tonygoodson

Typepad - Fail on Audio and Design

I've been trying to put an audio player in Typepad.
This Typepad recommended player works.  Just one problem, if you open this blog page or the front page of the blog which has the player, all the links in the players start to open.  In other words, every time you go to this blog page, if I have a 40MB file I want you to listen to, it starts to download when you go to the page.  That's a lot of downloads and bandwidth, which neither you nor I can switch off.  The song file I've enclosed is only 500KB but even that's quite a load.
Typepad just seem to shrug their shoulders and say that's how it is or suggest a third party player.

And yet how come in WordPress there's a flash player which only starts to download if you click on the play button.  Here it is.

The bonus is that it doesn't create an enclosure, which is best left to having a download link "Click here to download"

All it took was a Google search to find Mr Black and White's Audio Test, a link to Mindy McAdams at Macloo for the instructions, and a download of the flash player from 1 Pixel Out.  Thanks for nothing Typepad.

I've been a Typepad user almost from the start in 2003.  Maybe I'm getting itchy feet.  Trying to set up and design a new blog/website in Typepad is very easy.  There's a good reason for that.  The templates are very basic and a variation in 1,2, or 3 columns.  And don't shrug us off with claiming an amazing number of templates, which are just a variation in colours and font, and maybe a banner, but what about something a bit more flexible like Laurel Papworth's wordpress blog, which has 3 x blog entries and then a change in column width.  Too much for us Typepad users to code, but why not have some templates like that.  Gone are the days of serial long blogs.  We need to fit more onto a single page in a magazine style.

Come on Typepad.  Market leader.  You'll lose that soon.

Cluetrain – No 69 Maybe You’re Impressing Your Investors

69.  Maybe you’re impressing your investors.  Maybe you’re impressing Wall Street. You’re not impressing us. (The Cluetrain 95 Theses - No69)

This is my blog entry for Cluetrain Thesis #69 for the Cluetrainplus10 commemoration of the 10th anniversary of The Cluetrain Manifesto.

In 2001, William Pilder sent me an email suggesting I might like this Cluetrain book thing.  I loved it.  Loved the 95 Theses, they spoke to me.  The book spoke to me.  I started following the guys.  Chris Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger (and who is Rick Levine!!)

I picked up this “weblog”/”blog” word on the Cluetrain email discussion list which ran on Topica.  What the hell was a blog?  Ahh, got it.  I’ve blogged ever since 2001.

So No 69.  10 years on.  Erm you did try to impress your investors.  You did try to impress Wall Street, and you almost succeeded, but it all came crashing down.  And not only did you not impress us, you took our money, and crashed your company, and your economy and the world economy.  Nice one. Thanks a lot.

But come on, why would you behave any differently?  Because it worked and you could get away with it.  Very few players came into your markets over the last 10 years, using Cluetrain principles, to give your arse a good kicking.  That’s been really disappointing.  The last 10 years has largely has been business as usual.  In fact you’ve often dressed up business as usual, as something different using this Internet thing, and you’ve mostly got away with it. 

We overestimate in the short term, and underestimate in the long term.  - Paul Saffo

I got that quote from Doc Searls, quoting Paul Saffo.  That’s what’s stuck with me the most in the last 10 years of Cluetrain. It hasn’t come true yet, but it will, and we probably won’t recognise it when it has changed, because it was always that way wasn’t it?  Some things have moved a lot over the last decade.  Think Apple.  Think Google (and YouTube).  Think Bandwidth.  Think online business and banking. Think mobile handsets and mobile computing.  The technology has moved rapidly, but that “conversation” still has a way to go.

I predicted the demise of Sun Microsystems.  I predicted the demise of Apple.  I predicted the demise of Google.  I’m not doing well with my predictions….yet.  Well once you’re a public company, you have to impress your investors, and you have to impress Wall Street, so by logic, you’re not impressing us!!  When you have to make quarterly and weekly and daily reports for your investors and Wall Street, it doesn’t bode well for the long term, if you follow and believe in Cluetrain No 69.

Great companies that survive the decades and centuries put their employees first, and I don’t mean the guys at the top. In the long term, how you treat your employees, is a reflection of how you treat your clients and customers, which in turn will impress Wall Street, or not.  We mostly try to impress Wall Street first until the money runs out.

It’s going to be very difficult to let go of this Wall Street dependency.  It’s worked reasonably well for centuries, but some of us believe there has to be a better way.  Yes, reward innovation and entrepreneurship.  Yes, find ways to seek large capital investment, yes reward stakeholders.  Aren’t we ready for a new way to build community and businesses?  I don’t have the answers, but In the short term we overestimate and in the long term we underestimate.

And finally, my favourite part of the Cluetrain book is near the end.

The Cluetrain Hit-One-Outta-the-Park Twelve-Step Program for Internet Business Success (p170)

1. Relax
2. Have a sense of humour.
3. Find your voice and use it.
4. Tell the truth.
5. Don’t panic.
6. Enjoy yourself.
7. Be brave.
8. Be curious.
9. Play More.
10. Dream Always.
11. Listen Up.
12. Rap On.

Interview with Tim Ferriss "The 4 Hour Workweek" and being a Sound Engineer/DJ

I've just published my Productivity Show interview with Tim Ferriss, Author of "The 4 Hour Workweek".  Nice of him to say yes and give me some time.  And in fact, it's a good use of his time, by being available for 30-60mins to a potential audience of 500,000 and more, on The Podcast Network.  He asked a few big authors what the biggest use of time, for the smallest return is....Book Tours and Signings.  Not because they don't want to get out to the people and fans, but the time it takes, to get to a venue, do the book signing, and get back home, or on to the next venue.

So blogging and podcasts are two efficient channels for selling more books.  We talk about this on the show, and it was also talked about in Leo Laporte's interview of Tim on TWIT - The TechGuy.

And you know what, a busy person always has time.  Credit to Tim for saying yes, and making himself available and being supportive.

I had more trouble with the technology than the guest!  I record in CallBurner, over Skype.  That's the good bit.  CallBurner records easily, and in high quality, both an mp3, and and 2 high quality WAV files, one for each voice.  I usually copy the mp3 recording into WavePad, save it as a WAV, drag it to The Levelator (and have a listen to Doug Kaye's excellent talk on The Secret Lives of MP3 Files), which magically brings the voices up to the same level, and makes the recording louder. Convert back to mp3, and publish.

However....WavePad, loses the last 10-20secs of the mp3 file when I initially convert it to WAV.  Weird. I usually paste in the missing last 20secs and edit it.  But this time, I thought I'd play with the high quality WAV recordings on both our voices.  Loaded it into Audacity, combined the two channels/voices, into one mono recording, and then convert to mp3.  But, I can't get the mp3 to save in Audacity, at the right frequency.  It keeps saving at 32KHz, which doesn't work on some flash players.  I'm not the only one with this known problem,   And WavePad wouldn't read the Audacity output WAV or from The Levelator's WAV.

So back to the ordinal mp3 recording, which is lower quality.  I'm also experimenting with plugging my headset and mic into the USB port, instead of the sound card, which I think is creating background noise.

Jeez, when I've made my million's with Tim's help, I'd love to spend all day making podcasts and fiddling with sound!  Oh, and recording just like a real DJ in realtime, and mix the sounds in live on CastBlaster or WildVoice.

Are You Too Wordy?

Interesting link via Seth Godin, author Steven Johnson, has analysed his own work, and a few others, using Amazon text stats to measure the average number of words per sentence, and average number or syllables per word, for several books.

He's plotted the results against other authors.  What he's found is that each author writes in the same style for most of their books, and it seems, the higher selling authors use less words per sentence and less complex words.

That's probably true of bloggers as well.  Certainly the ones I read.  And my reading choice has always been contemporary work with short sentences and short words!

Purse Pliers

I implore you to read Scott Adam's Dilbert Blog.  It's by far the best and funniest blog around, and the comments as well (except for the idiots who don't get it, and take it all too seriously).  Any world problem no matter how big or small can be solved by the Dilbert Blog.

Today we have Purse Pliers for men who don't want to be seen (or infected) by their wife's purse.  Brilliant!!

As you know, there is no way to hold a purse in a manly fashion. After sixty seconds of transporting a designer bag full of Tampons and lipstick, your testosterone will be so low that you’ll be playing field hockey and lactating.........

....That’s why I invented the PursePliers ™. They are exactly like regular pliers, but you carry them in your back pocket in all times in case you are asked to hold a woman’s purse. When you hear the call, “Honey, would you grab my purse?” you whip out the pliers and use them to safely transport the purse and its wuss cooties.

So Far So Good with Windows Live Writer

So what out else is out there for editing a TypePad weblog? (Robin Capper from my previous entry has suggested BlogJet) I'm just trying out Windows Live Writer.  Are there any other editors which let you drag photos from a webpage into the blog you're editing?  This is great, because in TypePad editor you have to save a picture from the web to your PC, and then insert it in the editor.

Credit to Microsoft on this one.  It reminds me of when I first developed my TGtips website which I created in Word!!  People are critical of the HTML code that Word/Microsoft generates, but as an end-user, it's great to be able to create something so fluid in Word, place pictures anywhere, and then have the page save as HTML, which works in 95%+ of cases.  Sometimes it didn't!!

I spotted the recommendation for Windows LIve Writer and Adobe Lightroom in The Age, Terry Lane - The Digital Darkroom.

You Are Innocent

On Monday, I had a terrible gut feeling.  The guy they arrested on Monday for the Ipswich murders.  I felt they'd got the wrong man.  I wanted to tell someone.  I wanted them to keep looking.  Why did I think they'd got the wrong person?  Well reading all that crap written about him, all the guilt piled on him, gave me a picture of someone who despite the way he's been painted, actually likes women.
I could of course be wrong, which is why I didn't write anything on Monday, to be proven right by Friday.  And now they've charged the second guy they arrested.

Let this be a warning to all of you on the Internet with your blogs and profiles.  They're coming for you!!  Just watch how the Old Media will make something out of nothing, based on your humourous profile, and any pictures you happen to put there.  You may think it's funny now, but just you wait!!

What happened to Presumption of Innocence?  When did the UK allow the naming, ageing, and addressing of people arrested or helping with enquiries.  And just because the first guy allowed himself to be interviewed by the BBC and Sunday Mirror, doesn't make him fair game.  It makes him, well I was going to say naive, but even that's not fair.  If he is innocent, then he's a frightened guy who didn't know what to do, given that he's seen people he knows murdered around him.  What would you do?

How many of you have profiles and weblogs and MySpace pages, that the media would have a field day with?  Do not be seduced by all these newspapers and media types pretending to support blogging with their 10-20 frontpage bloggers, who may support you in court!  What you need to worry about the 100s of other media people in each organisation who only pretend to get it, but will cut and paste your stuff at a whim.

I think this whole case so far, has left some of us thinking, is it just me, or does something feel totally wrong about the reporting of the first arrest.  What's encouraged me to now write, is this article, which thought the same two words I did when I read about the first guy arrested, Remember Colin Stagg.

Imagine that either of the men arrested in Suffolk is eventually released without charge. He would become another Stagg, already convicted in the court of public no-appeal of being an oddball, an imperfect partner, somebody whose lifestyle throws up so much smoke that there really must be some fire there somewhere, mustn't there? - although officially he would be, of course, utterly innocent.

Tagged - I'm It (5 Things Most People Don't Know About Me)

Johnnie Moore has tagged me for "5 Things Most People Don't Know About Me".  So here goes.

1. For some reason my face brings out things in people.  They either ask me for the time or say I look like someone they've met before.  In my time I've been likened to Rosie Casals the female tennis player, and my nickname at school for a few years was Rosie), Kevin Rowlands of Dexy's Midnight Runners, George Best (in his fat bearded phase), David Gest (I've just gone on a diet from that one), and Gonzo from The Muppets.

2. My Dad was born in Montreal, Canada, and my Mum was born in Vienna, Austria, and I was born in Whalley Range, Manchester!

3. The first album I bought was Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, and I love non-cool melodic music which includes, Atomic Kitten  (Whole Again), Robbie Williams, Tom Jones, Eagles, Hanson (MmmBop),  Slade, Cliff Richard (pre  70s), Bee Gees (pre Disco), and lot of other uncool, but nevertheless melodic stuff.

4. When we were kids, my sister locked me in a suitcase, I couldn't get out, and she didn't know how to open it.

5.  I have the same birthday as Ronald Reagan, Axl Rose, Rick Astley, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and lots of other weird people, who aren't on the usual lists.

And I tag Cameron Reilly, Peter Christo, Daryl Cook, Hobart Swan, and James Wall.

Aussie Blogs

Just registered for Aussie Blogs (via Daryl Cook).

Inbox Zero - Delete Delete Delete

So, seriously, if you’re not going to do anything with a message, just get it out of your sight, and make room for the actionable messages in your life. Delete it, or — if you’re a big chicken like me — archive it. In any case, remember that if this were something you really wanted to and could respond to, you would have done it the second it arrived. (43 Folders).

I'm good at having a zero inbox.  The trouble is, I do have quite a few emails in my @Action folder, ready for action, but never quite getting there.  And I feel guilty, because I hate people not responding to my emails to them, so I set myself up to try and answer every personal email.

So Merlin is right, if I could have done it the second it arrived I would have!

Actually, come to think of it that's not always true.
There are some email replies that need to be considered or you want to spend some time on.  Also, I don't know about you, but I have a weird relationship with some of the blogs I read.  Some of them are so good that I want to give them my full attention, so I never get round to always reading them!!
Examples include, Kathy Sierra, Guy Kawasaki, Merlin Mann!!, James Wall, Seth Godin.
They tend to write long and considered, whereas, the retiring Dave Winer, Scoble, write short and often, with the occasional rant.