anything media » Just cool stuff

RealSki – Resort Technology Partners

craigkendall — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:54:45 +0000

I’ve been going to the Boulder Denver New Tech meetup for about a year now. It’s always interesting and fairly often we get to have an aha moment when some company unveils something they are working on to the group. Last night was one of those times.

Resort Technology Partners presented their RealSki iPhone app which, pending Apple App Store approval, will be available soon to those of us who enjoy the winter downhill sport. RealSki is a augmented reality app which allows a user to take advantage of their video capabilities to scan the landscape of a ski resort to locate runs and landmarks. As I watched a video of the app being demonstrated I just had to say… WOW!

The app will come in two versions. Free with five maps (including Copper Mountain for those of you in CO). Then you can add additional maps for only $0.99 per map. They will test the app for a short time, then plan to have 100% of North American ski destinations available by the end of 2010.

You may be familiar with augmented reality if you’ve seen Urban Spoon’s scope feature or the new Twitter 360‘s visualization capabilities.

It’s not just the coolness of video location, it’s the realization, like the first time I saw my son communicating with a friend during an Xbox 360 game, that you are watching something that is going to change the face of how we communicate forever. It was awesome! Can’t wait to download my copy of RealSki.

Cool (and useful) Google Calendar Tip

admin — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:23:19 +0000

I have used Google (Apps) calendar for a couple of years now. Love it. But one thing I found annoying was trying to move quickly through the calendar to look ahead. Then, I accidentally placed my cursor over the small calendar that appears usually to the upper left of the main calendar and discovered my scroll wheel advanced or retreated (couldn’t think of another word to convey this) the calendar in rapid fashion. So there’s a great tip for those of you who use Google Calendar. Put your mouse cursor over the small calendar and move the scroll wheel to make big time travel leaps.

FLV Good, Better, Best Aspect Ratio Sizes (Adobe)

admin — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:11:00 +0000

Thanks to Adobe I found a great chart for encoding video to FLV at a variety so different standard (and not so standard) sizes which their gurus had tested to determine which were the best, better, and good settings. Problem is I cannot for the life of me find it online again and I have almost lost my hard copy several times. So when I found it the most recent time (today) I thought it was lost I decided to somehow perserve it for posterity in a manner other than a hard copy printout in a pile on my desk.

(If someone ever finds it only, please tell me where and I’ll give more precise credit where credit is due)

Adobe Standard Aspect Ratio Sizes (PDF)

Something special going on in Boulder CO

admin — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:21:40 +0000

This past two weeks I had the opportunity to participate in an awesome project. The Silicon Flatirons Center (out of CU Boulder) was having a pseudo-gala event honoring several individuals and companies for their work in the entrepreneurial world and for who they were in business in general. One of the awards was a Lifetime Achievement Award for Brad Feld, who is as Jack Tankersley of Meritage Funds put it, “one of the preeminent venture capitalists in the country”. I was enlisted to interview eleven of his colleagues, friends, and family (which I quickly found out most fall into at least two of those categories if they are in one because of the type person Brad is) and to compile sections of those interviews into an hommage video to be shown the night of the gala. Here’s the video:

Brad Feld – Lifetime Entreprenurial Achievement award video from Kendall Media Group on Vimeo.

As you can see, he’s quite a guy. I’m delighted I got to do the project, but more delighted I got to learn more about Brad and the influence he, and others through his inspiration have been able to do in this exciting area.

Organizations all over the world could learn a lot from what I observed the night of the awards. While a number of highly respected and influential people were in the room that night, there was also a league of young entrepreneurs floating around the room taking it all in. It appears the leadership for the event, knowing the audience created a great environment where the two subcultures could meet and “play well” together picked a unique venue in The Dairy Center for the Arts to host the event, and, they facilitated some interaction between folks by, among other things, assigning every attendee to a team for a Rock Band tournament. It was an awesome way to see merging of two generations who love the same thing… starting businesses.

Props to the folks at Silicon Flatirons, to those who have inspired them (like Brad, Jason Mendelson, Brad Bernthal, and Phil Weiser). It’s special what’s happening in what used to be lazy little Boulder.

Calculate PayPal Fees

admin — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:23:27 +0000

Because it would reduce paperwork and time if they could pay by credit card, I had a client recently indicate a desire to pay via PayPal and a willingness to pay the additional PayPal fees to have that convenience. Not sure of the PayPal balance required to offset that I entered “calculate PayPal fees” in Google and discovered this great little tool online:

http://www.rolbe.com/paypal.htm

Guys around table making decisions are too old

craigkendall — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:43:20 +0000

So today, Sony comes right out and says they don’t plan to offer x-box styled Netflix type streaming from the PlayStation3. Here’s a quote:

We’ve concentrated most of our efforts on our download service, both rentals and downloads of movies and TV shows. Our efforts will continue to be there, because our customers want to own the content…[In regards to the Netflix streaming on NXE,] there are certainly some positives for the Xbox 360. But there’s also some confusion. It goes further into the argument of “owning the content” [versus renting or accessing it]. [thanks gizmodo for the heads up]

I remember a meeting I was in of an eBusiness steering team at a 110+ year old publishing company where one of the oldest guys at the table, and the Executive Vice President no less, leaned forward and said “I think the guys around the tables making decisions are too old” in response to a denial of some new and innovative delivery method for content.

Personally, I think xbox and really Netflix has proven to be geniuses. I made the decision as soon as I saw the notice that Netflix streaming was coming to my xbox that I was not going to make the purchase of the PS3 or Blu Ray player I was contemplating because I believe the Blu Ray player will have a short, 8-track-ish life span as realtime streaming and download of content will take over. I know my kids (22 and 24) could care less about “owning” something like a movie on DVD. They’d assume to use Redbox which is way cheaper and ultimately to download through their xbox or TIVO.

Bravo xbox & Netflix… Boo Sony!

Common Craft: Explanations in Plain English is Their Business

craigkendall — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:06:22 +0000

So a friend of mine tweeted a link to an awesome video today. I find trying to explain social media, networking, twitter, and on and on and on to folks who are way out of the loop is terribly difficult. Thanks to these guys, there’s now a GREAT source for explaining and I don’t have to do it. Here’s a sample:

Twitter in Plain English
These guys do great work, and that’s why their whole series is on my list for how to watching.

Drinking from a fire hose

craigkendall — Wed, 21 May 2008 22:42:23 +0000

I remember the first time I heard this phrase. It was used in conjunction with a new employee being fed loads and loads of info on his first day of work. I’d never heard it before but it so fit the look on the guys face. He was so overwhelmed by information pouring into his head.

The other day I got a Twitter message from a friend about an interesting application built on top of twitter which is called Firehose – Realtime Twitter Timeline. It’s built in FLASH but shows the flow of Twitter updates going on near to realtime across their public network.

I signed up for Twitter back when it first showed up but have just recently gotten back into it. Not real sure what to do with it yet, but I’m having fun experimenting with how to capitalize on the eyeballs it affords as well as how to mash it up with all the other toys out there. If you are not Twittering… you should be!

Follow me… craigkendall on Twitter!

Simple Video Blog Solutions

craigkendall — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:57:39 +0000

It seems there’s a growing interest in video on the web and hence many folks looking to figure out how to get into video blogging.

My friend Bill Seaver over at MicroExplosion media posted a simple and user-friendly review of the Flip Video Ultra which seems to be a great solution if you are looking for a way to get quickly into the video blogging world.

How about you… are you using something to create video blogs? What is it? What rocks about it? What sucks about it?

Permanent Email Address… Why all those weird looks?!

craigkendall — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:50:47 +0000

Why is it when I give people my personal email address they look at me funny? Why does the fact that I own my name as a domain and maintain it as my personal email address surprise folks. It’s kind of like I’m a leper or something.

It all begin back in 2002 when I was one of the many bit by the demise of @Home cable company. I awoke one morning to discover the email address many of my friends, family members, and co-workers had used for me for several years was no longer in existence. Sure, Comcast had graciously agreed to provide service to the @Home subscribers displaced by the bankruptcy however, due to no action on my part I suddenly found myself having to get the word out to folks who had me in their address book that I could no longer get email at the address they had always used for me.

That was the day I decided to change my email address to something over which I had almost total control. So I registered my name (craigkendall.com) and the names of my immediate family (juliekendall.com, jeskendall.com, adamkendall.com) and began the journey of managing our own “permanent” email addresses. At first I just redirected at the server level all email to my “permanent address” to my new Comcast account and spoofed the return to my “permanent” address. But, shortly thereafter I ditched the spoofing due to my email being perceived as spam by some servers and started fully hosting my own email address through my web hosting account.

Since then, I have moved the hosting of my email to Google Apps due to their superior spam filtering. It’s a simple yet really sophisticated solution. I point my domain’s MX record to an address specified by GoogleApps and shazaam… my own email address through webmail@craigkendall.com that looks like Gmail, works like Gmail, but is mine. Not an address forwarded to a Gmail account, but my own with all the cool features of Gmail and IMAP functionality to allow me to access my email directly through my iPhone and it stays in perfect sync with my webmail and Thunderbird on my notebook computer at home.

So, it’s too easy to set it all up and you should do the same. Then, you “own” your email address permanently and folks can look at you weird when you give them your email address too.