News: New Liveblog plugin for WordPress turns any post into auto-updating liveblog

September 4, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

This news just came through my RSS feeds. It seems that Automattic, the developer of the WordPress blogging site and software, want to make it a bit easier for bloggers to “liveblog” events. The new WordPress.com VIP Liveblog Add-On allows bloggers to write entries, including text and graphics, directly from their site to users pages. These pages are then automatically update for anyone who js monitoring the liveblog.

Liveblogs are often seen around breaking news stories and events like Apple product announcements. More an more, bloggers are covering these events live and want to get the word out as quickly as possible. This new plugin makes it simpler than ever before.

Here are some bullet points about the new plug-in directly from the WordPress.org web site…

Post updates right from the front-end of your site (no need to use the /wp-admindashboard)
Viewers of your Liveblog get new entries served to them instantly and automatically, without needing to refresh their browser.
Your authors can drag-and-drop photos right into the Liveblog area, without needing to navigate to separate browser tabs or windows.
There’s no need for a separate site dedicated to liveblogging: every post can be a liveblog, even existing ones.

You can download the Liveblog plugin directly from WordPress.org

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.

Video: New Media Tip: Pinterest: Follow Boards, Not People

August 15, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:24 — 48.0MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Getting the most out of your Pinterest feed, without burying yourself in a lot of unwanted information, means following Pinterest Boards, not people. It would be rare for you to like everything that someone pins, but by selecting the appropriate topic boards on Pinterest, you can get just the information you want from each person you follow.

Can’t see the video above? Watch “New Media Tip – Pinterest: Follow Boards, Not People” on YouTube

Social Media Self Preservation is available as an Amazon Kindle book, readable on any computer system or smartphone using the FREE Kindle Reader software.

For more New Media Information, visit Careers in New Media and New Media Interchange at the following sites:

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

Product: iStabilizer Dolly makes smooth moves for video

July 30, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) points out this New Media device which can help you get smooth “dolly” shots using your iPhone or other small camera. (See Hello, Dolly! Meet iStabilizer’s new iPhone moviemaking accessory)

The Dolly is a combination of smooth running skate wheels, a positional arm and standard tripod mounts that can connect to your iPhone or other camera. rolling the Dolly gives you smooth “dolly” shots around your scene or actors at a fraction of the cost of a true dolly rig used by mainstream productions.

You can see several demonstration videos on YouTube to give you a feel of the type of shots you can achieve with the Dolly.

Photo: A little Final Cut Express anyone?

July 28, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

Final Cut Express can get a little cluttered even if you are just working on a short 5 minute video.

This episode includes titles, B-Roll cutaways, overlay audio and still. Yikes! Watch this video and find more gardening information at A Gardener’s Notebook

This episode will be released soon on the Gardener’s Notebook blog and podcast.

Product: iPhone Swivl

July 23, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

I am one of those New Media producers who is without a cameraperson for most of my shoots. Something like the iPhone Swivl might just make things a bit easier. It uses a wearable sensor that allows the base unit to track you around the set.

I need to get one and try it out. I wonder if anyone could hook me up with a demo model. I will agree with the review below that $179 is a bit pricy for this product. I am also concerned that it only uses the, lower resolution, front facing camera of the iPhone when I would rather have it use the 720p rear facing camera. It seems I might be able to use it with my Flip video cameras, though, which would give me 720p. Hmmmmm….

Buy the The iPhone Swivl at the Photojojo Store!

From the PhotoJoJo website…

[…]

The Swivl knows who or what you want to film by tracking an easy-to-wear and super compact 3-in-1 sensor. This triple duty gadget acts as a sensor for movement, a microphone for crystal clear audio and a remote for fine-tuned Swivl control.

Simply place the sensor on your actor (your BFF, your pup, an RC Helicopter, even yourself) and watch the Swivl keep up!

[…]

Here is a video review from Twit.TV

New “Interactive Transcript” button appears on YouTube videos

July 22, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

A noticed a new button had popped up when watching some of my own YouTube videos this evening…Interactive Transcript (highlighted in yellow in the screen shot below).

Clicking the Interactive Transcript button opens up a timecode synced transcript of the video you are watching. YouTube has been offering automatically generated captions for quite a while now, but this lays out the automated transcripts in such a way that the user can click on individual lines to just to that part of the video automatically. Machine transcription is far from 100% accurate, but with good audio Google’s algorithm can do quite well.

Thus bodes well for making video and audio searchable in Google’s index, something that is not really possible today. I would assume though that since they are creating these transcripts anyway, it won’t be a far step to slurping these transcripts into the Google indexing system so that people can find videos simply by searching on word used in the video. One missing feature is an easy way to export the transcript, even from your own videos, so that you could share it on your own web site along with the video.

Let me know if you are seeing the Interactive Transcript button on your videos. Google often rolls out tests to random users in order to judge the popularity and effectivness of new features, so it might not be available for everyone.

Product: Picosteady video camera stabilizer from Kickstarter

July 19, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

It seems that wall the cool new products for New Media producers is coming from Kickstarter these days. Witness the Picosteady, which I came across in this post on the Red Ferret blog.

The Picosteady is a custom designed rig which us usable with both large and small video cameras, including smartphones, and yields nice smooth movie videos like much more expensive rigs.

While I could see this working with lighter cameras, I wonder how well it would work with the larger Digital SLRs. The company page indicates that it does, but it seems it would be harder to balance and use with the larger cameras. That would require some hands-on use to truly know though.

It is neat to see a small company like this able to bankroll themselves via Kickstarter and provide short-run, high-quality products that producers need. The initial priced is $139, with “after Kickstarter” models going up to $179. At $139 I could envision purchasing a Picosteady, but the $179 price point seems a little high for me. I would need to know that I would get a lot of use out of the unit before purchasing. It makes it less of a casual purchase in my mind.

This could be a lower price option for you, if you are looking for a camera stabilizer to improve your videos. Others in the market are priced much higher.

You can find a demonstration video on the Picosteady Kickstarter page.

Real World Example: Moving to a new podcasting web host and why

July 10, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

As you may have read a few weeks ago, when Apple released its new Podcasts app for iOS devices, I discovered that my long running podcast, Career Opportunities, had disappeared from the iTunes Podcast Directory. When I looked at the listings for my other podcasts, I noticed that they seemed to be having issues updating their information and logo graphics. When I tried to re-submit Career Opportunities to the iTunes Podcast Directory, I also found that my GoDaddy Shared Hosting did not provide the byte-range request feature that iTunes now required to register a podcast. This set in process a whole series of actions which have now all been completed. This post is an attempt to catalog what I needed to do to repair the situation and put my web site and podcasts on good footing for the future.

Career Opportunities in iTunes Podcast Directory

New Web Hosting

First, I needed to find a new web host that could support podcasting, hosting my own media files and also 5 WordPress blogs. Based on the recommendation of (fellow Friends in Tech member) Steve over at the GeekCred podcast, I decided to move to Dreamhost. I contacted Dreamhost with a few questions and they confirmed they did indeed support byte-range requests on their server and could also deal with the more the 20GB of data that make up my web site.

One Dreamhost feature that made my web site move easier than ever before is that they support shell access for their web hosting accounts. This means I am able to login to a command line on my web host and use that command line for various functions. In my case, this meant I could use the WGET command to mirror my entire web site directly from my GoDaddy server to the new server. The reason for doing this, of course, is speed. To upload just one podcast, A Gardener’s Notebook, from my home computer to the new web host was estimated to take almost 7 hours at the full speed of my cable Internet connection. Because the web servers are on higher speed connections, though, I was able to move the files directly between the web hosts at 3MB/sec and accomplish the entire move in about 1.5 hours. This dramatic difference made me realize how critical shell access is to anyone is who moving their web site to a new host. I understand from others that Dreamhost is one of the few web hosting companies that provides shell access, but I would find this to be a critical need for any podcaster who hosts their own media files. We simply have too much data to be troubled by uploading our entire library from a standard Internet connection.

WordPress Database Move

Since I have 5 WordPress blogs on my site, after all the static files had been moved to the new web host, it was time to consider moving all the databases that hold the content for these blogs. This is not something I am experienced with, so I called on another Friends in Tech member, Kreg from the Technorama podcast, to help me move those files. Kreg wasn’t available immediately, so I began to poke around in the process and see if I might be able to do it myself. As it turned out I was able to export all the data from the old system and import it into the new. A few quick changes to each wp-config.php file on the blogs and I found that everything was working on the new site. It was a great learning exercise and also means I won’t be so leery of moving databases in the future. Once again, Dreamhost’s Control Panel and help files made it a straightforward and easy process.

Re-submitting to the iTunes Podcast Directory

First, as a word of warning, if your podcast is dropped from the iTunes Podcast Directory, you will be able to re-submit it, but all your ratings and reviews will be lost. Your podcast will also receive a new, different, ID number and link in the iTunes Podcast Directory. This could be quite damaging for a particularly popular podcast, so do everything you can to make sure it doesn’t happen to you.

Mainly, make sure that iTunes can easily and regular access your RSS feed. In my case, it appears that GoDaddy is doing such aggressive traffic management that external services like iTunes, Feedburner and others are refused connection to your web host on a regular basis. I found this to be especially true when trying to re-submit my podcast. I would get 10-12 error messages of Connection Reset before iTunes was able to access my RSS feed. Conversely, when re-submitting from Dreamhost I received no Connection Reset errors. iTunes immediately recognized my feed.

One big issue when re-submitting your podcast is that you cannot submit the RSS URL that you are currently using for your podcast. If you do, iTunes will tell you that it is a duplicate podcast. Instead, I took my existing RSS feed, saved it to a static file (in my case, I named it index-fix.xml) and then stripped out all by a few podcast entries. Then I used this URL to re-submit the show to iTunes. Since my feed already contained all the appropriate iTunes XML entries (since I use Blubrry Powerpress to generate the feed) iTunes recognized all the settings and re-addded the podcast. Career Opportunities then reappeared in the iTunes Podcast Directory in about 1 day.

Of course, you want iTunes to use your old RSS feed as the main feed for its listings, so you need to re-point iTunes back to your original feed. Once the podcast had reappeared in the iTunes Podcast Directory I was ready to take the next step. iTunes provides an XML tag that allows you re-point iTunes to a new, different RSS feed. This tag is

<itunes:new-feed-url>http://welchwrite.com/career/feed/</itunes:new-feed-url>

Of course, you should use your own RSS URL in place of mine above. You place this tag immediately after the <CHANNEL> tag in the RSS file. I edited the index-fix.XML file and added this tag using a text editor. Within an hour or so, iTunes had seen this change and re-pointed the iTunes Podcast Directory listing back to its original feed.

Don’t forget email accounts and subdomains

On my web site I had quite a few email aliases and 2 subdomains on my old web host. Remember that these will need to be set up fresh on your new web host. I prefer to set all of this up before pointing my domain name at the new site. Every web host will provide you a temporary domain name for your new site so that you can test out nearly all functions before “throwing the switch” to send everyone over to the new web host. In my case, everything seemed to be working well at this point, so it was time to reset the DNS servers to point to the new web host.

Switching your domain

In my case, my domains will remain hosted at GoDaddy for the time being, although I will probably move them in the future. I prefer to take one step at a time so I don’t create multiple problems for myself. The process of moving is complicated enough without adding additional, simultaneous issues on top of it. Dreamhost provided me with the IP addresses for their Domain Name Servers so I only had to visit GoDaddy and enter those numbers for each domain to point it away from GoDaddy’s web servers and off to Dreamhost’s.

It can be a bit difficult to tell when the switch over has occurred as, ideally, the sites should function in exactly the same way. In my case, I added a small notice to my home page telling visitors that I was moving web sites. I only added this note to the front page of the new web host. Every so often I would reload my main page in my web browser. When I saw that the page included the web move notice, I knew I was looking at the new web host and not the old one. Within about an hour I noticed that visits to http://welchwrite.com were already pointing over to the new web host.

Complete

I has now been about 3 days since I made the move and I am quite happy with how it worked out. The new web host at Dreamhost seems a bit faster and, more importantly, it doesn’t seem to throw up the Connection Reset errors I was seeing with GoDaddy. I have also noticed that the listings for my other podcasts now have been updated and include the appropriate logos and a current list of episodes available. I am fairly confident now that I shouldn’t have any on-going issues with my podcast listings down the road.

If you have any questions or comments about my experience, please add your comments below. I would love to hear them!

Product: Blue Microphones Tiki – New

July 8, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

Blue Microphones are known for their quirky design and, for the most part, their recording quality. I own a Blue Snowball myself and this mic has become one of the standard podcasting miss for new media producers all over the world.

Blue recently released another in microphone in their product line, the Blue Tiki.

The Tiki plugs directly into any USB port and provides many special features for podcasters on the go.

From the Blue Microphones web site…

The new Tiki is the world’s first USB microphone that mimics the intelligence of human hearing by focusing on desired sounds, minimizing background noise and knowing when to mute altogether. Tiki’s two modes give any Skype user, podcaster or musician the versatility to quickly choose the best option in any situation. First, Intelligent Speech Mode brings your voice to the forefront of a conference call or chat while noise-canceling technology simultaneously minimizes unwanted, competing background noise. Natural Recording Mode captures a wide range of sources from vocals to acoustic guitar, recording high-fidelity audio with exceptional clarity. Tiki sets a new standard for crystal clear audio for wherever you go.

Listen to recording samples of Tiki in various modes

In my own experience, devices that plug directly into a USB port can be prone to damage due to bumping them into people, furniture, walls, etc. I would probably plug Tiki into a USB extender cable to allow for safer use while also giving me more options for positioning the microphone in each recording situation.

Engadget recently had an article on the Blue Tiki. Read it here!

Blue microphones available from Amazon.com

News: Twitter tweets no longer appear in LinkedIn timeline

June 29, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

In a move which seems to foreshadow a movement away from linking social media sites together, LinkedIn announced via email today that your Tweets will no longer appear automatically in your LinkedIn timeline if you previously linked your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. From the wording of their email, it appears that Twitter is the cause of this new policy.

LinkedIn status updates CAN be automatically sent to Twitter if users click the “Twitter” checkbox when composing a status update.

For myself, I have turned off a lot of the automatic linkages I had set up in the past. For example, my Twitters no longer appear automatically on my Facebook account. I think this shows that social networks are seeing that such linkages can effectively “spam” the timelines of other sites without any further action on the user’s part. Google+ has yet to provide any API for cross-posting Tweets or updates from any other social networks and there has been some discussion that this may never be part of the G+ API, to prevent just such issues.

It will be interesting to see how other social networks react to this decision and start turning off their own cross-posting API calls.

Email from LinkedIn

LinkedIn and Twitter have worked together since 2009 to enable you to share your professional conversations on both platforms. Twitter recently evolved its strategy and this will result in a change to the way Tweets appear in third-party applications. Starting today Tweets will no longer be displayed on LinkedIn.

We know that sharing updates from LinkedIn to Twitter is a valuable service for our members. Moving forward, you will still be able to share updates with your Twitter audience by posting them on LinkedIn.

How can I continue to share updates on both LinkedIn and Twitter? Simply start your conversation on LinkedIn. Compose your update, check the box with the Twitter icon, and click “Share.” This will automatically push your update to both your LinkedIn connections and your Twitter followers just as before.

What changes can I expect to see on LinkedIn? Any conversation you start on Twitter will no longer be automatically shared with your LinkedIn network, even if you synced your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.

If you would like more information about what this means for your synced LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, please visit our related Help Center topics.

Thank you,
The LinkedIn Team

Apple podcasting changes cause problems with GoDaddy-hosted podcasts

June 28, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

Update (July 10, 2012): I have written up an entire post about my experiences moving web hosts due to the problem below.

You can read it at Real World Example: Moving to a new podcasting web host and why — Douglas

This week, when Apple released their new Podcasts app for iOS, I sadly noted that one of my podcasts had gone missing from the iTunes Podcast Directory. I am still gathering information as to why the podcast disappeared, but in trying to re-submit it I came across an even larger problem.

Despite hosting my sites on a GoDaddy Shared Server for years, changes at Apple and limitations at GoDaddy have combined to make it impossible to host a podcast using GoDaddy Shared servers.

Over time, and on-going, I have had issues with my web server sending “Connection Reset” error to the various services I use, including Feedburner and various RSS feed services. This also presented itself when attempting to re-submit my podcast. It often took 10-15 attempts for iTunes to access the RSS feed.

Itunes connect

Once iTunes could see the feed, though, another, much larger problem arose. I recieved the following error:

Itunes byte

“There is a problem with your feed. Your episodes are hosted on a server which doesn’t support byte-range requests. Enable byte-range requests and try your submission again.”

It seems this might be a new requirement in the iTunes Podcast Directory, as I don’t remember running into this problem in the past. According to GoDaddy this IS a new requirement from Apple and, even worse, they cannot/will not provide the byte-range request services on their Shared Server hosting plans.

“The error that you are receiving is being caused because our shared hosting servers do not support the format that your podcast is being added as. This means that you will not be able to use this method to broadcast your podcasts.”

So it appears that GoDaddy shared servers are no longer capable of hosting podcasts. While you may not experience any immediate issues with your show, it could be in danger of being dropped from the iTunes Podcast Directory and should that happen, you will not be able to re-submit your show, due to Apple’s requirements for byte-range requests.

I am now in the process of finding a new web host and moving all 20GB+ of my site to the new server, as well as moving 6 WordPress blogs that are hosted there. If you are hosting on a GoDaddy Shared Server, you may want to consider doing the same before you are caught by this issue.

New YouTube Dashboard rolling out

June 28, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

I just logged into my YouTube account and found that a new dashboard has been enabled. Here is the new layout.

Youtube dashboard

The new dashboard creates an easy location to see videos, stats and comments all in one screen. You can link to the full view of all of these, as well as reply to recent comments.

I think this is a good start, but could envision more information that could be added here. Still it is nice to have a nice overview to work with on a daily basis.

When the dashboard is available on your site, you will receive a pop-up note asking if you wish to enable it.

Software: WordPress 3.4 released and available for install

June 13, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

I try to take a moment each week to make it WordPress Wednesday on my web sites. This means I check for updates to themes, plugins and the WordPress software itself. Today I saw that WordPress has released their 3.4 update for all those self-hosting WordPress on their own web sites. Offering myself up as a guinea pig, I have installed it on one blog and all seems to be well

There are bug fixes, of course, but also a flurry of new features, although most mainly look like “under-the-hood” enhancements that will take a while to be adopted by the theme and plugin community. You can find a complete list of improvements on the WordPress web site and get an overview int he video below.

Download the latest version of WordPress here

Video: Podcasting – Stay in control of your RSS feed from PodCampAZ

May 21, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:40 — 277.2MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Douglas E. Welch (http://douglasewelch.com) presents “Stay in Control of Your RSS Feed” at PodCampAZ 2009 (http://pocampaz.org)

It is important for podcasters to start out on the right foot when setting up the RSS feeds for their podcasts. The RSS feed is their main connection with their subscribers and losing control of that feed can be disastrous to communicating with and maintaining their audience.

Don’t see the video above? Watch “Podcasting – Stay in control of your RSS feed” on YouTube

Subscribe to Douglas’ YouTube Channel | Watch the Careers in New Media YouTube Playlist

Subscribe to the Careers in New Media podcast using iTunes

Video: London Timelapse

May 17, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

Another cool time-lapse video for your inspiration.

Where could you take a cool time-lapse? I think they give a great feeling for the location as you can see a large amount of time and activity compressed into just a few minutes.

If you take time-lapse videos, do please share it with me and I will share the best ones here.

Video Archives: My Podcast Process from PodCampAZ

May 14, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:58 — 347.5MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Douglas presents his podcast process from the beginning of recording to the final release and download of the podcast file. If you have been wondering how to share your podcasts with the world, this presentation gives a thorough overview of the entire process.

If you can’t see this video above, please watch “My Podcast Process” on my YouTube Channel

Subscribe to Douglas’ YouTube Channel | Watch the Careers in New Media YouTube Playlist

Subscribe to the Careers in New Media podcast using iTunes

Troubleshooting: Powerpress Plugin vs. PushPress Plugin – Disappearing podcast links

May 6, 2012 by Douglas E. Welch

I was having a difficult time releasing my latest gardening podcast last night. The PowerPress plugin I use from Blubrry.com was silly refusing to accept a podcast enclosure link. I could past in the URL of the media file, click verify to assure the file existed and press Update on the WordPress post, but once that complete the enclosure information would be gone. It was very frustrating.

I could see that the PowerPress plugin was working on my other blogs and even on past posts to the garden blog, so it looked like something that had changed recently. I try to keep all my WordPress plugins up-to-date to prevent malicious attacks on my blog, but it looks like this time an update had broken something else. In this case, an older plugin, unrelated to PowerPress itself, was the culprit.

After quite a long time trying various searches for an explanation, I finally came across this post — “PowerPress Media URLS keep vanishing” on the Blubrry.com Forums. It seems that the plugin PushPress was no longer compatible with newer versions of WordPress and it was interfering with the PowerPress plugin in some way. Sure enough, deactivating the PushPress plugin cleared up the problem and allowed me to, once again, post my podcasts.

I am posting this in hopes that if and when someone else runs into this problem, my post will be easier for them to find during their search for a solution.

Link: PowerPress plugin from Blubrry.com

Careers in New Media

Helping to Build New Careers in New Media

Category Archives: technology

News: New Liveblog plugin for WordPress turns any post into auto-updating liveblog

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

Elsewhere: The intersection of new media and robotics

Product: iStabilizer Dolly makes smooth moves for video

Photo: A little Final Cut Express anyone?

Product: iPhone Swivl

New “Interactive Transcript” button appears on YouTube videos

Product: Picosteady video camera stabilizer from Kickstarter

Real World Example: Moving to a new podcasting web host and why

Product: Blue Microphones Tiki – New

Apple podcasting changes cause problems with GoDaddy-hosted podcasts

New YouTube Dashboard rolling out

Software: WordPress 3.4 released and available for install

Video: Podcasting – Stay in control of your RSS feed from PodCampAZ

Video: London Timelapse

Video Archives: My Podcast Process from PodCampAZ

Troubleshooting: Powerpress Plugin vs. PushPress Plugin – Disappearing podcast links