Category: Geek Stuff

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Brain Buster Podcasting The Marketeer

Christopher Penn – Honorary Ronin

So I thought I was pretty clever earlier this week with my Rule of 2 (don’t waste your time with social networks that you only hear about once), then Chris Penn, of The Financial Aid Podcast weighed in with a brilliant comment – who gives a damn about the 2 minutes it takes to register, join every network out there to lock down your namespace (protect your brand in Marketese), and he’s absolutely right. He also pointed me towards some other crazy crap Google is trying.
The thing is, this is not the first time he’s dealt me a brainbuster. He’s doing crazy stuff all the time over on MySpace and he’s always experimenting. He’s also good at scripting, and I’m not, so that makes me jealous.

You may ask “Why only an Honorary Ronin”? Chris is actually a ninja, so calling him a Ronin would be an affront. I’ll let him correct my limited understanding if necessary, but the Ninja work for the emperor, sort of like Navy Seals (but you never see them and if there was a movie about them with Charlie Sheen in it, everyone involved in the film would end up assassinated). The Ronin is often without a master, usually because they have been disgraced – basically mercenaries.

In other words it’s sort of like how Colin Powell would be Sir Colin if not for that altercation we had with the kingdom back in the late 1700’s.

I also salute him for working at this place that, for some unknown reason, he’s the only one there that’s not a supermodel (actually I just checked Flickr and for some reason there were some other guys at the holiday party this year, maybe they took some heat for discrimination or something).

So Chris, this sangria’s for you.

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Brain Buster Geek Stuff

Brain Busting Dilemma

This just happened and I had to sneak over here for a quick post. My plan this morning was to go to a holiday gathering of former co-workers from DCI. I just heard about Crayon’s holiday party in Second Life… I’m actually considering passing on the real world event for the virtual one.

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Podcasting

The M Show – Game On

Live from Boston! It’s Sunday Night! That means there’s a hot fresh M Show waiting to be loaded on your iPod. If you don’t have one, get one for the holiday – you need it, you know you do!

The only stuff newsworthy involved the gaming industry so that’s all we’ve got, that and some field recording with some people who slept out outside for a shot at a Nintendo Wii. Tomorrow it’s back to work.

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Gaming The Marketeer

Big Bumpin’

I was a the local Burger King this week feeding my junk food addiction with one of my favorites – the Burger King Chicken sandwich – basically the chicken equivalent of a hotdog, rolled in batter and deep fried. Add a toasted bun, mayo and lettuce and I’m ready for the defib to zap my rapidly hardening arteries.

BK has a great campaign going now where if you buy a value meal you can get an XBox game for $3.99. The games run on both the new Xbox 360 and the original Xbox. Always a sucker for a novel campaign, and a card carrying gamer I had to try one out. I immediately had to laugh as I asked for a copy of “Big Bumpin“. Am I just being too Beavis and Butthead or does this seem outright blatant:
The lit marquis on the game cover says “Big Bumpin'” and you’ve got the king, known for slinging the meat, and his huge (game) cock right there with him. I haven’t actually had time to try it out myself but the reviews on the gamers sites I hit now and then say that this is the best of the three and not bad, especially at the price. So if you hear that 70’s scratch guitar theme later these week, you know I’ll be busy in round of Big Bumpin’ with the King and will deliver my verdict.

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Geek Stuff Productivity Booster

Embedding YouTube in a WordPress Post

Ok, so I thought that last post would be easy… how hard could it be to embed a YouTube video into a post? One hour later…

Thanks to this dude, Viper, and his WordPress video plugin, it rocks.

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Brain Buster Geek Stuff Productivity Booster The Marketeer

Multimedia-Content Management System

So I got a demo of Brainshark about a week ago. The idea of a Multimedia-Content Management System was a bit of a brainbuster for me. To boil it down – now that anybody with a decent computer and the right software can create some kind of multimedia presentation, you need a system to manage these presentations, better yet make them simple to create and host. It was funny because I talked to some people over there a couple of years ago before I started working at MarketingSherpa.

I had to go with a hyphen to make it clear that this is not a Content Managment System (CMS) with a Multimedia interface, but rather a tool to manage media that includes audio and video. I was impressed with the system, but the content generators I am working with now are extremely technical so simplifying the process is not a pain point for me (yet). We are using Camtasia to generate video files and I’ve found that a Shure SM-58 mic into a Mobile Pre USB does a great job of capturing audio.

The UI reminded me of Macromedia Breeze, a tool I have not had a chance to try out. Last time I tried to get a copy it was around the Adobe acquisiton and it was hard for me to even figure out who to call to buy it, I just gave up.

Enough rambling, I’m off to bed… did you listen to the podcast yet?

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Geek Stuff Productivity Booster The Marketeer

Second Life versus GoToWebinar

I’m going to be talking in Second Life (SL) on Thursday as part of a CaseCamp. CaseCamp is when a bunch of Marketeers get together and talk about stuff they’ve been trying (at least that’s what I’ve been told, this is my first). I’m looking forward to it because I’d written off Second Life, it’s very cool but First Life is kicking my ass right now so I don’t really have the time to figure out how to get my Avatar to stop dancing or where to buy a shirt for a virtual person. When I heard about CaseCamp though, I jumped on it (it’s all about the content, yadda yadda yadda).

I’m interested to see how it compares to other online collaboration tools. Between the new version of GoToMeeting and a good conference call service that’s a combination that may be an overpowering heavyweight to a challenger like Second Life and Skype, but we’ll put it to the test on Thursday.

My prediction? Yes, prediction. Pain. (Sorry, just carried away with an obscure Rocky III reference, I may even see the new one.) G2M can handle 200+, SL’s servers aren’t in that weight class yet, but I’m only about 3 hours ahead of a SL n00b so we’ll see what I might be missing.

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Daily Life Podcasting

The M Show – I hate the holidays

It’s Sunday, so yet again you can cruise over and check out the latest M Show, your favorite Business Podcast, which will be posted as soon as the upload finishes.

Find out why I hate the holidays, the government, and why I have to short change charities this year so I can bear my tax burden.

You can also build your own movie trailer here.

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Daily Life Geek Stuff

Saturday, it’s a Saturday

Even though it’s the crazy holiday season it’s been a good day of rest. I got some work done this morning including the first cut of my Web 3.0 video that I sent off to the master of the lost art of audio story telling. I watched “The Sandlot” with my neice today and saw “The Holiday” with the lovely Carin last night (good date flick, a lot of fun).

I’ve also been messing around with Brain Age on my Nintendo DS, the UI for Sudoku is surprisingly good, exceptionally simple. The DS continues to astound me, I have no doubt there will be a Wii in my future.

I’m getting ready for a Christmas party tonight. Bonus points and a shoutout for anybody that knows the song that the title of this post came from. Have a good weekend, tomorrow’s The M Show!

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Daily Life Podcasting

Why Radio Sucks

Not long ago I was travelling for business with a rental car and I had no way to get my iPod output into the stereo. After 15 minutes I was actually considering the risk of driving with headphones (and decided against it for my personal safety, I already felt at risk in my ultra-sub-mini-compact vehicle).

Reason #1 – Ads. There’s tons of them. This is the golden age of podcasting, there are very few there.

Reason #2 – Finite number of stations, finite choices. When’s the last time you heard a show about the best way to raise pigs or knit? Radio: every town in America has, the morning zoo, talk from the left and right, country, rap, classic rock, current rock, oldies and that’s it. No matter what your hobby, you can find something that you really want to learn about. And even though I am 100% podcast there’s lots of hollywood quality stuff through Audible (John Federico, thank me later).

Reason #3 – 60 GB, 9000 songs, my choice.

Reason #4 – If you are stuck waiting somewhere you can watch video on your iPod, kind of cool coming through 6 car speakers.

Bonus Reason: You may say “But John, in your simple-minded rant you forgot one thing – variety”, and you I say “See #3 and add Smart Playlist – Random” and check out my channels on gigadial – it’s great, subscribe to the feed and I’ll throw you random new podcasts to check out. The CAPOW channel covers marketing and business stuff, New England Podcasters is everything else for the general public, and the John Wall channel has everything that’s too nerdy, radical, edgy, or adult for the (somewhat) family friendly NE Casters channel.

My channel has some All-Star geek recordings right now that include Apple Founder Steve Wozniak, Joel from Joel on Software, and Business Gurus Clayton Christensen (the Innovator’s Dilemma) and Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point and Blink).
If you want just music then check out some folks doing some great stuff: Rock from Accident Hash, Hip-Hop from Julien, Chill with Anji Bee, and get your pirate Barry White style groove on with Suzy Chase.

By the way, anyone can add to those channels so if you have anything you’d like to share please add it.

Holy web bluntman, that’s a lot of links. Have a good weekend, The M Show will be out Sunday Night with some special guests…