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December 29, 2007
It's pretty easy to tell where iTunes makes the bulk of its money based on how it responds when you try disabling some of the media preferences. Hop into your iTunes preferences and start unchecking media sources, you'll find that...
September 28, 2007
Here is what I'd like to do: Create a Smart Playlist in iTunes that will roll up all of my unplayed podcast downloads into a single playlist I can work my way through while running, biking, or driving. Since my...
May 12, 2007
Just over a year ago, Apple's legal department told a 14 year old girl to shut her pie-hole after she suggested to the company in a hand-written letter that they include song lyrics with songs purchased through the iTunes music...
April 24, 2007
Recently Apple sent out a newsletter to videocasters explaining how to optimize their videos for the Apple TV. A lot of it was pretty basic stuff but one section in particular caught my eye. Apple suggests only encoding for the...
February 27, 2007
A reader wrote in with a few interesting iTunes questions I thought I'd throw out to the group. I'll take a shot at the questions, but would appreciate some additional takes. 1. There are at least three computers that I...
December 13, 2006
Sometimes I wonder why Apple makes the choices they do for default settings in iTunes. For example, if I subscribe to a podcast feed, it's probably because I want to listen to the podcasts in that feed, correct? So why...
November 15, 2006
Resources cited during the Metro Brokers Technology Seminar Technology Evangelist Treo 700 Phones Treonauts Blog Fujitsu Fujitsu T-4215 Tabnote Computers Fujitsu S500 Scanners Pricegrabber Google Google Docs Google AdWords Gmail iTunes Skype Garmin Nuvi Kodak v705 Camera Bloglines Sprint...
November 12, 2006
I'm turning into a big fan of Smart Playlists in iTunes 7. Here is my current iTunes situation: 2500+ songs Wide range of genres Lots of podcasts Lots of podcasts improperly labeled as music after initial import of MP3s. This...
October 28, 2006
iTunes 7 is causing a friend's PC to grind to a halt. As one song comes to an end and the next begins, iTunes is chewing up enough resources to cause songs to stutter. We tried disabling Crossfade Playback to...
October 23, 2006
Have you ever had problems downloading songs on iTunes? Things were not working well for me on Saturday night while I scrambled to pick up some Bob Dylan for a party. The Essential Bob Dylan has 34 tracks. Only 3...
May 30, 2006
The thing I like most about traditional web search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN is that they ask very little of me as a content creator. All I have to do is make my web site easy for to crawl by their search engine spiders. The beauty of this is that it's a fairly easy thing to do, and I don't have to change a thing if additional search engines are launched. New search engines can index my site's content and display results from my site without any additional work on my part.
May 17, 2006
This is a list of web sites and products mentioned during Roald Marth's presentation at Dynatek's 14th Annual User Conference at VisTaTech Center in Livonia, MI:
March 24, 2006
The latest HDTV podcast from the HT Guys (#76) mentions Technology Evangelist's syndicated HD videos content available through iTunes.
March 16, 2006
Yesterday I posted on Democracy player, and right now it's Technology Evangelist's preferred player for techies. As we stated, it's a wee bit buggy and not for everyone yet, so how can you watch our HDTV content if you're not an uber-geek?
March 4, 2006
As I complete the editing of our next episode of "The Innovators" I thought it would be fun to mention some of the nifty little things that we do inside of each video as it's posted. Since the next video will have a lot of URLs in it, I think you'll find these tips handy. Please note that the following applies to our "Watch Now" clip only and not to the clips you would download via iTunes or any other RSS feed we may have.
Progressive Start
Our Watch Now clip is authored in such a way that it should start playing immediately if you have a 1Mbps or greater connection to our server. This means no buffering time, no waiting, nothing. If you only have a 56k connection or slower broadband connection to the net, that's OK, you'll just have to wait a bit longer. Unlike traditional streaming media, you'll still be able to watch in full quality no matter what your connection speed.
Chapter Marks
In the lower right hand corner of the player you'll see a nifty drop down with a title in it. This drop down lists the chapters that are available for playback. If you have not yet downloaded a chapter yet, it will not show up in this list, only items you're able to view will be in here. This is nice if you want to jump to a specific point in the video.
URL banners
You may have noticed that we place the URL of different web sites in the video feed. Not only are they handy to reference, but they are clickable too. For reasons beyond my comprehension, Apple decided to not change your cursor to a pointing hand when you're hovering over a link, so the only way to know that you can click on it is if I tell you. Well, any time you see a black bar with a URL in it, you can click on it (and sometimes you can click on the name banners too).
Full Screen
I'll be posting an experimental full-screen mode for users that don't have QuickTime Pro. Once again Apple baffles the mind and decided to not allow full-screen playback unless the viewer purchases QuickTime Pro, or if the author puts special tags in their media to force the player full screen. Needless to say, we'll have the special tags. I'll be doing this with the 480p content, so make sure your box is able to play 480p h.264 video, otherwise it may stutter a bit.
Syndication
You can view any of our HD feeds right inside of your favorite video syndication software, such as Apple iTunes. Simply browse for our feeds directly in iTunes, or subscribe to our feed manually from this page. We offer feeds in 480p, 720p, 1080p, Video iPod, Sony PSP, MP3 and AAC formats. We'll even be posting torrent feeds soon giving you access to the all new Democracy Player.
I'm about done editing our next episode, but as I have mentioned before it takes a very long time to compress the content. As soon as I have a majority of the video ready, I'll post her online to help curb your HD addiction. Hope everyone enjoys these nifty tips!
March 2, 2006
I have had MANY comments asking why we chose QuickTime to distribute "The Innovators" when we could have used Flash, Windows Media, etc. I have also had a few questions on why we chose HDV to shoot in as opposed to DVCPRO HD and whatnot. Lets start first with the equipment.
February 16, 2006
Microsoft?｢どｨび｢s Xbox 360 and Sony?｢どｨび｢s Playstation 3 are about more than just games. A lot more. I just recently got my Xbox 360 and have been playing around with some fun stuff involving media downloads. This whole experience makes me think about the future of television.
February 1, 2006
Rocketboom, the tremendously popular daily videoblog starring Amanda Congdon, has decided to accept advertising within their daily news stories. They report on a wide range of topics, from news to culture. They are conducting an Ebay auction for their first week's commercials -- bids have already exceeded $10,000 with more than seven days to go!
January 29, 2006
Under this scenario, a company like Yahoo could pay for prioritized bandwidth, causing their site's content to be delivered faster than Google's. Communications companies, including AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth see prioritized bandwidth as a way to generate new revenue from content providers. This is a hot issue deserving attention from internet users because congress is updating the 1996 Telecommunications Act this year.
January 9, 2006
One of the big announcements at the 2006 International CES Show this week came at Larry Page's keynote where he announced that Google is now offering paid video content through their video service. This upgrade to Google Video allows people to rent or buy video content from major content providers, including the NBA, and more than 300 classic television shows from CBS. However, the press I've seen so far overvalues the role the CBS partnership will play in Google's long-term plans for their video service.
January 6, 2006
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