New community for independent musicians
I’m happy to announce to readers of my blog that I’ve just launched a new music community. While branded as a service for Cincinnati musicians, it fundamentally is capable for providing a really rich community for musicians globally. Check it out — it’s free: http://grooveriver.com
Enable AVI, FLV and DivX encoding in Podcast Producer
Excited at the prospect of using Flip Ultra and Flip Mino cameras and uploading the video via Podcast Producer, I was disappointed to discover that both Flip cameras wrap their video in AVI files, and use the 3ivx codec, effectively thwarting my Podcast Producer plans. Videos uploaded via the Podcast Capture utility resulted in audio-only posts to the wiki/blog server.
That highlights one common complaint I’ve made and heard about Podcast Producer — that it demonstrates it’s heritage with a decided bias for Apple-endorsed wrappers and codecs (read: QuickTime).
In my quest to use these fantastic(ly inexpensive-but-handy) Flip video cameras, I recently found out that simply adding a QuickTime plugin to Mac OS X 10.5 server provides the capability to transcode far more file formats and encodings than the stock installation of Podcast Producer allows: AVI, FLV, 3ivx, DivX, MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, Flash Video, Indeo 1 & 2, to name a few!
The solution is drop dead simple (as any Mac OS X endeavor ought to be):
Google flagging all search results as “harmful”
Searching for GarageBand ‘09 topics this morning, I noticed a pattern — one that’s virtually impossible to notice given Google’s new self-appointed role of protector of digital humanity.
Every link is flagged as “This site may harm your computer” — even trusted pages on the topic, such as pages on Apple.com. Any attempt to visit the resulting links are intercepted by Google, in effect preventing me from visiting the site. Sounds like a good idea, except it isn’t, because Google can’t seem to get it right, and Google isn’t interested in fixing sites that are incorrectly flagged.
Garbage Starting to Smell
The Sickly Sweet Stench of Rotting Thought
Thank you for taking the time to visit this dump! Sniff around and check out some of my previous garbage. Of course, I'd love to know what you think as well, so make sure to deposit your own trash in the appropriate pile. See you around!
