phyllostachys 59: Minute Tech 44 show notes

44 - What is Ice Skating?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 44 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Wednesday, December 5th, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- Oil is up, Oil is Down, Imus is up, Apple is Down;
- What is Ice Skating?
- Toyboxcar Leads Me to Scribd.com.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA. "Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.

And:

Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

Oil goes up, oil goes down. Very cyclical. Very Tao.

Bloomberg reports this morning that the spot price of crude oil is on it's way down again due to evidence that OPEC is stepping up production to avoid....for our sake, not theirs...continuation of $100 per bbl, and also in part due to the slight lessening of tensions over Iran. Why Iran, you may well ask? It seems that a US Intelligence report suggests that Iran's current ability to produce "the bomb" is not as near as originally feared. This seems a long way off from the turmoil surrounding the Valerie Plume episode of US Intelligence.

As of Tuesday morning in London, crude was trading down at $88.74 dollars per bbl, nearly 10 percent off the high close of $99.29 reached on November 21st.

In other news, "Chimps exhibit superior memory, Outshining Humans"...and "Don Imus Steps Gingerly on the Air". You may draw your own conclusions from that juxtaposition, provided inadvertantly by news.google.com.

Also, in Minute Tech 43 I mentioned that Apple is on the rise insofar as market share goes...but the stock sure tanked on Monday. Why is that - it could be many factors: a new patent-infringement lawsuit brought against Apple and AT&T for the "visual voicemail", regarding two patents from 10 years ago; the fact that NBC has officially pulled video programming from Apple's iTunes marketplace, since Apple wouldn't allow them to raise prices; or because, as Fast Company is quoted as saying in a ZDnet article, Apple is a hermetically sealed company in an increasingly interoperable world.

Tech Question:

What is ice Skating?

Wikipedia has a fine article on this. Suffice it to say that ice skating is the act of sliding along on a smooth surface of frozen H20 with rails of a hard substance strapped to the bottom of your feet, either for the purpose of hitting a little black pancake with a stick, of leaping with a partner in twists and turns, of sliding at breakneck speed around a tight racecourse, or for touring up a frozen river in search of adventure.

wikipedia lists five types of ice skates: Figure, Hockey, Bandy, Racing and Touring. The principle differences between hockey and figure skates is the serrated toe "pick" on the front of figure skates, to allow for certain jumps, spins and stopping maneuvers, and the uppers: hockey skates typically have hard plastic & leather uppers for stiffness, whereas figure skates are primarily leather, which still provides significant support.

Touring and Speed skating skates have blades longer than hockey or figure skating - touring skates may be designed to be attached to the bottom of the shoe or boot, and some speed skates have hinge attachements for the boot.

Bandy skates generally have a shorter boot, not covering the ankle, and wikipedia says that the bandy skate is designed to reduce injury to other players. Bandy is essentially field hockey on ice, with a curved-end stick and a bandy ball, as opposed to a hockey puck.


Podcasting - Blogging News:

On gmail this morning I got a notification that "toyboxcars" is following me on Twitter. Who? What? Following the link provided in the e-mail, I come across the Twitter home page of somebody following 201 people, with 6 followers and 0 posts. Why am I going to follow somebody who's not starting out with contributions, but just lurking? Toyboxcars, if you're listening, I'll follow when you've started contributing to the twitter-verse.

Toyboxcars did have one interesting item: he or she had a link to a page on a web site I'd never heard of: www.scribd.com. Scribd, with two primary slogans of "Publish yourself online" and "Scribd is for Writers" appears to be a site for publishing documents of various formats that you want others to read. The three big buttons on the first page are basically:

1 - Upload document - we accept all major formats - free unlimited storage!
2 - Share with the world: (a) Publish to a wide audience, (b) Get feedback from Scribd's community, and (c) Embed your docs anywhere on the web;
3 - Explore our Library: eBooks, Schoolwork, Sheet Music, Legal Docs, photos, Presentations, Zines, Poetry, etc.

Hey, this could be interesting. Looks like lots of abuse via spam, but also some useful stuff - a search on "wu style", ostensibly searching for anything on wu style tai chi, yields a long listing, including a PDF of Bartlby.com's The Sayings of Confucius...with selectable text. I'll finish with this except - I was able to highlight in the PDf, but not copy/past... remember to check out www.scribd.com:

The name Confucius is the latinized form of the Chinese characters, K'ung Foo-tsze, meaning, "The master, K'ung." The bearer of this name was born of an ancient and distinguished family in the district of Tsow, in the present province of Shen-tung, China, B.C. 551.

Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com

"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"

- Oil is up, Oil is Down, Imus is up, Apple is Down;
- What is Ice Skating?
- Toyboxcar Leads Me to Scribd.com.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

phyllostachys 58: Minute Tech 43 show notes

43 - What are Winter Sports?

Good afternoon, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 43 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Monday, December 3rd, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- Snow, Hadrosaurs and Apple all on the rise;
- What are Winter Sports?
- HangBoarding may be in my future.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA. "Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.

And:

Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.



Tech News:

What we experienced as rain Sunday in Pittsburgh, thank goodness, was experienced as a bunch of snow in the northeast. Parts of New York State had six inches of the white stuff, while New Jersey was getting some three inches.

Out in North Dakota, I don't know about the above ground weather, but scientists are just releasing information that below ground the weather is quite, uh, preserving. Dakota, as the unearthed hadrosaur has been named, is a dinosaur body that was first found as a body...with skin and musculature preserved in the fossilized state rather than just the skeleton. Scientists speculate that the ground in North Dakota at the time somehow converted the whole body to minerals before bacteria could eat away at the corpse. Wow...just thinking the word "corpse" with a dinosaur fossil....makes you look quickly behind you to make sure you're not being watched.... :-)
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/071203_dakota.htm

Meanwhile, back in present day, we have a new milestone - Apple, according to Net Applications, is up to a high of 6.6% market share, and the safari web browser is up to 5.14%. Both these measurements are based on computers that have accessed many websites, rather than the number of units sold that other companies use for tabulation. Check out www.netapplications.com, or any of the mac rumor sites such as Mac Daily News, MacRumors or ThinkSecret for more complete reporting.

Tech Question:

Winter Sports: Skating, hockey, figure, tour & speed; Sledding; Skiing, both cross country & downhill, and related sports; Taboganning; Hang-boarding; curling...what else is there?

Obviously, winter sports encompass that set of sports that are unique to the winter, that is that they are not, or can not, generally, be performed during the summer. With the advent of modern cooling systems, ice skating has become a year-round sport, whether you're in Calgary or Miami. With various forms of astroturf combined with treadmills, or cross-country ski's with wheels, you can nearly ski year round. And of course the wheeled versions of skates & snowboards have been around for decades in the form of rollerskates, inline skates and skateboards.

This past weekend I took my son to a sixth skating lesson at a local ice rink. While it was like pulling teeth to get him on the ice, I couldn't wait. Although I skated quite a bit, and played hockey, as a youth, I haven't skated before this year in probably 25 years. Now, I did pick up on inline roller blading several years ago while living in San Francisco, which whetted my thirst for this type of movement...but ice really is quite different. On ice you have much more freedom than on wheels on pavement. Ice-skating backwards, if you can manage it both mentally and physically, is rather effortless....doing so on roller-blades is more suicidal.

After skating for about 1 and a half hours on Saturday...about an hour past my son's endurance...I realized that I got more than just movement out of the experience...but some exercise as well. My primary exercise these days is commuting in my car, so you can imagine that some atypical exercise form might be welcome. Later in the evening, I went straight to Youtube, and glommed onto videos of how to do various things on the ice, including types of "extreme" skating.

In the next few podcasts I'll focus on some of the technical details of winter sports...if you're listening in the Northern Hemisphere...or at least in the northern reaches, you'll notice outside that this is the right season for this focus. Hang on!


Podcasting - Blogging News:

So, speaking of blog journeys, as I did in MT number 42, I took a couple more yesterday and this morning. From Facebook, I followed link to the blog of an old friend, Charles Buchwald, at http://buchwald.ca/. Charles is a designer for HangBoard Snoflight, Inc. HangBoard makes a most interesting device - as it's name implies, it appears to be a snowboard on you hang from a harness, somewhat akin to a hangglider harness, and swing side to side to move the board left and right. If you go to www.hangboard.ca, you'll see links to a few Youtube video demonstrations.

Personally, with all the societal opposition to sledding these days...and I guess I refer to my inlaws' desire not to allow my son to sled due to the potential hazards...I'm hot to try this device. It looks very cool to be racing down a mountain on a futuristic flexible flyer, which looks to have quite a bit of control and maneuverability in the hands of the "pilot".


Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com

"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"

- Snow, hadrosaurs and Apple all on the rise;
- What are Winter Sports?
- HangBoarding may be in my future.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

phyllostachys 48: Minute Tech 33 show notes

33 - What is Nunavut?

Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Saturday & Sunday, November 17th & 18th, 2007

We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 33 - What is Nunavut?

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.

Also by:

Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.

Tech items:

As usual, when a company brings out a decent product which sells well, people begin bandying about the M word. That's M for Monopoly. Journalists have been after Apple for being a monopoly in the music distribution arena. Do you think Apple is a monopoly? I don't - you can get your music online through iTunes, you can go to a local music store and buy CD's, you can join a CD music club, and you can visit any number of second-hand music stores. Now, is Apple a monopoly because they have the only decent music player? SanDisk, Creative and Microsoft each make very useable music players...and very affordable, perhaps more-so than Apple's range of iPods. So...what makes Apple a monopoly? Are then bullying other music distributors? Are they forcing others out of business using methods other than the rule of feet (consumers can choose which store to walk into)? Let me know what you think.

Tech Question:

What is Nunavut?

Christopher S. Penn, on his self-named blog, asks whether America and the UE will respect Canada's assertion that the Arctic Circle shipping route over the North Pole belongs to Canada, as it's within the territory designated by Canada in 1999 as Nunavut. Mr. Penn suggests that America's track record in respecting other's sovereign territories over the past several years has not been stellar, and that perhaps this behavior will move on to use of the "Northwest Passage", a holy grail of shipping industry.

For Europe, the shipping will be far easier with a bigger or permanent shipping route through the North. The Northwest passage from Europe to San Francisco is shorter than via the Panama canal, and the Northern Sea Route, formerly known as the Northeast Passage is far shorter than traversing the Mediterranean, Suez Canal, Indian Ocean, South China Sea and western Pacific to reach Yokohama, Japan.

Nunavut is a land of just over 29,000 inhabitants, spread over an area equal to the size of Greenland, but with half the population. Nunavut has been continuously inhabited for roughly 4000 years, with first contact by Europeans being by Norse sailors in the 8th or 9th century, and the English, specifically Martin Frobisher, in 1576. The anthropological understanding is that the North American and South American peoples may have crossed from northern Asia some 20,000 years ago via a so-called land-bridge formed at the site of the Bering Straits in Alaska. I want to be careful here, though - go to www.native-languages.org forward slash bering.htm and check out the discussion on the "Bering Strait Theory". Native Americans certainly have a right to not have a migration theory forced upon them....suffice it to say that if you look far enough back in history, we all emigrated from somewhere...and are native to wherever we were born.

But I digress. Is the Northwest or Northeast passage going to be a bone of contention? Again, Check out Christopher S. Penn's blog post. Who knows where this global warming trend with take us?

podcasting/blogging tidbit:

If you follow @pistachio on Twitter, you may have seen that she is currently in India, far from her Boston home, but also with family there, doing speaking tours on what she knows best. check out www.pistachioconsulting.com.

Chris Brogan of podcamp fame has moved on from Pulvermedia to work with CrossTechMedia, the producers of the ITEC conference and Exhibition, which will be in 18 locations in the US and Canada during 2008. Chris, good luck on your new venture!

Have you checked out the MacBreak video shows on iTunes? Their recent shows in the studio discussed "Multicam Editing Essentials", that is the use of cameras from multiple angles to highlight whatever you're shooting, and "Droplets and Compression Templates in Compressor".

Finally, one of my favorite podcasts is back after a brief hiatus: VentureCast, with David Hornik and Craig Syverson..and they're back to their two-week schedule. VentureCast 27 dealt partially with an un-advertised conference titled Out of the Lobby, where tech and VC types got together in Hawaii to discuss...well, whatever they discussed.

Do you have a favorite podcast or blog? Let me know...or go to pghbloggers.org to see Pittsburgh Region blogs.

Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com

"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"

- Apple’s monopolistic tendencies?
- What is Nunavut?
- Pistachio, Brogan, MacBreak and VentureCast.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

phyllostachy 45: Minute Tech 30 - Empathize

30 - Empathize your Hero's


Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 30 - Empathize your Hero's

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - email leonardtolbert@hotmail.com for more info.

Tech items:

I've spent so much time this morning researching the latter parts of this show, that the news items will suffer. Suffice it to say that Data, Lore and Nunian Sung are not alone:

Google has released it's own Android - an architecture for creating mobile wireless software programs - think e-mail, facebook, etc.

Apple and it's tech co-horts have bounced back from a 20% decline - yesterday rising on the NASDAQ to the tune of some 10%. Talk about volatility - this type of market is why some go screaming from Tech companies, while others revel in the uncertainty.

Tech Question:

Empathize your Hero.

How can you emulate your hero without truly empathizing with the feelings and experiences of your hero?

Sure, you can put yourself into just the glory moments of your hero: the steps up to the private jet, the end of the mililtary campaign with victoriously bloody sword held high, viewing the sunset from the water-side villa in Thailand, putting the pen down at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, or sinking that victorious putt on the 18th green.

But remember that your hero is human, too: they must deal with the fear of their King's rejection, they must plan to mobilize the troops, he or she who's smile has launched a thousand emulators must deal with loosing teeth, and he or she who has amazed the masses with decades of virtuousic music must deal with the uncertainties of sudden illness.

Monday's Wall Street Journal has a story about Japanese Pianist Izumi Tateno - who has reformed his music abilities after suffering an age-related debilitating stroke. What a story to empathize with - what a hero to emulate.


podcasting/blogging tidbit:

After 30 episodes of the Minute Tech podcast, I'm considering both ways to improve the current workflow, which I've detailed in an early blog post on the Minute Tech blog, as well as ways to augment content.

One of the important things to consider in message is simplicity. Simple messages stick with your audience more easily than complex messages. Also, the ideal in presenting messages is to chunk you message into sets of three: three main subjects, three ideas that the audience can grasp without loosing sight or concentration, three concepts.

Currently, I have three segments:

Tech Items - which can be comprised of tech ideas, concepts or news items;
The Tech Question - the main focus of the episode, focusing on one main idea;
The podcasting/blogging tidbit - providing news or information about the medium in which I'm working.

So, I don't necessarily want to dilute this framework...but I want to insert other items, such as a periodic biographical reference to a famous person who people can emulate. Perhaps, thinking about it, I could insert this as a weekly special segment. Hmmmm. I think its really important to provide people with the hope that their situation has been met and overcome by others before....just how to embed this "meme" within the current framework is the question to be resolved.

I recently came across information about a local Pittsburgh company called Elliance, Inc., formerly known as Research Access, Inc.. Elliance provides web services in the areas of marketing, e-commerce website design and a new field called Search Engine Optimization - depending on your perspective, the three service areas can be considered facets of one - your overall brand. On their SEO website, they have a graphic pertaining to optimizing podcasts - check it out via the link in the show notes, or Google the words "elliance podcast optimization" (don't quote them in the google search) and click the first link.

http://searchengineoptimization.elliance.com/search-marketing-resources/seo-infographics.aspx?title=Podcast-Optimization
http://searchengineland.com/071113-125726.php

http://www.nfib.com/object/IO_23935.html

http://www.elliance.com/About/speakersBios.asp

Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com

- Android in the making, and Apple stages a comeback;
- Empathize your Heros.
- Focus on three ideas; elliance.com.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.