anything media

I often wonder how much storage I’m gonna need for a video project and have found two tools to date that seem to make sense.

The first is a widget (or web page) called VideoSpace for Mac put out by Digital Heaven.

The second I discovered this morning (and am already falling in love) helping a student see if his video assignment would fit on his USB flash drive. It’s a web page optomized for iPhone called Footage Calc and it seems to have more options yet is simpler to use. I set a bookmark on a page on my iPhone so I have one click access to it anywhere as long as I have cell coverage or wifi.

I’m always excited to see what is going on in the video world. Cori Chavez, a Boulder-based colleague began a series called New Video Monday which she is using to promote and explain some of the issues (which many deem illusive) surrounding the online video craze. Her latest highlights a simple online tool known as Animoto which can be used with photos, music, and text to create your own video.

Using Animoto by New Video Monday (Cori Chavez)

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)

Come join in the fun!

… but what about video that gets results and doesn’t take a Hollywood production budget and crew to pull it off?

I’m really excited to have been asked to be part of the Learn About Web Denver conference taking place at the Curtis Hotel September 14th and 15th. The goal of LAW-D is to help small business owners who want to utilize the best resources in social media, web design, and search marketing to attract more customers to their websites. I’ll be speaking on creating great video on a shoestring budget. I know, I know… it’s kind of like cutting off your own arm since video is part of how I pay the bills. But I have a soft place for small business owners who can’t even afford my reasonable prices so Craig Sutton and Deb Robinson found me an easy pushover to get to jump in with both feet.

I’ll be covering some simple but profound (I think so anyways) ways anyone with a video camera can shoot better video and compile them into more effective tools that can get results on your web site… and all that using tools readily available to you already with no additional expense. So come join me! Let’s have some video fun!

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.

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

A recent Neilsen study indicates, in my opinion, a very important and yet untapped question related to the console wars. Joystiq covers the findings which seem to indicate that Xbox 360 owners appear to be more likely than PS3 or Wii owners to spend time on their console. While console purchase numbers are interesting to track, it appears that XBox is winning the console wars in two very important indicators of longevity for games: games sold and console use.

The first, second, and third times have been the charm for IgniteBoulder and IgniteBoulder 4, scheduled for April 29, is sure to be a great time! So mark your calendar and protect that date!

Ignite is a night of presentations on a variety of topics, with a twist. Each presentation has 20 slides, that automatically advance after 15 seconds. It is a worldwide movement, and Boulder is hosting our fourth April 29th at 6pm.

Tickets are set to go on “sale” via EventBrite at 11am on April 15th (tax day… Andrew, what ARE you thinking!)

Cast your votes for what presentations make it to the stage and big screen on April 4. Make your way over to UserVoice and review the pitched topics. You have ten votes to spread between the growing list of topics/ideas.

Andrew Hyde of Boulder.me and StartupWeekend fame does a GREAT job with the tireless job of coordinating these crazy awesome nights.

Kendall Media Group via our eventon.tv brand provides video services to IgniteBoulder. Check it out at:

http://YouTube.com/IgniteBoulder (without slides)

http://omnisio.com/igniteboulder (with slides synced side by side)

Okay, I admit it. I have a severe, over the top lust for the Amazon Kindle. As a new business startup things are tight so, like others whose tweet’s I’ve watched, I too have hovered over that Buy Now button on Amazon’s site several times. However unlike them, I’ve not pressed it. Last week, Amazon released to the iPhone App store a free version of their Amazon Kindle reader. HOORAY! Thanks Amazon, I can delay buying the real one, hopefully till you release the Kindle 3 without a physical keyboard but with one more like the iPhone’s (HEY AMAZON… hint, hint, hint… and I’d be a GREAT beta tester… hint… hint… hint).

I read my first ebook cover to cover on my Dell Axim. So the screen size is not a huge issue for me at this point. It was actually my reading on the Dell Axim that provided the convenience that actually got me back into reading books regularly. So, anyways I downloaded the iPhone Kindle software and thus far I have to say I am very impressed. I read another blog post by Don Reisinger reviewing several other popular ebook readers available for the iPhone and found I disagree. So here’s my two cents worth as far as what I like about Amazon’s offering:

1. Perhaps the biggest perk for me is that books I buy on Amazon now for the Kindle I can read on my iPhone and on that glorious day when a real Kindle is mine I have them for it as well.
2. Simplicity. Others rave over the Stanza or eReader, both of which are free like the Kindle software for the iPhone. I tried them as soon as the App store opened and found them uninteresting and a little too complicated. The simplicity of the iPhone’s overall interface was carried well into Amazon’s Kindle software.
3. Ease of getting books to the iPhone for Kindle. I was really impressed when I chose a sample chapter from a book and indicated I wanted it sent to my iPhone. Shazaam! It was in the list of available books. One of my complaints with the other readers was the complicated process to get books into the reader. While I couldn’t find any that let me buy right through the actual app, I found the buy it on Amazon and it gets sent to your phone to be simple enough.
4. Reading screen itself. For some reason, the Kindle software for iPhone just looks better on my screen in it’s stock install. I guess I could tweak the others and find something similar, but why should I have to. I think someone actually spent some time reading on the Kindle for iPhone and that’s why it has a better stock interface for reading. The Stanza and eReader seem to be a bit behind here. eReader needs to adjust their spacing between lines. I understand they are trying to fit more on the screen, but one of the big wins for the iPhone Kindle is the leading between lines. The Stanza has a way to increase it and tweak the font, size, etc. but I think the Kindle format is fine as it is loaded.
5. Margins. This seems simple, but it makes a big difference. The Kindle has some margins around the edge of the screen. I’m guessing Stanza and eReader want to show a maximized approach to screen utilization. I remember a comparision of the difference getting from one place to the other would make speeding verses doing the speed limit in the city. It was pretty sobering to realize the risk of speeding would only buy me a minute or two. Same for the screen readers in my mind. The margins around the edge maybe only get me one more line on the screen, but having the margins seems to massively increase the readability overall in my opinion.
6. While Don Reisinger applauded the scroll bar for pages I find it irritating and unnecessary. It’s a nice feature but one I doubt I would use. Keeping with my old rule of tech/multimedia “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”

My only fear at this point relates back to an eBook I purchased on Amazon and after several years of not looking at it I went back to view it and was unable to. First problem was they were using Adobe’s stupid edoc reader (not just a standard PDF) and the computer I had the document on was gone… crashed… finito. So the book was no longer accessible without re-downloading it to satisfy Adobe’s specs. When I tried to find it I could not and contacted Amazon. They informed me that the publisher (and a major one) had terminated the contract and they were no longer able to provide access to the book. So basically it was tough luck dude! I was pissed, but there was nothing anyone could do.

I’m hoping the Kindle and Kindle for iPhone have better service for this side of the issue, but for now I’m in love with my iPhone version of the Kindle and will (finally) have a screen reader I feel I can use. Thanks Amazon!

On Dec 31, 2008 I found myself plagued with a virus because I just visisted a site. Not because I downloaded something from it, but because I just visited the page. I had McAfee antivirus running and had never had an issue in over a decade of web stuff. Then, and I’m fairly certain it was SendSpace.com and an embeded PDF that prompted the whole thing, I notice my computer just running like crazy and the fan and a notice that McAfee cannot reach the update server.

That began a long and arduous process of rebuilding the hard drive. I finally caved and went ahead and upgraded the hard drive but still had to ensure all documents and files were bug free. (Will I ever really know that for sure?)

I found this article on Virus Removal at The Powers Zone which had some good tips in it (after I was done of course!). I am now running McAfee and SuperAnti Spyware in it’s real-time protection mode. (NOTE: Had I thought of it beforehand I could have popped the HD out of the notebook, slid it into my external dock on my desktop and done the scan which cleaned it without any of the hours of laboring over it.)