Joining the iPod club

Hooha! I got an iPod for my birthday! I was hinting, but it was still a surprise. It's a green 3rd generation 8 Gig iPod Nano. The third gen nanos have video, too!

I've already gotten into iTunes and pulled in all my ripped CDs. I also subscribed to a bunch of podcasts (some favorites that I was simply pulling off YouTube, some I had downloaded directly from their host websites).

My sister got me an iTunes gift card, too, so I was able to buy some songs I found out about from Pandora (there's only one MC Chris song on iTunes!! Lame!) I also pulled in two Mitch Hedberg Comedy Central tv specials. I've yet to get my own videos on there - that's something I'd like to do, and I'll updates here as I figure that out.

But, overall, I'm totally digging my iPod. I'm finding iTunes and syncing up my iPod to be an easier process then I thought it would be, and I have no complaints about the click-wheel or using the iPod interface (two things I've heard other people complain about). I am definitely seeing how one could get lured into the "listen to my iPod everywhere all the time" thing - it's awesome having so much music so easily available in such high quality in such a small package. I can't believe I actually worked out in the garden last summer with a Sony DiscMan clipped onto my belt...

Using Labels in Blogger

I just realized that all of my tags (or labels as Blogger calls them) weren't working. The labels are the "key words" that appear below each post, which will basically help you, the reader, browse my posts by subject. Anyway, I was just typing them in when I would post - but apparently they need to be separated by a comma.... Ugh, so now I need to go back through all my posts to fix them. Seems stupid that it wouldn't be smart enough to separate them by itself or at least prompt the user a little better as to the preferred format.

YouTube Partners

So, I've found out a lot more about the whole YouTube Partners thing. Apparently getting the extra features a partnership can provide can be as simple as applying to be a partner! This doesn't seem to be heavily advertised by YouTube, but there are instructions and loads of YouTube video bloggers talking about it, like this guy.

I think Arlington County should qualify - I've uploaded about 100 videos and we generate original content on a regular basis that is viewed by thousands (well, cumulatively maybe). I'll go through the application and we'll see! Heck, my personal YouTube account gets hits in the thousands, too, so maybe I'll see if I can be a partner on that side, too...

The YouTube "in crowd"

I found out that the state (er, Commonwealth) of Virginia signed up and has started posting videos.

They don't exactly have the whole thing figured out yet it seems, as some of their videos are unsynched and aren't quite YouTube "friendly," but whatever. The thing that really struck me was how when you go to their channel page, the main video plays automatically. Funny thing is, I was just talking to John Lisle, the PIO of Arlington's Police Department about this exact thing - the ACPD has a YouTube page of their own and John was asking me about how to make the video on the channel page play automatically (like the VA state channel). I didn't think it was possible, but now that I saw the VA state page doing it, I knew there was something to what John had said.

As any good internet researcher does, I turned to Google. I typed in "auto-play video on youtube channel page." This got me some good hits and basically what I learned is this: YouTube will work with celebrities, large companies, politicians and any other big powerful organization and give them a "super" page that can have its own fancy background, an auto-play video, and a couple other features. It's not something mentioned on YouTube's pages, in any of the account settings, or even in their help. Interesting....

So, I sent a friendly message to the VA state folks (linky on their channel page, of course). I offered a suggestion about encoding their video to help with the synch issue and inquired about the auto-play video... all in the interest of inter-governmental partnerships, etc...

I got a reply back, and long story short it is indeed a big Google who-you-know thing - the whole VA YouTube thing came out of a meeting between Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Governor Tim Kaine. Within two days, the VA YouTube page launched.

Goozex

Goozex is a video game trading site I discovered recently after yet another frustrating craigslist experience had me down on the whole idea of trading video games with people... Seems interesting. I've signed up and put my "library" of games (actually just three games I don't really want anymore anyway) out for trading. But I don't need to explain how it works. You can read it for yourself.

My kid's online... I have no idea how that works.

So I was talking to someone and they mentioned their 9 year old's DS and how he had lost a piece to it. I asked if he lost the stylus, intending to suggest a good replacement brand.

"The what?" she replied.

"The little pen thing," I explained.

"Oh, I don't know what it does. I have no idea how it works." And the conversation ended.

And that's kinda okay, I guess, but then later on I overheard the same person talking about their son to someone else. "Oh, yeah, he connects it to the computer and plays games on there with his friends."

Wow, so you don't know how your 9 year old's game works, yet he's going online to play Pokemon with strangers? Awesome.

Link to my early post about buying a Nintendo DS

Sony XD Cams and proxy video possibilities

So we got our new Sony XD cameras in at work (HD, woo-hoo!), along with new decks and lots of other fun new gear. Looking at the gear and thinking about what other bits 'n' pieces we might need, I suggested we get some big flash drives.

The idea that I had was that we could shoot on the XD cams and use the proxy video to do some cuts-only editing with the free Sony software that comes with the cameras (and is available online). The proxy video (low-res versions of the video files that are stored on the Blu-Ray discs that the camera records to) would fit nicely on a big drive, and then we could do some editing at home on our personal computers.

I was thinking specifically about some of our simpler programs and promo stuff, like the Adopt-A-Pet show. That show is mostly cuts-only, with a layer of graphics put on top for lower thirds and transitions. It'd be easy to do the first edit at home, bring in the EDL (edit decision list) and the proxy video, and then have our AVIDs at work reconcile the full-res video and build out the HD timeline. Basically, I'm hoping we'll have some tele-commuting capability as a result of having these new cameras. Not so much consumer technology, which is more the topic for this blog, but it's cutting-edge stuff just the same. Cool!