Monthly Archive for January, 2005

Page 4 of 6

Podcasting trick #5: play-it-now buttons

Published on January 14, 2005 in music and webdev. Closed

Traxsource podcast
While working with Jurriaan on a podcast for BeyondJazz.net (with their excellent sample spotters show), I finished a small project I had been working on a couple of months ago: a web-based streaming media player for MP3/RAM/WMA files. I actually stopped it when I saw the excellent work Lucas Gonze had done with Webjay. Didn’t feel like re-inventing the hot water.
But now I have added a visual part: I wanted to have a one-click “play this in my media player and show me the playlist at the same time”. So I worked further on the formats that support playing audio while showing a web page at the same time: SMIL (works with RealPlayer and QuickTime) and ASX (Windows Media Player). Since the BeyondJazz blog is not yet public, I also used this system on the Traxsource Cyberjamz Radio Show (another one of my music podcast experiments, together with Traxsource/Brian Tappert).

The idea is the following: instead of having the title of the post as a link to the MP3 (in some cases, when you click it, your browser starts downloading all those megabytes before the audio starts playing), I now have 3 icons: one for playing it in RealPlayer, one for Windows Media Player and one for direct downloading. To do this, I actually just edited the Blogger template as follows:
<h3 class="post-title"><$BlogItemTitle$>
<BlogItemUrl>
<a href="http://www.smoothouse.org/projects/media/player.asp? type=smil&url=<$BlogItemUrl$>&page=<$BlogItemPermalinkUrl$>"
title="Click to open in your RealAudio player">
<img border=0 width="20" height="20" alt="Click to open in your RealAudio player" src="http://www.smoothouse.org/projects/podcast/icon_ram.gif">
</a>
<a href="http://www.smoothouse.org/projects/media/player.asp? type=asx&url=<$BlogItemUrl$>&page=<$BlogItemPermalinkUrl$>"
title="Click to open in your Windows Media player">
<img border=0 width="20" height="20" alt="Click to open in your Windows Media player" src="http://www.smoothouse.org/projects/podcast/icon_wma.gif">
</a>
<a href="<$BlogItemUrl$>"
title="Right-click to download">
<img border=0 width="20" height="20" alt="Right-click to download" src="http://www.smoothouse.org/projects/podcast/icon_download.gif">
</a>
</BlogItemUrl>
</h3>
(if you’re familiar with HTML and/or Blogger templates, try this at home. If you’re not, wear protection.)

I still have to work out some quirks with the Real/SMIL format (on some machines the HTML page does not show), but apart from that, it works like a charm: you click the icon, your player opens, the music starts playing and you see the associated post page in your player.

Remark: this trick does not affect the core podcast as such: the MP3 files, the RSS feed, … stay the same. It’s just a user interface enhancement for the associated blog, with a detailed description for Blogger users. The principle as such will work on any Movable Type, WordPress, or other Pivot.

PS: So what are podcasting tricks #1 to #4?
Well, with all this mumbo jumbo I’ve already posted on podcasting, I couldn’t start counting at #1, now could I? Let me improvize:
#1: easy podcasting with Blogger and Smartcast
#2: podcasting with Webjay
#3: ID3 tags for podcasting
#4: Podcast icons – the definitive collection (also a Pixagogo album)
____
Update Jan 19: the Beyondjazz Podcast is now publicly available.

Don’t unsubscribe from spam

Published on January 11, 2005 in spam. 1 Comment


Brian McWilliams, author of Spam Kings has published an article “Remove me” on salon.com on his recent under-cover job within the spammers community to check whether these people really take “Unsubscribe me” requests into account. He poses as an affiliate (someone who sends spam on behalf of some company and gets commissions for each sale) to a company selling fake Rolexes.

When I signed on to BlackMarketMoney.com for the first time, I saw a page where my sales stats would be displayed. A preferences section included a form where I could specify account numbers for my commission payments. There were also pages with suggested ad copy and graphics files, as well as an updated list of the various domains we affiliates were supposed to advertise in our spams.

But what really caught my eye was a note at the site that insisted all affiliate spams include an “unsubscribe link.” Two huge archives were also available for download, containing lists of “remove” addresses. The October list held around 202,000 e-mails, while the November list had over 282,000 addresses. Sales affiliates were instructed to scrub their mailing lists to remove these names.
(from salon.com)

Eventhough the affiliates are given all the information necessary to remove the addresses of people, reality turns out to work differently. I let you read the story – and his conversations with the people who unsubscribed – on the site, but his conclusion remains unchanged:
Do NOT use the “unsubscribe/remove” option in spam mails!

Podcast Pepsi Challenge: doing it in the car

Published on January 10, 2005 in podcast. 3 Comments

While he was still a sceptic in October 2004, Russell Beattie has taken the Pepsi Challenge and tried out listening to podcasts in the car:

I am officially hooked on Podcasting!
I drove down to work this morning and listened to Adam Curry on my new MuVo and was quite entertained for most of the ride down (he’s actually a great morning DJ) and then coming back I listened to most of Jerry Fiddler’s talk over at IT Conversations. WOW! What a difference it made to my hour long commute! I almost didn’t want to get out of the car tonight. No searching for a station, no frustration in the topics that NPR is talking about tonight and though I love her dearly, no Terri Gross. Awesome!
(via russellbeattie.com)

couch on wheelsThis is something I experienced myself and have seen in others too: while it is possible to listen to podcasts at your PC, it’s not ideal. You start reading your email, dive into the fridge, switch on the television and get terribly distracted. For me it was also a 2-hour morning commute listening to IT Conversations Pop!Tech series that made me realise to how much use my previously ‘lost’ time in the car could be put.

So if you’ve never done it in the car, don’t make a judgement about the values of podcasting. It’s like comparing a car seat with your cosy couch at home: it might not be as comfortable to sit in, but this is more than compensated for by the fact that your car can drive you around, and your sofa most probably not.

Come on, it’s the New Year, you know you deserve it: Apple iPod Mini: 272€ – Creative Muvo2: 200€ or if you just took your company public: Apple iPod photo 60GB: 707€.

Just a little lovin’ early in the morning

Published on January 9, 2005 in music. 18 Comments

Crooner
I have an extensive collection DJ mixes on my hard disk, and a while ago I discovered in one of them a catchy tune. It starts as a laidback (112 BPM) love song, a crooner voice singing “Just a little lovin’, early in the morning, just a little lovin’, early in the day …“. It then turns into a groovy re-edit of the same song, with the voice nicely cut up to match the new tempo (124 BPM). There are some added vocals that are a bit silly (clearly a non-native English speaker), but the chorus is really addictive. For some reason it stayed glued to the back of my head, I caught myself whistling it several times a day. But what was it?

I had no idea in which show/mix tape I heard it, and didn’t see myself browsing through over 100 hours of MP3 and RM files just to find it. Thanks to Google, I quickly found out the new version was created by Irfane (a French DJ and part of Outlines), back in 2003. The original seems to be a Barry Manilow Barry Mann/Cynthia Weill song, performed by great singers like Dusty Springfield and Sarah Vaughan. Apparently clearing the rights on the Springfield performance has proven so difficult that the song is only coming out in March 2005, on Sonar Kollektiv, the Jazzanova record label.

UPDATE: this is the video!

You can also hear it in this mix: MixOfTheWeek #233 (after 44:42).