TECHPopuli

It's a Sony!

Sony is apparently recalling all its li-ion laptop batteries. From Arstechnica:

Sony has finally bitten the bullet and issued a worldwide recall of all Sony-manufactured lithium-ion batteries used in notebook computers. Earlier in the day, Lenovo/IBM joined the ranks of Dell, Apple, and Toshiba in issuing a recall for all Sony batteries that ship with their notebooks.

We're back

I had a major web-hosting snafu this past week. But I'm back now... I hope.

Mini RC Chopper

I'm going out tomorrow to try and buy one of these. It looks cool!

Technorati admin stuff

I'm trying to get the Technorati system to notice this blog. They say if I create a post with the following link in it, it will make this happen. So here it it.

Technorati Profile

Technorati Tags: technorati

Andrew Baron on Rocketboom Ad Sales

Owen Mack of coBRANDiT interviewed Rocketboom's Andrew Baron at Podcamp, about the famous eBay ad auction and Rocketboom's other advertising sales.

Let me disclose that I enjoyed Andrew's hospitality at The Cambridge Commons on Friday night. He paid for the drinks and appetizers. The thing I find most interesting about this video interview, is he says that if he had the time he could sell $40-80,000 per week ads all the time on Rocketboom. If that's true, then why doesn't he just add a staffer to do that. It would pay for itself wouldn't it?

Technorati Tags: podcampboston, podcampboston2006

New YouTube player

Sometime in the past few days YouTube has upgraded their video player. Its controls have a bit more color and the layout is a little different. I wonder what other improvements it has, if any.

PodCampBoston2006 Day One

I attended a full day of sessions at day one of the first PodCamp. They were all good, and a couple were excellent.

Chris Penn reprised his BarCamp session -- in a shorter form -- on ways to promote your podcast. A lot of his ideas are generally applicable to spreading the word about any web content.

Feeds demystified had Eric Olson of Feedburner talking about the peculiarities of making RSS feeds for podcasts. He also talked a little about metrics for gauging the size of your audience.

I only caught the tail-end of the panel on podcast formats. It was a common problem today that some of the session names became confused between things like "file formats" and "content formats". This session was about the latter. What I caught of it had some seemingly great advice about how to form your podcast for maximum appeal.

Larry Lawfer and Mark Blevins' session on how to conduct good interviews was among my favorites for the day. Lots of good advice for how to prepare and execute interesting interviews with all kinds of subjects, from your next door neighbor to a hollywood celebrity.

In a change of pace, I next attended a brief schmooze-fest of the New England Podcasters Group. I had a nice group chat here with David Tames, CC Chapman, Andrea Mercado, and Greg Demetrick.

My final session of the day was another great one. David Tames gave some terrific, real-world, practical advice on recording video and audio. Good stuff. UPDATE: David has posted some notes from the session.

All-in-all a terrific first day. I'm looking forward to part two tomorrow.

Technorati Tags: podcampboston2006, podcampboston

Podcapmp: Kickoff party

Back from a very fun opening to Podcamp. The party given by Berkman Center at Harvard was a big hit. A large crowd, very diverse. As Steve Garfield said to me, if that was all there was to the weekend it might still be OK.

I had great talks with David Tames, Susan "Sooz" Kaup, Shava Nerad, Owen Mack and Dave Lamorte. As well as brief conversations with many others.

If this is any indication of what the rest of the weekend will be like, it's gonna be great!

PodCamp begins

Soon I'll be heading off the the first event of this weekend's PodCamp. Tonight is the pre-party hosted by the Berkman Center in Cambridge.

Tomorrow and Sunday are the days filled with sessions and what I'm expecting will be some fascinating people and conversations.

Star Trek facelift

The original Star Trek episodes are getting a major restoration and enhancement, and will begin airing next week.

Here's the story from TVGuide:

Star Trek purists, take a deep breath! On Sept. 16, the iconic ‘60s series will return to syndication for the first time since 1990, but with a startling difference: All 79 episodes are being digitally remastered with computer-generated effects not possible when Gene Roddenberry created the show 40 years ago. The news could cause Roddenberry loyalists to have a collective cow, but the longtime Trek staffers in charge of the makeover say they're honoring the late maestro's vision, not changing it.

I am cautiously optimistic that this will be OK. I've set my TiVo to check it out.

Head-mounted video

"Headscreen" ???

We used to think that seeing someone wearing audio headphones in public looked odd, now it's commonplace. We're gradually getting used to people wearing cellphone headsets. It's only a matter of time before this is common too.