Eric Sheline

Since I’ve been offline, a lot has happened in the tech world! Here’s a sampling.

The Nikon D90 is the first digital SLR with HD movie recording (link) and many compact digital cameras already contain the feature, confirming my prediction that the feature would be the “next big thing” among digital cameras. Now if only they’d add a line-in so I could use an external microphone, I’d be in camera heaven!

More publications are picking up on the fact that the iPhone is probably the next major gaming platform. Now if Apple would just get it’s act together and help instead of hinder developers, we could soon see it surpass a major portable gaming platform. To be honest, I could be just hyping up the iPhone as a gaming platform because I want to use it to play Advance Wars…

On a more ominous note, Comcast is the latest major ISP to begin capping data plans (link). As my friend Matt Buchanan explains here, this will basically kill a number of enterprising new internet-based services. If the rest of US ISP’s follow the trend, you’ll soon have to choose between HD movie rentals, Steam or Xbox Live gaming, and Bittorrent usage (oh, and still remember to leave some bandwidth left over to check your mail too!). Meanwhile, countries who have a more competitive field of ISP’s get options like 1.2gbps satellite internet and may have to “suffer” under a bandwidth cap of 30GB – per day. It is well past time to bring the United States’ internet options into the 21st century, or else this country will be left in the dust.

Apple has announced their SDK (and shown it running Spore), making the iPhone and iPod Touch the biggest competitors to the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. I should have posted this back when I thought of it instead of just now, but just wait and see, the iPhone/iPod Touch will be huge devices for gaming. Yes, they’ll never be great devices for games like Super Mario, but for games like Picross and Advance Wars, they’re perfect. [gizmodo]

Just a quick tip for today. The site TinyURL is a great website (and super convenient for long web addresses that are annoying to paste into emails/IM/etc) but if you don’t trust the source, sometimes clicking on it may be risky.

To solve this, before clicking on the link, go to this TinyURL preview page and enable previews. You can then go back and click the untrusted TinyURL link, and it will safely take you to a TinyURL-hosted preview page where you can view the original web address before deciding whether to visit it or not.

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It happens every holiday season: the game release floodgates are now fully open. Top-tier titles are being released way too fast for one gamer to buy and play them all! I’ll quickly run through the games I’m playing now, and my upcoming ranking of which games I’m playing first.

I’m enjoying these now:
- Halo 3 [360]
- Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance [PC]
- Resident Evil 4 [Wii] – must.. unlock… handcannon!

I want to play these ASAP:
- Call of Duty 4 [360]
- Crysis [PC]
- Super Mario Galaxy [Wii]
- Mass Effect [360]
- Zelda: Phantom Hourglass [DS]
- Bioshock [360]

All of those titles are among the best of their kind! I wish some were released last summer, I do not have time to play them all right now. It also seems like too many of those listed are shooter-type games, and the primary developer left making great non-shooter games is Nintendo.

The Xbox 360 in particular has been overrun by shooters. Of course there are non-shooter games I want to play like Beautiful Katamari and Ace Combat 6, but one of those is a 3-year old game idea and the other is a sequel in a long running series. I’d love to see some fresh, original, non-shooter development for the console to give it more variety!

[images courtesy metacritic]

I just started working on podcasts, and in this post I’ll show you how to get started easily and inexpensively.

Before getting intimidated by podcast production startup costs, know that all you really need for the most basic podcast is an internet-connected computer with a built-in microphone – that’s it!

Personally my podcasting setup is a computer, a portable digital recorder (optional), and an external mic. You can of course use your built-in mic to try out podcasting, but if you ever do want to upgrade the sound quality of your podcasts closer to professional-level, the very first thing you should get is an external mic. A good external mic is usable on your computer recording directly and also with any good portable recorder, so make sure you get a decent one! I recommend the Shure C606WD, as it is a good basic microphone that has given me excellent audio quality and is fairly affordable.

Podcast production can be split into three basic steps: recording, editing, and publishing. You can read my basic instructions to do each one, but for any specific, technical questions (EX: How do I record audio directly into Audacity?) just search for them on the internet or in forums. I don’t want to write specific instructions here as they will inevitably change with time and become obsolete.

[1] Recording -
Basically in this step, you plan out and record audio however you want (externally, straight to computer, etc), then get it onto your computer in an Audacity-compatible format. The main 3 formats you should be using throughout this project are:

-MP3: Everybody knows what this one is! It’s a compressed format to save space, and it will playback on almost any portable device or computer you’ll ever find. This can be the format your recordings are in, and most importantly should probably be the format you export your final product in. MP3 files can be different bit rates, usually either 64, 128, or 256 kilobytes per second (kbps)

-WAV: This is an lightly-compressed format, leading to superior audio quality at the expense of disk space. You can record and edit in this, but only export using this if you never will stream it over the internet and only store it on the hard disk as a high-quality archive. WAV files are so large they cannot easily be streamed over the internet, so if music quality is very important to you I recommend still going with MP3, and just raising the quality to 256 kbps or above.

-AUP: This is Audacity’s proprietary format. This is the format you should save to during editing in Audacity. It saves separate track information, and is a great format if you want to keep an archival copy on your hard drive for possible re-editing. Even though you should export as a flexible mp3, I’d keep an AUP copy saved as your “original”.

If your raw audio recordings are in a different format, don’t worry you can convert it to a compatible format. For example, my portable Olympus recorder outputs to .wma only, so I use iTunes to convert it to mp3.

[2] Editing -
Once you have all your audio in a compatible digital format, download Audacity (available for Windows, Mac, or Linux) and install it on your computer. Make sure and get version 1.3.3 or later. I know that’s an “unstable beta” and yes it may cause you problems (if so, uninstall and get the earlier version) but 1.3.x+ versions contain the most important feature of all: nonlinear editing!

Import all your audio into Audacity, and start editing! The way I do it is to first import all my audio as separate tracks, then crop them down and cut out the junk I won’t use in each clip. Then I create two “final” tracks and eventually edit all my other audio into these two. I take the first clip in the podcast (EX: narration) and put it at the beginning of my first “final” track, then the second clip (EX: interview) in the second final track, but staggered as to pick up where the first clip left off. Then I put the third clip in the first track, basically putting clips in alternating tracks and using the “drag-to-reposition” tool (not a technical term!) to line them all up properly.

[3] Publishing -
By now, you should have a completed, edited podcast hopefully in MP3 format. The simplest way of publishing would be to just upload it to your web server, then post a direct link to it and users can “save link as” to their own computers.

A slightly more advanced way to publish would be to embed a flash player or mp3 player plugin on your website. Like I said with the specific instructions, use websearch to find something good for you, but as an example, I’ll probably be using the wordpress-based Audio Player plugin for posting podcasts on this blog.

The largest audience for podcasts is probably on Apple’s iTunes store, so if you want to get yours listed there, check out Apple’s FAQ. I haven’t tried it yet, so if you have any additional tips for iTunes-aspiring podcasters, email me.

I’ll post a few podcasts I’ve made using this method soon. I hope this quick walkthrough has helped you get started and you enjoy it!

I just went to the 2007 Austin Maker Faire, tons of interesting stuff there. It was really great overall, there was everything from a human powered ferris wheel transportation device (see picture above) to a fire hydrant made into a flamethrower, and everything in between. The only bad thing about the day was that they stole away all our water bottles, forcing us to buy overpriced water inside. Shame on you, Make magazine, don’t let yourself stoop to the level of common sporting events!

Well, 3 days after I reported the Xbox 360 hardware error – otherwise known as a Red Ring of Death (“RROD”), I received Microsoft’s pre-paid return packaging (also known as the “coffin” – look at the picture). I sent it off the next day, and since I’m in the same state as the repair facility, it arrived the following day.

In all honesty, it doesn’t bother me too much to have it gone. I like the 360, but I mostly just use it to play single player, with the occasional online match. My 360 held out just long enough for me to finish Halo 3, which is just fine with me! (Microsoft better have a replacement to me by the time Mass Effect comes out though…)

Yahoo! Autosync is basically an easy way to upload your Microsoft Outlook contacts to an online contact manager (Yahoo). Since my iPhone supports yahoo contact synchronization, and I am trying to switch away from using the Microsoft Office suite, I decided to give it a try. It worked really well, once the program is downloaded, it’s a simple installation. You then enter your Yahoo ID and password, select what to synchronize, and it works! The problem is, to get the program in the first place you have to go through yahoo mail “Classic” – the old version! (or use my link below!) The newer, supposedly better (finally out of beta!) version directs you to a third-party synchronization service called trueswitch.

I only used it to synchronize my contacts, but the program is also supposed to synchronize your calendar, tasks, and notes. Once the contacts are online, they are easily editable through both the Classic and “new” Yahoo Mail interface. The only problem is that just like during importing, to export them you must switch back to the Classic interface. They can be exported to an Outlook CSV, a Netscape/Thunderbird .ldif, a Yahoo CSV, or zipped vCard files.

Hopefully in the future Yahoo will not discontinue the Classic interface, or if they do, at least bring useful tools like this to the new interface!

[Autosync via Yahoo Downloads - Windows only, Yahoo account required]

Or in other words, an Xbox 360 “Red Ring of Death” (hence, RRoD) . This particular 360 is very close to a launch model, with the production date in December 2005, so I guess I should have been expecting a problem, but it’s worked great so far!

Just yesterday, I was playing Halo 3 and finishing up a blog post about the game and it was working fine. The console was shut down after playing Halo for a couple hours, then I turned it back on to watch a DVD – and got the RRoD. Microsoft has been kind enough to extend the warranty for RRoD’s to three years, so hopefully I’ll be able to use that to get a working Xbox. I’ll log everything I do to get a replacement, and you can track it all through this blog.

UPDATE 5PM: Talked to “Mark” on the phone, I should receive the return mailer within the week, and then it will take weeks (!!) to get a replacement/repaired Xbox. Mark claims “it usually takes less time than that” – which I hope is true because 4+ weeks is a long time for a replacement!