Category Archives: Technology
IHBS 2011
January 16, 2011Last week I attended the four day International Home Builders Show in Orlando Florida with my boss George Goodwyn of Goodwyn Home Builders. It was nice but the mood was still a little down because of the home market, however there were certainly lots of signs of recovery. There were hundreds of booths that seemed to go on for days. They had lots of very modern faucets, sinks and just about everything you could imagine.
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YouTube pulls the plug on my audio
August 20, 2009This week I noticed that YouTube had removed all the audio from some of my videos because they have music in them that I am not licensed to distribute. Media protection is a very complicated issue nowadays. Makes you wonder where to draw the line. What if I was performing the song myself? What if my video simply had music playing in the background, does that mean I can’t share it on the internet?
I clearly am not profiting from my videos of a family vacation that are up on YouTube. Second of all, some of the music used in my videos was purchased by myself; does that not give me the right to play it for my friends and family to enjoy?
I respect an artist’ ownership of his or her music, but if someone is sharing that song without profiting from it, that should be allowed. After all, shouldn’t a talented musician want to share their songs with as many people as possible?
Here is my latest video from my trip to Europe. And my first edit in High Definition! This time I’m uploading to Vimeo. Thanks to The Beatles, Sufjan Stevens, MGMT and The Books for the songs! If I could personally ask you for permission I would.
UPDATE: September 3rd So I decided to upload the above video to YouTube anyway, just to see what kind of problem they have with it. Shortly after, they send me an email saying content was identified as being owned by Sony Music Entertainment, and I need do nothing. I checked the video to see if YouTube has yanked the audio yet, and surprisingly they didn’t! I scrolled to a song by MGMT that I used in the video and noticed a small ad pops up in the bottom identifying the artist, song name, and giving the viewer the opportunity to buy it. That’s great!!! I would love to support the artist. I can deal with a little ad. Technology and creative marketing win over pirate killers!!! Posted in Technology, Video |
A peek into iPhone development
July 14, 2009Today I downloaded the iPhone SDK. The Software Developers Kit includes a variety of programs for developing applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I haven’t done a lot(or any) software development but Apple’s development tools, like many of their products, seem to be made for simplicity. Many elements you will need for your app can simply be dragged and dropped into place. All you have to do is connect the elements and tell them what to do. Sounds simple but you do need a healthy dose of programming knowledge. I think I’ll give it a chance, the least I can do is copy the steps to build a simple app and modify it enough to call it my own.
DashCode is one the the apps included with the SDK. Dashcode makes web apps, which are based on web development language. That I can work with. In a few hours I managed to make a web app for my website! Based on my RSS feed, it’s basically a blog customized to fit nicely on the iPhone. If you are on a iPhone check it out here http://aaronheine.com/iphone. Posted in Technology |
Your cellphone will be your supercomputer
March 22, 2009I’m going to play technological prophet for a moment. In light of Apple releasing it’s third version of its iPhone software, I began thinking about the capabilities of smart phones and the possibility they have to overpower your PC as your main machine simply because of the mobility of the phone.
This comparison shows you what I see as the nine most important abilities of the two most popular personal technological devices.
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All browsers are not created equal
January 16, 2009Sorry, but I’m gonna get a bit geeky now. I have been a loyal Safari user for a long time now. I’m kind of a mac loyalist and Safari has worked wonderfully. Never crashes, very fast and seemingly up to date with web standards. I know many people, especially web developers use Firefox, but I never really saw much of a reason to switch. A few months ago Firefox 3 was released and became the most downloaded app ever! Still not enough to make me switch. I’ve used FIrefox before and wasn’t impressed. Firefox is open source, which opens it up to many add-ons, but none of them really really interested me. Until now…
A friend told me about Firebug. This add-on really lets you manhandle a web page. It gives you the HTML, CSS and the DOM in an unobtrusive window. It lets you tinker with any website as if it were your own. It presents tons of information about the the layout in very organized ways that even Dreamweaver could learn from. It’s also is a great trouble shooting tool for my own sites.
A couple more great add-ons. Fire.fm – This internet radio has been getting more play than iTunes lately. Morning Coffee - Opens all the pages I regularly visit when I wake. Twitter Bar - Lets me post to twitter in my navigation bar. Posted in Technology, Uncategorized |