I’m a storyteller. I find cool new things, use them to make my life better, and teach others to do the same.
Want to get together with Chris Pirillo, Greg Hughes, Tim Germer, myself, and other cool geeks? Don’t forget to come down to McMennamin’s Blue Moon in northwest Portland tonight (corner of NW 21st and Glisan) for the Geek Dinner.
I’ll be podcasting, doing video, and who knows what else. I can’t wait to go home after work, and get my loadout/gear ready. I’ll be a walking geek exhibit! Please, don’t mug me! 
Fatwallet Forums - Dell UltraSharp LCD 1905FP $248, 2001FP $379.67, 2005FPW $384,
OK, so these aren’t “tiny” screens, they’re really big screens, but I wanted to share this. There are a couple of stackable coupons that let you get select Dell LCD Flat Panel monitors for cheaper than I’ve ever seen them:
19″ 1905FP for $259 shipped (needs $1 filler to qualify)
20″ 2001FP for $422 shipped
20″ Widescreen 2005FPW for $384 shipped
Check out the FatWallet.com post linked above for the coupon codes and discounts. No hoops to jump through - just pick one of those three monitors (and something at least $1 for the 19″), apply the coupon codes, and checkout. Coupons expire 5:59 AM CDT on 4/27, so you’ve got a few days.
Thanks to Ed for the heads up. I know a few of you have been looking for a good deal on an LCD, so don’t miss out on this one.
Good luck!
I’ve been publishing TinyPodcast Video Edition in more or less the default Windows Movie Maker settings - 320×240 resolution, 512Kbps, 30fps, Windows Media 9 Video format. This seems to be a good balance of quality and file size (about 3 MB per minute of video). But I’ve gotten feedback that Windows Media Video doesn’t look so great on the Mac and Linux. And I wouldn’t mind making the video resolution a little bigger to get a better picture (hey, storage and bandwidth are free, thanks to Ourmedia.org and Archive.org, not to mention Google getting into the video hosting game, even though you can’t download from them yet).
Some have suggested Quicktime Pro as a better cross platform codec. It’s only $29, but Quicktime 7 is coming next week, with the launch of OS X Tiger (assuming the Windows version of Quicktime 7 Pro comes out at the same time), so I don’t want to be instantly obsolete. And I can’t seem to find any documentation or review of exactly what Quicktime Pro can and can’t do as far as video importing, editing, etc. Not even screenshots can be found on the Apple website. So I’m on the fence about Quicktime. Are any of you having quality issues with Windows Media Video on a non-Microsoft OS?
Assuming that I stick with Windows Media Video for now, what would you think about having larger resolution (say, 640×480), and/or a lower framerate (15 fps instead of 30)? RocketBoom, one of my favorite video blogs, only uses 15 fps, and looks pretty good doing it. I doubt there will ever be any intense action sequences on TinyPodcast Video Edition, so I think we could get away with a lower frame rate. And maybe that would offset the file size if I bump the resolution up at the same time.
I’m going to play around with a couple of different encoding settings, and see how things turn out. But I’d like to hear from you, since ultimately, you’re the ones that are downloading and watching the videos.
Just post a comment or email me with your feedback.
Thanks!
Axim Deal of the Week: X50v with Extra Battery for $405USD
Via PocketPCThoughts, the latest great deal on what I think is the best PDA on the market today. You’ve heard me rave about the gorgeous VGA screen, and the rest of the specs don’t disappoint, either (624MHz CPU, 64MB RAM, 90+MB File Store, WiFi, Bluetooth, SD, and CF).
I know several of you that are looking for a good deal on one of these, so check this out if that’s the case. It expires tonight (Wed. 4/20), so don’t wait long.
I know of more than a half dozen people who have bought the x50v after hearing me evanglize mine, and seeing the eye-popping screen. Want to be the next one to do so? 
feedmap .net (BETA) : Where Blogs Meet Maps
You might have noticed that I added a blogmap from FeedMap.net over in the right sidebar. If you’re getting this through my feed, here’s what it looks like:
Scoble’s got one, too. Have a blog? Get a blogmap. Not listed on the blogmap? Make sure your site and feed are geo-coded, so it knows where you are.
Pretty cool stuff.
Brian and I are both busy with work stuff today, so we rescheduled this week’s TinyPodcast for Friday. Sorry for the delay.
We’ve got lots of cool stuff to talk about, and we plan on doing simultaneous video and audio again, like we did last week. Thanks for the positive feedback you sent!
MAKE: Blog: MAKE:DIYcast- our new audio/podcast experiment!
After a hiatus from his debut with the Engadget Podcast, robot and gadget hacker extraordinaire Phillip Torrone returns to our ears with the MAKE DIYCast.
I had a listen this morning, and it was great stuff. Phillip always has the greatest toys, and cool ideas that make you go “why didn’t I think of that?”
Head over and have a listen, and subscribe to the RSS 2.0 feed in your favorite podcast aggregator to get future episodes delivered automatically. Highly recommended.
FWIW, pt and the Engadget Podcast were a big part of my inspiration to start TinyPodcast, so I’m extra happy to have pt back on my iPod.
Motorola finally lets it go: the MPx is no more - Engadget
I had a feeling this was coming. It seems that Motorola has finally admitted that their uniquely designed MPx (a.k.a. MPx300) Pocket PC Phone Edition will never see a larger release than the few units that have trickled out in Asia.
The design of the phone is awesome - dual hinges to open as a clamshell in both portrait and landscape orientations - but the specs were anemic for two years ago (32MB RAM, 200MHz), let alone if it were to come out today.
I can’t say I’m surprised, but hope springs eternal for the RAZRBerry, the long-rumored slim-and-sexy version of the MPx. Come on, Motorola - we want to be “wow”ed!
Geek Dinner in Portland (Chris Pirillo)
Chris Pirillo, head honcho of Lockergnome and Gnomedex is going to be in Portland this week, and is having a geek dinner on Friday night (4/22) at McMennamin’s Blue Moon on NW 21st.
I’ll definitely be there. My wife Rachel is going to be out of town, but I probably couldn’t convince her to go to something so geeky anyway.
You can bet that I’ll do some audio and/or video of the meetup, and post the results here.
Had a busy weekend, lots of family functions, but being me, of course I managed to use lots of gadgets.
We had a 1 year birthday party for my niece Lauren. It was going to be at the Oregon Zoo, but after checking the forecast info and Doppler radar images on WeatherPanel on my x50v and getting live updates via Accuweather’s web page on my BlackBerry, I was convinced that it was going to rain all day. Based on that info, we went to the Children’s Museum across the parking lot instead. Of course, it later stopped raining, so even though I had access to almost-live weather radar images, I can’t predict the weather any better than the guys on the news. Oh well.
I took my Sony DCR-HC40 Mini DV camcorder, and took lots of video of all the cousins while we were at the Children’s Museum. I’ll post that up as soon as I get a chance to pull it off of the camera. I’ll try to make it fancy and interesting - I’m looking forward to trying out some of the features of Windows Movie Maker that I haven’t used so far for TinyPodcast Video Edition.
Later that afternoon, we threw a 40th birthday party for my wife’s brother. Again, I took lots of video, and I’ll post it up later. My wife Rachel was in charge of a lot of the decorations, and had asked for my help, so I exercised some willpower, and left my PSP in my gear bag, so as not to get sucked into a game of Lumines, and ignore any requests to help set things up. We were pretty tired after we got home, but I did manage to get a couple hours of Mercury and Lumines in.
On Sunday we went to church in the morning, as usual, and I have all of my church books and material on my Dell Axim x50v, so it got the usual amount of usage. After we got home, between afternoon naps, I snuck in some more PSP time. I should have done some feed reading (I’m pretty behind) or worked on processing the video I took on Saturday, but it was a nice relaxing rainy afternoon, and I never got up the energy to do it.
So even though it was a non-geeky weekend by most definitions, I still managed to get lots of gadget usage in. It’s in my blood - I just can’t help myself!
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Need to lighten up - I’m doing a "Twitter Boot Camp" with the ISN team in 1 hr. # # # # # # http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ # # # http://tinyurl.com/5gswmy # # # http://tinyurl.com/5hla4f # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # I hear @motherpopper’s around somewhere. # # # # # #
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # AP said its an "educational" software company. Guesses? # # # # (That goes for anyone else, too.) # # # # # # # And, uh, what does "PR’d" mean? #
http://tinyurl.com/3pcktn # I’ve still got it if you want another copy. # # http://tinyurl.com/4gnccd # Look up my code via @wii. # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # 
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