November 2008

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Brian Eno: I believe in singing

November 29, 2008 in iPhone, music | No comments

From NPR

I believe that singing is the key to long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, increased intelligence, new friends, super self-confidence, heightened sexual attractiveness and a better sense of humor. A recent long-term study conducted in Scandinavia sought to discover which activities related to a healthy and happy later life. Three stood out: camping, dancing and singing. (link to full article)

Interesting theory, but the man has obviously not heard me in the shower. I’d better stick to creating sounds with Eno’s very cool iPhone app, Bloom.

Coltrane’s Giant Steps animated

November 27, 2008 in film, music, video | 1 comment

Michal Levy has an uncanny ability to interpret music graphically. Check out her animation, Giant Steps and her latest film, One.

MiFi to go

November 27, 2008 in iPhone, mobile, tools, web | 2 comments

I’m trying out the WPtouch WordPress plugin that is supposed to render WP blogs beautifully on the iPhone, iPod Touch and other mobile devices, including the new Android mobile OS.

If you visit this blog with a mobile device, please let me know what you think.
If you use a similar plugin which you prefer, please comment.

Please do adjust your set

November 26, 2008 in new media, video, web | 3 comments

YouTube now supports widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio video display on their site. Which is great. [example]

The new aspect ratio can be used in embedded video as well. By changing the width and height parameters in the embed code in the example below I was able to use the full width available to me in this blog column. This example is 500 x 300 pixels. (I’m also forcing high quality video playback)

[pimp for BCScene]

It’s about the Audio

November 24, 2008 in conferences, new media, podcasts, spoken word, web | No comments

I enjoyed Podcamp Ottawa yesterday. Thanks to Mark, Andrea and Bob for organizing.

The conversation was frank and informative and it was nice to reconnect with the likes of Julien and Charles who I haven’t seen in a while.

After much conceptual talk in the morning session about context and content and connections, Hugh McGuire did a great job “rebooting” our conversation when he led off the afternoon with a poignant reminder of why, I think, most of us in the room choose to spend the entirety of a Sunday in November sitting on the floor — lovely as the plush red carpet was — talking about podcasting.

Hugh played a clip from well-known Canadian podcaster Scarborough Dude which very effectively reminded us it’s about the audio; that audio, whether it’s online, on the radio, or on a portable device … that audio has a way of communicating to us, of engaging us, of captivating us in a way that the written word or visual media simply cannot.

Chalk it up to the primacy of language, the power of the spoken word, or the theatre of the mind, the fact remains, audio is the most powerful form of communication we have.

And our love of audio is why we choose to spend 6 hours numbing our butts at the NAC yesterday.

PodCamp Ottawa

November 21, 2008 in conferences, podcasts | No comments

NAC New Media is happy to be able to host PodCamp Ottawa again this year.

PodCamp Ottawa 2008
Our theme is, “Fresh Thinking and Approaches”
Date: Sunday, November 23, 2008
Time: 10:00am - 4:00pm (welcome at 9:45am)
Location: National Arts Centre, Panorama Room

Register online here:
http://podcampottawa.pbwiki.com

Come on out and share your ideas on podcasting and meet some really nice people.

Speak Now

November 19, 2008 in apple, applications, iPhone, internet, tools, web | 2 comments

Yeah, the iPhone changed everything. Now the new Google iPhone application with voice recognition changes the iPhone in a very fundamental and useful way. Google’s voice recognition not only works, it rocks.

Here’s the intro video from Google:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=y3z7Tw1K17A&fmt=18

Have you tried it? Drop a comment.

Stoopid YouTube Tricks

November 18, 2008 in tools, video, web | 1 comment

YouTube was for many years only serving up crappy low rez video. It’s now been a year or more since they started allowing users to upload and serve higher quality video (640×480 h.264 video at as much as 1800 kbs, 64k mono AAC audio). You can now choose “watch in high quality” when viewing YouTube video, when available, or set your YouTube preferences to always show high quality video when available.

‘Problem was, you couldn’t easily share the better quality video using YouTube’s handy link or embed code offered up just to the right of the video player window. Those links defaulted to the lower rez offerings so it was impossible to email a link that would go straight to the higher resolution video, or even to embed the higher rez video into a web page or blog.

Turns out you can work around the low rez issue with these straight forward hacks.

To link to high quality videos append &fmt=18 to the end of the URL, like this:

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=RM7WfEudu5E&fmt=18

To embed high quality video, add &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 to the end of the two URLs in the embed code, like in this example

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/J11guhn6qT4&hl=en&fs=1 &ap=%2526fmt%3D18"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/J11guhn6qT4&hl=en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D18" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

To save a high quality YouTube video use the KeepVid bookmarklet.

[Via High quality YouTube video hack at Kottke.org]

Hugh on Obama on Tech

November 15, 2008 in internet, new media, podcasts, web | No comments

Sez friend Hugh McGuire:

I don’t know how Obama’s presidency is going to go, and I don’t hold my breath for any miracles. Any president of the USA has one hell of a challenge on his (or her) hands, and the O-man has inherited a bigger mess than anyone can clean up.

But, man if he wanted to make me happy, he could not have started in a place nearer to my heart than his Tech/Science platform, released today.

[read article] and listen to podcast

Time-lapse stage setup

November 13, 2008 in video | 2 comments

If you’ve ever wondered what a stage setup entails: