Steve Holden's Blog

Investigating Options For Commenting On Specific Podcast Episodes

I have been wanting to come up with a quick way to comment on specific podcasts that I've been listening to.  In a recent brainstorming session with a friend we considered that maybe Apple iTunes was keeping the RSS referral post link in the meta data of the iTunes music library XML. 

Unfortunately after digging into the XML file and looking at what iTunes exposes to AppleScript, it doesn't appear to work.

Maybe I should output the podcast OPML file I have from iTunes, and use something like Google Reader to manage my options for specific podcast episode commenting. Thoughts?!?

Another Interest Architectural Dual-Use Space Idea

There was an interesting article in the Sunday San Diego Union-Tribune about a company called GarageTown USA  that is offering a different type of storage space in some parts of the United States. 

First up, these are 'condo' units that you purchase to own.  They also include: climate control, better security, posh customization options, and community clubhouses. 

A couple of other companies in Florida are offering something similar with a heavy focus on vehicles: Park Place Car Condo and DreamCar Carriage House.

It sounds like a nice place to setup a 'group' audio/video production area.

Getting Tool - Jello Dashboard - Goes Open Source!

My favorite tool to integrate Getting Things Done (Getting) into Microsoft Outlook 2003 is called Jello Dashboard. 

It is now officially open source.

Manager-Tools Conference Summary Live Show Annoucement

I'd like to announced that I am going to be joining fellow FriendsInTech.com member Douglas E. Welch, host of the excellent Career Opportunities podcast, for a Talkshoe Talkcast on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 at 9PM EDT/6 PM PDT.

The subject of the Talkcast will be a re-cap from my recent attendance at the Manager-Tools.com's Effective Manager Conference held last week in Washington, DC.

Conference Notes from Edward Tufte Conference

I attended an Edward Tufte conference in San Diego back on January 29, 2007, and I have uploaded my conference notes in PDF format.

I have to highly recommend this conference/workshop.  Great stuff!

Do You Twitter? Do You Care?

A large number of podcasters that I listen to have been talking a lot about Twitter. 

When I first looked at it, I didn't really get it. 

But I think a recent TWIT mentioned that it was kinda like a casual blog which peaked my interest ... somewhere in-between a blog post and a non-blog post. 

It definitely could be used for keeping people in your close circle of online friends updated on what you are doing, where you are at, etc.  Kinda like your IM setting for your status but with more details and updates.

Anyway ... I'm 'sholden' on Twitter if you care.  I'll be trying it out for a couple of days or so for sure. If you want an invite I can send you one.  Drop me an email: [email protected].

Great ScreenCast - SmartSetr via FriendsInTech.com

Fellow FriendsInTech.com member Kevin Devin just posted a great screencast of how to use Eric Appel's SmartSetr to quickly organize and create new Flickr sets from your online pictures.

Special Podcast from FriendsInTech - "Island Of Misfit Geeks"

The very talented members of FriendsInTech (FIT) have put together another special Christmas podcast that should be out on Dec. 18, 2006 over at FriendsInTech.com. 

This original story and production highlights "Lucky the reindeer and his friend Herbert's adventure to find the Island of Misfit Geeks and save Christmas for Santa."

Here is a promo:

The team did this last year for Christmas (2005), and we also did two custom Halloween casts: 2005 & 2006.

Additional Thoughts On The Cobalt Qube

Dave Winer reflected recently on the Cobalt Qube. 

I loved the device when I got one for a quick reaction information technology (IT) infrastructure project I was responsible for back in 1999. 

I used a Qube & a Snap server, and had a team of engineers and scientists running off a 24-port hub in less than a day.  It worked for nearly one year flawlessly before it was replaced by a more robust set of servers and services, but for rapid IT prototyping that enabled directory services, email, web, calendar, file sharing, discussions, etc. it was perfect from my perspective.  Better yet it met all the operational requirements.

I didn't get too many complaints from the users who were all on Windows NT workstations running Office.  I did get a lot of grief from other IT folks about the lack of robustness, and some features issues around  integration with tools like Microsoft Outlook.  I think the cuteness and small form-factor was hard for many old-school IT folks to get warmed up to.

You can pretty much do the same thing today with open source software and any white-box PC or go completely hosted via ISPs or other service providers.  But at the time, it was just plain neat.

 

Open Source Rapid Prototyping - PDF, Nagios, & VMWARE

The combo of open source and virtual machines is really providing some powerful options for rapid evaluation and prototyping. 

Here is an example ... "Want to do some network management?" ... then download the $10 PDF of "Network Monitoring with Nagios", then get the VMWARE Player, and then check out the Nagios appliance deployment for VMWARE. 

In a couple of clicks, your up and running and ready to do some network management.  If you like what you see, a couple of file transfers, and some more clicks, and you can be in production mode. Nice.

Thanks to a recent HomeNetworkHelp.info podcast for getting my thoughts moving in this direction.