When I feel most alive … go ahead, take your shoes off!

Here is my February update. I am leaving for Big Break tomorrow! A week at the beach sounds good to me! Pray that God would do great things in and through me! I’m looking forward to: fellowship with my fellow interns and the several hundred college student involved in Cru that will be at the conference, playing volleyball on the beach, sharing my faith with beach-goers on spring break, being close to God in times of corporate worship, and just having FUN!

WHAT IS PODCASTING?

Here is an article on Podcasting, done by USA Today last month titled

“Radio to the MP3 degree: Podcasting”

And another one on Newsweek titled

“Tivo for your iPod”

And one more from a blogger, Cameron, titled

“100 Bloggers - Get Your Head Around Podcasting”

HOW TO GET PODCASTS?

To have automatic download of podcasts you need a podcatching client, which does essentially the same thing as an RSS feed reader except that it is mainly for audio content (and can sync with your music player - for that’s iTunes and can put all of my podcasts in certain playlists that I specify so they are easy to get to - as well sync them to my iPod each day)

Here is a link to a popular cross-platform podcatching client, called iPodder.

And my favorite podcatching client for Mac OS X is PodCastTuner.

Another related technology but more related to blogging, is RSS. Here is a little bit about RSS:

WHAT IS RSS? (Really Simple Syndication)

RSS is a kind of file that usually contains a series of headlines and articles. Because there is a standard format for how the information is delivered, it enables you, through the use of special software, to aggregate all of your information into one place.

For example, instead of surfing around to 20 different web pages for news and other regular content, I can just launch my RSS feed reader (see below) and check up on what’s going on without navigating a ton of web pages) Such programs present the content in an easy to find and read format and all in one place.

Here is an explanation of RSS on wikipedia.org

HOW TO GET RSS FEED CONTENT?

You can already do this via some web-based services like www.bloglines.com but like email, I like having the content kept locally where I can see it again if I want at my leisure, even without being connected to the internet. Although many sites do not provide full-text articles in their RSS feed, instead they only give you summaries or excerpts, but that is enough for me to be able to tell whether I am interested enough to read the whole thing (off their website directly, which they always have a link to of course)

A popular Windows RSS Feed Reader is SharpReader.

And my favorite RSS Reader for Mac OS X is Net News Wire Lite

I recently discovered a new technology called podcasting. For those who might be reading this and don’t really get all this technology stuff, here is a summary of what podcasting is:

Basically, people record audio-shows (called podcasts) that they then put on the Internet to be heard by anyone, for free. Then I can use some software on my computer (called podcatching software) to automatically download these audio-broadcasts in MP3 format and have them automatically transferred to my iPod overnight so I can listen to them whenever I want the next day. It’s pretty much radio on demand.

This is only important because until today, I had not thought that maybe I could actually be a creator of audio content, until I found an article talking about www.audioblogger.com. Through this site, I have a number to call on my cell phone and I can just talk into it like I am leaving a voicemail, and it will save it into MP3 format and post it as an entry to my blog for all to listen.

So this is my first audio blog entry! Have a listen. I recorded it as I walked from my desk to my car after work this evening. If the audio seems kind of shaky, it’s because I’m walking as I talk. Enjoy! Maybe I’ll post some more audio entries sometime soon.

I recently discovered a new technology called podcasting. Here is a summary of what podcasting is:

Basically, people record audio-shows (called podcasts) that they then put on the Internet to be heard by anyone, for free. Then I can use some software on my computer (called podcatching software) to automatically download these audio-broadcasts in MP3 format and have them automatically transferred to my iPod overnight so I can listen to them whenever I want the next day. It’s pretty much radio on demand.

This is only important because until today, I had not thought that maybe I could actually be a creator of audio content, until I found an article talking about www.audioblogger.com. Through this site, I have a number to call on my cell phone and I can just talk into it like I am leaving a voicemail, and it will save it into MP3 format and post it as an entry to my blog for all to listen.

So this is my first audio blog entry! Have a listen. I recorded it as I walked from my desk to my car after work this evening. If the audio seems kind of shaky, it’s because I’m walking as I talk. Enjoy! Maybe I’ll post some more audio entries sometime soon. I also plan to post some of my thoughts on podcasting versus blogging and what I see in the future for podcasting.

Happiness abounded this week as my new iPod arrived on Tuesday. The guys in the mailroom at work were probably pretty annoyed with me calling every hour to find out if my package had come in. I didn’t really call them every hour, OK maybe every other hour.

Anyway, I’m very pleased with the new iPod. Here are the details. It’s got a 30 GB hard drive for music, photos, and whatever else I please. It has a color screen for showing photos and album art and a very slick looking menu system for navigating the iPod. It came with a power charging brick, a USB to dock connector cable, one set of my very own Apple signature white iPod earbuds (now I can make my own fun iPod commercials of my silhouette self dancin’ around in my white earbuds!)

I’m very happy with the size of this iPod. I can’t imagine having the mini, it would almost be too small! It’s just a little bit thicker than the 4th Gen. iPods, a little bit larger (but thinner) than my cell phone, and takes up less space in my pocket than my wallet.

To enable me to use my new toy in the car, I got a mounting stand to hold my iPod where I can reach it comfortably, a cassette adapter, and a car charger so I never run out of battery. I am fairly pleased with the sound quality of the cassette adapter. Besides, my car speakers aren’t all that great anyway, so it’s not like I could get incredible sounds anyway, so it’s not worth paying for anything more expensive like a line-in solution.

Well, that’s all I got for now. Here are some pictures of the beautiful iPod. Watch for my next post about pod-casting and my thoughts on this new phenomenon.

1. They are prettier than PCs - which just makes me want to use it even more I mean come on now - working on a Dell computer (or other PC) just makes me feel like the only work I could possibly do on such an ugly machine would have to be the most boring thing ever. But when I startup by beautiful TiBook G4 Powerbook I am excited about whatever I might do!

2. Apple cares enough about interface/interaction design to try to make on that is halfway decent. I took a Human Computer Interaction class in college and when I use Windows, I just want to cry because the OS itself makes performing my tasks so much harder. Certainly, I have adjusted and gotten used to doing things inefficiently, but why should I waste my time using a horribly inelegant OS when I can use my Mac?? Prime example here is Exposé in Panther Mac OS X 10.3. It’s a wonder of interface design. For more good thoughts on interaction and interface design check out Ask Tog.

3. Because in addition to the incredible applications from Apple, there are tons of open-source developers creating excellent freeware/shareware products all the time. My favorite free app that has changed the way I use my computer is Quicksilver from Blacktree, Inc. which facilitates application launching and other tasks like mapping Apple Scripts to hotkeys (called triggers) like for controlling iTunes) It is just one great example of the great work being done by independent software developers for Mac OS X.

A few others that I use on a daily basis are Adium (a multi-protocol chat client), NetNewsWire Lite (an RSS feed reader), Meteorologist (weather forecast in the menubar), Pod Cast Tuner (a podcast feed downloader), iScrobbler and Amua (for use with audioscrobbler.com and last.fm music profiling and listening services), ecto (which I use to post to my blogs) Growl (system-wide customizable notifications) and MuMenu (software update lists in my menubar - which I use to keep on top of all this new great software listed by www.macupdate.com!).

I’m sure there are some similar programs for Windows, but I am just so impressed with these that it makes using a Mac that much better! Every piece of software above is free with the exception of ecto ($17.95 but totally worth it if you are an avid blogger!) So try some of these out and tell me if you can find such amazing software for your PC! I think not!