4 posts tagged “whats up with tech”
A quick post today...
Last night I sent a text message to Twitter. Something like this:
"Picking up all the cliche valentines day gifts for my wife."
My phone (a Mogul) automatically put an accent on the e of "cliche", (which was the correct thing to do). I sent the message and didn't think anything of it.
Today my friend (and co-host of Whats Up with Tech -- which we'll get back to soon hopefully), Tim Fisher (@TimFisher), asked me, "What was up with that post from last night?" Then he showed me how the message was delivered to him from Twitter:
@P@i@c@k@i@n@g@ @u@p@ @a@l@l@ @t@h@e@ @c@l@i@c@h@?@ @v@a
It was the same way on the Twitter web site. Uuhhh, what?
The only thing I can figure is that Twitter couldn't deal with the accent on that e. Between the @ symbols in the messed up post you can see that all the original characters are there up until the accented e which is replaced by a question mark.
So when Twittering, if your phone automatically changes standard English alphabetic characters to ones with accents, tildes, umlauts, or that backwards "c" thing under the c in Francais, and the like, you might want to undo that before sending it on to Twitter.
The new Zunes from Microsoft are out (as of yesterday). They're a little cleaner and shinier than the first generation ones. They have a bunch of new features and there's a new version of the Zune marketplace and software, too.
I recently ordered a 1st gen. zune and according to the FedEx site, it's at my house right now, so I'll be playing with it tonight. It's one of the infamous brown ones. I ordered it because apparently the brown ones didn't sell very well and I bought it for about $90 (for the 30 GB model). The other ones were still closer to $200. You can get the new 80 GB ones for $250 (but they don't have brown ones anymore). However, as I write this, Amazon is currently out of stock.
Probably the coolest part of the new hardware is the new touchpad. You can use it as a regular touch pad and press the different parts to navigate. But it's also touch-sensitive and you can flick your finger across it to scroll through your songs (or whatever media you're browsing at the time).
The Zune marketplace (the equivalent of the iTunes store for iPods) has been completely re-written. The zune software was originally based on Windows Media Player. The new version doesn't seem as mature. There are a lot of things that you should be able to customize, but can't (at least not yet -- I'm sure Microsoft will be making a ton of updates to this over the next several months). The software now has built in support for podcasts, too. What's Up with Tech isn't listed yet, but should be soon. The user interface of the zune site (zune.net) and of the zune software/marketplace/whatever isn't as intuitive as it could be. One of my main complaints is that they break some primary rules of usability. They try to be cute with their naming conventions instead of naming the links what they actually are so that people can figure out where they should click. They should read Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think". Another complaint is that I can't edit all the values of the ID3 tags for my MP3's. For example, you can't specify the mood for the song. I use that a lot when choosing songs for a party, etc. I'll still probably keep using MusicMatch for that reason. Also, instead of having 10 or even 5 gradations for "preference" for you songs, all you can do is say that you like it or not (yes or no), represented by a full heart icon or a broken heart shaped icon (the previous version of the zune software let you specify the number of stars (1-5)).
I had some flaky performance on my computer with the new zune software, too. Every once in a while, like when switching between certain programs (I had Photoshop running) the zune software would all of a sudden pop to the front and/or it would flicker a lot. I'm sure most of these issues will get worked out by Microsoft very quickly (especially the bugs as opposed to the missing features).
One cool part of the new software is the now playing screen (the image below). However, I still wish there were more features. For example, whenever I see the now playing screen, I want to click on the album art to get more information (you can't). Or I wish I could see the album art bigger (throughout the app), but not possible. By looking at the image you get a feel for the music in my collection.
Another good thing about the new software-based features is that they're supposed to be backward portable to the 1st gen devices (which is a big part of why I bought one of the old ones, knowing that the new ones were coming out). I'll let you know how it goes.
I was just considering making a post and my vox page shows that I joined on Oct. 3, 2006. Today being Oct. 3, I decided I should post... something.
In the last year learned a ton more about audio and video production. That was mostly with the help of the people of This Week in Tech and the Pixel Corps. They put together a crash course for would-be podcasters this Spring in San Francisco called Gear Media Tech. The Pixel Corps people have a podcast of the same name here. It was very cool getting to talk to Leo Laporte, Alex Lindsay, Scott Bourne, John Foster, Craig Syverson, and everyone else -- especially since I was already listening to them on their podcasts (specifically: This Week in Tech (TWiT) and This Week in Media (TWiM)).
That event gave me a ton of inspiration and a bit of technical know-how to start podcasting. I now have a show with my friend and co-host, Tim Fisher, called "What's Up With Tech?". We cover technology trends for the non-technical audience.
I have aspirations to create many more shows (audio and video). Eventually, Tim and I plan to add the shows to what we're currently calling the Grab Bag Network. We have plans for some how-to shows, a show about beer, and others.
This past weekend I went out to the Podcast and New Media Expo in Ontario, CA (near Los Angeles). I'd say about 90% of the key people in the podcasting industry were there. And I was able to personally talk to a ton of them. Leo wasn't there, but a bunch of Pixel Corps members were. Steve Gibson of GRC.com and the host of "Security Now!" (one of Leo's shows on twit.tv) was there. Actually, Security Now is the first podcast I listened to. Steve won an award for best tech podcast and I was able to congratulate him in person. He's a great guy and I highly recommend his show -- I still listen to every episode.
I don't want to ramble much more, but I had a great time at the Expo and PodCamp SoCal, which was the day before the Expo. The parties were great, too. I met and/or hung out with the people from Podango, LibSyn, Steve of PodRunner, the guys of ExtremePods, various Pixel Corps people, John Foster of Beer School (and TWiM), Tim Street of French Maid TV, the guys from Ask a Ninja, Alex Albrecht from DiggNation, Shooby (everyone's favorite high school Junior), iJustine, Ewan Spence of The Podcast Network, and many, many others.
Thanks everybody from the expo. I learned a lot, did some great networking and had a ton of fun!
Damn, this post is chock full o' links!
I'm at PodCamp SoCal. Networking with a bunch of fellow podcasters. There have been some great discussions. I may give a more full rundown of what happened in a future post or perhaps on the What's up with Tech podcast.
