iPhone: still finding new gems

Friday marks the two week-aversary of having the iPhone… what’s remarkable is that I’m finding new features and uses for it every day. Yesterday I discovered that the maps function is also a handy wifi locator… simply plug in “wifi” plus an address, city or zip code (like 20009 wifi) and the little beastie tells you the closest sources for free wireless internet access. What a treat for the mobile tech guy. Should come in handy next week when I’ll be roaming about while working in the Nineball Portland office…

New podcaster association

There’s enough podcasters now… we have a union. Or a trade group. Or something. The Association for Downloadable Media has the following mission statement:

To provide leadership in and organization of advertising and audience measurement standards, research, education and advocacy to all those involved in portable media (Podcasts/ATOM/RSS media enclosures) across the Internet, iPods, MP3 players, mobile devices, P2P and other upcoming platforms.

So, now that that’s clear… on to membership. Corporations pay $1000 per year and individuals pay $150 per year. No benefits are mentioned, but that doesn’t mean there are some on the horizon.

I’ve been doing work with nonprofits, including trade associations, for the better part of the last decade. Some are effective, but some are not. I think there are certainly some important heavy hitters involved here (including a few I respect quite a bit), but I think the jury’s still out until we see some substantive work from the group.

Shocking news: iPod + thunderstorm = bad

The New England Journal of Medicine published a report this week from three Vancouver, BC doctors concluding that being struck by lightning with an iPod on is extra bad because the current travels through the wires and into your ears. Read the medicial mumbojumbo here.

Here’s my thought… if you’re struck by lightning, the more immediate problem is that you’ve been struck by friggin’ lightning. I’m guessing the 3rd degree burns are going to happen no matter what, right? Word to the wise… if you’re the tallest thing in an area hit by a big thunderstorm, stop being the tallest thing in the area. USA Today has this tip… and I publish it here because it seems utterly implausible to help, and is therefore very funny:

If you begin to feel your hair stand on end, this indicates lightning is about to strike. You should drop to your knees and bend forward placing your hands on your knees and crouch down. Do not lie flat on the ground, this will only make you a larger target.

I’m wondering if Microsoft will take advantage of all of this and make the Zune out of totally nonconductive material. Hmm. Someone get Redmond on the phone!

Photo credit: gurneyh on Flickr

Mixer tip

For those of you with a slightly more advanced set-up (i.e. a mixer and a condenser mic, perhaps), sound checks are a must before you record. When I bought my first mixer, I was totally perplexed by the multiple buttons and knobs and what they did… I just played with them until the levels sounded right. It took me a while before I discovered how wrong that was… for you newbies, here’s a tip:

On most mixers, you have two knobs or sliders that control the levels on the channel… the gain, and the fader. In almost all circumstances, you should set the fader to zero or U (depending on the brand of mixer… it’s usually smack in the middle) and adjust the sound levels with the gain. Why? The fader at zero or U is optimized for that channel…in other words, your mic will sound a LOT better if you keep it there. Many new podcasters will treat the gain and the fader to serve the same function. In some ways they do, but if you value a better sounding signal, keep the fader firmly on zero, and use the gain for the leveling… you’ll notice the difference!

iTunes podcast submissions back up?

I got a comment on the blog this morning saying that the iTunes submissions are still down… Apple seems to say that they’re back up according to their high tech system of “if this post is down, then submissions are back up,” because the post has been taken down. Looks like the link to submit within the iTunes Music Store is working… If that’s still a no go, the best advice I can give is make sure your RSS feed is properly validated and keep trying! I’ve got a semi-contact with Cupertino, so I’ll check in and see what he’s got.

Podcasts on the iPhone

Welllll, sorta. It turns out that the iPhone can stream mp3s through its Safari browser just like any other desktop computer. Not really a podcast per se, but it’ a step closer to that dream of wireless podcast access (still hoping that either Apple adds a podcatching to iTunes on the phone).

Rob at Podcast411 has gone a step further by promoting the handy little graphic above that one can use to directly link to an mp3 file. It looks sort of awkward, but it shows up great on the iPhone screen. That makes it easier for your iPhone-enabled listeners to tap and listen with less effort. Now… is it worth it? Maybe… there’s about 1 million iPhones “in the wild” right now, and I suspect there are a disproportionate number of podcast listeners in that early adopting crowd. They need content… and your podcast can provide it.

Feel free to copy the graphic above if you’re interested in using it for your show. The sample mp3 linked above is the most recent edition of the Nonprofit Law Podcast.

WiFi is now everywhere

A perfect story for a Friday…

Researchers in Massachusetts are now studying endangered snapping turtles by hooking them up with wifi… on their backs. Apparently, they collect data while they swim about and interract with each other. Once a turtle with the wifi backpack gets close enough to a data center (presumably on a beach), the whole set is amassed by tech savvy researchers who are probably sitting in a Hyanisport bar tossing back some coldies all in the name of science. Genius.

Off to NYC this afternoon… west coast people, check out the new contact info for Nineball Media Portland!

Feedburner makes pro services free

This was a bit of welcome news for any podcaster using Feedburner for their RSS feeds… Total Stats Pro and MyBrand are now free. Here’s how Feedburner describes these two services:

FeedBurner Stats PRO
PRO is feed analytics taken to the next level. You will now have access to the number of people who have viewed or clicked individual content items in your feed and “Reach,” which estimates the daily number of subscribers who interacted with your feed content. You can turn this on by signing in to your account, navigating to the Analyze tab and heading to the FeedBurner Stats PRO section. Click the “Item Views” checkbox to activate these PRO features.

MyBrand
The MyBrand service (also PRO-level) is located under the “My Account” tab after you’ve signed in. MyBrand lets you maintain consistency between your feed address and your hosted website’s domain, if matchy-matchy is your thing. For example, rather than using feeds.feedburner.com/MyFeedName, your MyBrand-ed feed address can be feeds.myexcellentdomain.net/MyFeedName. To get started with MyBrand, sign into FeedBurner, click the “My Account” link in the upper left-hand corner, and then click “MyBrand”. Nota Bene: You must be comfortable playing around with DNS entries and own the rights to the domain whose DNS entries you’ll be playing around with in order to successfully activate MyBrand.

I use Feedburner for the Nonprofit Law Podcast and suggest it for other clients if they have hosting covered. Total Stats Pro is a nice add-on… The MyBrand option is very cool… it keeps your RSS feed “in house” (under your own domain name instead of feedburner.com), which is a really nice feature. Try it out!

iTunes podcast submissions are down

Apple’s not able to process new podcast requests for iTunes for the time-being. Check out the message here. Once it goes away, apparently, that will mean the problem’s fixed.

UPDATE – Thursday July 5th – iTunes is still down for new submissions. This is rather surprising… I expected this to get fixed sooner rather than later. I suspect some people in Cupertino got their Independence Day holiday after all… or this problem is bigger than one would think.

UPDATE – Monday July 9th, 7 PM EDT – it looks like submissions are back up, but given the comment from this morning, it might be spotty.