I don’t know how I missed the Amazon Honor System, but there it was, making setting up a donation system very easy. And why you might ask, would I need donations? Because, I give a lot of my time away for free, can’t say no to sad story about how some person or another needs a Website, design work, or podcasting advice. Plus, everything I like doing doesn’t pay, or I haven’t discovered how to turn the cash spigot on.
Some of the projects I work on are the Photo Share Podcast, Writer’s Voice, this blog, the Netcast Blog, and I volunteer a lot of time to Valley Free Radio. This doesn’t count the ad hoc questions I get every day, none of which I ask money for answering.
Asking people to donate to my sustenance seems like an honorable thing . . . it’s better than robbing a bank! Or maybe not? My favorite radical defense attorney, Gerry Spence, said that the one crime he could rationalize and defend was bank robbing. Can you stop me from robbing a bank? Please check out my Amazon Honor System page.
We record the Photo Share Podcast using a Skype to Skype call; I make a Skype call to my podcast co-host Sandra and record the conversation, editing and mixing the audio file (.wav) later. We do this because it’s convenient and cheap (Skype to Skype calls are free), but there’s a bunch of problems that can crop up. Here are my top 5 potential screw-ups when recording these calls: Continue reading
A couple of weeks ago, on my Photo Share Podcast, we talked about the possibility of Microsoft gobbling up Yahoo. It wasn’t hard to see the writing on the wall, if you paid attention to the business news. There was some speculation by analysts that Microsoft would make the offer soon. Little did we know that Microsoft had been courting Yahoo since late 2006, making occasional offers during the past year.
Microsoft needs Yahoo. Despite its dominant position in both the operating system and desktop application realms, the computing world is changing, and if you look closely you too can see it. The web browser is becoming more powerful, designers and programmers using their skills to greater affect to get the most from the browser technology. With this shift to a browser based computer experience, more applications are being ported from the desktop to the web; see Google Docs, Salesforce.com, Flickr, Basecamp, and many more. This shift isn’t unlike the same one that took place when computing world moved from mainframe to personal, desktop based computing.
When Microsoft gets Yahoo, which may take a year or more after regulators in the U.S and Europe finish digging their teeth into the deal, they’ll have to “integrate” Flickr into Microsoft. If they don’t, Microsoft will be wasting their money. When Yahoo bought Flickr they could afford to leave Flickr to its own devices because the two companies operate on a primarily web based business model. Microsoft’s business model is not web based, and when they’ve tried to make the shift the results have been a failure, for the most part. See the latest, Windows Live. That’s why Microsoft needs Yahoo; it’s an admission of failure.
What might the integration of Flickr into the Microsoft world look like? From jump street there are going to be problems: what ID system will you use to login to Flickr? Well, given that Microsoft is buying the Yahoo users, I predict you’ll be moving over to the Microsoft system.
Expect new features to roll out at a much slower pace. More advertising. More integration with Microsoft proprietary technology (fewer implementations of open standards). A new Office program that will integrate the desktop and Flickr (of course, it will be clumsy and crash a lot). A change in the Flickr terms of use that will allow Microsoft to use your photos across its various sites.
Stay tuned. Things will get interesting. We’ll be having a new podcast up by Sunday night or Monday morning, covering all the latest news in the Microsoft/Yahoo mess.
It’s Christmas Eve, but we’re still hard at work on the Photo Share Podcast (and we’ll be putting out a podcast on New Year’s eve too). In case you haven’t heard, Photo Share Podcast is the only Flickr related podcast currently being produced. This episode takes another leap forward: our first audio comment came in from our photo of the week winner, Paul Specht. For this alone you should check out the podcast; Paul gives us some great info and tips about working with medium format and cross processing film photography. And we started a new feature: highlighting Flickr mash ups. I hope you like it.
Creating a podcast involves some heavy lifting! This is our second podcast . . . which we only had to record twice. Seems there were some technical glitches that just couldn’t be edited out with Audacity.
Lesson number 1: make sure you have your microphone cables under control when recording, because they sure make a lot of noise if they’re knocking around.
One thing our second podcast features, and that I want to talk about more of in the future, are applications (and mash-ups) that people are creating using the Flickr API.
One of the ways to cheaply record a podcast that has multiple hosts is to use Skype, the voice over internet protocol (voip). I’m using this technique when I record Photo Share Podcast with Sandra, my co-host. This post will try to steer you away from some of the mistakes we’ve made. Continue reading
I‘m in the process of trying to get a new podcast off the ground (if you haven’t heard it yet, check out Photo Share Podcast), and part of that means spreading the word to listeners of podcasts, or people who might be interesting in the subject of online photo sharing (like Flickr!). And I want to help users of both iPods and Zunes to hear my podcast. But . . . Microsoft won’t let me contact users of the Zune because I’m a Mac person and can’t install their special podcast submission software (it’s PC only). If you want to submit a podcast to their “marketplace” for consideration you’ll need a PC, thank you.
I put a special button on my site for Zune users to quickly add my podcast to their stupid brown machine, but Microsoft can’t give me any love back? Truly, a screwball company.
We finally went live with the Photo Share Podcast! Boy, if you have any intention of making a good podcast, with a nice site, good audio quality, and some compelling content, it takes a lot of work. Really, more than I ever thought, and I advise people about podcasting every day. But I wanted to do it right. For more than 6 months I worked on this podcast: looking for a host, thinking of a title, getting the website set-up, learning about audio production, working with my friend Ian Callahan on a graphic design, doing a demo show . . . all the time adds up.
It’s almost time: the premiere of the Photo Share Podcast. I’ve been working on finding a co-host, the website, and now the show intro is finished. I’m pretty happy with it, and I wish to thank the band Chi Weapon for the use of their podsafe music, Kanji. I’m also using their song for the outtro of the show, but in the future I’d like to feature music from bands that submit something catchy.
Here’s the show intro. Stay tuned, in 10 days or so we’ll have the first podcast.
According to MacWorld News, Queen Elizabeth II’s Christmas speech is being podcast. The Royal podcast is going to be posted on the BBC’s Web site, available when the speech is broadcasted.
Westminster Digital, a company that provides the U.K. governement with other media streaming services, is hosting the podcast.
On the one hand this isn’t really a big deal. Do you think the Queen even knows that her speech is being podcast? Probably not. I don’t picture the ol’ girl listening to herself on an iPod; and I don’t think she is going to down mix or sweeten her own audio. But, this does indicate how podcasting is becoming ubiquitious. Another note in podcasting history.
photo credit: zombophoto
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