December 11, 2004
The Golden Leaf
Worked as cast and crew on a feature film called "The Golden Leaf"
Here is a short description:
It's early fall. Yellows dominate reds, oranges and greens. Fallen leaves cover the ground. A light wind causes leaves to fall. They circle in the air and gently land. We walk through the woods with a rhythmic tempo. The leaves RUSTLE under our feet. The rays of sun penetrate through the foliage and shine on the ground. A low singing VOICE trails through the air. We stop. The VOICE continues to sing gradually climbing higher. We walk fast towards the VOICE. It becomes louder. We quicken the pace. The forest thickens. Intense colors mix together. Trees and bushes stand close. We move through the thicket and suddenly come up to a yellow tree. We move in very close to its leaves.
This film was written and directed by Ksenia Oustiougova, a new and very talented film maker.
Here is me in costume as a green guy.
This was shot in the Seattle Underground. Here are some more pictures I took on location.
Posted by Peter at 12:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 10, 2004
Podcasting Questions from KenRadio Connected List
This is a post I did for KenRadio's Connected mailing list in response to some questions about Podcasting and BitTorrent:
Let me see if I can address some of the topics and provide some data to think about.
There are two schools of thought about podcasting:
1. Podcasting is for personal dissemination of information about the life and times of the podcaster. Personal Podcasting. Audio Blogging.
2. Podcasting is another form of content distribution for the professional Radio Producer. Regular listeners have been asking for the ability to take the show programming in a portable file format for playback in an "offline" experience. Driving in your car, while exercising, or flying in a plane, etc. I want NPR and BBC Radio that I can download.
KenRadio and Webtalk Radio have been doing this for years but they were the exception rather than the rule.
Delivery of the bits
The podcasting developers got enough feedback during the initial stages of development to include the BitTorrent P2P solution into the final 1.1 iPodder application. While most podcasters haven't taken advantage of the technology, some have.
The application of BitTorrent to podcasts will solve the bandwidth expense issue over time.
More actual BT data later.
For those of you who don't know. I am the founder and chief developer of DownloadRadio.org/DownloadMedia.org a content aggregation portal that allows content producers a search engine and BT delivery of their content. We support Talk Radio, Music and Video formats.
We have done some integration into the podcasting model of our backend tools to help facilitate the podcasting community.
The BT Stats
Since DownloadRadio.org has been podcasting KenRadio, WebTalk Radio and Mark Levine's Inside Scoop on Washington for about 2 1/2 months, I thought I would share some actual statistics on those three shows. Most of the actual BT stats are from podcast clients that subscribe to the RSS/BT feeds we automatically generate.
Inside Scoop 2910 BT Downloads 28MB Avg show size 81.4GB Bandwidth Delivery
KenRadio 4225 BT Downloads 8MB Avg show size 33.8GB Bandwidth Delivery
WTR 2885 BT Downloads 12MB Avg show size 34.6GB Bandwidth Delivery
The audience for podcasting is still small but growing. As the media picks up more stories about it and the applications get easier to use for the end user, the growth will continue.
The world wide estimates for BitTorrents clients installed is about 10-20 million computers.
Those kind of numbers remind me of the old WindowsMedia and RealPlayer wars.
As for business models, the only models I can see is subscription and advertising.
Some content will be free and some will be paid. That's a fact of life. But take the cost of delivering the bits out of the mix and you have an interesting set of opportunities.
Just some fuel for the discussion.
Peter
http://downloadradio.org - Production
http://downloadmedia.org - Pre launch
Posted by Peter at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)
December 09, 2004
Upgraded to MoveableType
I decided to dump the GreyMatter Blog software and make the move to MoveableType
GM has been kinda clunky for a while and it was time to make the move.
I am on the learning curve so, if you have some suggestions, I am open to hear them. If you have used MT then let me know the tricks.
Things I am looking for with MT:
1. Groovy way in integrate my photo gallery and multimedia.
2. Add new menu feature(I am sure it's in the MT software or on the site, I just need to look.)
Posted by Peter at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)