Friday, October 26, 2007

Podcamp Boston 2: ...and in the lightness bind them!



Podcamp Boston 2 erupts this weekend. Chris Brogan & Christopher Penn originated the Podcamp concept out of the Barcamp concept - and created a veritable firestorm that has swept the planet, bringing community and communication wherever it has touched. If you cannot be in Beantown this weekend to see the event, I'm sure you'll hear of the ripples as the web receives volumes of twitter-posts and video feeds.

Keep up the conversations!

..Alex.

P.S. The first primary offshoot from Minute Lit is the Minute Tech podcast.

Sunday, August 5, 2007

Podcamp Pittsburgh 2 upcoming!

So, inevitably, with PodcampPittsburgh2 weeks away, I feel a podcast comin' on!

I've been somewhat focused on the fascination of "podfade"...and I've allowed time and the summer...and procrastination...to cause my own podfade with MinuteLit and MinuteLit Tech. Well, no more!

First some blogging/linking, though:

I check google news daily for Apple, and found this interesting story about the new Scion xB.

Podcamp Pittsburgh2 is coming soon to an Art Intstitute near you! (As long as you live in Western Pennsylvania! ;-)

I've been doing a one-up-style vid-cast called Logos, at Logos.blip.tv. This is a vid cast about Words...and the most recent Word was Vacation. We went south from Pittsburgh to the Shenandoah valley region of Virginia, visited a vineyard or two and spent some time reading, filming and surfing - water this time, not the net!

I've been lisening to lots of podcasts in the past week or so, after finishing JK Rowlings latest wrap-up masterpiece. MacBreak Weekly, This Week in Media, This Week in Tech, MacCast, CBC Radio's Quirks and Quarks, Marketing over Coffee, The M-Show, VentureCast, VentureVoice...and much, much more! Whew. Those guys (and gals). Leo LaPorte, Alex Lindsey, Kenji Kato (sp?), Craig Syverson, David Hornick, John Dvorak, etc. All current tech news, all very good tech know-how. All this banter actually go me interested in Pixelcorps, whose online training/community I joined for the summer...and hopefully beyond. Digital tech is, well, enthralling. Thank you, Killashandra Ree! :-)

Saw on slashdot Friday this thought provoking article: New Theory Explains Periodic Mass Extinctions. Very interesting. For those of you who follow science theory/fact, this makes me speculate that those finding extra-solar planets will begin in earnest searching out those planets which perhaps don't have the same galaxy-style wobble that the Sol system has, in the hope of identifying a longer-live species environment. Do you agree? Disagree?

That's it for now. The next thing I was going to talk about was Options...for background on that, check out my logos.blip.tv videos!

ttyl,

..alex.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Minute Lit 3 - Variations

Minute Lit 3 - Variations, was recorded two weeks ago at the Beehive coffee house, in Southside, Pittsburgh. Dawn and I met for several hours to talk through the basic outline for the show, on top of which we spoke extemporaneously about many fun, and some funny, topics. See the show notes below for details and links referenced in the 'cast.

See the podcast online at the Minute Lit main page, hosted on Apple's iWeb: you can subscribe to all episodes of "Minute Lit" and "Minute Lit - Tech" here, viewable in your favorite podcatcher (iTunes, etc.).

Please note that the podcast is recorded in AAC format, an "enhanced" podcast, which includes viewable pictures for those of you viewing on your PC, Mac, Linux boxen or color iPods/nanos. If you use an iPod Shuffle or other screenless audio player, like I do, just listen. :-) Note: if you're not using iTunes, you may need Quicktime [win/mac]

Show Notes:
Minute Lit 3 - Variations [1 hr 5 min 8 sec] (enhanced podcast, AAC, with pictures)

In this edition of Minute Lit, we'll
- explore the meaning and idea of variations in the arts
- the idea that if nothing is new under the sun, then what we see must be variation;
- we'll talk about a word you may not be familiar with, Proskynesis, and
- we'll pose a question to you which we challenge you to answer.


Discussion
Alex -
Kids play based on things they've seen, read or heard about.
Variation in Music
Bach's Goldberg Variations
For more on this, look up "goldberg variations".

Dawn -
Variations in Literature & Film
Quentin Tarentino
Sociologists take Hamlet to Africa
Queen Elizabeth left Buckhingham Palace to be amongst her people
Variations in film adaptations of Hamlet
Vampire lore & Buffy - after Alex mention's Elizabeth Kostova's "The Historian"
Drizzit - games/video games
Star Wars and Star Trek
Scotty's ashes are beamed up

Minute Lit Vocabulary word:
Alexander the Great & Proskynesis

Further Discussion
Minute Lit Tech - Podcast Review:
John Wall and The M Show
Bratz - Dawn shares Karin's views
No clowning around about Clowns

Lit Quiz:
Penelope and Odysseus - the answer to the question about how Odysseus successfully revealed himself to Penelope, his wife.

Minute Lit 3 Quiz Question
E-mail your answer in text or audio to minutelit[at]gmail[dot]com


Pixelcorps.tv
(podcasts, vidcasts) & Pixelcorps.com (classes, discussion) viewing and learning new media
Pittsburgh's G-Spod podcast - serving the Gay/Lesbian world community.

Conclusion

***Correction: While discussing the 4th wall, I attributed Puck's closing soliloquy of A Midsummer Night's Dream to Romeo and Juliet. Please note that Puck and the "If we shadows have offended" speech does, indeed, appear in A Midsummer Night's Dream. A thousand apologies. ~Dawn

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Lucas says: PghBloggers in next Star Wars Films...

Whatta rumor! :-)

The headlines:

Pgh Bloggers tonight at Finnegans Wake! for Blogfest 10.

Lucas Announces two new films in the Star Wars milieu:

"And here's a little news: Lucas tells me he will make two more live-action films based in the "Star Wars" era.

"But they won't have members of the Skywalker family as characters," he said. "They will be other people of that milieu."

The two extra films will also be made for TV and probably be an hour long each. But, like "Clone Wars," Lucas doesn't know where on TV they will land."
By Roger Friedman of Fox News

...and...

Minute Lit episode 3 - "Variations" has been recorded and is now in post-production. :-)

More to come soon on this latest. Dawn and I met at the Southside Beehive last Sunday morning for a great recording session. If you heard the previous episode, there was lots of background noise, from the music and kids and coffee machines. In this episode, we have merely to contend with the HVAC blower, as we'd moved back to the third room at the Beehive. The beehive has very nice vittles in their deli case (I partook of the veggie pesto sandwich) and awesome coffee & tea to sip.

You know, it's amazing how difficult it is for two co-producers, highly involved in separate lives and lifesytles, at different ends of a metropolis, to get together for a quick, intense recording session...but the act of getting together is, I believe, far more rewarding and satisfying than trying to use technology, such as Skype or Talkshoe. Having said that, we may try Talkshoe at some point anyways, as many of our podcast contemporaries are successfully using the podcasting service.

See you at Finnegan's tonight!

..alex.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

BootCamp PGH is this Saturday!



This Saturday is the long awaited BootCamp PGH! For those of you who missed the buzz across the wires and on the various sites connected to it, here is the info once again:

BootCamp PGH is a free one-day, immersive "entry level" version of PodCamp. It is designed to educate students, small businesses and corporate communications professionals on the power and possibilities of new media.

WHEN: Saturday, April 21, from 9 AM to 4 PM

WHERE: The Art Institute of Pittsburgh, 420 Boulevard of the Allies, 15219

WHO: New media experts, aspiring new media creators, communications and PR personnel, and you!

HOW MUCH: Free!


See? Free is good. Technology and social networking are good! The various sessions include everything from "Intro to Blogging" to "Integrating New Media into Existing Businesses." From "10 Trends Shaping the Face of Media" to "Performance Tips: Finding Your Voice." The variety is sure to provide something for everyone, at every level.

I will be attending quite a few of the sessions all day, and my esteemed colleague will be giving a few talks:

10:00 AM: Start Podcasting Right Now! by Chris Brogan and Alex Landefeld
and
12:00 PM: Intro to Social Networking Hosted by Jim Shireman of Sportsocracy and Alex Landefeld


So if you're in the area, and you're able (remember, it's free education--in a city full of colleges, you can't do much better than that!), stop by for at least a session or two. It's always good to put faces to email addresses and sign names!

See you there!

~Dawn

Friday, April 13, 2007

Minute Lit Tech 1.2 - the podcast

The second episode of Minute Lit Tech has been posted to Alex's iWeb site. Update your podcast-listening software to pull in the latest RSS feed updates (e.g., go to Podcasts in iTunes and click the Refresh button at the lower right).

Minute Lit podcast info:

See the podcast online at the Minute Lit main page, hosted on Apple's iWeb, or
download copies of both "Minute Lit" and "Minute Lit - Tech" here.

Give us a listen. Send us your comments, good or bad, in either written or audio format, to minutelit[at]gmail[dot]com.

This episode is titled "The Podcast". I note that although many bloggers are urging podcasters to move beyond talking about their medium and add real content to further encourage listeners...I choose to forge on and talk about the medium. In these still-early days of podcasting, it's important to encourage listeners, would-be podcasters, newbie podcasters and veterans alike to take continual interest in the medium itself, so that new things can be learned. Get out of your rut of just listening to a few shows, take hints suggested in your various podcasts to listen to new podcasts, video-casts, etc.

Although I don't watch many video casts, you should definitely periodically troll the offerings of such locations as youtube, Google's video site, network2.tv and blip.tv, as well as singular casts such as "Something To Be Desired". The creator of STBD is Justin Kownacki, who also is the force behind Podcamp Pittsburgh and the new Podcamp Pittsburgh Bootcamp, which will be occurring next Saturday, April 21st, at Pittsburgh's Art Institute. Listen to this episode of Minute Lit Tech to learn more, and/or go to http://www.bootcamppgh.org for more info.

As Craig Syverson mentions in one of his VentureCast shows, co-produced with David Hornik, there is still much room in the digital space for both podcasting and videocasting - there are vastly different audiences for both, with some cross-pollination...but the production of both encompasses the same group of producers and content-creators - it's just that podcasts can ramble on for 1 or 1.5 hours...whereas video-casts really work best in a shorter format.

I'm not even going to touch on monetization. I think, unless we feel a really good pull in one direction or another, that we should just "build it and they will come".

..Alex.

=============
Show notes: (a partial transcript of the show)
minute lit - tech - episode 1.2 - the Podcast

Minute Lit - Tech, the netcast for researching and discussing the Tech & Tools behind creation of 21st Century literature -- Episode 1.2 - the podcast

Minute Lit has been produced for your listening pleasure by the good folks at Silurian-Devonian Tunes, with your host for this episode, Alex Landefeld."

You may reach us at any time at minutelit@gmail.com. That's m-i-n-u-t-e-l-i-t @ gmail dot com. You may address your e-mails either to me, Alex Landefeld, or to our co-producer, Dawn Papuga.

"This netcast has been assembled in Apple's GarageBand, with background music assembled from [....]

This episode is dedicated to podcasts, talkshow hosts and interviewers of all sorts - without your attempts to reach out to your fellow humans, I wouldn't be presenting in this medium.

In this edition of Minute Lit -Tech, we'll
- explore the concept of podcasts - what, where, when & how;
- review briefly communication methods that precede podcasts: television, radio, pamphlets and bards.
- discuss podcasting methods - software, hardware and content.

Intro
The second episode of our sister program, "Minute Lit" has been completed and the final version has been released. We had two versions,

Podcasts - what where when and how

What
As you're listening to this podcast, you know generally what it is: a pre-recorded, Internet-distributed audio program. Although books on tape are prerecorded programs, they are by definition distributed in a more limited format, on phonograph records, audio tapes, CD's, DVD's and perhaps FLASH Ram drives, all of which are distributed through traditional retail channels and lending libraries. These formats allow for wider distribution, certainly, than Internet-based audio, though with the improvement of Internet distribution via satellite and long-distance wireless communications, the difference in distribution coverage is narrowing, limited merely to a difference between those with network access and those without.

Where
Though the name "podcast" does more than suggest it's origin as a netcast designed for the listening public using Apple's iPod listening devices, the term really encompasses any pre-recorded radio-like show which can be listened to on computers or portable listening devices.

What preceeded podcasts?
- books on tape/CD
- Television - visual information presented for immediate consumption
- Radio - audio information presented for immediate consumption, either stationary or via car/portable radios
- books, pamphlets -

In the first episode of Minute Lit, our vocabulary word was incunabulum, which describes sheets and books printed with the first printings of movable type or with blocks carved with the image of one whole page. These printings were the first instances of mechanical printing, following thousands of years of writing and copying texts either long-hand (by hand, thesaurus?) or inscriptions in stone or clay tablets. Since the beginning of printing, hundreds, then thousands and millions of books, pamphlets, posters, etc. have been printed, multiplying the amount of information to be distributed from a point of origin to an audience of one, 10, 100 or millions of readers.

Who prints? Who publishes? Who distributes? Who posts? Who reads? Who reads to others? Who records so that others don't have to read?

Bards, poets, priests, etc. - carried information from town to town...

Bards, travelling poets, priests, musicians, actors, commerce-businessmen (thesaurus?) - anyone who travelled from town to town to disseminate information from one group to another brought information of his own of from someone else, but transmitted the information colored with thoughts, feelings and ideas of the transmitter.

software, hardware and content:

As for hardware, other than your base machine, my biggest surprise as a complete novice was that basic computer microphones don't work very well by themselves.
Both mac's and PC's come with the basic headphone and microphone jacks...but I've not ever seen anything that says that an unpowered microphone won't work straightaway with a personal computer.

Well, try plugging a non-USB microphone or plantronics headset into that little microphone jack, and unless you turn the input volume up to full-blast, you won't hear anything. I ran into this with my Mac, and a good friend working with his PC laptop had the same issue. What we didn't know is that a microphone should be powered in some way - amplified, that is.

C'mon, we're software guys, not audio ace's.

Anyways, although I could have invested in a USB microphone (which implies a power-source via the USB connection), I wanted to be sure of something that would work...with existing equipment. I borrowed my wife's Griffin iMic, which is basically a USB external sound device with headphone and microphone jacks, plugged my headphone input and output jags into it, and then plugged the iMic into a spare USB port when Garageband was running....and OS ten asked me if the iMic device should be used. After clicking okay, I was up and running with workable microphone interface.

A benefit of the headphone interface is decreasing feedback via the mac's speakers....since I've been using this setup, that has not cropped up as an issue. One additional thing: with two or more Griffin iMic's, you can aggregate devices so that you can have an inexpensive setup for interviewing others on your podcast.

Google with the two terms thegaragedoor and agg, and you'll come up with the same great tutorial I found on The Garage Door's website.
http://www.thegaragedoor.com/tutorials/agg.html

Send us an e-mail at minutelit@gmail.com to let us know about your successes, failures or problems with these issues.

Podcasts reviewed
- Last time we reviewed in intro methods of four podcasts. Did you find those in your travels?
- The Command Line, VentureCast, This Week in Media, and That's Good to Know
....
=============

Saturday, March 31, 2007

Minute Lit - Episode 2 - Literature (final)

(final audio edit)

Finally, we've finished editing the 2nd episode audio file. The "pre-release" file was to get it out the door...the final version adds in a re-worked intro, cleans out the unwanted ums, ahs and dead spaces, and minimizes the non-verbal audio pops and clicks.

Also, in the enhanced audio file you'll see several image changes during the podcast referencing the Minute Lit title, our blogspot site and our e-mail address, minutelit[at]gmail[dot]com.

Give us a listen. Send us your comments, good or bad, in either written or audio format, to minutelit[at]gmail[dot]com.

What do you read? What would you like to read? What do you compute with? What do you podcast with? :-)

..Alex.

Show Notes:

In searching google for references to books, I happened upon the Shakespeare Concordance.

Shakespeare's Sonnet No. 23 (XXIII) is read by Dawn.

Vocabulary word: Concatenate -- can be difficult to say and define...but not hard to use in a spreadsheet program.

Concatenation in programming languages.

We find our way into discussion about Law and Order.

B.H. Haggin's Music for the Man Who Enjoys 'Hamlet' - an excellent review of classical music and how to listen to it.

We initiate discussion of Literary Journals, which we'll talk more about in future episodes.

We reference our spiritual roots in PodCamp Pittsburgh. Is there a PodCamp near you?

And we talk briefly about pasta.

* * * *

Minute Lit podcast info:

See the podcast online at the Minute Lit main page, hosted on Apple's iWeb, or
download copies of both "Minute Lit" and "Minute Lit - Tech" here.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Minute Lit - Episode 2 - Literature

After the interim episode of Minute Lit Tech, we're back with a full episode of Minute Lit! The pre-release edition of the episode is already posted, and we're working on putting the final touches on it--but if you want to get an advanced listen, drop by and tune in!

In this next episode Alex and I discuss what the definition of "literature" actually is-- and it's not as cut and dry as you might think (Halo can be considered Literature? Who would have thought?). We discuss the applicable Sonnet 23 from Shakespeare, and even touch on Law & Order.

Our word for the episode is "Concatenate," and as you'll hear, it really can be that difficult to pronounce! We also touch on literary journals, and give the ever challenging Minute Lit Quiz (hopefully this time it's more difficult!).

We'll post another update when the formatting and editing is complete, but enjoy the sneak peek!

As always, any questions can be addressed to us at MinuteLit@gmail.com and we'd love to hear from you!

Dawn

Shakespeare Concordance

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Minute Lit - Tech -- Episode 1 - Word Processing

Minute Lit - Tech

the netcast for researching and discussing the Tech & Tools
behind creation of 21st Century literature

Episode 1 - Word Processing

This episode is dedicated to teachers: we are taught by our parents, our significant others and our friends, as well as from strangers met but once. All have taught us much and have yet to teach us more...if we would but listen, watch and understand.

"In this inaugural edition of Minute Lit -Tech, we'll
- explore the idea of information transmission;
- review briefly a few other podcasts to review our podcasting roots, and
- discuss word processing and digital text editors.

Although we have only one episode of "Minute Lit" under our production belts, "Minute Lit - Tech" is a spin-off 'cast which just had to be done. We'll probably produce these two shows one by one.


Download copies of both "Minute Lit" & "Minute Lit - Tech" Here Note that Minute Lit-Tech has been produced in an aac enhanced audio file - use iTunes for best viewing of images.

Subscribe to Minute Lit Here

Please send comments to us at MinuteLit [at] gmail [dot] com.

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Episode 1 - Aesop


Minute Lit

the netcast for reading and discussing the
single and assembled words of literature.



Minute Lit has been produced for your listening pleasure by the good folks at Silurian-Devonian Tunes, with your host for this edition, Alex Landefeld. Co-designer and future co-host is Dawn Papuga, the voice behind LyriqueTragedy at Blogger, LibraryThing, LiveJournal and Myspace.

Check out www.librarything.com -- its a very cool social site.

Music for this netcast has been assembled in Apple's GarageBand; the text read to you and discussed is from both gutenberg.org and wikipedia.org.

This netcast is dedicated to:
- Mom: without your love and support, we wouldn't (literally) be here;
- Homer and fellow poets in the oral tradition: without your efforts in memorizing ballads, we might not have the wonderful literature that we have.

In this edition of Minute Lit, we'll:
- explore two Aesop's Fables, the cock and the pearl & the wolf and the lamb;
- we'll talk about a word you may not be familiar with, incunabulum, and,
- we'll read a snippet of text which we challenge you to identify. Be the first to e-mail us the correct answer, and we'll include your name in the next edition of Minute Lit.

Download a copy of Minute Lit Here

Subscribe to Minute Lit Here

Please send comments to us at MinuteLit [at] gmail [dot] com.