Increasing your blog's accessibility
Here's a 4-minute video interview with Skye Kilaen about how to make your website or weblog more accessible to the disabled. (Ourmedia page | watch video)
August 28, 2006 at 12:48 PM in Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)
About BitTorrent on this vlog
BitTorrent has gotten a bad rap in the press, coming on the heels of the peer-to-peer file-sharing phenomenon kicked off by Napster and some intense name-smearing by the entertainment industry.
But at its core, BitTorrent is genius. It's a way to more easily share large files between users without having a third party playing intermediary. The more peers who host the file, the faster the file can be shared with others.
You'll see Hollywood embrace it at some point.
Gary Lerhaupt, a friend in Silicon Valley who's working on a masters degree in computer science at Stanford, has launched a free service that takes the pain out of creating torrents. Check out Prodigem — it's simple even for the non-geeks out there.
Besides its simplicity, Prodigem's greatest gift is that it will serve as host for the first three BitTorrent seeds — for free. That means you'll be able to download new files at broadband speeds, rather than relying on the pokey upload speeds of individual users' modems for files stored on their machines. (Once you hit three external seeds, Prodigem no longer hosts the file.)
I'm experimenting a bit with BitTorrent on this vlog to see what extra value file sharing can add to the vlog experience. I hope to use BitTorrent to share video outtakes, but primarily it will be used to share photos, screen shots and text works related to a video.
Here are the first few:
Amanda Congdon of "Rocketboom": 12 images (torrent)
Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive: 7 images (torrent)
Lauren Gelman, associate director of Stanford's Center for Internet & Society: 5 images (torrent)
You may use these images under the same Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License that applies to the videos on this vlog. You then can freely insert a photo into a post when you blog about any of these folks. (It saves you the hassle of taking a screenshot of a video and converting it into a jpeg.)
Please use courtesy if reproducing any of these images online. I'm not sure I'll keep this up because it's a lot of work.
January 2, 2006 at 08:39 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink
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What are torrents?
BitTorrent is software that lets users share files between peers, without the use of a central server. With BitTorrent technology, the more peers who host the file on their personal computers, the faster the file can be shared with others.
Torrents are small files that contains metadata about media files to be shared as well as about the host computer that coordinates the file's distribution. One service, Move Digital, makes it especially easy for lay people to begin sharing or downloading torrents in a few simple steps.
More info:
• About BitTorrent on this vlog
January 1, 2006 at 08:29 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
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What is RSS?
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a method that lets readers stay current with blogs and news content using a feed reader. It's "news that comes to you," a term I coined a few years ago. More and more people are zeroing in on the content they want — from bloggers, news sources, even advertisers — rather than through random Web surfing.
Just download a news reader (or aggregator), subscribe to a handful of feeds, and you'll see content appear in your news reader just minutes after it appears on the Web. Wikpedia lists some aggregators here,
Web browsers like Safari and Firefox now support RSS, and the beta of Yahoo! Mail now incorporates RSS, so you can email and check your feeds at the same time. RSS got a major boost with the release of Microsoft's Vista operating system, which comes with RSS fully supported. Yahoo! has already done a good job taking it out of the land of geeks and into the general population.
For more information, here are two articles I wrote about RSS in the Online Journalism Review:
News that comes to you — RSS feeds offer info-junkies a way to take the pulse of hundreds of sites and blogs.
Tools for the info-warrior — RSS readers ride to the rescue of heavy news grazers.
January 1, 2006 at 01:47 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
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Stuart Henshall: All about Skype
Stuart Henshall, founder of the Skype Journal, discusses all things Skype, July 21, 2005, Stanford, Calif.
December 30, 2005 at 02:45 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
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Valerie Cunningham on the GoingOn network
Valerie Cunningham discusses the upcoming rollout of the GoingOn Network, July 21, 2005, in Stanford, Calif.
December 30, 2005 at 02:01 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
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Dan Russell on portable computing
Dan Russell of IBM's Almaden Research Center talks about the future of portable computing conference, July 11, 2005, in San Jose, Calif.
December 30, 2005 at 01:47 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
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