I've been working on a Web-based version of an HTML Help system I produced last year. I want to produce an online demo of it so I was doing some research to find a good application to produce this demo. I was hoping to find something open source, but I settled on Camtasia, which is not open source, because: a) I saw some good examples of demos done with Camtasia and it was pretty much the kind of thing I want to do, and b) Camtasia is produced by TechSmith who make SnagIt and SnagIt is the best screen capture tool I've come across - it's really easy to use and it just does what you need it to do and lets you do your job more easily.

When I was looking around for a suitable application I came across the work of Infoworld columnist Jon Udell. Jon produces what he calls "screencasts". I'm not sure if that's his term for it - probably not - but I hadn't come across the term before.

Jon Udell's blog is at
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/
It's currently number 44 in Userland's top 100 most-subscribed-to RSS feeds (Adam Curry's blog is at number 8) and is well worth a visit.

You can find a collection of Jon's screencasts at:
http://del.icio.us/judell/screencast+jonudell

The RSS feed for this is at:
http://del.icio.us/rss/judell/screencast+jonudell

Joh has written an introduction to screencasting (what it is and how to do it) and you can find this at:
http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmedia/2005/11/16/what-is-screencasting.html?page=1

For a really good example of what can be done, you should have a look at the screencast Jon has done on the Wikipedia article about the heavy metal umlaut. I use Wikipedia (who doesn't?) but I'd never really taken the time to find out how articles are created. This screencast explains the process better than any written article could. I won't explain why - just go and have a look at the screencast:

http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/umlaut.html
Read the rest of this entry »

Several of the technology podcasts I've been listening to have mentioned adding yourself to their Frappr map. I decided to check out what this was all about and it turns out Frappr is a site that allows you to create a personal map, based on Google Maps, and allow other people to add a pin with a comment.

This is good for blog/podcast authors because it gives you an idea of a) whether anyone out there is reading/listening to your stuff, b) it shows the geographic distribution of your audience and c) it allows your readers/listeners to give you a little public feedback, without having to write you and email (and thereby reveal their email address).

It's a nice idea, so I've created a Frappr map for ITauthor.com. Right now it's empty, so if you're quick you can go and add the first pin. Go to:

www.frappr.com/itauthor

However, the really funny thing about it is that at the bottom of each page it has a banner with a Firefox image and the words: "The Frappr Team Loves Firefox!" But, here's the comical bit, using Firefox 1.5, the map doesn't display, just a grey box with some lines and placeholders for the pin images. Woops!

So if you want to look at the ITauthor map - use IE.

I didn't ever think I'd ever recommend that!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

I've got the day off today (using up my annual leave before the end of the year). So I decided to have a go at creating a podcast for myself.

By the way, in yesterday's posting I said I was using Lemon, which "used to be called iPodder". Scratch that. It's now called Juice, but it used to be called iPodder Lemon. Apparently, Apple issued a cease and desist notice to iPodder telling them to change the name to avoid any inference of a connection between them and Apple (see http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27684).

After reading around the subject of publishing podcasts I decided to give dircaster a try. My reason for choosing dircaster was its simplicity. It's a PHP script and basically all you do is put it in a podcasts directory on your web server and then upload your MP3 podcast files into the same directory and the PHP does all the RSS stuff for you. If anyone out there has subscribed to the RSS feed for your podcast channel they get to see the new editions when they update (which is usually a scheduled operation). In other words, by simply uploading the MP3 files, your listeners get access to your new podcast via their podcast client or aggregator. The version I installed was dircaster 0.4e. See www.shadydentist.com/wordpress/archives/2004/12/23/dircaster-v04-podcasting-php-script I made the recording for my first podcast using my PDA, I then cleaned up the recording on my Windows laptop using Cubase, saved it as an MP3 then used WinSCP to move the MP3 file to the podcasts directory on my Linux Web server. If you want to listen to my first podcast (or any subsequent ones I might have done since writing this), go to http://feeds.feedburner.com/itauthor and click on the "Listen" button. Alternatively, if you want to subscribe to the podcast feed using your podcast application, just do the following:

In Juice:
1. Click the Subscriptions tab.
2. Click the Add New Feed button (+).
3. Paste the following into the URL field: http://feeds.feedburner.com/itauthor
4. Select the "ITauthor" subscription.
5. Select the Episode to download.
6. Click the Check/Download Selected Feed button (V).
7. If you've set up the Preference to play the download right after it's download you'll hear the podcast. If not, double-click the podcast edition in the Downloads tab.

In Apple iTunes:
1. Select Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast.
2. Paste the following into the URL field: http://feeds.feedburner.com/itauthor
3. Double-click ITauthor in the Podcast list. It works!

If you want to try creating your own podcast feed there's an excellent article called Where to Submit Your Podcasts: Best Podcast Search Engines and Directories on masternewmedia.org that contains a long list of podcast directories you can submit your feed URL to. Another useful thing to do is to ping audio.weblogs.com each time you publish a new podcast. You can do this using the form at: http://audio.weblogs.com/pingSiteForm

I commute 50 miles to work every day. The journey takes just over an hour in the morning and about an hour and a half in the evening (two hours tonight). I've been doing this for four years now. The worst thing about it is that it's such a mind-numbing waste of time. I tend to flick back and forward through the radio stations to avoid hearing the same news items again and again, or the same music again and again. I've tried listening to language CDs to learn French, but after hearing the same CD a few times you're not learning anything any more.

Occasionally I've recorded radio documentaries and Radio 4 science/medical programmes from the BBC Web site to listen to via my XDA, but it's a laborious process.

A better solution comes in the form of podcasts.

Podcasts have been around for a while now. The thing that's stopped me investigating them before now is the daft name. However, I eventually thought it was high time I put this to one side and took a closer look (or listen).

The first podcast application I tried out was the iTunes client. Whoever added Podcast functionality to iTunes did a really shoddy piece of work. It's very difficult to use. It's particularly difficult to navigate around and find podcasts. Click on podcasts takes you to the iTunes Music WebSite. After lots of clicks you can eventually find the podcast category you're interested in, but when you download one you're taken away from the list you were looking at, and if you want to download another podcast you have to go through the same series of clicks to get back to the list again. I found it incredibly irritating to use and went searcing for something better.

After trying out a few alternatives, I settled on using Lemon as my podcast client. Lemon used to be called iPodder and is a free download from SourceForge (see juicereceiver.sourceforge.net). It's a simple application and I only found two flaws with it: 1) it's not obvious how to download podcasts, although once you figure it out it's easy enough, 2) I'd like it to automatically download new postings to podcasts I've subscribed to and then send me an email a link to the downloaded file.

I downloaded some tech-related podcasts and put some postings to the WebDevRadio podcast on my PDA to listen to on the way home from work.

I use a small FM transmitter to allow me to listen to audio files on my PDA over my car radio. It's a neat little gizmo called an iRock (see www.the-gadgeteer.com/review/irock_wireless_music_adapter_review) and it does the job very nicely.

So my long drive home this evening was more interesting than usual, listening to Michael Kimsal talking about Web-related issues (see
www.webdevradio.com).

I've been looking at shared calendars (using Sunbird or Outlook as clients and PHP iCalendar on the web server to display the calendars). Sunbird allows you to synchronise a calendar with a .ics file in a WebDAV-enabled directory on the web server.

I found a useful article about WebDAV at:

www.akadia.com/services/mod_dav.html