Joe Tech

Is the title too harsh? You tell me. I mean, I love my iPhone 3G. I do. It’s an amazing piece of technology that offers almost everything I’ve always wanted in a phone and more. Unfortunately, Apple really screwed up on one important feature of the iPhone : the phone.

Widespread problems
In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, take a look at just a few of the mentions in the news and blogosphere about the iPhone 3G’s problems with actual phone calls:

• User anger: iPhone 3G problems emerging
• iPhone 3G Issues: The Plot Thickens
• FAQ: iPhone 3G reception — What’s the problem?

In short, the iPhone has been sporadically doing a horrible job of acting like an actual phone for many people, myself, included. What’s odd is that both my home and my office should have “Best” 3G coverage, according to AT&T’s coverage maps, yet the results are black and white. At home, I have no problems. At the office, I might as well sit on the roof and send smoke signals, because if you call my iPhone, only frustration comes from it.

Let’s point some fingers
I’ve read all sorts of theories in the last week or two. The top three possible causes are:

• AT&T can’t handle the load
• iPhone 3G switching software or the firmware is flawed
• The iPhone 3G hardware is flawed

I have money on the software/firmware, and it seems Apple does, too. After rumors of an impending update, Apple finally came through today with an update. What’s in the update? Your guess is as good as mine, because Apple sums up the whole 248.7 MB update as “Bug fixes”. Whatever the fixes are, I hope they allow me to use this pretty little toy as an actual phone from my office soon. If not, I’ll remain nervous that it’s either the network (which could take ages to update if that option is even pursued) or the hardware, and if it’s the hardware, I can only imagine the new iWait every iPhone 3G user will have to face.

AT&T + Apple = D-

Even if everything works swimmingly after my update installs, which is taking forever, both companies get a D- for failing to remember who made them filthy rich : their customers. As a Verizon wireless convert, I feel a little ashamed of what I left behind in the area of customer service. Even though Verizon was slipping just a bit, they’ve always seemed to have the customer’s needs in mind. In my first month as an Apple/AT&T customer, I’ve called AT&T twice about the horrible reception and was told that there was something wrong with my office building, even after I explained that every other phone on other carriers works like it should. Instead of opening a trouble ticket and looking into the problem, AT&T blamed my building and the “angle” of their tower. Apple’s closed-lipped take-no-blame approach to trying to quietly fix it hasn’t been quality customer service, either. Any believable theory had to come from unrelated experts and the general public.

Does the 2.02 update work?
It’s hard to say, but it’s not looking too impressive yet. Now that I’ve updated I seem to be at two bars, but it has dropped back down to zero bars and it jumped up, once, to 5 bars. Switching manually from 3G to Edge (or the other way around) still seems to take a couple seconds, so I can’t imagine the automatic switching has improved, but I’ve yet to test it. I just has a 12 minute phone call with my sister and even walked around the office without any problems on one bar, so I’m ever so slightly optimistic. Then again, I did drop another call after only a few minutes, so there’s obviously still some room for improvement.

How’s YOUR phone?
Moving from Verizon to AT&T, I’m beginning to feel like I left the better network behind for the shinier phone. If you have a cell phone, what phone do you have, who’s your cellular provider, and how’s the service and customer service?

For 11 days, I was on vacation. In the past, this meant that I would find myself without email or any internet connectivity. This time, I was more connected than ever. I was more connected, in fact, than I normally am at home. This was accomplished in a number of ways. In addition to bringing my new (pending road trip review) iPhone with me, I also packed the car up with several other goodies that made hours stuck in a car on the highway tolerable for a techie like me. On previous vacations, I’ve found myself unplugged and itching to get online, check email, etc. A vacation without electronics just feels unnatural, so I was determined to remain online in the most unobtrusive ways possible on this trip.

Working… just a little
I often need to work, if even just a little, while on vacation. Most times, I have been forced to spend 20 minutes walking someone through how to SSH into a server and make changes to something like DNS or a hosting configuration file. On this trip, I simply pulled out the laptop, plugged in my Verizon Wireless broadband card and made the change myself in about 5 minutes. Not only did I save someone else time, but I managed to get back to relaxing pretty quickly. In this photo, I was fixing a client’s DNS records as we were cruising down the highway. This may not be the most affordable for those of you who are tethered to a desk constantly, but if you travel enough, this is a great alternative to telling someone else how to do your job while you’re away. It was also a nice way to have a more secure connection than the hotels’ hacker-friendly wireless setups.

Keeping up with Email
One of the key features I looked for in a new phone was the ability to send and receive email. The iPhone promised this and has delivered to a marginal degree. When it works, it works and when it doesn’t, it just plain doesn’t work. Initially, I chalked this up to all the new iPhone owners, and that may still have something to do with the fact that I can only get it to actually GET my email about 70% of the time. Eventually, I still get all of my email, but if a client sends me something to review and I can’t get it right then, the whole “get email on your phone” functionality is useless. I remain optimistic, but will also enter an Apple or AT&T store with concerns this week.

Finding things and getting there
Finding things was relatively simple with my new iPhone handy. If it was food, I used Urban Spoon (1). While it works fairly well, it threw me a curve, suggesting 3 Monkeys in St. Louis, having me navigate through the “ghetto” to get there. After turning onto Compton St, we decided to just head down town for food. Another option that worked well for more specific navigation (such as the St. Louis Arch) was to just type my query right into the iPhone’s integrated Google Maps. Either way, you end up with a pin on your map (2). From there, you can simply click on the pin for more information, or to set up driving directions (3). We used this constantly, not only to determine drive times and best routes (4), but also to zoom right in for a turn-by-turn map of how to get there (5).

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Google Maps on the iPhone was one of the things that made our trip a lot easier. There were some glitches, but for the most part, this was a life-saver.

Keeping in touch
One of the most important things you can have on a road trip is a cell phone, even if you could care less about electronics or staying connected. If your care has ever broken down miles away from civilization, you already know about this first hand. A cell phone can be your life line to get medical help or even just a tow or a gallon of gas, but not if it says “No Service”. Since I was testing the iPhone, I took several opportunities to check the cellular availability of AT&T versus Verizon in places like the Painted Desert in Arizona, in mountain ranges, and everywhere else. Surprisingly, both did very will in most places and AT&T even outperformed Verizon a few times in the middle of nowhere, although Verizon is still king in the middle of Phoenix.

Satellite tracking for kicks
I took advantage of some test hardware we had at the office and rigged the car to be tracked constantly via satellite (except when I unplugged it). Below is the actual trek we made to Michigan last week, indicated by a couple hundred points on a basic map. While there can be some practical applications for this technology (and there are… trust me), we did it just for kicks so Michelle’s parents could watch us head their way.

Managing money
Have you seen the commercial in which a man and woman are scaling a mountain and she gets a text and a few hand motions later announces that she was almost overdrawn and that she just rectified the situation from her phone? Well, if it were that simple, there would be no security. However, after logging in, the Bank of America iPhone app allowed me to quickly move money from one account to another and pay my mortgage at 80 Mph. While it was more than just a few hand gestures, it was pretty painless and quick.

Plugging it all in
A lot of my favorite electronics just plug straight into the wall for power. What, then, do I do when I’m on the road of hours and hours? The answer is an inverter. This little guy juiced up my laptop, ipod, and iPhone when I needed it most and plugs right into the standard 12 volt socket most cars come with. This is a must for a cross-country road trip.

In case you haven’t already guessed, I’m a fan of the iPhone (or any comparable phone) that can keep me so connected in the most unconnected places. I suggest an iPhone for anyone who loves road trips as much as I do. The laptop was still like a monkey on my back, but was necessary for any complicated work to be done quickly, as well as for uploading photos from my digital camera. For now, at least, I’ll drag it along with me. Being able to plug it in for extended use was a huge bonus.

What do you use to stay plugged in when you’re away from home or the office?

We all know what a tattoo is. They’ve been around for centuries and surely will continue to decorate the skin for centuries to come. Time only enhances them by adding vibrant colors and ink that shows up best under black light. While mothers have always cringed at the thought of their baby getting a tattoo, most of us know someone with a tattoo or two and some of us have our own. Recently, I had a couple more done, so I thought I would post them and some that other people have that are equally as geeky.

I’ll go first

Above is a photo showing all my ink. Almost 3 years ago, I got a parallel port tattooed on my back. That’s the port in the middle that is a little lighter than the rest. I have been in love with computers since the first time I was on one in the early 80’s and it’s something I am very passionate about. Years ago, I wanted to get a bar code, but by time I got around to it, everyone else had one, so I opted for a parallel port instead. It was my first and when it was done, I immediately started thinking about what else I wanted done. Life kept me busy and I eventually started thinking about it again and worked out what I would want next. Last weekend, I headed to Americana Tattoo and added to my collection. The bottom row is a FireWire logo, followed by two FireWire ports. At the top, I finally got my bar code. I figured I shouldn’t care what everyone else has and did it anyway. However, I did make it a little more original. I used an online bar code image generator to generate a Code 128 barcode. I chose this standard because it’s easy to scan. The bar code should actually scan as “Joe” and the numbers underneath it spell out “Joe” in binary. These tattoos are just a small part of a much bigger plan.

Other geeky and nerdy tattoos
There’s a ton of geeky tattoo photos out there on the net, but I just grabbed all these from the Geeky Tattoos pool on Flickr. I had been planning a Matrix port tattoo to go with all my other ports, but I think it needs to be just a bit lower than the one below. I love the Tank Girl tat, because I’m a big Tank Girl fan. Of course, there’s the binary and the HTML-like tags (which are also on my list). Finally, there’s a bigger version of the FireWire logo, proving I’m not the only one crazy enough to ink that into my skin, and the “OMG LOL” tattoo, which has me thinking, well, “OMG! LOL!”.

Now I have questions for you.
1. Do you have any ink? If so, how many, what are they, and where on your body? (picture links are welcome)
2. What’s the geekiest (or your favorite) tattoo you’ve seen?
3. Any plans for geeky tattoos?

For quite some time, there’s been a parallel universe online with a ton of users and no real competition. Second Life was, well, your second life… a place to get away from the “meat world” and be someone else for a while. It still is, but now they have something to worry about. There’s only a few possible companies that have the resources and expendable cash to throw their hat into the ring. Google is one of those few and they’ve tossed their hat in with their own virtual world, Lively. It’s not much of a surprise that they’d play in this still very open arena. What did catch me off guard is the lack of publicity from a company positioned to turn the virtual worlds crowd upside down.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t really tried Second Life, but it’s not for lack of trying. I actually thought it looked pretty cool (and still do), but I couldn’t get it to install. Not only would it crash over and over again, but I found myself more frustrated just trying to get through to their support. Ultimately, I never got a response and gave up. Lively has its own problems, which I will get to, but it’s also still just in its infancy.

Get your new virtual life
What do you need to get started? Not much, really. One of the great ideas that makes me like Lively right off the bat is that it runs right in your web browser. The advantage of this is that it doesn’t suck up all your computer’s memory or require a powerful machine to play. Aside from a modern web browser, all you really need is a Google account and some free time. The Google account isn’t a bad idea, anyway. If you don’t have one already, you will be prompted to create one.

When you sign up, you create your Lively username that people will see and enter a couple other boring details. Then you get to dive right in and create your second you. This process begins with the selection of an avatar to represent you. The pickin’s are still pretty slim, but not horrible. One thing I found pretty interesting here was the ability to become male, female, or have your choice of a few different animals. If you ever wanted to live life as a pig, now is your chance.
Once you’ve chosen your avatar type, you need to refine it with some details. Start with a hair style and move on to your choice of pants, shirt, shoes, etc. When you’re all done, you’ve got this fully dressed avatar, ready to mingle with the crowd - or walk around aimlessly, clicking on things. The avatar options and finer detail choices still leave a lot to be desired. The selection process is pretty simple and the option variety is OK for the initial launch, but I really hope Google is working on rolling out more options as this thing grows. It’s still pretty new and too many of us look alike.

Walking, talking, dancing and fighting
Lively, just like any richly interactive experience, takes a bit of learning and some getting used to. Some things are intuitive and others aren’t. For example, to interact with a person or object, you just click on it. Simple enough. Try looking around and simple may not be the first word that enters your mind unless you enjoy flight simulators. Eventually, you get used to it, but it still doesn’t feel natural. What is pretty simple is the ability to drag yourself around. Click on your avatar, hold the mouse button down, and drag in the direction you want to go. Take it slow, though. You’re walking, not teleporting.

Once you’ve got your moves down, find a quiet corner and practice your animations. You can dance, applaud, body slam someone, flirt, you name it. Just right-click on your avatar and you are presented with a pretty healthy list of options.

Meet others and make friends (or enemies)
I met someone right away in Lively. I didn’t catch his name, but he beat the hell out of me while I was choosing pants. Rude, sure, but definitely not surprising. Any time you enter an environment in which anonymity is commonplace and even encouraged, you can expect to find people who never aged past 12 years old. The beating wasn’t as bad as the general demeanor of a lot of the people. In my first visit, Lively was only days old and it was full of these types of people. When I went back tonight, there were more rooms (including one called “Fight Club”) and a lot more people, most of whom were acting much more mature.

Getting to know people is pretty easy. Just walk right up, click on someone, and start chatting. You can send a private message by “whispering”, or you take a completely different approach and just start dancing with them. One thing I hope they add is the ability to ignore everyone else for a bit while I discover items, dance with someone, etc.

So far, I like Lively. While I may not have a lot of time for it, I can see myself relaxing in a new environment for a while after a long day. The installation process was very simple and impressed me after Second Live let me down, but in the few times I’ve played with it, it crashed twice after I closed the Lively tab in Firefox. There’s a lot more to learn and a lot for Google to add and improve upon, but it’s a nice start.

Try out Lively for yourself and let me know what you think or share things you’ve discovered that I haven’t found yet.

Here’s why the partnership between Entrecard and SezWho is important for bloggers everywhere, and something all bloggers should be taken advantage of.

1.) Your blog will get more comments. Under the partnership, when bloggers leave you a comment, they will receive Entrecard Credits, the micro-payment currency that allows you to advertise on 14,000 high quality blogs. If there’s one thing bloggers thrive on, its comments. Comments are the blood of a blog if the posts are the organs. So it’s no wonder that any system that is going to get your blog more comments just rocks.

2.) The comments will be high quality comments. Since low quality comments don’t get rewarded with any credits, people won’t waste their time and energy leaving poor quality comments. People who take it upon themselves to comment will make sure to leave good, relevant and valuable comments.

3.) It will get you to leave more comments. Let’s face it. We’ve all been in the following situation: We’re reading a blog post, we have a slight desire to chime in and comment, but laziness takes over and we click away or x out. With credits on the line though, we’re all the more likely to actually leave our comments. Not to mention it might put you on a mission every day to go out and comment. Commenting is one of the tried and true powerhouse methods to drive traffic to your blog and develop a reputation. Any system that is going to effectively get me to comment more often rocks.

4.) Credits!! It’s no secret why we want credits. We want them so we can advertise on the 14,000+ blogs in Entrecard. So you can either go dropping cards until your fingers hurt, or you can start commenting on some blogs!

5.) Check me out. One of the coolest features of SezWho is that you can “check me out”. Just by clicking a link, you can see all the comments someone has left from all over the blogosphere. How cool is that. Ok, so it doesn’t really have anything to do with the Entrecard partnership, but I wouldn’t have installed SezWho if it wasn’t for the Entrecard partnership, so it gets on the list. I love seeing what other comments people have left on other blogs. You might not understand how cool it is until you try it.

6.) Reduced bounce rate. Entrecard traffic used to mean someone dropping their card and leaving your site. Every now and then someone would subscribe, or comment, or click an ad. But now, now at least 50% of the traffic is commenting. THATS HUGE! My bounce rate has dropped like a rock. Awesome. Nobody likes a high bounce rate.

7.) BACKLINKS. Every comment you leave is a backlink to your blog. So by leaving a few comments every day, your slowly and steadily building backlinks to your blogs. And you’re earning credits while you do it. Nice.

8.) It’s Viral. When a lot of people start commenting your blog now, and other people “check them out” from comments they’ve left on other blogs to see where they’re commenting now, a huge mass of viral traffic will follow them… directly to your blog. That may not make much sense at first, but you’ll see what we’re talking about.

9.) School of blogging. More than anything, what this motivates us to do, is to learn how to write posts that are more inviting of comments. It also motivates us to learn how to leave the best comments we can -and how to be valuable contributors. For only if bloggers find our comments useful, do we get credits. And only if we write our posts well, will bloggers comment. The whole system really is quite genius in how it works like that.

10.) And the final reason why the Entrecard SezWho partnership is important for bloggers is… drumroll please… it’s gonna keep us blogging. Let’s face it, if we pour our hearts out into post after post, only to receive zero comments, its a blow to our motivation and our drive. Without the support of commentators sharing their feelings, thoughts and opinions on our blog, well, why blog at all, right? Why build a baseball field if no one is going to play ball on it? There are 100 million more blogs now than there were five years ago. That’s 100 million more blogs competing for comments. That’s pretty intense. But with Entrecard and SezWho, you don’t have to worry about finding people to come comment on your blog. All you have to do is focus on writing quality content, and let the Entrecard community take care of the rest.

So there you have it. The top 10 reasons why the Entrecard - SezWho partnership is important for bloggers, and why if you’re serious about blogging, you should be using Entrecard and SezWho to catapult your community to new heights.

I’m not a Radiohead fan, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be one. It’s just not my taste in music. I will, however, be subscribing to their blog or newsletter or whatever they have as soon as I’m done with this article. After they created a huge buzz by giving fans their album “In Rainbows” at whatever price the fan felt was fair, and now this House of Cards video, I just have to see what else they’re going to do.

They’re not sharks, but they’ve got lasers
What I’m talking about is lasers… a whole lot of them…. to make a music video without cameras. That’s right. We all know that lasers are cool and can be made to do some neat things beyond just being functional, but the band has taken creativity to a new level, blending artistry with technology and innovation to invoke oohs and ahhs from fans and non-fans, alike. Just take a look at the video below and see what I mean.

How it works
Even better than putting out a cool new video in a fun new way is showing how it was done. The whole thing was accomplished with a couple technologies, but with no cameras at all. The two technologies used to form live 3D views of the action were a Geometric Informatics product called GeoVideo and Velodyne’s LIDAR.

All of the close-up shots were handled by the GeoVideo:

GeoVideo is a high-resolution (over 600,000 triangles per frame) 3D geometry video acquisition system that provides 3D surface geometry data recording capabilities at 180 frames per second with real-time rendering for previewing geometry video data. The 3D geometry video data is immediately available for recording. Each video frame is captured with texture information that is aligned exactly point for point with 3D geometry.

To produce all the exterior scenes, the LIDAR gathers points with a couple groupings of lasers:

The HDL-64E operates on a rather simple premise: instead of a single laser firing through a rotating mirror, 64 lasers are mounted on upper and lower blocks of 32 lasers each and the entire unit spins. This design allows for 64 separate lasers to each fire thousands of times per second, providing far more data points per second and a much richer point cloud than conventional designs. The 64 lasers are employed with each laser/detector pair precisely aligned at predetermined vertical angles, resulting in a 26.8 degree vertical FOV. By spinning the entire unit at speeds up to 900RPM (15 Hz), a 360 degree FOV is inherently delivered. Regardless of the spin rate, 1.5 million data points (i.e. pixels) are generated each second, providing an exponentially richer point cloud than ever before possible.

Both technologies are pretty awesome and you can poke at the final 3D viewpoints here. Hit the play button, wait 5 minutes, and then click and drag on the view to alter the perspective. Try the up and down arrows on your keyboard to zoom in, too. You’ll get a better feel for how it works that way.

Give us a remix
Finally, the only thing cooler than showing off their new video and then telling us how it was all done is providing the point data and the tools to remix it. Including myself, over 2,000 people have downloaded the remix materials to make their own version of the sure-to-be-viral music video. The goal is to create your own version of the video and submit it to their House of Cards YouTube group. I think it’s a wonderful idea to inspire others to create and share. So wonderful, in fact, that I decided to poke at it myself.

Once I downloaded everything, I found that it’s nothing more than position/intensity data read into the Processing application by a small script. Being a programmer, I went straight for the code. When in doubt, change values one at a time. That’s what I did. I started randomizing things to change colors and pixel positions, but it gets interesting when you start replacing values with the aptly named frame counting variable, frameCounter. Just replace the last value (255) in the stroke() function call with “frameCounter” and watch the face fade in as brightness increases from zero with each frame count. Below are some screen shots of what I accomplished in about 30 minutes with some light tinkering in the code. I haven’t opened the data files yet.

Now play around with it yourself and see what you can make it do. If you do play, be sure to link to your images or videos from the comments below.

The Apple iPhone 3G is coming and people are almost as excited about it as they were about the first one. Are you? Will you be switching?

I don’t have an iPhone. I have wanted one since they came out, and I wanted it even more after playing with one. At first, I thought that someone would have to come out with something close enough to appease me. LG got close, but didn’t hit the mark.

Two things kept me from buying the iPhone. The first was the cost. Even though I have a $500+ phone now, Apple is famous for 1-upping themselves pretty often, making first generation products drop in value pretty quickly. Just watch ebay over the next few weeks. The second reason I’ve stayed away is because they penned an exclusive deal with AT&T. Sure, I could get one that would work on my long-time provider, Verizon, but then I’d be loathe to receive support for the thing, and Verizon had me locked into a contract (I’m free next month, coincidentally).

So now I am faced with a decision. Do I pick up a super cheap hacked iPhone for Verizon, do I pick up a brand new 3G when it comes out and go with AT&T (who has the exclusive for four more years), or do I stick with what I have and wait for something comparable to the iPhone?

Pros and cons of moving to AT&T and the iPhone 3G
When you buy a cell phone and cell phone service, the goal is to get a phone with good service, not to get a toy. I have to keep reminding myself that. That said, the new phone should be faster and have much faster web services. Plus, the 3G network is supposed to drop less calls (I keep hearing about iPhones and dropped calls). It looks like it’s the best choice when it comes to having a new phone, but I have a feeling I could regret moving from Verizon to AT&T. A downside is that I lose the benefit of mobile-to-mobile for all my Verizon friends, but when I add in a data plan, it seems cheaper than Verizon. This is also the newer phone, so it’s not “unsellable” as soon as I get it like an older model.

Pros and cons of getting a hacked older iPhone on Verizon
First of all, the cons. It wouldn’t be supported at all. I also would not be able to get newer software developed for the new models (unless I can and just don’t know it). Finally, the older models will be nearly impossible to sell for a while with the 3G hitting the market next month. But that also works in my favor. I figure I can get more on ebay for my old phone than I’ll have to pay for a hacked first generation iPhone with extras early next month. This is also a nice medium between not getting an iPhone and having to bend over backwards for one. There is also some other hidden benefits to getting a hacked iPhone, like the tons and tons of homebrew out there, not having to worry about voiding a warranty (since it’s already voided), etc.

Pros and cons of sticking with what I have
There’s not much good or bad about leaving things well enough alone. I don’t have an iPhone, but I have a pretty decent phone that is well supported and is made to work on Verizon. But I still don’t have an iPhone. My current phone has two drawbacks that I think an iPhone would handle nicely. The battery life is horrible. I am constantly running out of battery life. The iPhone has a much smarter method for locking/unlocking. I have to tap in a specific spot on my phone and then hit an unlock button, compared to the slide touch lock iPhone uses.

At the end of the day, I know a few things for sure:
- I really want an iPhone
- The timing of next month’s 3G iPhone opens the door for me to get one
- Michelle made me promise she gets one if I do.

So what about you? Do you have an iPhone? Do you plan on grabbing a 3G?

Today, I decided to write about contests, the Top Affiliate Challenge, BlogWorld, and other things on my mind. I realize that I’m a little overdue for a post and I’ll have some more fun tech stuff coming soon.

$100 every month
First, let’s talk about contests. For a few months now, I’ve been assisted by some other great blogs in giving away $100 every month to a lucky winner. While it is certainly fun and I enjoy doing it, I’ve decided to cease involvement in the $100 contests. Managing the contests and selecting a winner has proven to be much more time-consuming and arduous than I had anticipated and I would rather let someone else take over than continue to select a winner late every month. I had been waiting to collect all entrant data for April and May, but will proceed with selecting winners for those months and make sure they get paid soon. Thanks to everyone who participated!

More contests
Coming up, I’ll be reviewing another product of the techie variety that I’ve actually had sitting on my desk for a while now. Watch for that post. I’m going to give it away to one person who links to it, stumbles it, etc. That should be in the next few days.

Jim Kukral convinced me to buy a Pure Digital Flip and he’s giving his away. I got an email from Jim reminding me about it. Here’s how it works:

The deadline to be qualified to win my Flip camera is a week from
tomorrow. Monday the 16th. I’ll choose the winner that day.

You can still enter, just link to or write a blog post about
the www.onlinevideotoolkit.com and then send an email to me at
jim@jimkukral.com letting me know where to look. That’s it.

I am enjoying my Flip a lot. You should enter and try to win Jim’s, because it’s really a fun and useful gadget.

Vote for Ty Hurd
Top Affiliate Challenge is a battle of affiliate marketing prowess, and they’re looking contenders for the TV show. A lot of people have submitted auditions, but only a handful will make it to the show. I’ve been in communication with Ty Hurd in the past and was pleased to see him leading the pack in first place. He’s been helpful to me in the past without asking for anything in return, so I knew right away where my vote would probably go. After viewing other submissions and seeing that his was a parody of one of my favorite shows, Myth Busters, the deal was sealed. Head over and vote for Ty, but remember to vote his audition a “10″. See you on TV, Ty! Good luck!

BlogWorld
I’m still working on the details, but I’m definitely going to BlogWorld this year. Are you going? Let me know. I’d love to meet some of you there and I have all these business cards to hand out. If you are planning on going, let’s talk about meeting up.

Guest authors get paid
OK… Not everyone gets paid, but as promised, I set aside $5 per guest post to go to one of my guest authors. I randomly chose from the three posts that were published and Santousha of Seeking Serenity who wrote Laptop Maintenance for Noobs Like Me gets the $15. Congrats!

After my last post, I’ve been itching to make another video post. Last night, it all just fell in my lap while perusing HackADay.com. A recent post there, “Multitouch project roundup” talks about the many variations of multi-touch devices people are building in response to Microsoft Surface and the technology that preceded it. The problem with surface and some multi-touch implementations is that Surface will undoubtedly be out of your price range and mine and other DIY implementations have appeared daunting and still fairly expensive to pull off. Last night, one implementation, called mtmini, stood out from the crowd as a relatively simple and very inexpensive multi-touch project, so I decided that I just had to try it.

Below is the video, summarizing the creation of the multi-touch interface and some demonstration of it in use. I’m still working on my editing skills and the interface could use some fine-tuning, but I was pleased to have it actually working without a lot of effort. If you want to skip the building and commentary, jump to 3:26 in the video. It is also worth noting that Logitech didn’t have XP drivers for the camera I originally mounted in the box, so I ended up pulling that out and using a WebCam Live instead.

By all means, feel free to link to this post or share, embed, or link to the video on YouTube. Try to make one, yourself using either my method or the original (non-desk) method and post a link to your results here.

I don’t shoot much video, and the video I do capture is not of me when I can help it, but let’s face it. Video is taking over the web to a degree and I would be denying a new market opportunity if I didn’t at least poke at some online video. After some urging from Jim Kukral, I bought myself a Pure Digital Flip video camera and then headed to Jim’s site, OnlineVideoToolKit.com for some video tips. The video below is the the result of a Saturday out playing with my new toy. (Please look past my scratchy voice, shaky hand, and inability to remember where I am at any given time)

Having watched the video, it’s clear that I figured out a couple transitions and how to put the videos together with Microsoft Movie Maker, but I could use some practice handling the camera. Despite my clumsy newbie ways with a video camera, I managed to come up with something not too catastrophic, and that’s a testament to the Flip. So what’s my verdict? Let’s just break it down to the pros and the cons…

Pros
- Small and very light weight
- Much better video than I get with my still camera’s video recording
- Super fast to get going
- Super fast to get the video on my computer
- Cheap and easy video publishing solution

Cons
- Where’s the threaded tripod mount? (design flaw in my older version, it seems)
- Non-upgradeable memory
- USB interface is a bit clumsy without a cable

I bought the cheap version just to play around without putting a lot of money on the line. I spent about $72 (shipped) to buy mine on ebay. If you’re thinking about getting one, spend the extra money and get a 1GB or 2GB model, tripod-ready, with the extra features. Either way, I’m still pretty happy with it since I won’t need that much memory and the tripod and cable issues are easily fixed.

Now that I’ve jumped on the video band wagon for a test run, should I pack the camera (and my video blogging aspirations) into a box and hide it in my closet, or would you like to see more video blogs on JoeTech.com? Drop your thoughts in the comments area or post a video response on YouTube.