One of the things Blip.tv offers video publishers is the opportunity to upload a trailer. I thought long and hard about the perfect trailer to describe the weekday Hmmcasts. Here’s my first effort. It’s not videoed in stone and a different one could be produced. Interested in feedback, do you think this accurately captures the essence of the Hmmcast videos to date?
Update 4:55pm PST: Seems like the Flash version of the trailer somehow hosed the video at Blip. I’m in the process of replacing. The downloads are fine.
Don’t really care how many or how often others bash the Zune, I’m still using mine. No buyer remorse here.
Note of historical confirmation to one critic, the Zune isn’t dead and gone “within six months” as predicted. Here we are a full eight months later and the Zune is not even “VHS dead” as stated. Still, the critic stood by his article being “100% correct.” I wonder if he’d take anything back now that time has caught up?
With that said, I still enjoy irresistible humor like the following ZunePhone video.
Comparing the Zune to a rotary dial phone isn’t right, but is funny. Hat tip to the iPhoneBlog where I saw this first.
Now with our 2007 PT Cruiser having an external input, I have another prime opportunity to use portable music players like the Zune and iPod (yes, we still own and enjoy both, it is possible). My wife is saying she wants a new music player because our son is frequently using her iPod — and yes, he uses the Zune too — and I told her to wait until September to see what shakes loose from Apple. I heard something about new iPods next month (?). I’m sure new players will be along for both the Zune and iPod this holiday season.
Behind the Hmmcast
Viewers will notice a dramatic video quality improvement in today’s Hmmcast over most previous ones (download and compare to last Thursday’s Hmmcast). I’m also working on providing video for other formats besides the web and iPod.
Since this Hmmcast experiment began at the beginning of the year I’ve been primarily focused on the content and not on the video quality. This weekend we bought a new HD camcorder and are trying out new video editing software which ratchets up the video and audio quality significantly. I’m using Blip.tv which supports sharing multiple formats and seems to fit my future multi-format plans like a glove.
Still trying to figure these new tools out so please bear with me the next week or two. I’m excited about the possibilities of taking the Hmmcast to the next level in video and audio quality and sharing with the internet world at large.
Oh, and yeah this wasn’t actually posted until like 6:15pm PST, not 4:20pm as the post date/time says. I’ve made it 4:20 for consistency sake, but your readers aren’t broken.
No Hmmcast again this Friday, but in its place I’ll point to a good video from elsewhere. Warning: language not safe for work.
This is the funniest video I’ve seen all week and deals with unruly commenters courtesy of Collegehumor.com first viewed via TheAgitator.com.
As predicted the first comment: “first!” Then someone claiming the graphic was “photoshopped!” And from there you can only imagine how far it goes downhill.
Earlier today coincidentally I was commenting to someone elsewhere about how comments in blogs versus major trafficked sites like YouTube and digg have been better quality. Have you noticed the same thing? Whatever your experience with comment sections, I keep laughing over this video — good stuff!
What a crappy name for a dog, pun intended, but worthy of a chuckle. This lady from Kentucky named him Shithead and then put it on a tombstone when the dog passed on. People are complaining about it, saying it is “disrespectful.” Video not at 11, but below:
I debated whether to pull out the asterisks in the headline. Figured it’s more worksafe this way, so guess I’m dissing the dog too. Wonder what names Michael Vick used for the fighting dogs? Now there is disrespect.
Maybe you already have a million or more dollars, maybe not, but the question is what would you do if someone gave you a million bones? Would you save it? Invest it? Spend it? Squander it? I doubt many people would admit to the latter.
I find the answer people give to this question intriguing. These days a million dollars doesn’t go as far as it used to, unfortunately, but you can still do a lot. I read an article from one of the finance sites awhile back (sorry, didn’t bookmark the link, but would be happy to put in place if anybody else locates) that suggested a good target retirement principal sum these days is 5-10 million dollars. Naturally, that number depends on your family’s standard of living and what you feel like you’ll need, keeping inflation in mind, when you reach retirement age.
For $16 per adult, you can take the world’s largest gondola ride in Kellogg, Idaho at Silver Mountain as many times as you want for the whole day. When we went up on Sunday the skies weren’t completely clear, but it appeared we might be able to reach the mountain top without any fog or rain. This Hmmcast video shows our adventure up close and personal all the way to the top. The temperature at the peak (just over 6,000 feet) was 42 degrees and revealed a sad message:
Who was Natasha Fuller who died at the ripe young age of 21? Natasha was Silver Mountain’s assistant director of Silver Kids, who was killed in a skiing accident at Vail, Colo., on Feb. 7, 2001. While skiing alone she lost control and hit a tree with her head. This reminded me of Sonny Bono.
Cross country I’d be interested in and maybe the tiny hills downhill. The tubes look fun too. Think I’ll pass on any serious downhill skiing.
As mentioned in the last post, we’re doing some major OCR work at the moment. Some of the manuscripts in my writing trunk are 20+ years old. We’re using the demo of Omnipage 15 and think I’ll be buying Omnipage 16 ($149). There is a more expensive pro version for $499, but I don’t think I’ll be needing all those features. This is work intended for another website primarily although I have shared some of my fiction writings here in the past, see the 666 category on 6/6/06. My past experiences with OCR haven’t been as smooth as this one, so I’m hopeful to get the works all digitized.
Drama already on the 3/4 Van Halen new tour. Somebody airbrushed former bassist Michael Anthony out of the album covers on the official website, fans complained — even starting a petition to have him put back — resulting in the webmaster putting Anthony back on the covers.
As the image shows above, the fans retaliated with some photoshop skills of their own. No idea if this was Eddie’s fault or if he even knew about the airbrushing, but he’s taking the fall with some fans. Some are speculating that VH might not want have wanted to pay Michael Anthony for the use of his likeness on the website but that seems incredibly lame if that’s the case.
Come on boys, hold it together. December 3 I’m looking forward to seeing you guys rocking on stage, not busted up again. Heck, I’d like to buy the new album David Lee Roth teased you would make.
PSP .mp4 (480×272) 
iPod .mp4 (640×480) 
Windows .wmv (1480×1080 HD)
