Category: Internet

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Pluggd is fixing the meta issue with podcasting

Wired published an article about Pluggd, a company that is developing new technology to search the internet, and we’re not just talking about text anymore.

Pluggd has found a way to index podcasts, talk shows and other spoken-word content. The company’s service then allows users to search the audio files for specific words.

You can try Pluggd’s word-searching demo yourself right now. Enter your search term and you’ll see mentions of your word highlighted in various colors — heatmap-style — on a timeline of the show. The redder “hot spot” areas represent denser clusters of your search term, and clicking on one will cause the player to jump straight to the discussion about your desired topic.

Rather than just reading a transcript of a conversation, you can search for a term and hear it spoken in context by the original speaker in seconds. The ramifications for podcasting and more traditional spoken-audio formats are significant, and that’s just for starters. [wired]

If they get this right, the podcasting medium stands to take a huge boost. Take a look at the demo. It gives a nice preview of the service that they are working on. I’m still picking my jaw up off the floor a little bit.

Additionally, Digg did a design overhaul to their site plus some other goodies. They’ve added support for podcasting. That basically means that the same way that you can Digg a news story or blog post, you can Digg a single episode to share with others. I’m not too sure how it works from the podcasters end, but please feel free to Digg any of the RadioZoom or The Crazy Canucks episodes. 🙂

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The Skype free ride is about to end

SkypeI have been greatly enjoying the free, unlimited calls to regular phones on Skype for nearly the past year. It’s been a wonderful way to call up friends and family back in the states. The quality is pretty good, but on heavy traffic days on the internet, not so much. How are you to argue with it being free?

Enjoy it while it lasts. The free, trial period is coming to a close at the end of this month. I had hoped that Skype would just eat the bandwidth and keep it free, but that stands to not be the case.

Internet phone service provider Skype plans to start charging U.S. and Canadian users US$29.95 per year for unlimited calls to regular phones in both countries, as the end of a free trial offer looms.

Users who sign up before Jan. 31, 2007, will receive a special rate of $14.95 a year and 100 free minutes of international calling, Skype said on Wednesday. Any user wishing to continue using Skype to make calls to regular phones or mobile handsets after the free trial expires Dec. 31, but does not want a yearly plan, can pay for SkypeOut at a rate of 2.1 cents per minute for calls within the U.S. and Canada.

Computer-to-computer calls using Skype software will remain free. [macworld]

Still, that’s not a bad deal to pay that much per year for free calls between the U.S. and Canada. Naturally, there will be some people who will think that this is a load of crap. In my hometown, we used to run a free, local BBS[wiki] (yeah, remember those things from 1995?) and users flipped when they had to pay $25 a year to dial in over their modems. Sometimes you just need a little help with bills, and I could really see paying to use Skype’s service. However, I am a total sucker for free stuff.

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I have a thing for lines of code

I’m redesigning the RadioZoom site again. Ok, it’s not a redesign, but I’m porting the design, mostly, into a better layout. I’ve worked so hard to not make the website look like a blog because, let’s be honest, it’s a podcast, right? Anyone can start a blog and shift it into a site for a podcast. I’m just going to stop fighting the inevitable.

The current theme that I’m using, as it is a WordPress driven site, has so much code that is cobbled and hacked together that it hurts too much to clean up. I know it’s bad taste to take someone’s theme that they put out there for public use and then tear it all apart for my own amusement, but I’m picky. It has to look right, at least to me. I ain’t no design genius either, but beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder. Well, in this case, the programmer.

PodPress is really the reason I’m revamping the design. Subtle changes makes it not want to play nicely with the current design. They recently released a new version of this great podcasting plugin for WordPress, so I think it’s high time to dive into fixing it. At the same time, it keeps the geek skills sharpened.

If all goes according to plan, the new design should be live next week. Don’t expect any huge surprises. It should look similar to what it is now, but functionality will be the true improvement, perhaps more so on the back end.

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When geeks podcast about WordPress

Just last week, I discovered The WordPress Podcast. Being a podcaster that uses WordPress in all the projects that I’m apart of right now, I subscribed immediately. This is close to being the official podcast about WordPress, but not quite. That’s not to say that the folks involved don’t know what they’re talking about.

Of course, what they are talking about is incredibly geeky. There is something to be said about those out there who understand all the behind the scenes aspect of WordPress as a blogging engine that will not appeal to those looking for entertainment. If you use WP, like it, and are interested in the idea of exploring all the extra things you can do with it, then this might be for you.

So far, I’ve listened to a handful of episodes and been really liking what I’ve heard. The concept goes beyond just the hosts telling you tips and tricks for what you can do with WordPress. Other users, programmers, and designers contribute segments about things they are doing with their own sites. I already have a few ideas that I want to try out based on some of the things have been mentioned.

The one aspect that I really dig is the segment about recently released plugins for WordPress. They give a basic run down on some of the latest releases and updates, and the website for the podcast allows you to find links directly to what they mention. Very useful because anyone who makes WP sites will know what a pain it can be to keep tabs on what’s out there for plugins.

I’m anxious to listen to their two part interview with Matthew Mullenweg[wiki], the guy who basically headed the creation of WordPress at the age of 19. That shows you that The WordPress Podcast has the knowledge and connections for good, geeky content.

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Dinking with things that dink with content

I’ve been cramming a lot into my brain over the past few days. For one thing, I’ve been exploring the lovely world of Drupal. After all the things I’ve seen and heard about it, I’ve been impressed. It’s everything that it’s said to be. Content management system, and they ain’t kidding.

I set it up locally and played quite a bit yesterday. Every time I tried to do something that would be complicated by doing it stupidly, Drupal had some sort of built-in way to do what I wanted. Very interesting. Not sure that I like it from a blogging aspect, but it has that too. It can be oh so much more.

I’m experimenting with WordPress more and more. I’ve been a long time user of the visual rich editor. However, not anymore. It’s come to be such a pain, and the WYSIWYG interface gets so annoying after a while. Being a user of only version 2.0 and on, this is what previous versions did. I’ve gotta say that I like this, non-rich editor, much more. Loads faster in FireFox and has no lag. I’ll stick with this for now.

I did find a really great Flickr plugin for WordPress. Flickr Photo Album adds a nice interface for dropping images from your Flickr account straight into a post, all from within the editor. You can already do this with Flock, but I am still not impressed with its performance. This plugin makes things simple and quick, but the setup takes a little to sort out.

I also got into some Unix[wiki] junk last night. Seems that my external hard drive has the occasional ability of renaming itself at random times and confusing some of my peer to peer programs. How else are we to have our cheap nights in with some ghetto Tivo, aka BitTorrent? This could also cause problems with some of my podcast projects. If I spent enough time with it, Unix could become another language I could start to really understand. I’ve got way too many other things on the list right now. I should get some tape for the middle of my glasses.

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24 – Season 6 Prequel

Vanmega mentioned it, but I’m going to post it here. I’ve become quite the 24[wiki] fan over the past few seasons, losing track of it in its debut season do to lack of time in college. There’s parts that are hooky, but sometimes you just want that action where a hero might be able to save the day, even if it takes another week to wait for the next episode to come out. I guess these prequels are nothing too new, but it is to me. Looks inviting.

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The Black Keys – “Your Touch”

It’s a bit of a trippy video, but I love this track.  The Black Keys have quickly become a beloved favorite of mine.  I really dig the stripped down rock and roll, and it doesn’t get much better than two guys, drums, and a guitar.  Sure, there’s some layering that goes into the studio albums, but I hear they are amazing on the stage.  (By the way, Muffin, they’re coming to Lawrence, KS very soon.  Go see them.)

“So how do you feel about being dead?”
“I don’t know, my neck hurts.”

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Happy Thanksgiving

Rebecca really wanted to do some ice skating for a while now, so why not do it on Thanksgiving Day?

My legs are feeling it. I haven’t been on ice in about five years, inline skates for about two. It took me about five minutes to get back into the groove, but it all came back to me pretty quick. Quick stopping, cross-overs, and skating backwards? We’ll save that for next time.

Happy Thanksgiving to all celebrating this American holiday, but we’ll be throwing some Canadian spice into today. Canucks play Nashville late this afternoon, right at the same time that the KC Chiefs kickoff at home against Denver. How much better can today get? Lamb roast. We’re skipping the turkey.

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Here comes more YouTubes

Seth Godin pointed out that there might be more than one YouTubes in the world, especially after NBC Universal launched their own form of video sharing. Instead of it being user generated content, this stuff is actually coming from the corporate folks themselves.

DotComedy is full of various clips of NBC programming, but I believe there are clips from other networks as well. For the most part, it operates a lot like YouTube. There is an embed function that is not working yet, and the “coming soon” doesn’t give much of a time line for when that will be operational. Still, it creates some competition for fans of YouTube, as long as the content is fresh.

Just looking around the site on my first time through, a Late Night with Conan O’Brian clip of “Satellite TV”, and this Double Dragon short was highly enlightening. Lord knows I wasted time on that game in my youth.