Ramblings – 8-01-2009 – Podcast Patent What?
You can Patent Podcasting?
It was an interesting week. The one thing that just seemed to be the strangest is that a company called VoloMedia decided to put a patent on Podcasting. While we’re all still trying to wrap our heads around it, I can see how this can happen. I remember years ago I heard of patent cases all around of people who didn’t really invent something clean up because there was no document on it.
Of course, the more famous story goes to the girl who invented that clip to store your sunglasses on your car’s visor. The story goes she used Bobby-pins to invent the clip. Someone else saw the idea and made an adjustment, then patented it for their own. The end result is that girl lost out on millions of $$
Yeah, this is not no visor clip and we are no little girls. Nonetheless, this is why you claim for intellectual property. You never know who might just come by to capitalize on it.
Podcast Recorder Up – Podcast Recorder Down.
I thought I had resolved my podcast recording problems, but when I went to do the show earlier in the week, they came back. It was frustrating, but I think I know what the issue is. I have a machine with 2 SATA drives that are striped for cache storage. They offer speed of caching my recordings. I thought one of them went bad, therefore I took it down to 1 drive. Now I think the SATA controller bus is bad. I run checks on the drives and they come out with no errors – but they still crash the machine if I use them.
Video Recording is Tough
I am not replacing that machine just yet because I may be cascading machines. The reason why? Well I also need to work on putting together a machine for Video production. The one I was using is just not going to cut it. To spend 4-5 hours on one-10 minute clip is not productive. The worst part is I got done with the video and reviewed it – only to find that the audio is not in sync with the video! ACK!
This is an interesting road to go down, but I am working on it. What would be great is if WebcamMax had an option to go above 640 x 480 on recording video. They don’t. I do have a copy of ArcSoft I got with my camera. Not too keen on using it, for it doesn’t record in a native format my video mixing program will allow. That means conversion before I can edit. Not fun.
What? The Website AGAIN!?!
This week I had more issues with the website. On Wednesday I upgraded to WordPress 2.8.2. I thought the upgrade was fine, but when I went to post a new article on Friday, I noticed none of the AJAX was working. After a couple hours of deduction (because some functionality doesn’t work at all when AJAX is off, like disabling all plugins), I found the problem – a plug-in. What was interesting is I was planning to get rid of that plug-in anyway. This sealed the deal.
Local Community TV
If anyone is from the Madison area, you might know about WYOU, a local community TV station. They are faced with a new concern – broadcasting with out a community budget. The city gave this station $140k a year for production, but this year is the last they will get it simply because of economic times.
I was asked to come in with local music magazine CEO Rokker (Maximum Ink) to try and figure out what can be done in the social media realm to monitize, but stay commercial free. It’s an daunting and interesting task, but I think we threw some ideas their way and maybe this will work for all.
Long Weekend
It seems the next 3 weekends will be filled with trips and gigs. Therefore weekend production will be sparse. I still have to round up my notes for Week in Tech History. I should just record the month and be done with it for now. Yet I feel some sense of need to record only 7 at a time. I guess I feel then I am up on all the history.
Binghoo
The majority of the second half of the week was involved in watching the Microsoft – Yahoo love connection. I personally think this is a great thing for both companies and I am curious as to what Yahoo is going to do next. Although I believe that this might be a door-hold for Microsoft to seal the deal and buy out Yahoo within 2 years. I have noted that this is something Microsoft has wanted to do for a few years now, so I think that they won’t just stop because they have search engine control of Yahoo.
If Yahoo doesn’t show a promising line by next year – Expect Microhoo to be born. It will definitely speed up the process of putting Bing on Yahoo search engines…
Shout out to Andy, Todd
Both Andy McCaskey and Todd Cochrane had family issues. I have worked with both exclusively in the last year and want to give props to both for all their work they have done in the new media space. Andy has been hit hardest as he did not run his show all week. It is a great Technical podcast that runs daily – This should be required listening to all in the tech field. I know I take the 15 minutes to listen in on all the news Andy delivers.
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Well, off to a show. We’ll talk next week.