Jason Poole

Ok, I know…  it has been over a month since I last posted to my blog, but I promise more is coming.

I should have had plenty of time to write here since I was pretty much snowed in for over a week. I live in the Washington DC area (actually, I am 40 miles NW of DC) and we got hit with one of the biggest storms recorded in the area. So far this season, we got around 72-74 inches of snow this season. Our typical snowfall for the season is around 22 inches, so needless to say, we aren’t prepared for it.

So what’s coming up? I am glad you asked.  I am going to start recording my video netcast called Public Poole(see link in the menu bar). I am going to try to get on a regular schedule of recording the show at 11:00pm EST on Sundays. You can watch live at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/quanack and join the live chat at irc.jasonpoole.com. Hopefully I can keep the schedule and I can get some people to watch and contribute. Should be fun.

I have a couple other shows that I would like to do, one on PC and console gaming, and one on ice hockey. I should get one show on schedule before I commit to more, but I am a planner.

That is it for now. Hopefully I will see you online.

I guess it has been almost a year ago that Mac Heist 3 took place (I think it started in January and ended in March) and it is a great bundle of apps for a very low price. If you have a Mac, make sure to visit the Mac Heist site and sign up for the newsletter…  you don’t want to to miss out on the great deal.

Anyway, this is really not about Mac Heist…   it kind of is in a round about way. In the bundle of great applications that was in Mac Heist 3, there was a great tool called BoinxTV. With this application, you can make broadcast quality video transitions and effects that will rival multi-million dollar studios. This software is somewhat expensive with a sponsor edition costing $199 and a full version costing $499. Back to Mac Heist for a moment to let you know what a deal I got, I paid $37 for 13 applications, with one of them being BoinxTV.

I don’t know about your financial situation, but $499 is not in the budget for a hobby item, let alone $199. So where does the common hobbyist go to find an affordable solution to video production? Well, while looking through the documentation on the Boinx site about streaming to the internet (link), I found a pretty good solution with CamTwist.

This is a very cool application with a very cool price point…  free. You can do just about anything that a big production studio can do right on you Mac.  I am using is with a 3 year old MacBook Pro and it works very well. In the above picture, you can see a guy named Benjamin Higginbotha who does an excellent podcast call Space Vidcast, and he does some great screencasts of how to use CamTwist Studio.

I played around with the application for a few hours last night and I was totally blown away. I kept asking myself, how could you give this away for free. I will be producing a show over the next couple of days and I will use CamTwist for video switching and effects. It can make an amateur look like a pro.

While listening to the TWIT #225 (This Week in Tech) podcast Jason Calacanis of www.mahalo.com mentioned a new service that is similar to Four Square. Basically, these site allow people, using there GPS enabled phone, like the iPhone or Droid, and update their location in hopes to meet up with similar interest people. They also let you earn special achievements for checking in at certain locations and how often you check in. That is the very simplified explanation of the services.

One of the issues with Four Square is that you need to be in a location that is listed in their city list. This is great for people that are in a metro area like San Fransisco, Los Angeles and New York, but what about people outside of the metro area. This is where Gowalla really differs. Gowalla does not require you to be in a city area. In fact, you can really be anywhere.

Gowalla allows you to mark your location and you can earn rewards for visiting other’s spots. There is a possibility to earn special stamps for visiting certain locations or completing certain check-in tasks. Check out the site by clicking the logo and explore.  It could be a lot of fun.

NOTE: Those of you that are familiar with the Pack Rat collection game on Facebook will notice that the look of Gowalla is very reminiscent. That is because it is from the same developers of the Facebook game, Alamofire. As with the Pack Rat game, this is somewhat of a collection games as well. If you like Pack Rat, you should like Gowalla.