Tag Archives: publishing

Flying M Air Video Podcast Now Online

Posted on by
Comment

It took me a while to figure it out.

Come Fly with UsI spent about 4 hours yesterday morning and another hour this morning publishing a video podcast for Flying M Air. Why so long? Because I couldn’t find a single how-to guide online to explain how to do it the way I wanted to get it done.

On Friday, I got back from a 3-1/2 day trip around the southwest with photographer Richard Noll. Rick and I took tons of pictures and video — much of which was from the air — of the places we visited. The goal of our trip was not only to perform a final check on travel, hotel, and tour arrangements for the Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure, but to gather images I could use to market Flying M Air’s tours and excursions. I now have over 1,000 still images and 4+ hours of video to go through.

iMovie HD 6 and iDVD 6: Visual QuickStart GuideI spent some time early Saturday morning with iMovie and Jeff Carlson‘s excellent book, iMovie HD 6 and iDVD 6: Visual QuickStart Guide. The book has everything you need to know to create a great looking movie in iMovie HD, from choosing a video camera to building the movie with titles, transitions, and effects. It then goes on to discuss IDVD (which I’m not ready for yet). I learned a lot of things, including that I can reverse and slow down video clips — two effects I’ll need for my final project: a 20-minute promotional DVD.

Yesterday’s starter project was to build a slide show of images taken in the Phoenix area. The slide show would make good use of the Ken Burns effect to add motion to still images. I’d also included opening and closing titles, transitions, and music. It was a very simple project, and with Jeff’s guidance, I was able to knock it off in about an hour with about 15 slides. The final video is about 2-1/2 minutes long.

Although Jeff’s book discusses publishing a video podcast with iMovie and iWeb, I was not interested in using iWeb. It might be a great tool for Web publishing newbies, but it lacks the control features I need. (This might sound strange, but the software is so easy that it’s hard for an experienced user to use.) I wanted to publish a video podcast of this and future Flying M Air movies right on the blog-based Flying M Air Web site. This way, the videos would be available immediately to site visitors as well as by podcast to subscribers. I knew this was possible, but I couldn’t find any clear guidance on things like format (Was the export to iPod format the right one?), linking (Was it as easy as just including a link to the file?), and server settings (Did I have to modify .htaccess?).

Phoenix Tour ThumbnailI got the answers to all of these questions through Web research and trial-and-error. I got it working at about 5:30 AM this morning and was pleased to see the new podcast file being downloaded into iTunes. I then spent another hour tweaking the settings for Flying M Air’s WordPress theme files so instructions would appear onscreen when a site visitor checked the contents of the new Video & Slide Shows category.

Interested in seeing my first effort? You can download the m4v file (which can be viewed in iTunes or QuickTime) or subscribe to the podcast.

And if you’d like to read a how-to article that provides step-by-step instructions for publishing an iMovie project as a podcast with WordPress (rather than iWeb), keep checking in. I’ll write it up today, but Informit.com has first dibs. After all, I do like to be paid for my work.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Mac Cowboys

Posted on by
Comment

Maria Speaks Episode 30: Mac Cowboys.

Join me and a bunch of other Mac geeks for a dude ranch mini-vacation.

Transcript:

Welcome to WickenburgA few months ago, I started thinking about how cool it would be to have a computer conference here in Wickenburg, at my favorite guest ranch: Rancho de los Caballeros. Los Caballeros is not only the nicest dude ranch in this Dude Ranch Capital of Arizona, but it has the most interesting activities and the absolute best restaurant.

The idea was to invite a bunch of authors and let each of them do three or four sessions over a five-day period. The sessions would be in the morning and there would be all kinds of activities in the afternoon, like horseback riding, golf, shopping trips into town, Jeep tours, and, of course, helicopter rides. The people who came would have a lot of fun, learn a lot, and have a great opportunity to network with other Mac users. For some people, it could even be considered a business trip. Best of all, I could introduce people to Wickenburg, the little town I live in and often blog about.

The event would be called Mac Cowboys because of the western dude ranch theme.

Now in case you don’t know, I’m a busy person. It took me nearly forever to talk to the ranch people and crunch the numbers to see what the trip would cost. It looked feasible, so I set a date in early December, before the busy Christmas holidays. Then I got a list of possible author/speakers from one of my editors at Peachpit and invited them to attend.

I guess everyone is just as busy as I am. None of them could attend. I hope that it’s nothing I should be taking personally.

Desert SceneSo rather than give up the whole thing, I decided to restructure the event. I shortened it from five days to four. I cut the speakers from five to one. I cut the sessions from 12 to just two and made them more discussion based, giving all the participants a chance to share what they knew and ask everyone questions. I arranged the activities so all participants could go together, giving everyone an opportunity to network like crazy outside the meeting rooms. Then, with greatly reduced costs, I recalculated the per-person cost. The numbers I came up with were certainly within reason for a 4-day, all inclusive weekend at a luxury dude ranch.

Now I’m taking it public, offering it to the readers of my blog, podcast listeners, and the folks who buy Mac books from Peachpit Press.

Please understand that this isn’t a typical computer conference.

For a moment, think of the last computer conference you attended. You know, the one in the big conference hall with thousands of attendees shuffling around a show floor with shopping bags. The one with overcrowded dark classrooms with bad sound systems and speakers telling you more about whatever it is they’re trying to sell than something you really want to learn about. The one where you paid to get into the conference hall, you paid to sit through seminars, you paid to stay in a hotel, and you paid to eat disappointing meals. The one with uncomfortable free shuttles or long walks from your hotel to the conference hall. The one where your only entertainment were demos on the show floor or sad vendor parties with bad food and expensive alcohol.

Now wipe those ugly thoughts right from your mind.

Wickenburg SunsetMac Cowboys is a mini-vacation first: a four-day, three-night stay with luxury accommodations at a ranch that can only accommodate about a hundred and fifty people at once. You get yourself to Phoenix Sky Harbor airport or Wickenburg and just about everything else is paid for — ground transportation to and from the ranch, hotel room, three meals a day, horseback riding, golf, Jeep tour, helicopter tour, swimming, tennis, nature hikes — all kinds of activities. There’s even free wi-fi access in certain hotspots throughout the ranch. All you pay for is alcoholic beverages and extras like skeet shooting or golf cart or club rental.

I’ve set aside three short hours a day on the two middle days for official business stuff: a pair of conference sessions where you can learn more about using your Mac. One session covers Mac OS X topics. The other covers Web publishing topics. And there will be plenty of informal sessions among participants to pick brains and get burning questions answered.

And if you’re wondering what December is like in Wickenburg, AZ, imagine 60° to 70° F sunny days — often without a cloud in the sky. Weather won’t keep you inside during the day. Sure, at night it gets cold, but it also gets dark. And you have to rest sometime.

Sound good? I think so — and I do this stuff all the time.

This first Mac Cowboys event, which is scheduled for December 7th through 10th, 2006, is a test of my idea. If it works out on this small scale, it should work out on a larger scale with more speakers and more guests. If it ever outgrows Los Cab or I feel like trying someplace new, I can take it on the road to another ranch. I’d like to do it once or twice a year, just to keep life interesting.

So consider this your formal invitation. Come on out to Wickenburg and be a Mac Cowboy for a few days.

Want more information? Check out the Mac Cowboys Web site at maccowboys.com.

The Miracle of Google

Posted on by
1

How did we live without it?

We have the power to find virtually anything on the Internet. And that power is called Google Search.

Moments ago, I found a question in my FAQ system (horray!) from a reader of one of my long out-of-print books (darn!). He asked a question about an error message he’d seen (that I’d never encountered) while he was attempting to build additional administrative pages for a FileMaker Pro CDML-published database.

The book he’d bought is called Database Publishing with FileMaker Pro on the Web and it dates back to April 1998. It’s long out of print. If I recall correctly — I’m not at my office so I can’t consult my copy of the book — the book covered FileMaker Pro 3, which was the first version of FileMaker to support Web publishing. FileMaker Pro is now in version 8.5 and no longer supports CDML for Web publishing. CDML was the language and technology that FileMaker, Inc. bought from the Lasso folks to make FileMaker Pro Web publishing work.

So it should come as no surprise that I was unable to answer his question. And unable to replicate it, of course.

But Google has all the answers and it proved it again yesterday. I did a Google search for CDML Error 102 and Google came up with a list of Web pages that discussed the problem. I suggested this as a way for the person with the question to find his answer. (It would be silly for me to repeat what was on those pages when he could just as easily find the same pages himself.)

Google is like this. Have a question? Google it. If you enter the right search phrase, Google will come up with a Web site that answers the question. I think I can report a 90% results rate. And considering some of the questions I come up with sometimes, that’s pretty darn good.

The trick, of course, is to come up with the right search phrase. Googling a single word won’t usually get the results you seek. You need to come up a string of words that succinctly describes what you are searching for. In the example above, if I’d entered FileMaker Error, a much more general search phrase, I seriously doubt whether I’d see any results about the specific CDML error code the reader was getting. If a search phrase doesn’t get desired results, rethink it and try another phrase. In my example, I got the results I was seeking right away, so a second try wasn’t necessary.

With the amount of junk out there on the Web — including, some people might say, sites like this one — we’re very fortunate to have search technology like Google’s available to us. It helps cut through the chaff to get to the important stuff we want (or need) to read.

Short and Sweet

Posted on by
Comment

I switch back to the summary option for RSS feeds.

I gave it some thought. Lots of thought. I realized that I was one of the few bloggers out there who was publishing a full-text RSS feed. That’s not a big deal if every post is just 100 or so words. But most of mine are longer — considerably longer. By sending out a full-text feed, RSS feedreader users had no reason to visit my site.

I spend a lot of time on my site. I add features. I tweak appearance. I tweak features. I experiment with WordPress features. I get a great deal of pleasure out of molding my site to meet my needs. It’s as close as I get to programming (and it’s close enough).

I’d like to get comments on what I write. But people who access via RSS feed don’t come by to read the articles so they don’t come by to post comments, either. (Unless they’re pissed, it seems.) So I don’t get as many comments as I’d like to see. (I’m sure this post will generate lots of nasty comments.)

I also don’t like what I’m hearing about other bloggers stealing content from full-text feeds and displaying it as their own on their sites. This will make it just a bit tougher. (At least I think so.)

So I toggled the Syndication Feeds option in the Reading Options administration panel to Summary. And from this point on, only the first bit of content for each article will appear in my feed. If you want to read the article, come on over and read it. Otherwise, be satisfied with the summary.

After all, that’s what everyone else is giving you, isn’t it?

AlwaysOn

Posted on by
Comment

I get a new print magazine about Internet technology when Internet technology is putting print publications out of business.

I got it in the mail yesterday. The regular mail. The kind with the mail truck that puts stuff in my mailbox up on the corner. I like to think of it as analog mail.

The magazine is called AlwaysOn with the subtitles “the insider’s network” and “The blogozine on innovation.” Huh? The cover led me to believe that they’d collected a bunch of blog entries about technology, printed them up on slick paper, threw a few ads in to pay the bills, and mailed them out to people they thought might be stupid enough to buy in at the hefty price of $39 for four issues a year.

Well, that’s pretty much what the magazine is. The “Member Posts” section has short blog-like pieces that end up with the number of posts and comments that I assume are attibutable to that author on the AO Web site. Then there are a few one- to three-page articles about the Internet, blogs, communication technology, and high-tech business. And a couple of interviews. The big feature is “The AO Power List,” summary of a few dozen of the movers and shakers in the high-tech world.

It’s 48 printed pages, 18 of which are full-page ads. That leaves 30 pages of content for a susbcriber per-issue price of $9.75. (There was no cover price on the issue I received, so I don’t know what it would sell for on newstands if it even appeared there.) Is it worth it when you can just go out on the ‘Net and find the same kind of content online for free?

And I wonder how a quarterly publication can keep up with technology anyway. If it includes everything that happened since the last issue, most of that stuff would be sorely out of date. If it included only the latest and greatest info as it went to press, the information would still be stale — considering its editorial content — since it takes at least a few week for the actual production of the print publication. During that time, the same content could be covered to death on the Internet.

What’s interesting to me is that this publication should appear now. Last month, I got a letter from Technology Today, which I subscribe to, saying that because of the boom in Internet publishing and communication, they’d publishing once every two months rather than once a month. And the magazine would be getting slimmer. This, mind you, is a publication that has been in existence for more than 50 years. MIT, the folks that publish Technology Today, will be adding more current, up-to-date content, on its Web site, which has additional content for subscribers. So they expect subscribers to get most of the content they pay for online rather than in the printed magazine.

I also wonder where they got my name and address. From my Macworld Expo registration? Or from the Technology Today folks?

Anyway, in case you haven’t read between the lines, I’m not impressed and I won’t be subscribing to AlwaysOn. I’d be interested in hearing from other folks who have gotten this publication and liked it enough to sign up. Use the Comments link or form for this post to share your thoughts.