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New things I tried today

I tried Google Wave and see great potential in collaboration. I also see Google Wave treading into Facebook’s territory not Twitter’s. Mashable has the best write-up thus far including a reference to Google Wave’s advance serarch commands. Robert Scoble discusses the overhype and sums up the problem I’m trying to get my head around "noise" and "I don’t know where to look".

I tried TinyChat which is a video chat service that promises to supplant Skype but the true potential is in the features included in the $14.95/mth price. The video quality is high. The features are well integrated into the user interface. I think this could be a lot of fun for synchronous chat but I question why use TinyChat instead of ustream.tv or Livestream.

I’ve also tried Twirl TV which looks a lot like Hulu for the networks. They also claim to only be letting the first 10,000 people in.

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What is a podcast?

For the longest time I have wanted to get into podcasting. I have good excuses like my computer equipment is pathetically out of date, my hard drives are too small (size does matter!) and filling up, and time is a commodity (video and audio take time!). But really, the geek in me has held me back the most. I understand the definition of podcasting:

A podcast is a collection of digital media files which is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers. [Wikipedia]

That was not satisfying enough for me. I did not want to "podcast" until I could be certain that I was using the word correctly! Did quality of video matter? Length? What if my RSS stream occasionally had text only posts? Does Seesmic count? What about Youtube? Or Utterz?

Tonight I posed the question on Seesmic and had the pleasure of having the CTO and creator of http://podcast.com/ give the definitively best answer to the question. I really appreciated Kosso‘s answer! It nailed it for me.

(Someone should put that video in Wikipedia under podcast)

Update: David Jacobs of The Connected World gave a great answer from a coffee shop! Watch David Jacobs reply on Seesmic!

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Blogging Abby Ham for hits

I listen to music on Pandora at the recommendation of a college professor who told me that Pandora and its algorithmic music selection is the rage of his research assistants. Wanting to hang with the cool kids, I checked it out and was impressed. Now thanks to Darren Rowse at Problogger, I also listen to Sky.fm and enjoy the higher quality streaming but am not thrilled with the narrow selection of music choices. Thanks to my brother-in-law’s gift of XM Radio to Cathy I rarely listen to regular radio anymore.

I like Frank Murphy. He blogs and performs in my improv alma mater, Einstein Simplified. Even before the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra I had the best of intentions of checking out his STAR 102.1FM morning show but as is typical of "best intentions" I haven’t done it yet…until today. Frank drew me in with his mention of Reality Me’s report that Google Street Views is in Knoxville. What did I learn from today’s morning show? It is good! And apparently if you blog about Abby Ham, in particular Abby leaving Knoxville for Cleveland somewhere, you get traffic to your blog!

Good luck Abby Ham! Be strong!

Update: By the way, I highly recommend the 10th anniversary 5.5 version of Winamp!

Update: For Abby Ham fans, Frank Murphy suggests visiting Terry Morrow’s blog and Knoxville Trivia Blog.