FLV on RAWS server

Well, the other day after my Transient Spaces server space got activated, did a quick test run on streaming video directly the server. I don’t want to use YouTube to handle my site’s embedded video since I dont want to get weird ‘related videos’ associated with mine, so I decided to go the FLV way instead of the more classical Quicktime or (gasp) the Windows Media way.

It was more painless than I thought though, so I was pleasantly surprised. I just opened the Adobe Video Encoder, picked my video file and chose my settings (will probably go with the 150kbps preset). I hit encode and some moments later my FLV was hot and ready to use! In Dreamweaver just insert a Flash Video, and then you will pick a skin for your player interface and done :D!

 

FAKE!

Nevermind my last post about the GPS drawing. Just found out it was a fake. They had me though :P.

Read all about it:
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/05/artist-says-he.html

 

GPS + DHL = Art?!

The concept was simple but brilliant: place a GPS device in a briefcase and mail it via DHL with precise travel instructions over the course of a 55 day period. When all was said and done, the GPS data formed a virtual self-portrait of the artist that spread over 6 continents and 62 countries covering nearly 70,000 miles.

I’m speechless :-|. Just check out the pic and video of the journey. Totally at awe.

 

Science is Hot!

Sounds like a line Paris Hilton would say if endorsed by the Discovery Channel.

If you are reading this Paris: No, I don’t think Discovery will ever seek endorsements from you. Now everyone else: science is cool!

In the past being geeky was as popular as castor oil laxatives. Slowly becoming mainstream, I sure hope more shows like these are produced.

First was Mythbusters, now comes Smash Lab. Not only about blowing stuff up! It’s about why and how ;).

So check out Discovery’s new show called Smash Lab! Here’s a trailer:

(What are you waiting for? Gooooo!)

 

There’s no such thing as a free lunch…

Well, maybe there is! There are lots of freebies out there. My favorite site for free hi-res stock images is www.sxc.hu. And the one for free fonts is www.dafont.com.

Go on, share the love (and freebies) with others!

 

Bandwidth the Bunny

Text, images, sounds, videos, rinse, lather, repeat.

It’s been a hell of a ride in the computing world since installing Windows 3.11 from 38 diskettes to actually being able to watch YouTube on the go with our mobiles. We take a lot of things from our modern living for granted, and one of them is internet bandwidth. We don’t notice it was there until it’s gone (much like toilet paper).

So please Transient Spaces readers, why won’t you please think of the children?! Now seriously, a tip here :P. You as a website’s big cheese have a monthly transfer limit, and so do a lot of your site viewers too. So try to optimize your images to 72 dpi and limit the size and length of your videos if you are hosting them on your own site space.

Even better is uploading them to YouTube and sites alike and embedding them to your site so it uses THEIR bandwidth :D. Cons to that practice though. Remember that you get something like “related videos”? Given your keywords, it might attract not so appropriate for your viewers related vids. You and your viewers might not like Latin American idol reject audition tapes, eh?

So help save Bandwidth the Bunny every month ok?

 

Live Event Blogging

Just for fun, I’d thought I tried to do some of that live event blogging that sites like Gizmodo do on important product launches. They keep the visitors up to date minute-by-minute doing a constant stream of updated blog posts with a sentence or two and pics of what’s going on.

So right now I’m blogging during the lecture for week 10 about Politics of Networks.

1:56pm>> Dean is having trouble launching YouTube on Internet Explorer.

P.S.: Just managed to squeeze one entry out of Dean’s whole lecture due to my wireless signal dropping out. Guess I should have sat closer to the door :P.

 

Site… map?

It’s time to crank up the speed and actually starting to put some real work into the Online Documentary. Soon I’ve come to to realize that myself and most other people will have just too much content to put in the required 12-16 pages.

In the end we all may want to say a lot but don’t have enough of space for our ideas. This is where we start cutting, tweaking and trashing content, in hopes that what’s left in the final cut will shine through, be interesting and above all be understood by everyone.

Come the magic of a site map. After Dean suggested that we should first sketch out our site on a site map, I started doing one and interestingly enough it has helped me go in the most efficient direction.

Not only it told me the structure of the site to be, but also it has helped me refine my content and in the way discovered some holes in my narrative that I had to patch.

So make things short, do a site map people. Helps with structure and content and might help you keep your sanity in these hectic last 4 weeks of the semester

 

Wiki, what?

In reaction to Neil’s in-class question of what the word “wiki” actually meant, I decided to do some sleuthing of my own. Turns out I didn’t have to go far, just to the Dictionary app. Apparently the word is of Hawaiian origin and means “quick”.

So if you ever wondered, here’s the answer:

wiki |ˈwikē|
noun
a Web site that allows collaborative editing of its content and structure by its users.

ORIGIN
coined by programmer Ward Cunningham (1949- ), from Hawaiian wiki-wiki ‘quick-quick.’

 

Second Life… take out?

Absolutely positively have to be always on top of your Second Life? On the way to work, in the supermarket or even from the computer to the toilet and back? Samsung heard your prayers. This Korean mobile giant is releasing a Second Life app for some of their phones on the second half of ‘08. I predict a fun new urban game while on the train: “Spot the Second Lifer with a two year mobile contract”. More in The Korea Times.