Been doing a little Twittering, but not much because I left my cell phone AND laptop chargers in Orlando... Paying my credit card bill over dial-up at Kait's dad's house right now... Been having a good time in Maine. The first day I got here, I was running on 3 hours sleep (not conting airplane time), and we went to two adjoining 4J parties, one with Beer Die (like Beer Pong with a 6-sided die) and an old black woman shouting "Point! Point! Drink! Drink!" Then there was another party with free beer and a keg of PBR - it always tastes better free....

It started raining about 15 mins before fireworks were meant to start, so they started them immediately. We were up on a hill, so we just walked down a bit until there was a break in the trees and watched (mostly dry) under a tree... We also had PFA cheese platters and Pizza at an italian place down the hill with Kait's flatmate's brother and best friend and mom and her best friend. Don't try to sort it out, it only get wierder when we learned that Kyle's old roomate used to date Kait's sister before he came out...

The next day we (skipped over a few details and) made our way back to Portland to check out some shops and handcrafted beers (video coming soon). We were meant to go on a Whale Watch today in Kennebunkport (that's where George H Bush's house is), but it was rained out, so we watched Ratatouile instead (awesome, Brad Bird is the man) and went for lobster at a not-so swell place (agian, video coming soon).

This weekend we're visitng Kait's friend in Mass. and busing it down to NYC - should arrive on Sunday night, where we'll be laying our heads in Queens until Thursday or so... on the list of places to visit are coffee with Loren Felman, interviews with Fractured Atlas, some Broadway shows (not sure what, as long as they're cheap), some drinking, eating, dancing? etc....

Then it's off to Boston until Sunday, when I return home, because the next Florida Creatives Happy Hour is Monday the 16th at Crooked Bayou. A whistelstop tour of New England, and I must say, it's delicious sofar.

I started this morning with "The iPhone doesn't have video". That is Chris' reason #17 of 20 reasons why he didn't buy an iPhone on day 1. I agree with several of his points. This video is about 20 minutes long - I found it very easy to watch the whole thing, despite the fact that Chris gets a little agitated at times during the video.

The iPhone Rant ~ The Chris Pirillo Show

Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes

I also saw a fantastic post on RoughlyDrafted.com called The iPhone Threat to Adobe, Microsoft, Sun, Real, BREW, Symbian. The gist of the article is this:

If Apple’s purposeful omission of Flash on the iPhone is giving you déjà vu, it’s probably because Apple did the very same thing to rid the world of Microsoft’s domination of the online music, media, and DRM industry.

Three years ago, Apple refused to include support for Windows Media on the iPod. That resulted in the online music market being opened up and pushed toward the vendor agnostic MPEG AAC format.

The exclusion of flash makes sense. Embed a multimedia object that can be played by your local player - in this case, Quicktime, but the files (MP4, MP3, AAC) are open standards so any environment with a native player should support them. I think Zune plays AAC... I know PSP does. Everyone plays MP4 - everyone.

As for video recording, this tweet by Scott points to a PDF that supposedly says iPhone includes an h.263/h.264 encoder as well as decoder - meaning it should be able to do videoconferencing (that's h.263) and recording. When that comes and the price drops about $250, I'll consider iPhone again.

I was thinking about recording a video about why I won't be getting an iPhone, but Uncle Loren has it taken care of...

Why I Won't Get An iPhone | 1938 Media

I recently posted a comment on Mashable I'd like to share with you, my subscribers. The post was Rise of the Rose Bashers? and it pointed out people who have never used Kevin Rose & company's new IM/filesharing service, Pownce.

At the moment, one of the most popular stories on Digg is entitled: “Kevin Rose & Pownce Get Pwned by Uncov“, in which potshots are taken at Rose and Pownce. Further insults are piled on by the Diggers.

The digg audience is almost entirely made up of followers, not leaders. That’s actually the business model for the whole damned site! It’s not a big surprise to me that a service that allows for individuality and groups and privacy would not appeal to the “me too” crowd. Digg users don’t like being told they can’t do something - they’re spoiled in that way. That’s why the HD-DVD code was such a big deal, and the comments changes too. If one person has a contrary idea and they can be persuaded, the Diggers will glom on so they can be “cool”. This is how pop/anti-pop culture works.

If this doesn’t apply to you personally, great. Generalities are not ultimatums. There is a sliding scale, I’ll be the first person to admit to that.

Pownce (without having used it) seems like a “friends only” type of service - it will end up having a completely different audience because the service is fundamentally different. You’re not sharing with the world, but custom groups. This is Facebook vs. MySpace. One is for friends, one is for the public. The type of audience you see on these sites is very different. A service that gave you the best of both worlds was LiveJournal, with friends only, private and public posts, as well as custom groups. This is just that idea with a focus on IM and file sharing.

I think Digg has proven over its 3? years of existence that it's not going anywhere - actually, I wish they'd exapnd the service to include geographic categories - like countries, states, metropolitan areas - Outside.in is currently my choice for that kind of stuff, and Ma.gnolia could be if we could get some people using the service. I think that's the big thing with any of these Web 2.0 ideas - if nobody participates, it doesn't matter how good your service is. I'm working on a social networking site, and I'm planning to make my own local content offering, so I now see that you not only need to convince one group of users but that group ans several of their friends. This is the real trick. How do we do that?

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Mark Baratelli and I were talking on Skype chat one Monday and I decided to answer a question of his by recording it to post on my blog... here is the result.

Download Ryan Price vs. the Media + Mark Baratelli
Time: 37:56

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During the discussion, we brought up our twitter streams (Ryan's and Mark B's), video bookmarking with Viddler, and an interesting blog post on Lost Remote, one of my favorite blogs.

My Odeo Channel (odeo/a57c8c64939548eb)

One of my top 5 blogs, Lost Remote, often has stories that deal with Orlando - like when something happens at the Tribune company, a lot of times the Sentinel will be mentioned. Apparently, they tried out re-designing the local paper's web site before doing Chicago. OK, but now here's a story about our local NBC affiliate using a Slingbox to show the weather during live TV. Who knew?

From Lost Remote:

So the company has sent out a press release (click below to read). Also, Katz points out that NBC Weather Plus is using Slingbox to incorporate live video from WESH, KUSA, KPRC and WDIV. A write-up in Broadcasting and Cable explains how it works:

WESH, for example, plugged a coax cable right into the Slingbox, which lets NBC Weather Plus look at the station’s beauty cam at Universal Studios, as well as at two other tower cameras, says WESH Chief Engineer Richard Monn. To be placed on-air, the Sling video has to run through a scan converter, to change it from progressive-scan VGA to the interlace format, before it can be fed as a live source into a production switcher and displayed in NBC Weather Plus’s upper-right corner box. Running the picture small minimizes the hit in picture quality the picture suffers when it is compressed by the Slingbox for Internet delivery.

Re-re-blogging. My favorite kind of reblogging. Apparently, there is also a concept called re"vlog"ging coined by Ryanne Hudson with her revlog. When I heard about it the other day, I said, "Hey, I have one of those!" See? OrlandoVideo.TV

I got tagged with one of these internet Memes by Marc Rapp, and now let's see who I can infect with such a device: Charlie, Mark Baratelli, Beth Marshall, Linwood Sassy, Barry Smith.

• I'm a bit of an insomniac. That's the only reason I'm blogging at 7AM
• I've lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan within the last 4 years
• I own something like 80+ domain names
• I check 10 email accounts every day
• I probably have 5 MySpace accounts, probably
• At one time I wanted to be a Sociology major
• I play drums. I was in 3 drum and bugle corps and did 3 years o college band - I used to play for marc. with a c. - I'm on 4 tracks of his greatest hits album
• I once made a video where an evil duck fantasized about killing me

Ok Mr. Rapp - let's talk sometime this week. I know you're reading this.

A podcast about how I turned around on the Orlando Weekly. Recorded on my phone by calling my Skype number. I'll have a player for the mp3 here soon.

Download Ryan Price vs. the Media: Orlando Weekly
Time: 5:28

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I'm posting this because there should be an 8th video in this widget by the time you see it. I wish this thing would show the videos in reverse order, and perhaps it will - the first video should be OrlandoScene.TV 03 Taste, the second Heart of Coal, etc.

I've learned through the very useful and very pretty Revver statistics that about 5% of people who see my video play it to the end, and of those about 8% click on the ad. I think 8.16% ain't half bad at all - what I wonder is if the "views" includes people who see the player and don't push play. I don't think it does.

If you haven't seen all 8 of these videos yet, they are more than worth watching. If you're using a feedreader right now, I'm not sure if you can see the player because of JavaScript. You can find my videos on the web at Revver.

OrlandoScene.TV, BloggingFringe.com - that's where these videos live.