Subscribed 013: TUAW: The Unofficial Apple Weblog

November 24, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

Today on “Subscribed” I focus on another blog. My blog subscriptions are my lifeline to the world and have easily taken the place of all the print magazines I used to read each week. — Douglas

TUAW: The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Looking through my Google Reader stats, it looks like TUAW is one of my most favorited subscriptions. Even when I don’t have time to write an entire blog post on a topic, I can favorite it in Reader and it will automatically be Twittered out, posted to my Facebook page and stored away for future reference and inclusion in my month-end “My Favorite Things” posts.

TUAW is my go-to site for Apple information of all sorts. I am a Mac user myself, so much of this information is put to immediate use, but a large part of my clientele is also Mac-based, so when an important update, bug or announcement goes out, I am sure to hear about it quickly and thoroughly via TUAW.

Like many of the blogs I mention here, TUAW also has a companion YouTube channel.

Visit TUAW’s YouTube Channel

What are some of your favorite Subscriptions? Share them here in the comments!

Previously highlighted on Subscribed:

Elsewhere: Camera pan with a mechanical Kitchen Timer

November 12, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

Can you make a camera pan using a cheap mechanical kitchen timer? Instrucable member, mikeasaurus, did. A cool, relatively low-tech way of allowing you to create smooth pans which you can turn into time-lapse photos. His example here was created by shooting video and speeding it up in the editing process. If you had intervalometer to trigger the camera shutter, you could create more traditional time-lapse videos.

Links to his post and some sample video below.

wind up camera pan by mikeasaurus

[…]

Using a regular point-and-shoot digital camera I set the camera to video and wound up my timer. Here’s some footage I compiled with my camera pan, these videos were taken over about 10 minutes and sped up to show the slow pan effect:

[…[

Read the entire article

Elsewhere: How to Create Custom YouTube Thumbnails

November 6, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

A great intro to the whys and hows of creating custom YouTube thumbnails to dress up your channel and make your videos more attractive.

How to Create Custom YouTube Thumbnails

Are you frustrated by the default random YouTube thumbnail option for your videos?

Do you wish you could create something custom to improve your views?

Since December 2011, YouTube has been making some radical changes to their site.

Everything from the home page layout, website colors and even the look and feel of the video players have changed dramatically.

But none of these aesthetic changes have had any real impact on the way we need to be marketing videos on YouTube.

However, this latest change may just be the biggest game-changer that savvy video marketers can take advantage of! Introducing the Custom YouTube Video Thumbnail.

[…]

Read the entire article

Video: #KitchenParty – How to publish a successful food blog w/ Nichelle Stephens from Cupcakes Take the Cake! – Recorded Version

October 19, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:01:18 — 159.6MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

While #KitchenParty is mainly about food and foodie things, in this week’s episode we also talk a lot about what makes a successful food blog and, more generically, any successful blog. — Douglas

Watch the recorded video below!

Success blog

How to publish a successful food blog

Nichelle Stephens from Cupcakes Take the Cake! We’re talking Cupcake Recipes & how to #publish a successful food blog.

To watch the show, simply go here on Thursday at 5pm PDT/8pm EDT on our BakeSpace.com page or head on over to our site at: http://www.bakespace.com/news/how-to-publish-a-successful-food-blog/

And don’t forget… every show we publish a community cookbook based on the topic. This week we’re sharing #cupcake #recipes . To our your favorite recipe to our #community #cookbook upload your favorite recipe here: http://bit.ly/cupcakecookbook

Your Hosts Every Week: Babette Pepaj from BakeSpace.com , +eff Houck from the Tampa Tribune, Rene Lynch (LA Times) & Douglas Welch (pro blogger – a Gardner’s Notebook)

Subscribed 008: GardenforkTV with Eric Rochow

October 19, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

I have been watching Eric Rochow and GardenforkTV for a long time. He first caught my eye with some excellent videos on all sorts of gardening and food topics and more recently he has expanded to Gardenfork Radio — a long form talk and interview audio podcast that is perfect for listening in the car.

Gardenfork is a fairly eclectic channel and podcast, covering everything from Eric’s boisterous Labradors to who to make the perfect mashed potatoes to building raised beds to beekeeping. Eric has an infectious, unassuming manner which makes you feel like you would love to have him for a neighbor in the country. The show splits its time between his and his wife’s (the “camera operator”) apartment in Brooklyn and their farm in rural Connecticut.

You can subscribe to the GardenforkTV YouTube Channel for all the videos or subscribe to the video podcast using iTunes and/or ths Gardenfork Radio audio podcasts. I subscribe to both podcasts, as I love to see most everything Eric produces.

Visit the Gardenfork YouTube Channel for more videos!

What are some of your favorite YouTube Subscriptions? Share them here in the comments!

Previously highlighted on Subscribed:

Also on WelchWrite.com: #KitchenParty: Healthy recipes throughout the holidays – 8pm EDT/5pm PDT

October 11, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

I write on a lot of different topics here on WelchWrite.com, some of which you might also be interested in. Infrequently, I like to share events that are happening on the other WelchWrite blogs. I hope you find them interesting — Douglas

Join us for our next KitchenParty show and live chat on Thursday, October 11th at 5pm pacific/8pm eastern. This week’s guests are: Amie Valpone, The Healthy Apple and Carolyn Scott-Hamilton, The Healthy Voyager.

Submit your favorite ‘Healthy Holiday Recipe’ for our community cookbooks: http://bit.ly/hhrecipes

My Favorite New Media Things – September 2012

October 11, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

My Favorite Things

Here are my favorite shared new media items for September 2012.

Please let me know in the comments if you find any of the particularly useful. I’ll keep my eye open for similar items — Douglas

Subscribed 005: Tested.com

September 7, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame are joined by Will Smith and Norman Chan for coverage of “…anything that’s awesome!” Shows range from tips and hints to visits to Adam’s Man Cave and Jamie’s Warehouse for talk about movie props, welding and more. Additional shows cover uses for the MakerBot, a 3-D printer, product reviews and more.

Tested.com is another great hangout for geeks on the Internet. Check it out!

From the Tested.com Web Site…

SO, WHAT KIND OF STUFF CAN I READ ABOUT ON TESTED?

The short, pithy answer is: We’ll cover anything that’s awesome. The longer answer is that we have many interests, ranging from breakthroughs in science, amazing tales of exploration, and discoveries in nature to emerging technologies and new consumer products that promise to change our everyday lives. Tested is the place where we’ll explore those topics in depth, asking the hows and the whys about the things that excite us the most.

The number one rule of Tested is simple. We want to make Tested the site that we’d be most interested in reading. If you think there’s something we should be covering, but aren’t, please let us know!

Previously highlighted on Subscribed:

Article: How To Create A World: Skyrim’s Director On Building A Never-Ending Fantasy

September 3, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

Interesting article. I am collecting articles like this to share with my son who has entered the Tech/Game program at his new high school. I had been wondering myself how you went about creating a game as complicated as Skyrim and this article is a good place to start. I am trying to give him a good understanding of all the work — and all the different types of work — that go into creating a large commercial game.

How To Create A World: Skyrim’s Director On Building A Never-Ending Fantasy
By: Kevin Ohannessian

The fantasy world of Skyrim is notable for its scale and level of realism. Game director Todd Howard explains how his team at Bethesda Game Studios approaches the creation of a world.

[…]

Read the entire article

News: Blue Microphones Mikey Digital takes iPhone and iPad recording up a notch

September 2, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

From TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog…

Blue Microphones Mikey Digital takes iPhone and iPad recording up a notch

[…]

When it comes to microphones for the iPhone and iPad, I have to admit that I haven’t been too impressed with what’s been delivered over the past few years. For example, the original iRig Mic from IK Multimedia was quite noisy, although the iRig Mic Cast improved on that somewhat. The original Mikey from Blue Mics was also an improvement, but now the company is shipping the new Mikey Digital (US$99.99) that works with recent iPhones and all iPads to capture stereo sound with clarity.

[…]

Read the entire article

I am always looking for cool, new, new media tools and Blue seems to keep a fairly constant flow of new recording tech. I personally own a Blue Snowball microphone and have many fellow podcasters who use their Yeti product. It will be interesting to try out the Mikey and see what it can do.

My Favorite Things for New Media – August 2012

September 1, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

My Favorite Things

Here are my favorite shared New Media items for August 2012.

Please let me know in the comments if you find any of the particularly useful. I’ll keep my eye open for similar items — Douglas

Musopen is a online warehouse of public domain classical music recordings and sheet music

August 17, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

First seen on Slashdot…

Musopen’s front page declares…

“Musopen (www.musopen.org) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit focused on improving access and exposure to music by creating free resources and educational materials. We provide recordings, sheet music, and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions. Put simply, our mission is to set music free.”

What does this mean for you, the new media producer? Well, much like the old cartoons many of us watched while growing up, this classical music can be used in out New Media projects without worrying about copyright issues. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of classical music pieces available for download as MP3 or m4a files. These can be sliced and diced, played as music beds for your shows and a host of other New Media uses. While you might not have thought about using classical music in your productions, I think revisiting these classics might provide some interesting content of your shows.

You can search through the catalog in a variety of ways, including composer, performer, instrument, period and more.

Of course, the other — non-new-media-related reasons for the creation of Musopen js to give wider exposure to classical music for anyone who might desire it. If you have people in your network who can benefit from these resources, be sure to pass it on.

Link: Musopen

Subscribed: PBS Idea Channel

August 10, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

I have been moving away from mainstream broadcast and cable programming for a while and switching over to watching a lot of stuff on YouTube. My son, Joseph, has switched almost entirely to YouTube Channels for his entertainment viewing.

I realized today that I should be highlighting some of the YouTube Channels I subscribe to for my daily entertainment (and educational viewing).

Today’s new subscription is the PBS Idea Channel. This is a great collection of education and entertaining video on a variety of topics. I found the channel when I came across a blog post linking to their show on Minecraft, Makerbot and the Post Scarcity Economy.

Below you will find a link to a playlist of all their videos. I highly recommend subscribing on YouTube so that you will be notified of each new video as it appears.

* Just a reminder…you can also subscribe to my own YouTube Channel for videos on gardening, careers, technology, new media and more!

See all the shows I am watching and subscribing to in my YouTube Channel Feed

Don’t see the video playlist above? Check out PBS Idea Channel on Youtube.

Elsewhere: Radio Killed The Podcasting Star

August 6, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

I definitely agree with some of what this article has to say. Non-mainstream podcasts have the potential to change things dramatically, but without a unified method of discovering and monetizing podcasts most languish in obscurity. Apple’s podcast directory is woefully inadequate and dominated by mainstream radio and it contains no way to monetize podcasts through subscriptions or advertising. Secondly, there is no unified ad market where podcasters can turn for monetization. YouTube, with its connections to Google Adsense and easily monetization options is a far better environment for making money with your podcast — if you happen to produce video and not audio-only programs.

For greatest chance at success, it has to be as easy to watch or listen to podcasts (and discover them) as it is to turn on the television or radio. Until the time that there is some parity between entertainment doing from a variety of sources, podcasts will always be second class citizens of the media world.

Radio Killed The Podcasting Star

Podcasters are to radio what bloggers are to newspapers: independent voices taking attention away from mainstream media. At least that was the theory, when professional podcasts and blogs were getting started in the 2000s. But unlike blogs, podcasts by indie voices have not gone on to seriously challenge the mainstream media incumbents. Where is the Ariana Huffington of podcasting? Can you name a political podcaster who’s had the same impact as Josh Marshall and his Talking Points Memo blog? Sadly, there are no podcasting stars – and it’s all radio’s fault.

Read the entire article

Elsewhere: The intersection of new media and robotics

August 3, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

This video of a movie created using a Lego NXT, light-painting robot shows what can happen when new media and technology intersect.

Read more about this project in Lightplot, a post on The NXT Step blog.

There is also more detailed information on the robot on the Rethinkfx blog

YouTube Education uses New Media to spur lifetime learning

February 1, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

Online education seems to be exploding of late and the biggest New Media powerhouse is helping to spread the message.

YouTube Education

Get more into learning

YouTube EDU brings learners and educators together in a global video classroom. On YouTube EDU, you have access to a broad set of educational videos that range from academic lectures to inspirational speeches and everything in between.

Come here for quick lessons from top teachers around the world, course lectures from top-tier universities, or inspiring videos to spark your imagination.

YouTube Education collect and organizes a wide variety of educational material for easy searching and watching. These include short lectures and demonstrations from teachers from all over the world and full college level seminars for this that really want to dive in.

Lifetime learning is a great use of New Media. It brings directly into your home, office and school information and education that was tied up in academic silos accessible only by a few. While you can’t get your degree online via YouTube Education, you can certainly improve your knowledge in whatever topic interest you most.

Link: YouTube Education

Subscribe To A Newsapaper, Get An E-reader Free

January 26, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

It’s starting to happen. I was talking to someone just the other night about how such deals would greatly benefit mainstream media outlets. The price of the readers is falling very rapidly while their capabilities just keep growing.

Subscribe To A Newsapaper, Get An E-reader Free

Well, this was bound to happen. Barnes & Noble is offering big discounts on its Nook e-readers to people taking out subscriptions to digital editions of magazines and newspapers:

The Nook edition of People is $9.99 a month; with a one-year subscription, customers will receive a Nook Tablet, a color device with a 7-inch display, for $199, a discount from its regular price of $249. Customers who buy a one-year subscription for the Nook edition of The New York Times for $19.99 a month, which in…

Read the entire article

Elsewhere: New Media Challenge 2012-002 – Get close!

January 10, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

Are you ready for the next New Media Challenge? This time I want you to get close…really close!

This might take some doing depending on your camera, as they often don’t focus on very close objects, but I am sure you can work it out. Of course, getting close can mean something else entirely, too. Feel free to explore the theme in any way you wish.

Post a link to your video, photos, writing or more here by Sunday, January 22, 2012.

Use the comments link (click the number next to the little text bubble above) to add a link to this post.

Note: If you simply paste a YouTube URL for your video, WordPress.com will embed the actual video in its place.

New Media Challenges are designed to give you an excuse to stretch your New Media muscles. You can use whatever media you like to complete the challenge including audio, video, photography, writing and more.

Elsewhere: YouTube’s got big plans for web TV: specialized channels with niche and original content

January 8, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

I am so amazed it has taken this long for something like this to occur. I figured back in 2004 that podcasting would break open the media industry and provide a lot more alternatives to traditional, but media, programming. As they say, though, it can take a long time to turn a battleship. It is good to see some movement in this area, though.

It is important to remember that we do have alternatives to the typical programming provided by television, radio and movie producers. Where technological and monetary constraints kept the average person out of the media market, this simply isn’t the case today. Anyone can produce a show and, given enough experience and talent, can produce a show that is better, and has higher viewership than even the best cable-aired shows.

I have been advising people to use podcasting, YouTube and others to get their message out for the last 7 years and will continue to do so. We all have a unique message to offer the world and there will always be an audience, both large and small, that will find us, if we put our message out there.

YouTube’s got big plans for web TV: specialized channels with niche and original content

YouTube’s come quite a long way from its roots as a repository for random videos from the public. It’s gone from “Chocolate Rain” and the Tron guy to streaming Disney classics and now creating original, quality content.The New Yorker spoke extensively with YouTube’s Global Head of Content Robert Kyncl about the site’s future plans, and YouTube’s got its sights set on grabbing a big slice of TV’s $300 billion pie. Kyncl thinks the future of TV is in niche content, and YouTube’s original channels are just the vehicle to deliver it direct to your digital door. The site is commissioning people and companies to create the channels (as opposed to individual shows or pieces of content) which gives the creators freedom to program their channels as they see fit — all YouTube asks is that they provide a certain number of hours of programming per week. This production model is apparently pretty attractive to content producers, given the talent that’s on board and the amount of content that’ll be rolling out over the next six months.

Read the entire article

Voiceover class starts January 12, 2012 at UCLA Extension

January 6, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

Our friend, Janet Wilcox, will be starting her UCLA Extension voiceover class again in just a week. If you are interested in getting started in the industry, this could be the class for you. I will be speaking to her class about New Media this session, as I have done in the past.

Class Description:

Pursuing a Career in Voice Overs

Do people say you have a wonderful voice? Gain a comprehensive understanding of the tools needed to excel in TV and radio commercials, animation, narration for documentaries, and other areas of voice over work. Instruction includes breath and microphone technique, script analysis, finding characters spontaneously, and how to keep it fun, even when the pressure’s on. Participants also learn how to pursue a career in voice over.

Janet Wilcox’s Bio

Writer, producer, and actor with extensive experience on both sides of the microphone. Ms. Wilcox has written and produced promos for HBO, ABC, and The History Channel, among others. As a voice over talent, she has been heard on Lifetime, HBO, E!, Cinemax, and AMC. She is the author of Voiceovers: Techniques and Tactics for Success.

Careers in New Media

Helping to Build New Careers in New Media

Category Archives: Elsewhere

Subscribed 013: TUAW: The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Elsewhere: Camera pan with a mechanical Kitchen Timer

Elsewhere: How to Create Custom YouTube Thumbnails

Video: #KitchenParty – How to publish a successful food blog w/ Nichelle Stephens from Cupcakes Take the Cake! – Recorded Version

Subscribed 008: GardenforkTV with Eric Rochow

Also on WelchWrite.com: #KitchenParty: Healthy recipes throughout the holidays – 8pm EDT/5pm PDT

My Favorite New Media Things – September 2012

Subscribed 005: Tested.com

Article: How To Create A World: Skyrim’s Director On Building A Never-Ending Fantasy

News: Blue Microphones Mikey Digital takes iPhone and iPad recording up a notch

My Favorite Things for New Media – August 2012

Musopen is a online warehouse of public domain classical music recordings and sheet music

Subscribed: PBS Idea Channel

Elsewhere: Radio Killed The Podcasting Star

Elsewhere: The intersection of new media and robotics

YouTube Education uses New Media to spur lifetime learning

Subscribe To A Newsapaper, Get An E-reader Free

Elsewhere: New Media Challenge 2012-002 – Get close!

Elsewhere: YouTube’s got big plans for web TV: specialized channels with niche and original content

Voiceover class starts January 12, 2012 at UCLA Extension