A real Podcast/videocast coming soon

Rich Pav

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.

Testing YouTube.com video

Rich Pav 2 Comments

YouTube.com allows you to upload and share video clips similar to how Flickr.com lets you share photos. I’ve been playing with it lately. It downgrades the quality of uploaded videos quite horribly, but for non-technical people on dialup accounts (i.e. parents and grandparents) it’s easy to use. The RSS feed isn’t iTunes compatible, but that hardly matters to Mom. All the videos I put there will be G-rated.

So yeah, I realize I’m all over the place. Like fungus. That’s how we spastic people with short attention spans work.

iTunes Store Japan Opens

Rich Pav 5 Comments

Good Lord, they couldn’t have picked an uglier font. Didn’t anyone at Apple bother to check what it would look like on a PC before going live? That looks like the font that was used in MS DOS. The characters are so enormous that 90% of the titles are cut off. You have to hover your cusor over every title and wait for the pop-up to appear to read it. The titles of Japanese podcasts look better in the US directory.

And it’s #1 fatal flaw? Herro Flom Japan still isn’t listed. No wonder this podcasting thing hasn’t really taken off yet.

Oh, and 90% of the songs cost 150 yen, the other 10% are 200 yen. That was expected, really. CDs here go for between US $25-30.

A new RSS feed for not-so-great video

Rich Pav 1 Comment

For those of you who like the Herro Flom Japan videos to the point where you don’t care if they tell a story or not, I’ve made a new RSS feed called The Herro Flom Japan Video Clip Chumbucket.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/hfj_videochum

Sometimes I put some effort into making a video, but when I get home I look at it and I don’t think it’s good enough to send out to 400 people, but at the same time it’s a shame to just throw it away. From now on, I’ll throw those videos into the chumbucket.

I’ll try to keep them free of f-bombs because I know they’re popular with the kids, but I won’t guarantee it. I’ll rate them in the description that shows up in iTunes.

What can you expect to see in these videos? Whatever. Just stuff.

Public Service Announcement: iScoot extends Skype

Rich Pav 1 Comment

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.

Could someone please do me a favor?

Rich Pav 12 Comments

For some reason Apple will accept podcast submissions only from people who have a valid iTunes store account. What that means is if you don’t own a credit card issued in a country in which the iTunes Store is available, you can’t submit.

Could someone please submit Herro Flom Japan’s RSS? A friend of mine in the US did it for me the day after iTunes 4.9 came out but I’m still not showing up. Maybe it got lost.

This one too. This guy from Australia is in the same boat.
http://ozpodcaster.libsyn.com/rss

(Thank you Kevin!)

Are there people out there who wouldn’t mind giving international podcasters a hand? All you have to do is paste their URLs into the form in the iTunes podcast directory. I’d like to set up a mailing list where people willing to help would subscribe, and podcasters from iTunes-less countries could send a request to the ML with their URL. You paste the URL, reply to the request e-mail, CC to the requester, done. Problem solved, podcasters happy, listeners have access to more content, world peace breaks out, I get a Nobel Prize, Angelina Jolie dumps Brad, and all those who helped get to hear the podcast of Angie and I consummating our wedding vows.