I have tried everything under the sun to create entertainment for myself...or at least shift my lifestyle in a way to fulfill my entertainment needs for the few hours a night I have to consume entertainment.  I have a Roku for streaming TV and movies to my television from Netflix, a Wii when I need to rock some tennis or ski my fat backside down a mountain missing 7 flags (ug, I know), I have a Tivo for time shifting content of my choosing from network and cable broadcasts, I have a 5 disk DVD changer, I have the highest level cable with HD + "On Demand", I have an iTouch full of video podcasts and audio podcasts...  Basically at any given moment between 6pm and 10pm I should be in complete control of how I spend my evenings...at the mercy of NONE....even the big whig "we know better than you what you want to watch" network broadcasts.

But even with all of this technology at my fingertips, I still have been finding myself struggling in the evenings to entertain my brain in either a fun way or a meaningful way.  I'd say 1/4 the time, I am generally enthusiastic about what I find on TV.  I have certain television programs I dig. The Big Bang Theory, Dirty Jobs, Survivor (I know...get off my ass), Big Brother (I know...get off my ass), The Amazing Race, Mythbusters, The Office, and a handful of others.  But the other 3/4 of the time from 6-10pm I am searching out things...looking for something that doesn't suck...or at least doesn't suck enough for me to turn the channel.

Tonight, thanks to a posting on Facebook, someone pointed me in the direction of http://live.twit.tv.  I thought "why not, it's either freaking American Idol, which I hate, or some crap on cable about UFOs or Monsters...."  So over I switched to watch Leo Laporte, a guy I listen to weekly on This Week in Tech.  Well I hve just spent the last 3.5 hours watching Leo Laporte and his various guests create shows, discuss technology, discuss the podosphere, and basically entertain my nerd brain this entire time.  I actually have had my 50" LCD Sony Wega TV turned off for hours because I've been watching this stream on my Macbook (holy crap, 24% battery left..I better charge).

So is this the future of my nerd entertainment?  Have I just evolved from a nerd that watches Cranky Geeks on my iPod from the toilet, listens to TWIT at work, and generally hits G4 TV every now and then for nerd news delivered by random hot chick into a dude that has spent way too much money on technology to satisfy my nerd entertainment cravings only to spend every waking moment watching video streams of nerd news on the internet instead of watching the cable I pay $130 a month for?  

 Leo Lapore, Twit, the entire Twit.tv network are far more entertaining to this geek than crappy broadcast television.  The few things I actually dig I will probably continue to Tivo and catch when time permits...but my days of watching "Extra Extra" just because it is on at 6:30 and it's either that or Wheel of Fortune, which I can't watch because our stupid dog barks at the door every time a correct letter "ding" dings (the dog thinks it's the freaking doorbell). are completely over.  I think I have truly set my mind at ease with not having to watch my TV and my cable just because it's a big TV and I am paying out the ass for cable programming.

If it sucks, it sucks...and I won't watch.  I will find my own content....I will watch it when I want and how I want....I will not be forced into the mind numbing boredom of crap, crap, crap any more....I, my friends, will watch nerd shows on the internet.  Thank you very much Leo Laporte! 

I was rocking some Keith and the Girl this morning, one of my favorite comedy podcasts…a couple in NYC doing a show from their home.  Great, great stuff...my daily delight.  15 minutes into Episode 896 and I hear a weird noise…then I hear nothing.  Nothing at all.  I glance at my iTouch screen and it’s black.  I try the center button, nothing.  I try the top reset button….nothing.  I try plugging it into my charger even though I know it’s got a full charge….nothing.

I quickly went through my mental checkbook, realized it would be 4 pay periods before I could part with $220 (recent Wii purchases have killed me financially), and nearly splattered my drawers.  2 months without an iTouch?  No way, can’t do it.  I’m too hooked.  My Podcasts, my Pandora, my AOL Radio, my other apps.  Just 13 months into owning my first piece of Apple equipment, the iTouch purchased in January 2008, I realize how much I need the iTouch.  After just a seconds worth of thinking about it, I need my October purchased MacBook. 

Apple HAS me.  I have become so dependent on my daily routines, which center around having the iTouch in my ear nearly all day and the MacBook connected to my fingers all night, that I can't fathom what it would be like not to have my iTouch...not to have my Macbook.  If it came right down to it, if my iTouch crapped out on me this morning, I'd be going to the Apple Store over lunch, buying the newest 8GB iTouch, and then spending the next 3 weeks eBaying things from around the house that "I don't really need" in order to finance the "emergency" iTouch purchase.  Am I disgusting?  Am I sick in the head?

Yea, I have a few other MP3 players laying around that would do the job (sort of) to get my daily podcasts pushed into my brain that I could use while I save up $50 at a time in order to pay cash for a new iTouch...but they're nowhere near as epic as the iTouch. I realy feel that going from an iTouch to anything else would be such a downgrade, such a step backwards, the perfect example of devolution that I just couldn't handle it.

Luckily after holding the button on front and the button on top for about 10 seconds, the lovely, glorious shiny, silver Apple logo appeared on the dark screen and moments later I was back into the Keith and the Girl episode.  Now, though, I am worried that the year old iTouch is on the brink of death.  I better start saving up for the inevitable now...

Apple flat out has me.

Just found this out, thought I'd share.  For some reason, iTunes skipped downloading a podcast episode last night of http://www.keithandthegirl.com and since I have listened to every show of theirs in order, all 871 of them so far, this freaked me out.  872 was missing, but 873 was there.  So I went to iTunes using my iTouch, selected the episode for download, and off it went.  A few minutes later I thought it would be a good time to update any Apps I have on the device.  Two updates were available and when  hit the "Update All", the iTouch crashed back to the desktop.  Tried again, same result, tried again, same result.

It appears that, unlike a PC/Mac that can handle downloads from multiple sources and stores them in some sort of queue, the iTouch / iPhone doesn't have this ability.  If you're downloading App store updates, you can't download a podcast from iTunes at the same time....and visa versa, as I described above.  The apps are so independent of each other and the iTouch / iPhone seem not to notice or care, that nothing running on the device knows what else is running on the device and when you do something super crazy like try to download a podcast and update your apps at the same time, all hell breaks loose.

I guess I shouldn't complain...The podcast download is nearly done, I'll be listening to my show in no time, and then  can update my app store apps.  I just found it odd that such a whicked cool device like my iTouch can only download one thing at a time...

I've had an idea about creating a Digg-style social news network called www.BlogFloat.com devoted to New Media, bloggers, podcasters, video podcasters, social networks, and the like, for a while now and until recently couldn't muster up the man hours it would take to create one from scratch using the tools I am most familiar with (Visual Studio and ASP.NET). After the extensive programming I did on my Twitter-like site, www.bubeasy.com, I was sure this idea would remain in the idea realm and never materialize (like oh so many of my other concepts).

In search of an alternative route, I recently stumbled onto an article on Digg titled How to Build and Launch a Social News Site in 21 Days.

After reading the article and doing the mental calculations on how I could grab 21 days worth of time from my normally hectic schedule, I set out to research a bit more about the Content Management System featured in the article, Social Web CMS. I came to the conclusion that due to the fact I would be using a shared hosting account at GoDaddy and not having to run my own server (which would involve installing PHP, mySQL, and who knows what else), I should be able to get something up and running over a weekend.

Step one was to download and install the files on a free hosting GoDaddy account I had associated with another domain name. I wanted to test out the SWCMS before I plopped out any cash for the adventure and since I already had a Windows hosting credit, I thought why not? Unfortunately, after hours of heartache and visits to the SWCMS forum, with lots of support from a variety of folks over there, I opted to go ahead and buy the domain name I wanted, www.BlogFloat.com, along with some Linux hosting.

From there, I uploaded the files (I had some trouble using Filezilla on a Mac, as it seemed to only be willing to upload one sub-directory....if there were sub-directories within sub-directories, I had to manually upload them), did some slight tweaking, and then set out to Admin the new site. With great pleasure, everything seemed to work quite well.

I set out to try to tweak the graphics of the site by finding some Pligg-based templates on the web. After trying this one and that one, finding that things like the nav menu became broken or that certain pages wouldn't load at all, I re-uploaded the original files and basically started from scratch. Actually, I went through this procedure several times over the weekend as any time I seemed to tweak anything with a non standard template, things went to hell. Not that there is anything wrong with SWCMS, nor the templates, but I have been in the .NET world for a very long time and my PHP skills are foggy.

Administering the site proved simple, too. There is a module store that allows you to easily add existing modules to the new site, pretty much every setting for the site you can imagine is located in the Language menu, and the only notepad editing I had to do for the entire site was to re-write the FAQ page to suit my site's needs.

So over a weekend, purchasing the domain name and hosting on a Friday, tweaking, testing, and reloading from scratch a few times on Saturday, Sunday rolled around and I was pretty happy with the admin settings and layout (the default template “yget” is just pretty, I like it). I spent the day attempting to upload blog post links, editing a bit more in the Admin section, and that was it.

I showed off my new site to a few friends at work and was met with “wow” and “how long?” responses. The next step for the success of the site is to build the user network. My intention is to hit up every podcaster forum I can find, contact podcasters I know personally and ask for their support, and somehow I need to get the word out to the blogosphere, as such users would really, really find a site like this handy.

Imagine as a blogger that you are able to write a post, then post it at www.BlogFloat.com with a nice description and rise in popularity on the page based on the content of your writing. If people like it, you get hits. If not, then you try again with your next blog post.

I'm exicted about the future of www.BlogFloat.com. If anyone is interested in more details on how I made it work, feel free to contact me. Or, heck, just write a blog post, post it over at BlogFloat.com and I'll see it!

-Corby-

I was sitting at work today when I received an email about the joining of Blogworld's expo and the New Media expo into one event.  I attended the first Podcast Expo (had a great time, met lots of awesome people) and the second which I believe was changed to "New Media Expo" the following year, both in Ontario, CA.  Although I haven't been able to go since, due to family and work, I still follow all of the happenings in the podosphere and in the new media expo world.

The email I received today was titled "BlogWorld Expo & New Media Expo Merge to Create One Huge Event for the Entire New Media industry!" from Rick Calvert, founder of Blogworld and New Media Expo and Tim Bourquin of the Podcast and Portable Media Expo (later named New Media Expo).  The two gave their perspectives on how the joining expos came about one, big mega nerd get-together.  The full contents of the email from Rick's perspective was published over at  Blogworld.com and Tim's perspective at newmediaexpo.com.

Ah, the old days of sipping beers in the Ontario, CA Marriott hotel bar with the likes of Keith and the Girl, Brother Love, Dawn and Drew, the guys from Nobody Likes Onions, Rob from Podcast 411, Nate and Di, Swoopy, Bibb, and countless, countless others....  (my old Flickr photos of the first year's event can be found here)

It's nice to see the two groups getting together and hopefully an official "sticking it to the old media man" expo will come out of this.  As active in the podcasting community as many of us are, either as content creators or fans/listeners/viewers, we new media folks need all the togetherness we can get.  I think that by these two forces joining together, we might be in for some of the best new media expo adventures yet!

-Corby- 

As a heavy podcast listener since the early days of Keith and the Girl, Dawn and Drew, Daily Source Code, Bibb and Yaz, The Bitterest Pill, The Twisted Pickle Show, Nate and Di, and countless others that have come and gone, come back again, and gone again, having someone yap in my ear during my workday has become a mainstay of my existence.  In fact, on rare occasion when my mp3 player isn’t with me in my cubicle, I feel almost like I’m wearing my underwear on the outside of my pants…something just isn’t right.

Until I purchased my iTouch in Jan. of ’08 I had never been a slave to iTunes.  I had always used Juice as my podcatcher and websites like www.PodcastPickle.com and www.PodcastAlley.com to find new content and get RSS subscription information about shows I was interested in.  Then, in the world of drag-n-drop Windows XP, I was simply able to connect my mp3 player to the computer via USB and transfer whatever new .mp3 files rested in my ‘podcast downloads’ directory right onto my player, leaving for hours of entertainment while slaving away in the corporate world.  There’s nothing quite like working on some serious report while listening to Keith and Chemda of www.keithandthegirl.com discuss painting the faces of disgusting, booger covered, flakey skinned children.

Honestly, my entire life might be different now if any one of the 4 display Zune devices at my local Best Buy had actually worked.  On that cold January day I went to the Best Buy after hours of research on the internet, reading forums posts, comparisons, and toiling, I had decided on a Zune primarily for its ability to connect to your home network and sync podcasts automatically.  When none of the display models worked, either frozen on a screen, unresponsive to my thumb trying to navigate around, or the other two that just plain wouldn’t fire up, I turned 180 degrees, saw a beautiful iTouch box with a picture of John Lennon on it, and plopped out my saved up Christmas money with eager anticipation.  When I got home with the new device, I did one of the geekiest things I had ever done up to that point…I created an unboxing video and stuck it up on www.YouTube.com for the entire world to see.  Shortly after is when I became a slave to iTunes.  

As any iPod owner knows, if you’ve got one of these you must have iTunes.  Yes there are work-arounds and hacks all over the interwebs about bypassing this memory hog of a program but the hassle is hardly worth it.  The XP machine I had installed iTunes on has, over the last year, become exclusively an iTunes podcatching machine.  This is its only job.  Sit in the corner of the bedroom, iTunes open, and download new podcasts.  Wait for me to plug in the iTouch, send it the new podcasts while marking listened to ones for removal, and repeat….over and over, day in, day out.  Why waste all of that processing power to do one simple task that Juice used to do for me with a much smaller footprint and memory requirement?  Because it’s just easier not to do anything else on that PC.  It is a little old, slow, sometimes unresponsive, and there’s nothing worse than waking up in the morning, heading to work with a hopefully full of new podcasts iTouch, and realizing upon firing it up after sitting down at my cube for a hard day’s worth of work that there are no new podcasts because god forbid I left Firefox and iTunes open over night, iTunes crashed, and I have nothing new to listen to all day long.

Well this problem appears to have disappeared for me with the newest firmware upgrade of the iPhone / iTouch.  Firmware release 2.2 now supports direct podcast downloads!  As a prime example of what was just described, yesterday was Thanksgiving.  Some of the daily shows I listen to probably didn’t put out a show yesterday, but I know there were episodes from Wednesday that were not on my iTouch this morning.  So wishing to try out the new direct download feature, clicked the new ‘Get more episodes’ option under the Keith and the Girl podcasts heading and was taken to iTunes.  Granted, it would have been much more convenient if iTunes had known I was coming from the Keith and the Girl RSS feed and taken me directly to their download page instead of taking me to a generic catch-all iTunes podcast page, but after a quick KATG search, I was able to download two shows that my podcatching iTunes machine at home had for some yet unknown reason, not put on my iTouch before I left for work this morning.  Even the animation when you click the ‘download’ button for each episode was cool.  It sort of shrink-bounce-drops right into the Downloads tab with grace, beauty, and anticipated excitement.  It’s almost as though the file is grateful to be sent t the Downloads tab.

Now I had heard speculation and rumors about the iTunes over-the-air downloads being limited to shows with file sizes of 10mb or less.  This very well may be true for the iPhone folks going over AT&T’s network, but I am very happy to say that I was able to download two 80MB Keith and the Girl episodes via my work’s Wi-Fi network within minutes of requesting the files and they now happily reside right where they should, the podcasts tab under the Music button right in the Keith and the Girl directory.

Again, it would be quite nice if I was in Music > Podcasts > The Bitterest Pill’s episode list, clicked the ‘Get More Episodes’ option and I landed on The Bitterest Pill’s RSS feed inside iTunes without having to search for the show by title, but perhaps that’ll be something the fine folks in Cupertino fix in the next firmware release.  For now, I am quite happy to be able to download any podcast out of thin air without having to physically connect my iTouch to the dying beast of a machine that has been wasting away in the corner of my bedroom as the iTunes slave.  Maybe now I can bring new life into that machine with a lovely Linux distro.