It’s News to Me

The lastest version of Flock, soon to be released in beta and codenamed "Cardinal," has improved the way RSS feeds are handled. The feed reader in Flock is called My Newspaper, and it is represented by an icon in the icon bar that looks like a newspaper (what else?) and is positioned just to the left of the icon for starring a favorite (which, in Flock's terminology, equates to marking a site as a favorite).

It was reasonably instinctive to me how to open the My Newspaper sidebar (just click the My Newspaper icon), but how to add a feed to the newspaper didn't seem as immediately obvious. So once I figured out how to do it, I decided to record a short video and upload it to YouTube to illustrate the process.

If you'd like to view the video, click here.

Update 4/30/06: If I had done a bit more research before posting, I might have found the explanation of how to subscribe to feeds in the specifications for the Cardinal distribution of Flock. But like so many others, I first see if I can do something without reading the directions, and only when that fails do I turn to reading the instructions.

technorati tags: video, Flock, RSS, Feedreader

This morning I spent a bit of time evaluating SnagIt, a capture tool for Windows.

I decided to record a short video (about 1 min and 30 secs) about how to search in Flock’s Favorites Manager. It turned out reasonably well, so I uploaded the video to YouTube.com. You can watch that video here. I recorded the audio in real time and don’t find any way to edit what was recorded, so there are a few incorrect references (for instance, referring to the Favorites menu when I meant to call it the Favorites manager), but on the whole I was satisfied with the video because it is short and to the point, and it does illustrate how the search feature can be used.

I would welcome your comments on this first effort. Thanks.

technorati tags: Flock, video, tutorial, training, features, Favorites Manager

Given that most digital cameras give you the ability to capture video clips, most of us can now create a video and frequently we want to share those videos. Unfortunately, the file size of some of these videos is too large to email easily, particularly if some of the recipients of your intended video don’t have a broadband connection.

Whenever there is a need such as this, someone is usually eager to meet it, and that is just what the service YouTube.com does. This link to one of their videos of a “Call for Help” show explains more about the service.

technorati tags: video sharing, free service

I’m interested in locating any other Flock users here in Knoxville.

The reason for my interest is that over the weekend I exchanged a few messages with Daryl Houston about his recent podcast concerning Flock. During our exchange, I suggested to him that we might meet one evening to get to know one another and to discuss Flock and its progress. He was open to the idea after the next version of Flock comes out in early February, and he suggested that we might invite any other Flock users in our area to attend as well. Then the question arose about how many other users there are that are local to Knoxville. He doesn’t have that information and neither do I.

So I’d like to request that if you are a Flock user who lives in Knoxville or the East Tennessee area and if you think you might be interested in being part of a meet up with one of the staff of developers of Flock (Daryl), please contact me at talktoperry (at) gmail.com so that I can notify you when we have made plans for the get together. In fact, I’d extend this invitation to anyone who may be interested in learning about Flock, even if you haven’t yet downloaded and tried it. The time, date, place, and exact agenda are still to be decided, but we need to know how many of us there are and the level of interest. So far as I know, there is no “critical mass” we have to achieve to hold this event because Daryl and I can meet alone, but I’d like to give you an opportunity to be a part of it in the event you are interested.

Let me hear from you.

It’s never too early to think about one’s New Year’s resolutions, and as I was doing my morning surfing today, I came across the LibriVox Project, which seems like a worthwhile effort.  This article on Wired News gives a good overview of the goals and objectives of the project.  Not sure yet whether I’ll make participating in it a part of my resolutions for the New Year, but it seems like the kind of thing I might enjoy doing.

Interesting.

Only a year ago, podcasting was an arcane activity, the domain of a few techies and self-admitted “geeks.” Now you can hear everything from NASCAR coverage to NPR’s All Things Considered in downloadable audio files called “podcasts”. Thousands of podcasts are available at the iTunes Music Store, and websites such as iPodder.com and Podcast.net track thousands more. That’s why the editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary have selected “podcast” as the Word of the Year for 2005. Podcast, defined as “a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player,” will be added to the next online update of the New Oxford American Dictionary, due in early 2006.

‘Podcast’ Is the Word of the Year: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Almost a year ago now, I began beta testing MixCastLive, an excellent program for creating podcasts that was finally released in July of this year. This morning I note that its author, James Prudente, has now lowered the price of the program to a remarkably affordable $12.00. If you have any interest in ever doing a podcast, I’d recommend that you get a copy and begin playing with it.

You could even use it for creating audio content, such as my audio welcome message in the “About Me” section of this blog, or audio messages to your family and friends. The resulting MP3 file is, as are all MP3 files, about one tenth the size of the corresponding WAV file. In fact, James and I have often discussed that MixCastLive can be used for creating audio conversations where excerpts from one file can be incorporated into subsequent files that comprise an ongoing conversation. At this price, this is a tool virtually anyone should have in his or her arsenal of tools whether or not you ever plan to do a podcast.

You should know that it does require that you have .NET installed on your Windows system (and is therefore not available for the MAC). Fortunately, .Net can be downloaded for free.

Last night as I sat here at the computer, engrossed as I often am in playing Freecell, I got a Skype IM from Tom Simpson, wishing me an early “Happy Birthday,” just so he didn’t forget to do so tomorrow, which actually is the day. I mentioned to him that I had heard from James Prudente, the author of Mixcast Live, and that James was having some problems with the company that was hosting the media for his BigFeeder.com site. Those problems weren’t insignificant, because the hosting company has gone belly up, but James is working feverishly to make new arrangements. Tom and I were both beta testers for Mixcast Live so he knew James.

In what can only be called an exceedingly magnanimous gesture, Tom offered to host my podcasts for the moment over at PodcastHost.com, a site he runs. I was floored and, of course, I accepted his generous offer. It is the least I can do to give his site a plug, so please surf on over there and give it a look see. You may find some interesting podcasts there.

In addition, Tom’s other site is WebFeed Central, so you might also want to check that out. Since he’s been toying with the idea of blogging full time, you might find today’s post of interest.

Accepting Tom’s offer for hosting my podcasts meant that I had to become familiar with using FTP again. It had been a while since I’ve had to use an FTP client. Long ago, I purchased BulletProof FTP, so I simply downloaded the latest copy and reinstalled it. Fortunately I had kept my original registration information so I was able to get it installed and registered on my current system. And in little time, I had uploaded my two previous podcasts to PodcastHost.com.

For those of you who may have missed either of them, you can listen to them now (or again) by clicking either of these links. Podcast #1 is about 20 minutes in length and Podcast #2 is about 43 minutes long.

Perry’s Podcast #1 — A first effort in podcasting

If you’d like to save this podcast to your own hard disk, RIGHT click on this link, Save this podcast to my hard disk, and choose “Save target as …” (in Internet Explorer) or “Save Link as …” (in Firefox).

Perry’s Podcast #2 — An interview with Juan Gutierrez

If you’d like to save this podcast to your own hard disk, RIGHT click on this link, Save this podcast to my hard disk, and choose “Save target as …” (in Internet Explorer) or “Save Link as …” (in Firefox).

Keep an eye on this space for my latest, greatest podcast, coming maybe as soon as tomorrow.