Jul 14 2005
Here are a few URLs to get you started.
Jul 13 2005
I can't believe there are nearly 300 subscribers to this…thing. What's wrong with you people? I mean, I can understand why my friends and family like this stuff, but the other 295 of you? TV and radio programming must be pretty awful if you're coming here for entertainment. Whatever. I'm glad ya'll enjoy it. It's fun for me too. This is like being famous, but without the burden of having to keep track of my millions.
Tonight I started off at the Hobgoblin pub in Akasaka because I was thirsty for Blackthorn cider. Afterwards I turned the camera on myself while I took a little stroll through the neighborhood but…well, you'll see. It didn't go so well, so I walked to Roppongi where I had a bit more fun. Then I went home. The end.
I have to apologize to the blind guy who left a comment here a week or two ago. I've been meaning to put a podcast together for you. I hope you don't feel left out. How about if I just e-mail you the 50 or so hours of unedited audio I have saved?
Thanks to everyone who filled out the questionnaire. The results are interesting. I like feedback way more than votes. But votes are kind of nice too. If you happen to be at Podcast Alley voting for other shows you like, heck, you might as well vote for me too while you're there, right?
Jul 11 2005
A few people have asked me how to get video clips to show up in iTunes just like podcasts do. There's no real trick to it.
Actually, there is one trick for subscribers. To see the video in iTunes, you need to select "Show Artwork" from the Edit menu. The video plays in a wee little area in the bottom left corner. Click on it to play it in a larger separate window.
For pod/videocasters, create your video in some format that QuickTime can play back. I highly recommend you use 3ivx to encode your videos. This is what Rocketboom is using and their videos are incredibly sharp and smooth yet the file sizes are reasonable. (And Amanda Congdon has such big, beautiful…ah…eyes.) At $20 for the encoding software, it's a steal. And make sure your sound quality is good. Crappy sound makes the video seem crappy too.
Then, all you need to do is enclose the video file in your RSS file exactly the same way you normally do it with your MP3 file. My blog here runs on WordPress. When I write a post containing a link to a media file, WordPress automatically generates the RSS file with an enclosure tag. If you have a web server that runs Apache, PHP and MySQL, WordPress is a breeze to install.
If you're looking for a web host to run WordPress, Dreamhost is utterly amazing. I pay less than $8 a month, for a hosting plan chocked full of more stuff than I could list here. What they offer for such a low price is insane. Something new is that for every week you're with them, they increase your disk quota by 20MB and bandwidth by 1GB. I currently get 141GB bandwidth per month (I use about 50GB) and 2820 MB of disk space. And if you sign up through the link here, a friend of mine in the US who's out of work and going through some bad times gets the commission.
Jul 04 2005
I live for this stuff. Someone mashed together Google Maps, Flickr, Firefox, and Greasemonkey to make it incredibly easy to show exactly where a photo was taken.
Here's an example. Click on the photo below to go to the photo's page on flickr.com. On that page, click on the hyperlink "GeoTagged" below the photo. It'll take you to the geoblogger.com site and show you on a map the exact location where it was taken.
If you're willing to click one more time, click on the "satellite" link in the top right corner of the map to see the location on a satellite photo of Tokyo. Zoom all the way in and you'll see Shinjuku Station.
This is so simple to do that I'll definitely be tagging the photos that accompany soundseeing tours. If you have flickr account and are somewhat technically savvy, instructions are here.
Being attention deficient is a good personality trait for podcasters, isn't it? (Except when having to edit hours and hours of audio.)
Apparently there's also a way to import the data into Google Earth, but I'll leave that for another day. It's a great app to play with if you have a powerful enough PC and video card.
Here's a fun activity: Learn how to zoom in on your house starting from all the way out in space. If you're ever abducted and you manage to comandeer an alien dingy to make your escape, this skill surely will come in handy.
No tag for this post.Jul 01 2005
Lifehacker has a cool post on how to point iTunes 4.9 to del.icio.us RSS feeds of videos and MP3s. With no more bandwidth worries, I, of course, took advantage of this to promote HFJ guerilla-style.
How to find and add media to your iTunes library with del.icio.us
No tag for this post.
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