I have decided to go back to the “I wonder who will find me” model of personal publishing, instead of forcing it onto your screens. I’ve been pushing stuff to Twitter long enough, so you know it’s all here. Now to see if you keep coming back.

To be a little more clear, anything that I post here, on dbmini, w(t)f, Vimeo or Viddler will no longer automatically get posted to Twitter, which also no longer automatically posts to Facebook.

I will be putting everything back into Friend Feed if you want a one-stop-shopping experience for everything I share online, but that’s as far as it goes.

If you are one of my Facebook or Twitter followers and want to be able to keep up with my shit, might I recommend taking the time now to discover the absolute brilliance that is RSS and Google Reader. Everything I do has an RSS feed and it’s a great way to keep up. Bonus is that there are a ton of sites out there that also have RSS feeds, so you can easily subscribe to them to get the latest updates.

If you are one of my Twitter or Facebook followers that is tired of reading duplicate posts or seeing links from me, you won’t any longer. You’re welcome.

Finally, I will be removing FB Connect from donburnside.com and reset the Wordpress comment rules appropriately.

As always, thank you for your time.

Playing with a few things, changing a few things, updating a few things.

A couple of new apps this week. The first I heard about on Mac Break Weekly called Shape Collage. You can read the write up at dbmini. I know I know, I don’t normally post software reviews there, but most of the readers carry camera and they still out-number you 2:1.

Second app I’m playing with is called DoubleTwist. It’s an app for getting media to your device of any shape (mp3 players, phones, game consoles) and for sharing with your friends. I don’t see a real need for this on the ATP, but if you have anything else that holds media, it might be worth checking out. Full write-up to follow after I play with it some more.

Oh yea, both of these run on Windows and Mac. So go nuts.

More playing with HD and I’m starting to get the hang of it, or at least I think I am. In case you missed it, you can see the latest on Vimeo and YouTube (be sure to click HD).

Why did I post to both? I wanted to see which is better. I still prefer Vimeo over YouTube since it has a nicer player, but YouTube allows a larger file size and I can upload more than 1 HD video a week (without paying). If I start to post a lot of stuff in HD, I might opt for the ‘Pro’ account at Vimeo. I also posted this video at Viddler and the results were very good.

That is the exact same file I put on Vimeo and YouTube. Not too shabby I think.

Finally, I started playing with the Tumblr again. I’ve changed it so that the only going there are photos from Flickr, links from Delicious and video from everywhere. That will change to be Viddler only I believe. Next up will be integrating that into db.com and then I will start using it for random videos and links and all that. Keep an eye out for that to happen soon.

And I have finally managed to get an interview at the end of next week. Details on my Facebook page. Good interview JuJu my way if you please (and can spare it).

You can check out the same film in HD over at YouTube. That was the same clip, mixed down to 720p and uploaded to YouTube.

Overall I am more than pleased with the results I’m getting from this camera.

I was interviewed for the Viddler blog.

Thanks to Lavardera for recommending me!

Why have cable

A few years ago I decided not to waste money by having a land line phone and a cell phone at the same time. It was forward thinking when I did it, and now it’s all the rage. I mean really, how many of you have land line telephone service from your local telco? I do mean phone service, not a line that is there for your DSL connection. If you are younger than me, I’m going to say none of you. If you are older, I would say there is a higher chance, but not by much.

Looking again to save a few bucks, I’m thinking about turning off the television part of my Fios service. Honestly I only watch a few shows and seems like a waste to be paying Verizon $45 a month for 8 hours of programming. Then I saw this (via) and realized I wasn’t the only one.

But I have a really nice setup. 45″ HD TV. Full Dolby Surround (with 100w 12″ sub to rattle the walls). To keep that from going to waste, I’m seriously thinking about getting an Apple TV. I’ll buy the shows I want (in HD no less, or whatever the iTunes version of it is) and watch them when I want. I already have a pretty good DVD player for movies and I’m very comfortable using Handbrake for, um, any other programming I might come across, that I want to watch on the big screen.

Plus there is Hulu for when I want to watch Burn Notice, Carrier (which I highly recommend) or anything else that might strike my fancy.

Then, if I still need to be entertained, I can always cruise through Viddler, Vimeo and even YouTube. The way I see it, I don’t need cable.

Has anyone else thought about canceling your cable TV? Or have you actually canceled it? Let us know.

So, instead of sitting here being mad about not being at the New Media Expo in Vegas this weekend, I will share my current favorites.

• Skitch. This one has actually been bumped to living in the dock for me I’m using it so much lately. I would, for sure, pay for this.
• Fluidapp. I’ve heard that SSBs will be a part of the next version of OSX. Until then, there is this and it’s awesome.
• Quicksilver. I’m lost without this. Let’s me work without thinking or looking at the keyboard. Stuff. Just. Happens.
• Viddler. Have you seen the new features? Check out my new player! If there was a “Pro” account (like flickr), I would totally pony up.

Sure there are other free apps out there for the Mac, but none of them wow me like these. If you don’t use them, I believe it would be well worth your time.

If you’ve already seen this at dbmini, WRR or MF, no need to click through because it is exactly the same. I will say that I will be fairly sparse around here for the next week and change starting Thursday.

Can you believe this actually starts this week? Here at WRR we are getting pretty excited as you can imagine. Hopefully we’ll be able to share most of that excitement with you as well!

Before going further, do make sure you have registered for the MTTS event you are going to be attending. Besides saving $10, you will get a bag of swag for sure and the proceedes go to local charities. Win-win in my book!

Now, to keep up with all of the action.

• All photos will be on my Flickr, in the MTTS 2008 Flickr group and on Todd’s Flickr
• All videos will be posted to Whiteroof.tv for download and Vidder to watch
• Updates, as they happen, will come from Twitter, including when we broadcast live via uStream.tv
• All audio will, of course, be up on WRR for download with a player on Motoringfile.com.

To make things easier, I have set up a special RSS feed (actually it’s ATOM, but it will work in any reader) that will aggregate Twitter, Flickr, WRR and WR.tv. You can subscribe to that here.

I have already posted our possible live schedule here in case you missed it. Keep in mind that this is very tentative and is very much subject to change. This is where twitter will come in handy to keep up-to-date should things change.

Stay tuned! things are just getting warmed up!

It started off with a bunch of spammers and this guy. Then a few more readers came along. The long way too, usually following the link to donburnside.com that adorns the bottom of many pages I create. This brought the readership total up to about 7.

Then I started the show. about another 10 of you took the trouble to find this. Thanks!

Then I did the theme change. Including links to all of my sites on all of my sites. Recipe posts at flickr brought in some n00bs too. And the videos at Viddler.

After all of this, you, the wtf reader, are now about 1200 strong! Yes, holy crap indeed.

Now, in comparison, you are only about 1/2 as many as the MINI site. But that site cheats. It gets mentioned in the show. It’s linked up at MF among other places. It gets better search refs too, and has a higher google ranking. For the most part, it’s been fairly organic.

Now, to do the same with w(t)f.

You might see a few minor changes around the site. I’ve added tags (since all the kids are doing it). And, I’m going to be a keyword whore. But only for the next month. But I’m not going to do any overt promotion short of the occassional link on twitter. But only if I think it’s an awesome post. Remember, I hate spam worse than you do.

Right now you are on track to be 1500 strong this month. I want to see if my tweaks and whatnot can increase that by at least 500 for the month of June. While I’m not going to ask for your help, if you do come across a post that you think is worthy of sharing, please feel free to do so. Time to bring w(t)f out of the closet and into prime time.

Here we go!

New things for the week

A recap of all the things I’ve been trying/using this week, in case you missed any of them.

FriendFeed. I think it’s handy. 1 stop shopping for all my stuff, plus you can comment on things there (if you are subscribed). They added a new feature this week called Rooms that looks promising. It’s like a message board, kinda. Slightly less obnoxious and slightly easier to follow.

Facebook. For reasons passing understanding I started playing with Facebook again this week. It helped pass the time.

Viddler. Still using it. Still the best video service I’ve used. Bonus is a few new features they have rolled out lately. Subscriptions and RSS feeds. Handy stuff to have.

IShowU and Skitch. IShowU captures your screen as a video, handy for the new project and it works quite nice. And it’s cheap. As for Skitch, I finally found a use for it and it’s been super handy. It’s so handy in fact that, when it comes out of Beta, I would gladly opt for a paid version if one is available. Within reason, of course.

Fluid. I tried this before when it first came out and I thought it had potential. At the time, it worked not well enough to use on a daily basis. It’s been revised, fixed, revised and fixed again and seems to be working quite well for GMail. I might use it for a few other things, but I’m not quite sure yet. I’ll keep you posted.

If you are looking for me on Facebook, Viddler or FriendFeed, follow the links in the sidebar. If you are trying to figure out why you can’t use Fluid on your PC, now would be a good time to think about making the switch.

Busy week coming up. I certainly hope it goes smoothly. That would be keen. Oh yea, if Josh says anything to you about eating BBQ Penguin, just nod and smile. He does get a bit delusional at times (remember the Snobo Monkey’s from ‘01?). It’s all that fancy scotch he’s been drinking with his mates.