s annual blogging conference. Roland Tanglao, Jordan Behan and myself will walk attendees though the basics of videoblogging, from shooting stuff on your cell phone and streaming it to the net to basic video making techniques, getting your video onto the net and my section on how to effectively prepare and plan for your shoot, as well as a bit of an overview of higher-end tools. You can also make suggestions on our wiki prior to the event.
Roland has also posted on his blog about the event, and put up a video of our recent meeting that he shot on his Nokia N95.
Some rich fella paid over $2,000 for a mint Apple //c off of eBay, and then proceeded to document the unboxing of said beast. The thing I noticed right away is that Apple has consistently had some amazing package design, even in the old days. Plus, the Apple //c just looks damned cool.
Frontline, the always excellent PBS documentary series (which has a repository of shows available online for your viewing pleasure) is fixing its lens upon the online generation, and how growing up with the internet, instant messaging and constant connectivity as a part of everyday life affects today’s youth. It’s on television tonight, though I’ll likely watch it online, seeing as how I’m part of the 1200 baud generation and know how to do such things.
A couple of months ago, local blogging luminary and online marketing expert Darren Barefoot let me know about a promotion for the Brother HL-4070CDW color laser printer involving several local bloggers. In exchange for reviewing the printer on our blogs, we used (and in some cases presumably abused) the printer for a couple of months. My take? First off, the thing is a tank. It’s intimidatingly large and extremely heavy, and it honestly frightened the UPS guy when he delivered it to me. But what about, you know, the printing? Top notch, both in color and black and white. Never really had a problem with it….except for one time when I needed to print out the resume and the printer simply wouldn’t respond. That may have had more to do with my network connection than with the printer itself. And speaking of connections, the Brother has many, including network, wireless, and all the other standards. For a guy who generally wrestles with sub-$100 laser printers that don’t recognize anything other than their own inherent badness, it was nice to finally have a printer in the condo that actually WOULD print from whichever computer told it to, instead of retreating into spool queue hell. So all-in-all, I’d say the Brother HL-4070CDW is a decent printer, though I think it might be better suited to a big office and less for a guy who occasional prints out directions from Google Maps.
My days mostly consist of hanging out in the Podcast Studio and getting my learn on (now that I have a business that depends on such things), so yesterday I checked out an awesome session on green screens for video podcasts, and later got to meet Stu Machwitz, the guy who wrote the DV Rebel Guide. I later made my way (and not without difficulty, San Francisco is pretty but its organizational skills leave a little to be desired in terms of street layout) to the Final Cut Pro Supermeet, which was a thing to behold. There were at least 500 if not more people there, and all of them knew a hell of a lot more about Final Cut Pro than I do. Well worth checking out. I kind of got lost on my way to the event, and dealt with a surly but ultimately helpful cabbie. Still, what would a working vacation be without adventure, uncertainty, and lots of gadgets?
Ok, let’s get this out of the way….it ain’t worth it to get up at 3 a.m. and stagger to a lineup for a Steve Jobs keynote. But that’s just what I did this morning, since I’d never been to one of Apple’s signature shindigs before. My verdict on the new gear Apple trotted out today? Meh. Canada doesn’t have movies for purchase on the iTunes store, let alone rentals, and we also don’t have iPhones. The Macbook Air is a nice bit of engineering, but it’s nothing I pine for.
Still, getting to see a live “Macbreak Weekly” was cool, as was finally meeting Merlin Mann and Andy Inhatko. Tonight there’s a party for attendees featuring non other thanDevo, and there’s a lot of informative podcast creation sessions over the next couple of days.
Although it hasn’t been widely reported in Western media, the fact that novels for mobile phones outsold print books in Japan in the past year did briefly hit the news this past summer… the fact that people in Japan regularly read books on their cell phones is a story in itself though.
After Wired (still the usual outlet for tech stories to break into the mainstream) wrote it up early in 2007, there was a similar story a few months later in the Economist, and finally just a month or two ago, The Wall Street Journal did a small piece on it. However, surely the fact that the country showing us where mobile technology is headed shunning print books for e-books deserves a bit more media attention.