Archive for June, 2007

With the Joost hype machine cranking into overdrive, this little gem is nipping at Joost’s heels and has barely caused a ripple in the Internet pond. However that’s not to say that this is a site to be dismissed. Whilst Joost is an IPTV solution, it’s still dependent on a separate piece of client software installed on your desktop/laptop computer. This does however have the advantage of giving you a very rich environment in which to watch the provided content. Chime.tv has gone for the totally portable, web based solution and has still managed to pull off quite an interesting and full featured interface all of it’s own.

Both Chime.tv and Joost have a variety of channels from which to choose. Each of these channels has a range of hand picked content. Chime.tv draws it’s selections from the many videos available on YouTube, Google Video, Veoh and a whole host of other video sites. Whilst the content is somewhat limited, it is however of a fairly high quality, in content that is.

When watching YouTube videos, everyone has come to expect less than perfect video quality. On the whole this fails to be a significant problem, when played at the usual default YouTube page size. However when watched via Chime.tv at full screen, the pixelated quality is all to prevalent. If you are watching in your browser at full size, the quality soon gets in the way of the user experience, however when watching via a regular TV, if you have your desktop/laptop hooked up and you are watching from a distance, this is a minor annoyance. It does however become an issue, the higher the quality of your TV display, especially high definition flat screens. On the whole however it’s something you get used to pretty quickly and doesn’t distract too much.

Certainly an engaging site. It will be interesting to see if they manage to keep the available channels fresh and interesting.

New version of Democracy launches and hidden in there, is mention of a name change with version 1.0, from Democracy to Miro… mmm shame, I much prefer Democracy. You can, as always get it here.

New features are as follows :

1. Folder watching.
2. Resume playback. If you’re watching a 15 minute video and stop halfway, we’ll remember where you were when next time you watch it. There’s a preference setting to turn this on and off.
3. Auto-updating for Mac users. This should be the last time that Mac users will need to go to their browser to download a new version. From now on, when a new version is released you’ll be able to install it within the app and relaunch (we’re now using Sparkle). Windows users don’t have auto-update yet, but we’ll be able to give you details about what’s new in each release from within the app (right now it just tells you that there’s a new version, with no details).
4. Minimize to tray on windows– when you click the red x in the upper right, the application will hang out in the system tray. A much requested feature.
5. Windows Vista compatibility. This solves playback issues for some Vista users.
6. Resizing of thumbnails. We now resize and cache thumbnails so that the images displayed are smoother. This also makes switching between channels much faster.
7. More thorough proxy support.
8. Ability to play audio files on mac (previously we sent you out to an external player).
9. Many more keyboard shortcuts on Windows. This will make remote control support easy. Full keyboard shortcuts for Mac are coming soon with the first version of Miro.
10. Bug fixes, memory use reduction, memory leak fixes. Updated Perian on OSX to version 1.0b5.

I found out about this site, quite by chance. I’d read a blog entry over at John (I get no Spam) Dvorak’s site on learning to kiss passionately, which lead to a video on YouTube. No I don’t need any to tips, but if Dvorak covers it, it has to be worth a look, which indeed it was. Anyway the site behind the video, was one I hadn’t come across before. As soon as I hit the home page, I knew I’d found something special.

Basically the video site, VideoJug, aims to give advice and help on everyday things and situations, from computers to parenting, using videos. This in itself wouldn’t be a big deal, if the videos weren’t so good. Check it out. All comments welcome.

• Author : Ted Demopoulos
• Publisher : Kaplan Business
• ISBN Number : 1419584359
• Cost : $18.95
• Buy Book : Amazon
• Pages : 224
• Star Rating : 8.5 out of 10

The length of this books title, belies it’s relatively short page length. However at just a tad over 200 pages, you’d be hard pushed to cram in any more information than the author Ted Demopoulos already has.

The sub title of the book, “Read-Life Advice from 101 People Who Successfully Leverage the Power of the Blogosphere”, probably gives a better idea of what you can expect. I’m a particular fan of this style of book. Authors can research all they want, but if you really need to find out about a given subject, who better to talk to than the people directly involved. The subject in this case being Blogging and podcasting.

Most how to/advice books are pretty dry affairs, with page after page of tips and advice, usually from someone who is a legend in their own lunchtime. Whilst Ted Demopoulos’ credentials are not in doubt, this book takes a different tack, by providing 101 tips, not from Ted himself, but from out in the field, bloggers and podcasters who impart some of their hard earned lessons. There are many names in this book, with whom you may already be familiar with, including Seth Godin, C.C. Chapman, Todd Satterston and Guy Kawasaki, high profile bloggers, podcasters and people working in supporting areas.

The books 200+ pages are broken down into the following 8 sections :

1. The Basics
2. Some Business Uses of Blogs and Podcasts
3. Planning Your Blog
4. Making Money
5. Promoting Your Blog and Tracking Statistics
6. Podcast Specific Topics
7. Other Blog and Podcast Considerations
8. The Future

There is much to enjoy in this book and also tons of information to glean, for use in your own podcasts and blogs. There’s also a great resources section at the end of the book, that collects all of the websites mentioned throughout the book and lists them again by section, for easy reference.

Conclusion : A throughly entertaining book, filled with useful advice to assist you in your own endeavors. Highly recommended.

Issue #17 of Podcast User Magazine is now available and the biggest issue yet at 60 pages. Don’t forget it’s free to download, or you can subscribe for free and have it electronically delivered to you each month, as soon as it is published.

Get it here.