Herro Flom Japan

That's it, from now on I'm encoding videos I shoot with our home video camera using the new H.264 codec in Quicktime 7. Last night I took the one.org hires video from here and re-encoded it with QT7 pro. It took absolutely forever, with my CPU maxed out at 100% the entire time, but the result is amazing. Of course, it doesn't look better than the original; actually, it looks exactly the same.

Here's what blew me away. The original video is 12.4 MB. Encoded with H.264, it's an astounding 2.1 MB with no loss in quality. Take a look. Enlarge it. There are no jaggies. It seems like as long as the video resolution isn't too high, even slower computers can play it back smoothly. The demo videos on Apple's site are all huge, requiring a minimum of a 2.8GHz CPU. That's ridiculous.

Videos I take with the Sony Clie will stay in MP4. They're so small and so horribly riddled with compression artifacts that re-encoding them with H.264 codec makes them bigger instead of smaller.

Tomorrow my wife is taking the kids to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I'm staying home because I can't stand watching American movies that are dubbed instead of subtitled. I solemnly swear I'll put something out. It's been far too long.

Supposedly similar posts:

• None Found

Last week I did a podcast/videocast at the new Apple Store in Shibuya. Had I not forgotten my iRiver at the office over the weekend, I would have put it up. I have the rest of this week off, so it'll be up soon.

Two new and cool things to show ya'll:

• A Google Map mashup that shows who has visited my site lately.
• The most awesome streaming video technology I have ever seen. Oh. My. God. Click that link, it'll blow you away. I will play with VP7 as soon as I can. Like, as soon as I can park the kids in front of the PlayStation so I can shoot & encode some video. Unfortunately, it looks like you gotta pay to use Vividas' Java applet that plays fullscreen video. Nevertheless, this is making my geek nipples so hard, they're bleeding.

Supposedly similar posts:

• None Found

It's now possible to have incoming Skype calls forwarded to any phone, even your mobile phone. Holy-frikkin'-moley.

First, let's assume that you use Skype on a PC and you already have purchased SkypeOut credit so that you can can make PC to phone calls. Next, download and install iScoot. Fire it up and enter your mobile phone's number. Leave your PC connected to the net with Skype and iScoot running and go outside. (If you're afraid to go outside, then just walk a few steps away from the computer. Don't worry, your porn collection won't evaporate.) When somebody Skypes you, iScoot will patch the incoming call to your phone via SkypeOut.

Now is that cool or what? I assume that if I use SkypeIn, someone could call my number in the US and it'll be put through to my mobile.

Supposedly similar posts:

• None Found

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.

Supposedly similar posts:

• None Found

Ladies and gentlemen, iTunes 4.9:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/download/

Currently, the podcast directory is hidden in the iTunes store. In the navigation bar on the left, select "Movie Trailers" then "Soundtracks." On that page there's a link to Podcasts.

Here are the technical details for making your podcast iTunes compatible:

http://phobos.apple.com/static/podcast_specifications.pdf

HFJ isn't available yet. There's a way to submit a podcast's RSS feed for consideration, but please don't do it yet. I'm working on adding album art to all the previous episodes and moving them to another server so I don't wake up one morning and discover I owe Dreamhost for excess bandwidth.

In the meantime, you can subscribe manually by pasting the RSS feed into iTunes. It's under the "Advanced" menu.

Supposedly similar posts:

• None Found