Category: Geek Stuff

Categories
Gaming

Watching Movies on The PSP and Getting RSS Feeds

Last month I got a Sony PSP so that I could watch video during long flights.  I asked a million questions of Greg before I bought it, and as usual, he gave me all the info I needed to know. As I just told him, if I knew how cool this thing really was, I would have bought it a long time ago.

First and foremost (for me) was the ability to watch movies. The main cabin on many flights is so tight that I can no longer open my laptop to work or watch a movie. I’ve been watching some vids on my iPod classic, but the Touch made me look at larger screens. Comparing the Touch to the PSP, I went with the PSP’s larger screen, better gaming platform and lower price.

Getting movies on to the PSP. The first thing you need to do is not buy any of the media manager programs out there because the latest version of Sony’s (3.0) can be downloaded for free. If you understand how to manage files and folders then you won’t need the media manager, you can work right at the file level yourself. When you plug in the PSP via USB cable it will show up as a drive.

Remember that Sony wants you to buy your movies on their proprietary UMD format (or at least they used to), so their tool gives you no way to get a DVD over to your device (it will do unencoded video, such as off your videocamera, because we know how many of you out there are looking forward to portable home movies. Hold for a moment while I resist the urge to poke my own eyes out).

I’ve never done it, but back when I used to sling the rock down on 6 Mile in Detroit, I heard about these crazy kids using tools like DVD Decrypter, DVD Fab or DVDShrink to pull the video files off a DVD so that you could watch on on a PC. It’s not currently clear if that’s legal or not, some say it is a violation of the Digital Millenium Copywrite Act (DMCA), others say Fair Use allows you to make a copy for your own backup purposes. Please remember I-ANAL (I am not a lawyer, so consider all the previous just the street wisdom of a rock slinger (just kidding, actually I’ve never slung the rock)).

If it were up to me, I’d say you should be able to watch a $20 copy of Beethoven III on whatever player you have, but you shouldn’t be stealing other people’s content (aka “sharing” aka “Pirate Bay”). Guess what? It’s not up to me.

Whatever video source you have, you could then run through the iPod setting on Videora, which does a great job at cranking out an mp4 file that will play on your PSP. Besides video files, it’s also cool that for around $20 you can get the upgrade to Tivo to go and pull content from your Tivo to a format that will play on the PSP.

The downside of all of this is that it takes time. It depends on your hardware but it can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours to get a video from it’s source to your PSP. Suddenly buying video on the PSP store seems like it would save you some time and headache. And it will.

Other cool PSP stuff:

  1. Portable DVR -get a video out cable (only $6 used!) and you can plug it in at your hotel to watch your own shows rather than roll the dice with hotel cable.
  2. Wi-Fi – Built in
  3. Skype – with the WiFi now you have a portable communication device to carry with you
  4. Browser – You can check your gmail with it. Typing on the T9 is a hassle but reading and clicking on the links is not too bad. (Hey Sony! Where’s my add-on keyboard!)
  5. RSS Reader – Yes it’s true, click on the icon and it will add a feed to the reader.
  6. Podcasts – Audio with no problem, I checked out TWiT with no problem, video was a little pickier, it didn’t like the latest version of Tiki Bar, not sure why yet.
  7. Games – last but not least, Burnout Legends is the most kickass driving game of all time, and the PSP version rocks. If you’ve never crashed a high performance sports car into a gasoline truck at 185 mph, you have no idea what you are missing.

Cons:

  1. With my earphones on it’s not as loud as it could be at peak, but I am using some Shure e500’s, some basic earbuds may work better. You can work around that easily with a Boosteroo, which will also allow 2 other people to plug in if you are on a plane with friends.
  2. Battery life – it’s around 6 hours, so if you are travelling big time, you’ll want a second.

There is a whole subculture of folks who hack and and into homebrew. Homebrew is a term that’s literal definition means to make your own software, in reality the majority of people hide behind homebrew so that they can crack copy protection and save/play games from their memory sticks. This is not really a “con” but as someone who’s work is published digitally, I’m against stealing other people’s stuff just because it’s possible. The version I bought, the 3000, has not been hacked yet, the previous 2 versions were hacked by use of a special battery that forces the device into a mode that gets into a maintenence mode. Considering the fact that I work at a software company, and I only play 3 or 4 games a year, it’s easier for me to buy what I use and avoid getting crushed by karmic retribution (or risk time in the big house).Other things I picked up: a second battery, video out cable, a travel case that holds 2 UMDs and 2 Memory sticks. My PSP is the 3000 which has a brighter screen that the previous 2 models. I would include an Amazon link for memory sticks but I’ve heard that Radio Shack is having a Black Friday special on SanDisk 4GB sticks for only $20. Get them while they are hot!

Categories
Podcasting

Bono Vox

Thirsty Thursday had an extra kick this week with Shel Holtz (For Immediate Release is the leading audio program for PR practitioners and has a large following. When Shel comes to town, there’s a crowd of people that want to meet him). Upstairs at Vox was semi-private so we had a great space to meet and I did get to spend some time over on the leather couch quality testing Martinis until the crowd showed up.

A few photos from Todd Van Hoosear hit the presses this morning, and most importantly Chip Griffin was there and made a surprise announcement that Custom Scoop was sponsoring the event. A perfect fit, Custom Scoop provides online media monitoring services.

Thanks to everyone who showed up, including Jenny, Sarah (don’t worry, Carin doesn’t refer to you as Poo Cane), Steve Garfield, Sooz, THE Ann Handley who grew up near Doug Haslam (and Ron Ploof, what was in the water there?). I have a bunch of business cards from new folks that I met so I’ll be adding some new subscriptions this weekend. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to convince the lovely Carin into a night out, thanks to all of you that asked for her. Thanks for a great time, I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did.

Categories
Daily Life Podcasting

The Weather Cooperates

Just an update of what’s been going on with me – after being sick AND it raining last weekend I was able to make up for lost time. I took photographs at all of my nephews and nieces games (2 soccer one football  – you can check out the Sports Illustrated level lens that I rented this weekend looks like over on these Flickr shots (sorry, my contacts only).

And since the weather was good I winterized the air conditioner, mowed the lawn and made some space in the garage for some wood.

Quarter end went well, but was insanely busy as usual. Maybe I can start looking beyond politics, finance and chores to talk about some marketing stuff?

You can get a dose of some Marketing Audio on this week’s BeanCast, with yours truly on the panel:

Direct link to file

And The M Show showed up this week, 10 minutes of action here:

Direct link to file

Categories
Podcasting

Weekend of Sound

The M Show made an appearance this weekend:

Direct link to file

You can also get more marketing goodness from The Beancast:

Direct link to file

And for audio variety, I post things that I want to check out to my Gigadial channel, you can subscribe via iTunes to get the same stuff automatically – it’s like I’m hunting down interesting audio content for you.

Subscribe in iTunes

Categories
Podcasting

Blue Steel

The latest video edition of the digital photography podcast Tips from the Top Floor has everyone from the Portland, Maine photo workshop that I was at over Labor Day Weekend. Check out the video, and if you want to see the pictures, here’s the flickr tag.

Working on our modeling skills was interesting, here’s me doing the “White guy lamely attempts street cred by standing behind graffiti”.

Categories
Podcasting

Editing Podcasts Makes them Suck Less

Shel Holtz, of FIR fame, was writing about editing podcasts and I started to comment but after it got to three paragraphs I thought it would be better to just bring it over here. I’m not buying the “no edits, no second takes” argument. You can rationalize it as “more energy, more real feeling” but the reality is that editing is a lot of work, and leaving that part of the workflow out makes it much easier to create podcasts (and perhaps stay motivated in the long run).

I’m honored to be on Shel’s “must listen” list, and by adding us to the “live to the hard drive” group, he proves his own argument. I’m glad we get the “live” sound across, but the Marketing Over Coffee marketing podcast goes through an editing process very similar to FIR. Every episode gets a full audio review, often sections are cut out or cleaned up. The recording session is free form so occasionally it goes into topics too tech heavy, too gray to talk about in public, or because it’s early morning either of us can break into the classic New England coughing/hacking fit.

You’ll note that Mitch and C.C. both podcast solo, which makes one-take easier, and both of them do a great job of speaking extemporaneously, which not everyone can do (radio or public speaking experience makes a huge difference here).

One other thing, many people record with headphones and don’t think about all the people who listen in the car, which is a much less forgiving playback environment. The Levelator, or more advanced tools like compressors and limiters are an absolute must (I’ve also found the cheap edition of SoundSoap to do a nice job cleaning things up). It’s tough to listen when you have to turn the guest up to 28 on the dial and then the host renders you deaf. I’ve given up many casts that were fantastic content but were just to hard to listen or understand while driving. I could call out some of my friends here, but why pick on them when I have the same complaint with some great content, big name shows like the New York Times’ Times Talks podcasts.

I’ve never really bought the “it has to be unedited” argument. If you feel it’s more sincere if it’s untouched that’s fine, but don’t expect other people to sit through a bunch of boring stuff, especially when they now have options that Doug Haslam mentioned like NPR, or the BBC (I am going to be on Steve Wright’s show one day) which are professionally recorded and edited to flow seamlessly.

Would you even send all your email without using the delete or backspace key? Would you write a brochure without having anyone edit it? Would you get dressed in the morning without looking in the mirror? Are you going for the thrill of “Live without a Net” or do you want your content perfect? There’s no “right” answer, it’s just about creating great stuff. If Saturday Night Live was done by some random people on your street you’d never stay up to watch that, but on the other hand if it’s taking you 10 hours of recording and post-production to do a 20 minute podcast maybe you could be more productive by lightening up a bit.

I can give you one right answer though: if you cut out the crummy parts, it will suck less.

ps – this post had no editing of any kind.

Categories
Podcasting

Big Time Audio

Marketing Over Coffee is out with a review of Google chrome.

Direct Link to File

This weekend I recorded a special M Show with C.C. Chapman, who hasn’t been on in about 100 shows.

Direct Link to File

Photo on Flickr by alzimmermanoh.

Categories
Geek Stuff

Here’s Why We Need This

So after a few hours of using Chrome the only bad thing I have to say is that I’m missing my Delicious tags. Aside from that there are some very interesting things:

  •  History Homepage – When you open it up you get screenshots of your past pages, it’s dynamic, it’s very cool.
  • I also really like the fact that the window itself has no border, between that and the modest toolbars, and use of the title bar to compress the tabs, you get more overall screen real estate. If you’re someone like me who sets the start bar to auto-hide for a few more pixels, you’ll really like it.
  • It’s a lot more solid than I thought it would be, most pages look “right”

But it’s not perfect

  • For some reason the graphing plugin that AWstats uses does not show up (for 1 of 3 sites only)
  • I couldn’t get the Flickr uploader to work

Aside from that, I’m very impressed and it’s already taken the top spot. 

Categories
Geek Stuff

Why do we need this?

Another browser? Google announces their browser: Chrome

This comic tells the story and here’s what I’m thinking so far.

“Wouldn’t it be great to start from scratch”

Uh. No. Web designers and marketers have taken years to get things to work on 2 platforms, nobody wants a third. You could consider Vista an attempt at starting from scratch, that’s gone well.

P5 and 6 – Multi-threaded browser that’s less of a memory hog – Ok, so I’m a little interested.

P11 – They talk about QA, yeah that’s not a revolution.

P12 – Uses Webkit just like Android. Give me your best Spock… “Fascinating”

P22 – Porn mode, you can open a tab that saves no history. Great, the politician’s dream.

“It’s good for developers because it’s open source” That’s debatable. My ultimate question is: can you get more standardization by further segmenting the market? I doubt it, they have to be counting on wiping out the competition.

Categories
Geek Stuff

Getting Ringtones on the Palm Centro

Totally off topic here, but just a quick one for Centro owners. I have this thing about paying for ringtones. I’ve been editing audio for a long time so the thought of paying $1.99 for a crappy snippet absolutely kills me.

There is a shortcut where mp3s can be sent with text messages but on the palm boards I found an even better solution. For the full post click here, otherwise here’s the punchline from Ridius, the smartest person on the Palm Forums:

Step 4: Now we actually need to import the songs. Here’s how you do it

1. Open the Blazer app (Web icon)
2. In the address field, type file:///cardname/foldername/filename (e.g. file:///MYSDCARD/Audio/PurpleHaze.mp3)
Remember that this is case sensitive so make sure you have all the capitol letters correct
3. Tap Go
4. Choose Save as Ringtone from the list
5. The rest is easy as you pretty much just tap ok

I only ran into a minor glitch as my card had not been named so the default “Card” did not work. I named it on my PC and it’s all good now, the Jack Bauer ringtone is in full effect.

The next Geek project is Opera on the Centro…