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March 31, 2006
While researching yesterday's post on Google-dependence, I took a look at how much traffic this site receives from Google. Here's what I found out:
March 30, 2006
If a Google employee drank a bit too much Google Juice and tripped over the extension cord powering things at the GooglePlex, what would happen to your website's traffic? Put another way, how dependent are you on Google's Search for website traffic?
March 29, 2006
Once you find an online news site you like, how do you keep up to date with that site's content? Personally, I tend to use a process that goes something like this:
1. Type in the address (with autocomplete) to get back to the site.
2. Bookmark the site once I find myself going back regularly.
3. Subscribe to the site in order to bring the content to me rather than checking in for new content.
March 28, 2006
A few colleagues and I have recently been kicking around thoughts on the benefits of fixed vs. fluid page width for web design. We haven't come to any conclusions on this yet - the issue will probably never be resolved - but thought it would be fun to open the discussion to all of you.
March 27, 2006
One week ago today at 9:05:03 CST, the Global Flyer coasted into a perfect landing at home base ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú Salina, Kansas.
March 26, 2006
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that everyone uses the web differently. Yet we all use one of only a handful of popular browsers to surf the web. Over time people find ways to customize their browsing experience from small changes like adding bookmarks and favorites, bookmarklets, and custom toolbars. FireFox users can take things a step further by installing appropriate Extensions to add additional browser functionality, customizing their web browsing experience. However, we're still falling far short of offering specailized web browsers for pre-defined user groups.
March 25, 2006
Frank Gruber raised a good point in the comments following my post, Ping Your Way to a High Technorati Ranking, when he asked how does one know that another blog is linking to you.
March 24, 2006
The latest HDTV podcast from the HT Guys (#76) mentions Technology Evangelist's syndicated HD videos content available through iTunes.
March 23, 2006
Two months ago, I posted an article called,
"Technorati
Link Optimization: Getting What You Deserve" that explained how the
Technorati blog search engine uses inbound links to blogs to decide how
important a blog is, and thus how high to rank the site. In my opinion, if a
site chooses to link to you, you should deserve credit for the link to you
site on blog search engines like Technorati. I figured out a way to optimize
the Technorati ranking of this site by detecting who's linking to the site,
and pinging sites that hadn't already pinged themselves.
March 22, 2006
One of my favorite features on the Google Toolbar is Autofill. I can type my
personal information one time, such as name, email, mailing address, and even
credit card, then input it into applicable forms with one simply click on the
toolbar. This saves time with online shopping, and ensures accuracy in the
forms I fill out. Additionally, Autofill is smart enough to remind
me when I can use it by highlighting fields it recognizes like this:
March 21, 2006
Please please please link your web site's logo to your homepage. This is a design convention that should really be mandatory by now.
March 20, 2006
How much is your website worth? That's not an easy question to answer, but one way to measure the value is to look at the metrics of sites that have already been sold. One popular example of this is Weblogs, Inc's sale to AOL last October.
March 19, 2006
I mentioned in an earlier post on How to Combat Comment Spam that keyword filtering has been the most effective strategy for combating comment spam used on this blog so far. Since that post went live, the site has seen an uptick in search engine referrals from people looking for a good keyword list to use in their own blogs.
March 18, 2006
What does the future of citywide wireless Internet access look like? Will it be free? Publicly owned? Provided through government authorized monopolies? One citywide WiFi possibility that is gradually turning into a reality is in the works in Minneapolis right now.
March 17, 2006
The following is a list of current technology stories that I find interesting but haven't had a chance to write about yet. If you happen to be familiar with any of the concepts listed below and would like to contribute some thoughts on your experiences, please contact me using the options listed on my bio page or post a comment in the comments field below.
March 16, 2006
Yesterday I posted on Democracy player, and right now it's Technology Evangelist's preferred player for techies. As we stated, it's a wee bit buggy and not for everyone yet, so how can you watch our HDTV content if you're not an uber-geek?
March 15, 2006
I ran across an application recently that will change the world. I see massive media networks like NBC, CBC, BBC and others all stand by and watch as their business models are blown to bits. Everything we know about television, radio and media in general will be re-imagined. As Jeff Jarvis recently posted quoting Rupert Murdoch, "A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it." I'm throwing my hat in the ring and screaming to the world "it’s time, the revolution is here!" So what is this hot app? What will change the world?? What could make such a huge dent in the traditional media universe??? It’s simple -- Democracy.
March 14, 2006
Up until now most video on the Internet has been postage stamped sized. A small 320x240 or 240x180 window at 15 frames per second. We had to do this because we simply had no good CODEC to compress with and no good way to distribute larger files. With the advent of h.264 we’re able to distribute full 1080p HD resolutions online. The problem is that these files are HUGE! One 25 minute show can be around 2GB. If there were 10,000 downloads of that show, it would be 20,000GB of information transferred. That’s a lot of information for one server to deal with. By using BitTorrent we’re able to distribute that load among everyone interested in the video, reduce the strain on the server, drastically reduce costs, and improve the user experience. In my mind this will end up being the standard way of delivering HD content online.
March 13, 2006
Our next interview in 'The Innovators' series is with Mr. Frank Gruber. Frank is a hardcore blogger who gives us some fantastic tips on everything from how to start a blog, as well as how to monetize, advertise and get...
March 12, 2006
I've had a few conversations lately with colleagues about the critical role inbound links play in determining a web page's ranking in search engines. One link building strategy that consistently comes out of conversations like this is reciprocal linking, as in, "if you link to me, I'll link to you."
March 11, 2006
For those of you who remember Charbax from our CES HD coverage, he's back! This time Charbax was able to make it to the CeBit 2006 and record come great segments in Divx HD. Go grab the Divx player and head on over to http://www.cebitvideo.com to see the latest from the CeBIT show in beautiful HD!
I'm currently riding shotgun in a car on the way to Stillwater, MN for a birthday celebration. Basically, a perfect time to test the viability of posting to the site using a Treo phone.
March 10, 2006
Why do people comment spam blogs? Primarily to generate links to sites they own in an effort to increase the site's search engine rankings. Unfortunately, this can be a blog management nightmare for bloggers, littering their great content with hundreds of irrelevant comments for the latest and greatest enhancement drugs, online casinos, and girls girls girls. So what's a blogger to do?
March 9, 2006
Google opened its gigantic checkbook again, this time for Upstartle, LLC, creators of Writely.com, a web-based word processing application. We've mentioned Writely a few times before on this site but haven't explained what makes Writely such valuable tool.
(Via CityPages Blotter) The StarTribune, Minnesota's largest daily newspaper, has decided to stop providing free paper copies of their newspaper to their employees.
In other news, celebratory music was detected emanating from Minnesota's remaining forests.
March 8, 2006
I've received a few inquiries into how I created the tag cloud for this site, and figure it would be easiest to explain how it's done here.
March 7, 2006
Technology Evangelist has switched to using a tag cloud for the category navigation on this site. So, what does that mean and why does it matter?
March 6, 2006
Once a month, I receive a series of emails from the community service officer with the Minneapolis Police Department reporting on criminal activity in the five neighborhoods closest to my home. The reports are delivered as screen shots from a crime reporting system called GeoMaster:
March 5, 2006
Displaying a table of data in a blog post is no easy task using most common blogging applications today. They tend to have limited table building tools, and properly hand-coding a table in HTML is a fairly daunting task. So, what options are there for bloggers interested in including a table of data in a post?
March 4, 2006
As I complete the editing of our next episode of "The Innovators" I thought it would be fun to mention some of the nifty little things that we do inside of each video as it's posted. Since the next video will have a lot of URLs in it, I think you'll find these tips handy. Please note that the following applies to our "Watch Now" clip only and not to the clips you would download via iTunes or any other RSS feed we may have.
Progressive Start
Our Watch Now clip is authored in such a way that it should start playing immediately if you have a 1Mbps or greater connection to our server. This means no buffering time, no waiting, nothing. If you only have a 56k connection or slower broadband connection to the net, that's OK, you'll just have to wait a bit longer. Unlike traditional streaming media, you'll still be able to watch in full quality no matter what your connection speed.
Chapter Marks
In the lower right hand corner of the player you'll see a nifty drop down with a title in it. This drop down lists the chapters that are available for playback. If you have not yet downloaded a chapter yet, it will not show up in this list, only items you're able to view will be in here. This is nice if you want to jump to a specific point in the video.
URL banners
You may have noticed that we place the URL of different web sites in the video feed. Not only are they handy to reference, but they are clickable too. For reasons beyond my comprehension, Apple decided to not change your cursor to a pointing hand when you're hovering over a link, so the only way to know that you can click on it is if I tell you. Well, any time you see a black bar with a URL in it, you can click on it (and sometimes you can click on the name banners too).
Full Screen
I'll be posting an experimental full-screen mode for users that don't have QuickTime Pro. Once again Apple baffles the mind and decided to not allow full-screen playback unless the viewer purchases QuickTime Pro, or if the author puts special tags in their media to force the player full screen. Needless to say, we'll have the special tags. I'll be doing this with the 480p content, so make sure your box is able to play 480p h.264 video, otherwise it may stutter a bit.
Syndication
You can view any of our HD feeds right inside of your favorite video syndication software, such as Apple iTunes. Simply browse for our feeds directly in iTunes, or subscribe to our feed manually from this page. We offer feeds in 480p, 720p, 1080p, Video iPod, Sony PSP, MP3 and AAC formats. We'll even be posting torrent feeds soon giving you access to the all new Democracy Player.
I'm about done editing our next episode, but as I have mentioned before it takes a very long time to compress the content. As soon as I have a majority of the video ready, I'll post her online to help curb your HD addiction. Hope everyone enjoys these nifty tips!
March 3, 2006
We have covered distributing HD on the Internet and some of the challenges there, now lets cover actually acquiring HD for online distribution. The following is a list of equipment I am proposing for purchase by Technology Evangelist. Nothing is set in stone, so we may go down a completely different path, but the list below seems pretty darn good if you're in the market to acquire content in HD.
March 2, 2006
I have had MANY comments asking why we chose QuickTime to distribute "The Innovators" when we could have used Flash, Windows Media, etc. I have also had a few questions on why we chose HDV to shoot in as opposed to DVCPRO HD and whatnot. Lets start first with the equipment.
March 1, 2006
Posting the first episode of The Innovators with Derek Franklin proved to be nothing short of a huge challenge... Let me start at the beginning and go from there
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