| Friday, 29 April 2005, 10:46 pm Tags: Alerts |
I can’t believe the response we’ve been getting for The Return of the Bleep. The BitTorrent tracker I’ve been running for serving the torrents has logged 984,000 hits on announce.php in less than four days. I don’t know how that correlates to actual downloads, but it’s a lot. (If anyone knows how to correlate these hits to downloads, please let me know!)
We’re getting ready to unveil a name along with new feeds and a new web site. We’ve received over 2,000 entries in our contest to name the show, and I think we’ve got some good candidates. We’ll reveal the new name and new feed URLs on Sunday. The response to this is so incredible – better than anything Patrick, Kevin, and I have ever seen. It’s given us new excitement about bringing tech programming directly to you without involving mainstream media.
To that end, I’ve added a Paypal subscription button to the torrent pages. The podcast is free, and always will be, but we’d like to avoid putting advertising in it. If enough people contribute a modest amount to the show, we won’t have to and we can upgrade the production and maybe even do a video version. Who knows, we might even be able to re-grow TechTV from the ground up.
Cick the button below to pay just $2/month. That’s 50 cents a show. Your subscription will renew each month until you cancel it.
As always, thanks for your support. You’re proving that it’s possible to create quality tech shows by users for users without involving big media.
| Tuesday, 26 April 2005, 3:01 pm Tags: Blogging |
OK I’ve set up BitTorrent feeds for both ROTSS shows in four, count ‘em, four formats. As usual, please keep your BitTorrent client running even after the download is done to help others get the files. (These are the official BT feeds for now – please redirect your client from the old leoville.tv/bt feed.) As always, these files are Creative Commons Share-Alike licensed so you may redistribute them in any fashion for non-commercial purposes.
| MP3 64KBPS | Direct links | RSS Feed |
| MP3 32KBPS | Direct links | RSS Feed |
| Bookmarkable AAC (for iPods) | Direct links | RSS Feed |
| Ogg Vorbis | Direct links | RSS Feed |
If anyone with BitTorrent tracker experience would like to help me set up a better system (I’d like to run my own tracker and automatically seed it from four different servers I run) please email me! I’d like to do this every week but it’s a bit much to have to seed these files by hand from home each time.
| Monday, 25 April 2005, 1:37 pm Tags: Alerts |
I apologize if your podcast client is having difficulty getting ROTSS. We totally overwhelmed the Coral mirrors and Coral isn’t failing gracefully. I don’t think they’ve ever seen demand quite like this.
The direct link does work however: http://leoville-downloads.com/tlr/TLR20050424.mp3 – as does the Vorbis link: http://leoville.tv/tlr/ROTSS002.ogg.
Your podcast client will get the file as soon as the flood of requests dies down. I will move the feed from Coral to bittorrent later today and for all future releases.
For those who are confused about which podcast feed to subscribe to, ROTSS is on TLR http://leoville.tv/podcasts/tlr for now. Once we get a name I’ll set up dedicated feeds. There will be four feeds, high and low quality MP3, Vorbis, and bookmarkable AAC for ipod users. I’ll give you those URLs as soon as we settle on a new name for the show.
Thanks for your patience.
| Monday, 25 April 2005, 6:48 am Tags: Blogging |
Episode 2 of the podcast formerly known as ROTSS has been posted. This week join Patrick Norton, Kevin Rose, and me, as we discuss journalistic credibility, car stereo support for iPods, LAN Party addiction, and more. Also enter our contest to win a box of Patrick’s crap – all you have to do is come up with a new name for the show. Runners-up receive web hosting from Vizaweb and Jinx Hackwear. Send your entries to leosprogram@gmail.com.
Theme music this week is courtesy of John Selvia
Subscribe to the TLR podcast to get each new episode by midnight every Sunday, press the play button to the left, or download it from the links below. (The podcast will have its own dedicated feed once we get a new name.)
Plain MP3: Coral Mirror - Local
Ogg Vorbis: Coral Mirror - Local
| Tuesday, 19 April 2005, 10:27 pm Tags: Amber MacArthur, Call For Help, Camera Phone, Photos |
mmmmm blueberry
| Tuesday, 19 April 2005, 1:39 pm Tags: Announcements, Camera Phone, Meetups, Podcasters |
Don’t forget, the podcast meetup is tonight at the Lone Star Grill in Toronto. Eric Rice, Ray Slakinski from iPodderX, Ross Rader and I will be there. RSVP at Ross’s blog.
| Tuesday, 19 April 2005, 12:40 am Tags: Alerts, TWiT |
It is done. The first ROTSS has been posted. Subscribe to the podcast to get it by midnight every Sunday, press the play button to the left, or download it directly.
It’s a 56kbps MP3Pro file weighing in at around 14MB. Join Patrick Norton, Kevin Rose, Robert Heron, and me for 34 minutes of Skyping fun as we discuss driving in the dust, cell phones, Kevin’s new webcast, systm, and the demise of TechTV. We plan to do this weekly with a rotating cast of characters. Your input is welcome. (Anyone want to design a logo? – Update: Thanks to all of you who sent in logos. The one you see here is by Lori LeBeau-Walsh. G4 has told us that they intend to reserve rights to the name “The Screen Savers” so we’ll be considering other choices.) Theme music this week from Wayne and Wax’s CD “Boston Jerk.”
Incidentally, I’m very happy to report that another Screen Saver alumna, Megan Morrone, delivered twin boys on Friday, Huck and Milo weigh in at over seven pounds each. All are doing well, but don’t expect Megan to make an appearance on ROTSS any time soon!
UPDATE: Welcome slashdot readers. By popular demand, I’ve created Vorbis and plain MP3 versions of the show. I had hoped to upload them to OurMedia.com but it’s not working right now. For the time being I’ll host them locally. To defray bandwidth costs, please use the Coral Mirror unless it’s not working for you. I’ll do this for all future episodes. We plan to record again this Sunday and Yoshi will be joining us.
Plain MP3: Coral Mirror - Local
Ogg Vorbis: Coral Mirror - Local
| Saturday, 16 April 2005, 4:12 pm Tags: Alerts |
Ross Rader is hosting a Toronto area meetup for podcasters at the Lone Star Grill this Tuesday evening. Two Californians, Eric Rice and I, will be there, too. RSVP at Ross’s blog.
Speaking of podcasts, there are two new postings on TLR:
- My weekly visit with Bill Handel, Fridays on KFI – we talk about the Harmony universal remote
- My weekly tech news summary with John Donabie this morning on CFRB
Sunday evening Kevin, Patrick, Robert Heron, and I are going to try our first Skype-based podcast. I’m calling it TROTSS – an acronym for The Revenge of The Screen Savers. If all goes well I’ll push it out on the TLR channel Monday morning.
| Friday, 15 April 2005, 1:31 pm Tags: Blogging |
I am taking time off from trying to get my tax liability to match my ability to pay to cast my eye toward the tech news.
Today is the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. Kate and Leo were not actually aboard. President Lincoln died on this day in 1865. Ray Kroc opened his first McDonalds in Des Plaines, IL, in 1955.
Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452. Don’t ask, don’t tell.
- Apple has announced that OS X Tiger will ship at 6p April 29. Tiger is the most significant update to OS X since it was shipped four years ago, and at $129 for the upgrade, it better be. Apple announced its quarterly results on Wednesday and it’s looking good for the little Cupertino upstart. The company announced earnings of $290 million on sales of 1 million Macs and 5 million iPods in the quarter. Despite beating forecasts, Apple’s stock dropped 10%.
- Microsoft has announced that it will unveil the new Xbox 360, May 12 in a half-hour special on MTV. The special will be hosted by Frodo, aka actor Elijah Wood, reportedly an Xbox fanatic.
- News agency Reuters was forced to shut down its instant messaging system yesterday due to an infestation of the Kelvir worm. There’s no schedule for bringing it back online.
- US anti-spam laws are a bust. In a telephone survey of 1,421 Internet users by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 28% said they’re getting more spam than a year ago. Only 22% said they were getting less. But we’re getting used to it. 53% of e-mail users now say spam has made them less trusting of e-mail, compared to 62% a year ago.
- The US music industry is going after Internet2 users. The prototype high speed network is restricted to campuses and research institutions so far, but according to the RIAA that hasn’t stopped students from taking advantage of the 100mbps speeds to share music. Lawsuits have gone out against 405 students from 18 campuses who use ihub2 to share music on the high speed network.
- Ebay traffic has fallen for the ninth straight month. 5% fewer visitors used the site in March. That’s a “paltry” 65.9 million uniques. (Are there that many Internet users in total? Jeeze.) Wonder how much of this has to do with the January fee increase?
- Internet casino Golden Palace.com has paid $650,000 to name a new species of monkey. This is the same company that paid $28,000 for a grilled cheese sandwich with the purported image of the Virgin Mary on it. The monkey will be named callicebus aureipalatii, that’s Latin for “golden palace.” CEO Richard Rowe said, “This species will bear our name for as long as it exists. Hundreds, even thousands of years from now, the GoldenPalace.com Monkey will live to carry our name through the ages.” What a ghastly thought.
- Intel Russia has created the first Wi-Fi hotspot at the North Pole.
- The NY Times has revealed the contents of President Bush’s iPod. The device was given to him by his daughters last July, and he uses it to pep up his bike rides. It contains mostly country music from George Jones, Kenny Chesney, and the like, but also songs by Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison and the Knack. There are only about 250 songs on the 10,000 song device. Someone needs to turn him on to Kazaa.
- He may use an iPod, but he doesn’t send email even to his daughters. Bush said he’s afraid his “personal stuff” would be made public. He said “everything is investigated in Washington” and as a result “we’re losing a lot of history, not just with me, but with other presidents as well… I don’t think you’re entitled to be able to read my mail between my daughters and me.”
- Gordon Moore says time is running out on Moore’s law. That’s the one that says transistor density on microprocessors will double every 18 months. It’s held true since he coined the law 40 years ago, but Moore says it will stop working in another couple of decades. “Something like this cannot continue forever. The dimensions are small enough now that we’re approaching the size of atoms and that’s a fundamental block. I think the law has another 10–20 years before fundamental limits are reached.”
- Intel’s eBay offer of a $10,000 bounty for the April 19, 1965 edition of Electronics Magazine where Moore first made his pronouncement has caused an uproar in libraries, where people are stealing copies of the magazine.
Listen in this morning at 7:50a Pacific for the gadget of the week on KFI 640 AM in Los Angeles. Tune in tomorrow at 7:45a Eastern for my weekly visit with John Donabie on 1010 CFRB Toronto. And, of course, listen to my show every Saturday and Sunday, 11a to 2p Pacific on KFI, Los Angeles.
| Saturday, 9 April 2005, 4:53 pm Tags: Camera Phone |
We’re back from France. It was a wonderful family trip. I know it’s boring to show family pictures, but I can’t resist posting this one of Henry at Vaux-le-Vicomte – a truly beautiful castle with a tragic history.
I’m in Philadelphia working for the weekend, but the radio show will be live once again Sunday (courtesy WIOQ – thanks, guys!).
Swag
