For all of a baby's "firsts" captured on video, there is one I bet you have never seen because well, most of us just take it for granted; and I promise you: it will make you smile, or cry, or both.
Watch an 8th month old hear his mother's voice for the first time thanks to cochlear implants.
(via plasticmind)
Thank you goes out to Arin for letting Harper watch a scene from the Sound of Music on YouTube, and being cajoled into watching other renditions of "Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti" on YouTube, thus completely lodging this song in my head.
On the bright side, I did get to see a pretty ingenious marketing flash mob of sorts:
More than 200 dancers were performing their version of "Do Re Mi", in the Central Station of Antwerp. with just 2 rehearsals they created this amazing stunt! Those 4 fantastic minutes started the 23 of march 2009, 08:00 AM. It is a promotion stunt for a Belgian television program, where they are looking for someone to play the leading role, in the musical of "The Sound of Music".
Media Manager provides users and authors within Movable Type and Melody with the ability to search and insert media from a number of popular remote services like Amazon and YouTube. Using Media Manager one can open a dialog, enter a few search terms, select the book, DVD or video and optionally insert it into a blog post.
Once the media item has been selected it is automatically inserted into Movable Type or Melody's asset management system and can be view by going to "Manage Assets" under the Manage menu.
To install this plugin follow the instructions found here:
http://tinyurl.com/easy-plugin-install
Prerequisites
Keep in mind that before installing Media Manager you need to make sure you have:
Download Media Manager from github.
For Media Manager
Related
You can file bug reports here:
Media Manager represents a lot of work by one individual. While the author is happy to write this software, and support it completely free of charge, the author also appreciates and form of support you can provide. Please consult the following URL to learn more:
http://www.majordojo.com/projects/mediamanager.php
(c) 2007-2008 Six Apart, Ltd. (c) 2009 Byrne Reese
Media Manager is licensed under the Artistic License.
On a recent trip to Chicago I stopped by a non-local mega-bookstore to look for a last minute gift for Harper as is required on any business trip that takes me away from Harper for more than 48 hours. And boy, did I hit pay-dirt with the book I selected for him: MOONSHOT. The book, which we have read at least once a day since I have returned has fueled a newly discovered fascination with all things rockets, spaceships and astronauts. Harper and I now take daily trips to "Baaaaaaath Tuuuuuuub Plaaaaaaaaanet" (said in the same tone of voice as Pigs in Space, if you remember that) and he now likes to countdown, speaking into a closed fist as to simulate a muffled microphone, to spontaneous liftoffs several times a day.
His interest has sparked an interest inside of me as well, which is honestly what is so wonderful about this latest obsession of his. We have been watching the liftoff sequence from Ron Howard's Apollo 13, as well as tons of old archival footage of the original moon landing, and some more recent HD footage taken from a Japanese satellite (via kottke). It has been wonderful.
The book is wonderful and I recommend it to all parents with children who dream of space and of being an astronaut. The illustrations are the reason I selected the book. They are saturated with detail and give me something new to look at with each subsequent read.
The author has put together a great web site for the book as well, complete with coloring activities, a collection of great video resources for kids and even its very own trailers.
If you want to see some great television, granted not of the ilk of The Wire, but that of just raw run of the mill entertainment, then by all means watch Susan Boyle on Britain's cross between Star Search and American Idol called Britain's Got Talent. What makes this "great television" is that the producers could easily have staged Susan's performance differently, but in stead they chose to exploit the cognitive dissonance between what you see and what you hear. The result I think is an immensely powerful, albeit somewhat cheesy (given that it is Broadway), performance.
Watch it on YouTube.
Via Slate's Cultural Gabfest.
Regardless of how you feel about URL shortening services they have become an essential component of the Internet today. Services like Twitter make them all but a necessity so that character starved bloggers can squeeze as much copy into a tweet as possible, after all, every character counts.
I recently watched an interview with Ev Williams in which he talked briefly about making features for a product simply by blessing and codifying what your users are already doing in some meaningful way. His example was their observing people using the @twittername to signify a reply and their subsequent decision to auto-link that identifier to the person's Twitter account. That interview, plus a later conversation gave me an idea for a pattern I would love to see adopted by URL shortening services in the hopes of laying the groundwork for similar serendipitous features on Twitter.
The problem is thus: URL shortening services make the content being linked to even more opaque to a client than it already is. When you think about what can be inferred by a complete URL on the Internet you realize just how much information is lost in the shortening process. Consider these URLs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z19zFlPah-o
From this URL you can infer that what is being linked to is a video. You also know the video's ID and could conceivably embed your own video player to display it on your web site.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dorkmaster/3287780385/
From this URL you can infer that what is being linked to is a photo, you have a handle to the identity of the person who uploaded the photo, and you have an ID to the photo.
And the list goes on. Even relatively random URLs from stupid blogs can tell you a lot:
http://www.majordojo.com/photos/2009/04/jellyfish.php
This tells you at the very least that what is being linked to is at least a web page, most likely in HTML. You could infer more I suppose, but it would be difficult for a machine to do so without actually following the link.
And that is the crux - you don't want to force clients to follow the link in order to make these simple inferences. Ideally, a shortened URL could provide some kind of hint to as to the nature of the content being linked to on the other end so that Twitterific for example could embed a "play" button to play a video, or even embed a photo posted via TwitPic directly in your feed.
So what if a convention was defined and adopted that:
Then clients would be free to do whatever they wanted with the extra metadata, mainly ignore it, or bring some added value to their users. So here is my proposal:
URL shorteners should append to any shortened URL a simple one character code identifying the content type of the content being linked to delimited by a hash or pound sign, e.g. "#". For example, both of the following URLs remain resolvable despite being augmented with an additional two characters:
URL shorteners ideally agree to a standard, or at least publish a lookup table for their coding conventions. Such a look up table might be as simple as:
| Code | Description |
|---|---|
| i | an image |
| v | a video |
| o | a page with an oembed tag |
| h | html |
| b | a blog post with comments |
The specifics don't really matter provided that the codes tell clients something that would be useful to them when processing a link to a resource.
It also has made me ponder a little bit how tweets could be similarly augmented to include additional meta data about the tweets, as hash tags do, and what clients could then turn around and do with that extra little bit (no pun intended) of information.
The world can't get enough of Joe, a guy John McCain met on the campaign trail who was thrust into celebrity status when McCain and Obama mentioned him by name over twenty times in last night's debate. Joe was concerned that if he purchased his boss' business which he said grosses between $250,000 and $280,000 annually that he would be forced into a higher tax bracket. A reasonable concern for anyone considering a purchase of that magnitude at a time like this.
So in an effort to keep things straight, let's get to know Joe and understand more precisely this new poster child for the Republicans would be affected by Obama's tax plan. You might be surprised.
Let's assume for a moment that Joe purchased his boss' company and in 2009 made over $280,000. Under Obama's plan, all income under $200,000 would be taxed at a lower rate than individuals are currently paying, income between $200,000 and $250,000 would not be taxed differently and income over $250,000 would be taxed at a higher rate. Under the current progressive tax law that means that only $30,000 (the amount over $250,000) would be taxed at a higher rate, and the bulk of Joe's income ($200,000) would be taxed at a lower rate. Here is how it would shake out in the books:
Analysts calculated that the extra tax would amount to $900, which would likely be more than offset by separate provisions of Obama's plan: a 50 percent tax credit for health care and elimination of the capital gains tax for small businesses. -- source: MSNBC
However, Joe's gross income is different than Joe's taxable income. Once you actually deducted from the $280,000 any business expenses, wages, and other deductibles, Joe's taxable income would certainly fall below $250,000 meaning that Joe's taxes would actually go down.
But the above is based upon the assumption that Joe's boss' business makes that much, which it doesn't. As it turns out, the business' annual revenue is about $100,000, further cementing that Joe would not be adversely affected by Obama's tax plan at all. Other failed assumptions about Joe that John McCain has made:
Sorry for the politics, but I can't help myself. If there is one thing I hope people hear is what Obama has been saying over and over and over again, and after every time John McCain insists that under Obama's plan, people's taxes would go up:
That includes mine. But you know what? If Obama asked me to pay more than I do today, I would. Why? For starters, while I could certainly use the extra income, there are others out there who could use it more. Plus, I want to live in world where neighbors and citizens extend to each other a helping hand when times are tough, and not turn our backs on them based on a procrustean "every man for himself" ideology. God forbid that one day, due to forces outside of my control I find myself in need -- only to find that there is no one there to help, and no safety net to fall back on.
There was thing about becoming a parent I was completely unprepared for: the feeling you get when you hear of tragedy that befalls another parent or their children. Before becoming a parent, I would hear such news, have my moment and think, "that is horrible," and then I would go about my day. But since having Harper, hearing such news creates this profound and lingering sense of sadness and emptiness. I remember my own parents speaking of this feeling, and it was something they told me that "only a parent can understand." They were right.
So, when my friend Sarah sent me this email:
I want to share some upcoming news with you that is very close to my heart. My good friend, Dana Richards, and I have registered for the Honolulu marathon to pay tribute to the sons of two of our dear friends, Dena and Lori. They have endured major heartache and tragedy and they've given us the courage to make this effort.
We are self funding and running this race together, and raising money for medical research for Mitochondrial Disease and Juvenile Type I Diabetes. Our goal is to raise $5000 for each cause (for a total of $10,000). Please help us by making a contribution and know that each mile we run is for something much bigger than all of us.
I couldn't not give.
Please, take a moment a meet Evan and Owen by watching the video below and visiting their blog. And please: please give. And if you don't give to this worthy cause, than give to any cause that benefits the health and well being of children everywhere.
Learn more:
With the release of Movable Type Pro, and with us making is completely free to bloggers, the Universal Template Set has been quickly making its way into the hands of more bloggers. I often get asked by other UTS users, "could you send me your templates, I would like a front door that displays my action streams like yours does."
In the past I just replied to those emails after having cut and paste my template code into the email. But recently I created a handy template set generator, or exporter for Movable Type that makes it a snap for me to package up all of my templates into an easy to install plugin.
And that is exactly what I did with my current design. So if you are looking for a Universal Template Set, or Professional Website variant that includes support for Action Streams, look no further. Here it is:
Download Majordojo UTS now.
Yes, I want to hear it. Send me a comment.
There are few people I respect more on this planet than my cousin Ford. Ford is a person who, for as long as I have known him, has been devoted to helping other people. There are few people I know who give so selflessly.
Several years ago he started The Cottonwood Institute, a non-profit devoted to helping kids obtain a closer understanding and connection with their environment and their community through outdoor education and survival programs.
After several years, I finally feel like things are starting to take off for him. Not only has he hired his first full time employee and cultivated a solid base of benefactors, but the formations of a community around the CWI is beginning to form. Students just recently produced a video for him on YouTube:
People often ask me why blogs are important, and this is why. Ford's blog started off as nothing more than a website, hosted on TypePad. But slowly and surely his blog is evolving into a hub of activity for his students, alumni, benefactors and an entire community of people who share a common interest: The Cottonwood Institute.
Congrats Ford. You have so much to be proud of!
So yesterday was a day just like any other day, except that I had the pleasure of listening to a Movable Type user rant about our claimed, but "lacking" support for podcasting. Man, it hurts hearing such a passionate user become so frustrated.
But it is precisely at times like those that we at Six Apart swallow our pride and listen to our users. Not hear them. But actually listen to them.
And you know what, Todd is right about at least one thing: Movable Type's support for podcasting could be better. A lot better. So I went ahead and slapped together the first Podcasting Plugin for Movable Type 4.0, and I call upon Todd (and the rest of the Movable Type user community) to help me make this the best podcasting plugin for any blogging product.
Now I put together this first pass really quickly - in just a couple of hours actually, which I think is a testament to how easy it is to build a plugin on Movable Type for anyone who knows a little Perl, not to mention evidence to what it means to be a true Media Platform (see also the YouTube, Flickr and Amazon asset integration provided by Media Manager).
But I digress. I purposefully put together the most minimal feature set possible and still meet Todd's basic requirement: the ability to link to an externally hosted MP3 file and have Movable Type encode the necessary enclosures within an RSS and/or Atom feed. For fun I am redistributing a free flash MP3 player licensed under the creative commons to make it easy for users to allow readers to listen to their MP3 files directly from their blog.
But now I need to pass the baton to Todd, ProNet (especially Budd) and any other serious podcaster (Niall?) to help me shape the remaining feature set for this plugin. As a Product Manager myself I am reasonably certain think I could define a feature set myself, despite how clueless Todd may think I am, but I really do want this plugin to be something informed directly by the community. So please, everyone, chime in.
Todd, I am personally sorry you had a hard time with Movable Type. I sincerely hope this plugin will begin to provide the functionality you need, and I hope we can continue to evolve its feature set together as a team.
In yesterday's hackathon I took another whack at Media Manager 2.0 adding support for two of the web's most popular media sharing services, Flickr and YouTube.
I have yet to update the documentation for these new services, so here are a few things you should know.
1. YouTube support requires no special configuration. Yay YouTube!
2. Flickr support requires that you register for a Flickr API Key, that you will input into your System Preferences for the Flickr plugin. Once that has been setup, you need to go to your profile, select "Flickr Auh" and authorize your MT blog to access your Flickr account.
Flickr support still needs a lot of work - especially in the search area. But this is likely to get overhauled a great deal as Media Manager because more of a framework for supporting third party media integration with MT.
The download/build below is an early build for which I have done very little testing. If you are a brave soul I would really appreciate your help and feedback in downloading and testing it.
Media Manager has been a hobby of mine ever since I first started working for SIx Apart; from my first release of BookQueueToo, which was an expanded version of BookQueue, to a nearly completely rewritten Media Manager for Movable Type 3.x, this plugin has been how I, as the Product Manager for Movable Type, understand the developer experience of building plugins with the Movable Type platform.
When I set out to update Media Manager to work with Movable Type 4.0, I really wanted to take a fresh look at how it was built, and what the user experience was like. My previous versions of Media Manager surfaced far too much complexity by trying to bundle too many different capabilities into the product, like "reviews" and "ratings" which are probably, in all honesty, functionality best left to be fulfilled by other more specialized plugins. I also wanted to remove some vestigial features that were left over from the plugin's earliest incarnations, such as the statuses "read," "reading," and "not read" - which are perfect if the only thing you consume is books, not so great if you like DVDs, CDs and even kitchen appliances.
Despite however Media Manager's reduction in complexity, Media Manager 2.0 is a far more advanced plugin then its predecessors. That is because it integrates more smoothly and seamlessly with the core Movable Type user experience then ever before, thanks to Movable Type's incredible developer APIs. However, to some users Media Manager may seem too simple having "lost" many of its formally core features. For example here are the features that will ultimately be removed from the core Media Manager plugin once it is officially released later this year:
I do this not only because I want Media Manager to serve as a reference implementation to other developers on how plugins should be built and how they can best leverage capabilities within the platform, but also because it is what is best for the product. I want it to be simpler and easier to use, more focused, and capable ultimately of support services like YouTube and Flickr.
So today, I release the first public beta of Media Manager 2.0 to hear your feedback and your thoughts on the changes I have made, as well as get your advice and suggestions on how I can make Media Manager better.
I have been following the laptop battery recall with great interest. Of all the coverage I have been exposed to, I have yet to see a really good video of the real risk at hand. Then I found this video on YouTube. Granted, the circumstances are manufactured, but the footage is extraordinary. It is amazing to think how much power is stored in one of these things.
Arin always gets frustrated when I am driving TiVo, because if I will always go back to watch two things: a movie trailer, or an Apple “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” ad. Then I found a whole series of spoofs – which are hilarious.
Could I have a new favorite truck? Yes, I actually have a favorite truck. $5 dollars to the person who can find a picture of one of those vehicles whose sole purpose is to move concrete highway dividers from one side of the road to the other, simply by driving over them.
I think this technique is a bit over used right now, but I love me a good Photoshop tutorial.
A couple of days ago a friend of mine released a film they had literally been working on for years. It is only 3 minutes long, but as soon as you watch it you will know realize the magnitude of their undertaking.
Of all the sites on the Internets these days she you could have published this film, she chose Atom Films because they would actually pay her a royalty everytime her film was viewed. Now, she may not have made “quit your job” money (as Anil might say), but she might, as her Atom Films contact told her, earn the cost of a latte every once in a while. Not much, granted, but it is an important reward for anyone who put so much time, energy and heart into something they this this.
So, she emailed her friends to tell them about the new film and word began to spread. Then someone ripped the video and posted it to YouTube, it got dugg and before she knew it the film rocketed to the top of the "charts" and was viewed well over a million times. And each time that happened, there was one more fraction of a latte she didn't earn.
One of the consequences of rampant piracy is that it engenders a behavior in which people don’t consider who they are stealing from, because many who pirate simply don’t believe they are stealing. I just wish more of them would develop a Robin Hood mentality where they were more conscientious about who they were "borrowing" from.
Wishful thinking I know.
But perhaps artists, especially someone like Ahree, could add a bumper to the beginning of their films in the ilk of the classic FBI Warning to help people understand that they are stealing from a real live person and not just another filthy rich studio:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
YouTube helps to screw the little guy