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MiFi to go

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.

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

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]

While I’m at it, here’s a link to the Podcast 101 piece done by Kevin Rose and Dan Huard of Systm. Take notes, there’ll be a quiz tomorrow.

Mike Kujawski posted a link on the Podcamp Ottawa Wiki to a very useful, and funny, video explaining RSS in a way anyone can understand. This is going to save me least a couple of hours a week.

podcampott2.gif

Mark Blevis yesterday announced Podcamp Ottawa to be held Novermber 25 in the Panorama Room of the National Arts Centre (go figure ;-)

The idea here is a back-to-basics “UNconference” day of discussions including an Audacity presentation by Mark’s Canadian Podcast Buffet co-host, Bob Goyetche, and a WordPress session lead by Charles Hodgeson.

Updated: Registration is free. Attendees will be asked to make a $10 donation to the Snowsuit fund. Check out the wiki and register soon; attendance is capped at 80.