Michael Harvee has a Groundhog Day, QA director Steve asks for made up word definitions, Listener James & I have been dugg – digg.com/apple/Keyboard_shortcuts_for_Automator_Actions_Tutorial, Podcast Academy & Podcast Expo: Macs everywhere, how to make a viral video, Alex Lindsay of pixelcorps.com and MacBreak Weekly, Leo on narrow casting, Greg Lemon’s mythshow.com, meeting Slau from slau.net, Invisible Shield demo video shieldzone.com, David Lawrence gives advice to Al on slowing down, Doug Kaye from itconversations.com on the Secret Lives of MP3s, meeting brilliant college instructors from Santa Barbara, Al gets interviewed about the NosillaCast for labrats.tv with Andy Walker and Sean Carruthers.
Subscribe to the Podcast –> 
Listen to the Podcast once – 38 min 27 sec
This was a very exciting week for me, I went to the Podcast Academy and Expo in Ontario, California. I’ll be doing some free form rambling about how exciting it was, but first let’s get to the usual business. how better to start the show than to go through Research Department Steve’s latest criticisms. He feels that I should define the silly words i sometimes use, such as “hinky” and “hork”. He believes that I may be leaving some of you confused and bewildered by these non standard words. I think you’re quicker than that and through context even if I make up words you’d be able to keep up. But I don’t want to argue with RD Steve, so I’ll comply with his direction.
Hinky to me means odd or sometimes messed up, like when your applications sometimes behave oddly, or your OS is unstable. Even though Steve thinks this is a made up word, it’s actually in the english dictionary with origins around the 1950s, and the definition that I use is “of an object, unreliable” and the usage is “my brakes are a little hinky”.
He may have me though on the use of the word “hork” which I used to mean messed up, as in “I horked up my Mac when I installed Windows Vista on it.” I looked in the dictionary and didn’t find it, so I had to resort to urbandictionary.com, and even there I had to go in about 5 definitions before I found my preferred meaning. The more common uses include eating quickly, vomiting, stealing, pilfering. Definition 5 is “screw up, make dysfunctional”. Before I move on, I must predefine a word I’m about to use, and that is the word “booger”. Now you might think you know what that word means, but I’m going to use it in the same context as hork – as in “I boogered up my operating system”. I sure hope this clears things up for everyone who was confused or were planning on being confused in my next section.
Forever Monday
As you may have noticed, I boogered my feed last week even though I started 5 hours early. I blamed it on Podtrac and Libysn because they keep changing things with no notice, and it takes me hours of experimentation to figure out what they did. 3 weeks ago i could user secure FTP to move my files to Libsyn or I could use the web interface. 2 week ago neither SFTP nor the web would upload, I finally figured out that I had to switch to plain old FTP. the errors are of course helpful – it kept saying that my user account wasn’t recognized (even though i could log into the website) and they even moved the location of the files on me, so my uploads wouldn’t work and then the feed wouldn’t feed.
Podtrac has just fallen apart on me altogether, that’s a site that tracks podcast downloads to be used by potential advertisers. It hasn’t been pulling any stats for me for a couple of weeks, and this week having the link in the feed url broke it, which I figured out but when I pasted the url back in I accidentally pulled the previous week’s podcast. ARGH! In any case, I apologize for the inconvenience, and i appreciate listener Mike’s comment on the blog when he said, “remember Al, this is supposed to be fun!” Michael Harvee (with 2 e’s) had the best commentary on what happened, it’s kind of long but it’s just wonderful:
insert Michael Harvee’s audio here
I really enjoyed that Michael, really puts life into perspective!
I’ve been Dugg!
remember the tutorial written for us by James Kocsis where he taught us to create keyboard shortcuts using Automator? It was back on show #58, and I’m still using the shortcuts he taught us to do, AND I’m even getting my nerve up to do more Automator actions now that he got me over my fear of it. Well anyway, his tutorial made it to Digg! That’s the site where you can post an article you thought was cool (you digg it) and then if other people like it too, they digg it, and as it gets dugg by more people it rises in popularity. You can also undigg something if you think it’s stupid. Right now his tutorial has 13 diggs – if you thought it was cool, I’d love it if you’d go over and digg it yourself, let’s see if we can get it way up there! to digg this article, go to the link in the shownotes digg.com/apple/Keyboard_shortcuts_for_Automator_Actions_Tutorial or just go to digg.com and do a search for “Automator tutorial”. Be sure to set the time to last 30 days or you’ll never find it. I think this is so cool, it shows how much people really like tutorials!
Podcast Academy & Expo
This week’s Podcast Academy & Expo was just fantastic! I have SO much to tell you, so I’m going to break it up into pieces. the most important thing to get across is the feeling from the show – the excitement & enthusiasm from the people I met and the things I learned. Later, probably next week and beyond I’ll be walking through some specific tools I learned about that are pretty darn cool!
Podcast Academy from gigavox.com
– 8 lessons – good – not dramatically better than Podcast expo though
– Macs everywhere! about 75%
– viral video – Tim Street of the non-family friendly French Maid TV – how to for young men – emotions: o Love, joy, surprise, anger, sadness, fear – capture 1/2/3 – little kid video example
– Alex Lindsay from Pixel Corps pixelcorps.com – they help graphic artists learn their craft better and to find professional work.
– MacBreak Weekly podcast from twit.tv/mbw
– watched on Call for Help with Leo, Leo pushes too fast, he explains really fast. here he had no time driver so he rambled – loved it! my question re: enhanced podcasts, he sells to mac users, will pay more for shiny, pay $150 more for black!
– I hate TV. I hate it completely. I want to kill it.
– talked to him one on one afterwards, great fun, nicest guy, very gracious
Leo
– narrow casting is a good thing – youre talking to people who care about what you care about – stop worrying about numbers of downloads – TechTV was always always trying to get them to broaden the appeal to the audience – Wrong answer if youre doing a show for ESPN, dont do a show about football who dont really like football! You do it for people who LOVE football! – They diluted it until no one wanted to watch it. I liked this!
– advertising big subject of the weekend – Leo took it on because even he doesn’t make money podcasting! 88% of the respondents to TWITs survey said they were glad they took on advertisers, but 12% felt like we were lovers, I thought you were doing it just because you loved me this is actually gratifying, means we connected
– While i enjoyed Leo, actually wasn’t his best work, especially since he did much of the same speech the next day for the keynote! Always a pleasure to see leo anyway.
– sat next to Steve Gibson of Security Now! from grc.com/securitynow.htm
Greg Lemon – mythshow.com, knew my cast! if you like mythology, I am certain you’ll enjoy his show. he’s just getting started, so give lots of encouragement if you like it!
General Impressions 2 camps – those who want to learn better how to serve their listeners and those who believe podcasting is here to serve ads. Many concentrating on how to connect with your audience – make forums and wikis on your blog so people can participate, makes it more of a dialog, people feel like they’re part of the show. I’m going to try and do this, I’m not sure how many peopel know how to write/edit wikis, but we’ve got a pretty geeky audience so that should work. At least having forums could be fun! don’t know how much work that would end up being for me though, I might need to solicit some help in moderating them!
Slau
High point was meeting Slau – remember podsafe for peace . honored he listens to the show, met through emails, finally in person. so much fun! check out his music at slau.net
Invisible Shield
Exhibit hall – Invisible Shield from shieldzone.com – thin plastic material to protect iPods, cell phones, gaming systems, PDAs, GPS’s – custom fit, incredible protection with no thickness. have on my iPod Video, toss it around carelessly and no damage at all. demo with nuts and bolts – 
Slow down
David Lawrence – specializes in teaching how to use “natural voice”. asked for volunteers, I said people say I talk too fast. He gave 2 good ideas – take longer pauses, and repeat if too excited! I’ll give it a try – let me know how I’m doing! he also told us to push up our cheeks on either side of our chin and go “bbbbbbbbb” – so maybe he was just making fun of us!
Secret Lives of MP3s
Doug Kaye of IT conversations at itconversations.com – a great podcast, taught Secret Lives of MP3s. it was a great, really really geeky presentation on the difference between MPEG 1 and 2, when to use AAC vs. AIFF vs. MP3, how to use encoders to create high pass filters – tons of stuff you don’t care about! what you DO care about is how I can continue to improve the sound quality of my podcasts. He really taught me some stuff that I hope will help, so again let me know if you find the sound gets better (or worse!)
One of the greatest parts of the show is taking a break and sitting down with a group of people you don’t know for lunch. I think the most fun i had was when i met two teachers from Santa Barbara City College – Linda and I think her name was Liz. These two women are so far ahead in technology, that school is so lucky to have them. They’re in media arts, and they’re always looking towards the future to how to bring information to the students. it was positively delightful to talk to them because they were brilliant, and knew a ton about how to work with the Mac, they were only missing a few little points here and there how to get into podcasting. They were very indulgent with me and pretended to find me fascinating, either that or I really did teach them something. I talked so long that I missed a session I meant to attend, but it was worth it. Half of this kind of experience is what you learn, the other half is what you teach. Podcasting is all about giving back, so it was a great investment for me. I hope they need my help again, I encouraged them to write if they need me!
another fun experience – in Jan when I got my MBP I podcasted, how happy with Samson – s/w didn’t work, answered the phone, knew everything about the Mac – I went to their booth, and I started telling the story, and the guy says – “that was me!” his name is Rob Garofala and he was so stoked to hear my impressions of their service. fun to get to tell them!
Highest point of the week!
On Call For Help in Canada with Leo LaPorte i’ve come to “know” Andy Walker and Sean Carruthers. Andy has moved onto other adventures, but I came to love him because of how he would explain technology using food! ex: peanut butter & kittens to explain VPN. very silly, leo chucking food at him, always a mess. Sean Carruthers brings more serious geekiness – great explanations of technology, he’s still on the show. Andy and Sean have video podcast Lab Rats labrats.tv – explain technology like what’s all this about HD TV and interlaced vs. progressive scan?
Imagine excitement – see them at the show with no one around! gushed like a groupie – rockstars to me. then Andy asked if I’d agree to be interviewed for their show!!! did the show, great fun, so honored, could NOT have been more gracious! As soon as it airs on labrats i’ll be sure to tell you about it. In the mean time I put a link to a page of pictures my buddy Ron took while we were doing the interview. pictures from the interview
I’m exhausted from three days of fun and learning, so I’m going to sign off now. As always, keep your great feedback coming by sending me voice recordings at [email protected] or emails at [email protected]. thanks for listening, and stay subscribed.