NosillaCast 01/22/2006 Show #27

18 new countries, enhanced podcast version, accessibility petition, Catholic Insider podcast, 4th quarter earnings report, new advertiser, CoverFlow, Konica-Minolta exits camera market, TV Rant, why freeware/shareware is cool, iWeb review.

Listen to the Podcast – Time: 25 minutes 10 seconds

Jan 22nd, 2006 show number 27

so where did all you people come from? Being an engineer, of course I’m plotting the number of visitors to podfeet.com in Excel and watching the number grow with enthusiasm. December was kind of a sleeper month, didn’t do even as much as November, but evidently that was the holidays because all of a sudden people are coming out of the woodwork! in the past 5 days the curve is almost VERTICAL! I’ve added EIGHTEEN new countries in one week. it’s insanity! and so much fun. If you don’t believe me, check out the graph in the shownotes at podfeet.com! If you’re a new listener to the NosillaCast, please drop me a line at [email protected] and let me know where you found me!

Research department Niraj has suggested that I should have a link to a live update of what countries listen to the NosillaCast, but he’ll regret that because I’ll make him help me code it up! For now, I want to tell you all the countries that have joined us this week. In the show notes I’m including links to the CIA Factbook that will show you a map of these countries, land area, climate, terrain, natural resources, ethnic groups, and a ton more interesting information! If you’re new to the NosillaCast you need to be informed that I am the epitome of the ugly American – I’m absolutely pathetic when it comes to geography! All those years of Calculus and Physics seem to have pushed any skills in that area right out of my brain.

Algeria, Argentina, Costa Rica, Croatia, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Jordan, Kuwait, Macedonia, Malaysia, Malta, Romania, South Africa, Thailand, Uganda, Ukraine and Vietnam

all the new visitors, IE is up to 27%! (we had driven it down to 11%) check out podcast 18 on 11/20/05 to find out why not IE

Posted the enhanced version of show #26 on podfeet.com
chapter markers
pictures at each chapter – see in iTunes or on iPods
put in links
asked listener Neil to check it out, did an EXHAUSTIVE review – couldn’t see the links – wonder where they ARE visible
Neil felt it was mildly entertaining, and might help to go back after a full listen through to jump to a specific section to re-listen
drop me a line and let me know what you think – extra work, any value?

accessibility petition
Mentioned last week that there’s a petition out to request google to make its services more accessible by eliminating the captcha’s – those funny looking graphics that show you letters to type in but which make a site unusable for the visually impaired. Please go to petitiononline.com/captcha/ that’s c-a-p-t-c-h-a, and just click the button to help more people able to participate in this great adventure.

Catholic Insider Podcast
last week I gave Father Roderick a plug for inspiring me to get a new microphone, and then I didn’t tell you where to find his podcast! There’s two ways, through catholicinsider.com or through his new website sqpn.com. that’s a VERY hard url for me to remember for some reason – it stands for StarQuest Podcast Network. He’s got a beautiful site and a fantastic podcast. He’s got an enthusiasm about life – including movies and music and people and even technology! You should definitely consider listening to his podcast, when you’re done listening to the NosillaCast of course!

4th quarter earnings report – $1.04 from google adsense. thanks to ALL of you who clicked on an ad! I’m well on my way to even higher earnings this quarter, I’m up to $0.27 already this year!

Podcasters struggling how to pay for bandwidth and maybe actually make a little money at this – looking to advertising, but only 2 advertisers out there – Go Daddy and Go to Meeting (which isn’t even cross platform). If I hear one more ad for those two services I’m going to scream! I thought I’d go in search of a new and different advertiser, and I think I found something you’re sure to enjoy.
Advertisement

Rico’s Squid Emporium

Listen to the Rico commercial again!
Well i know where I’M heading right after the show, Rico’s Squid Emporium to get some of that fresh squid!

CoverFlow
If you’re an old fogey like me, you still remember with pleasure what it was like to flip through your vinyl albums to find the right one. Research department Niraj found CoverFlow from steelskies.com. watch iTunes cover art flip by like “real” albums with beautiful reflections like they’re on a black lacquered table a la iChat AV.
loaded my “albums” quickly
slider on the bottom to go through alphabet
double click launches iTunes in the background to play

CoverFlow is a free album browser for OS X Tiger, using Cocoa and OpenGL. Even if you can’t use it because of system limitations, there’s a cool video on the website you can watch to make you jealous. You don’t NEED this application, but it sure is cool to look at.

Konica-Minolta exits camera market
I got my first real camera in December of 1978 – it was a Minolta X700 SLR. I used that camera till April of 2001 – for 23 years, until I got my first digital camera. As you can see on my “my favorite gadgets” page of the website, my latest digital camera is the Konica Minolta Dimage Z3. This week the sad news came that KM is exiting the camera business entirely! Nikon announced earlier that they were exiting the film camera business, but KM is getting out 100% and selling their technology to Sony. I’m sad to see them go, they did a good job for me over the years.

TV Rant
So my husband has been dying to get digital cable for ages now because he loves good sound and a high quality picture. I tried to placate him with an indoor pair of rabbit ears designed to pick up the HD signal, but it was kind of flaky and inconsistent. Last week we installed digital cable routed through our Tivo and hooked up to our stereo reciever and the HDTV, and then he went off on a two day business trip. I sat down to watch my two favorite shows – Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy, the picture recorded was all black! then my son Kyle tried to watch one of his shows, and while the picture was there, there was no sound! So here I am all ready to watch TV, surrounded by no less than SIX remote controls, and I can’t watch television!!! I think you’ll like my solution – I downloaded the shows off BitTorrent and watched them by connecting my powerbook through DVI into the big TV! isn’t that crazy? I paid for the Tivo and the Tivo service, and I paid for the digital cable service, and for the TV and the stereo, and yet I had to illegally download the shows I paid to get! sheesh.

Luckily he came home and spent hours diagnosing our wiring diagrams and finally figured out what was wrong and all is happy in the Sheridan household now.

Why freeware/shareware is cool
One of the reasons i like freeware/shareware besides the price is accessibility to the developers. on show #23 I reviewed a shareware app called SaveMe that will auto save your documents in any application, and which is tailorable by application. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now, and I found a small bug and one annoyance, so I shot a note off the the developers and Adam Goldstein from goldfishsoft.com wrote back to me almost immediately with a very positive response, telling me that they would put my suggestions at the top of the fix list! I know you think I’m an international celebrity and all, but I know that this is just how it works with these freeware/shareware guys. Can you imagine getting this kind of response from a company like Microsoft or Apple? make sure you always pay your shareware fees if you end up using the tool, these guys deserve their compensation for making our lives more enjoyable and productive.

iWeb
Spent a few hours with iWeb yesterday checking it out.
really easy to start up – pick a theme, drag and drop photos and movies
will lock up on media window (where you pick photos & movies) if you have any corrupt files, but doesn’t tell you that you have a problem. Evidently something wrong with one of my movie files, had to take them all out of the Movies folder
also locks up on a lot of people who had flip4mac installed
really fun to add photos, they slide around on the screen as you’re putting them in, rearranging easily. also ads a slideshow button that brings up a very iPhoto-like interface on the web browser. Automatic and beautiful. I tested on Safari & Firefox on the Mac, and Firefox and IE on XP and it was a completely consistent experience.
themes don’t seem to be editable – wanted to put podfeet.com banner in, couldn’t do it easily
once you’ve chosen a theme, you’re stuck with it, can’t change without tossing all your content. this is a huge omission, people who use WordPress and blogger and all those kinds of tools enjoy and expect the ability to change your theme out when you’re bored, or just want to improve.

Wraps it up for show number 27, as always feedback is welcome at [email protected] or you can post a comment on the website at podfeet.com. Thanks for listening and stay subscribed!