Tip on using video in your site

Here’s a cool site on how to embed video on your site – which handles HTML 5, Quicktime, Flash downgrading gracefully: http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody

I’m starting to see the writing on the wall that HTML5 (H.264 likely) will overtake Flash for video in the future.  Google and Apple are pushing hard for it – and in theory it works a lot better.   I don’t have a lot of experience with it myself – but I’m learning.  I just put a YouTube video on one of my clients sites: http://www.bradbuyshomes.com/.  I originally made this video as an AVI and uploaded it to YouTube (which took a while). Unfortunately it didn’t work – so I then exported it as MPEG-2  and that worked better.  Probably MPEG-4 is now the best choice – buy my Roxio Videowave doesn’t have any MPEG-4 at anything other than very small resolution outputs. I should have used Pinnacle Studio to create the MPEG-4 file….

Twitter Custom Background

Here’s a brief guide to creating a customer twitter background.  I put one together – I’m not completely happy with it but I wanted to experiment with it – see https://twitter.com/andrewhelpme for what it looks like at present.  Here are the basic steps I took to make one:

1. I started with a basic rectangle that was 1600 x 1200 – so that it fills most monitor screens without repeating.
2. I added in a 200 pixel wide rectangle on the left.  This represents the maximum size my custom sidebar can take up. (I left this in place for demonstration purposes).
3. I then added a rectangle as the background.  In my case I picked a color off the header of my website (a bluish color).  I then picked a gradient option for that fill color and played around with gradient points to get a decent look.
4. I then started adding my own content:
   • I put a picture of me in the upper left-hand corner (unfortunately this doesn’t look as good as I hoped)
   • I put the logo of my corporation toward the bottom
   • I added in a catch phrase for my businesss
   • I put my website name vertically along the side
5. Here is the initial version of the background:
6. I wasn’t happy how that came out so I played around with it some more.
   • I made my picture smaller as it was too grainy.
   • I moved the website name to the top so it’s along the left edge – but starting from the top.
   • I made the logo smaller and moved it underneath the picture.
   • I then made a box around my picture, logo, etc. that had no interior but a hazy white exterior.
   • I removed the corporate log – as it was extraneous
   • I also then applied a “pattern” to the background rectangle to make it more interesting.
7. Here is the 2nd version of my custom twitter background

I did all my graphic editing in Macromedia Fireworks (now owned by Adobe) – but you could do this in pretty much any picture editing suite – except for paint.  I’m definitely not a graphics designer – so I’m trying something pretty simple…

Here are some other guides I found:

http://www.twitip.com/custom-twitter-backgrounds/

http://www.mytweetspace.com/

PDF Handling Tips

Here are a few tips for working with PDFs – in terms of if you get one and need to work with the contents:

1. http://www.pdfonline.com/pdf2word/index.asp – this free service will convert a PDF into a Word Document (RTF) – which is very helpful if you trying to pull out tabular data.  It does a pretty reasonable job – and the price is right!
2. Adobe Photoshop Elements – sometimes I get a graphic in a PDF format which is hard to work with.  Fortunately I discovered that Photoshop Elements (the cheap version of Photoshop) will import a PDF in so you can pull the graphics out.

iTunes Tip to pass on

Here’s an iTunes tip to pass on – to avoid having to reboot: http://blogs.msdn.com/dancre/archive/2008/01/15/why-do-itunes-updates-keep-making-me-reboot.aspx

Of course, I’m so tired I remoted into my computer with iTunes with logmein.com.  Gotta have my podcasts…

#amazonmp3 – my MP3 source (free anyone!)

While I have an iPod and I use iTunes I buy all my music from Amazon.com – because they are DRM free MP3s.  I don’t want to mess with anything other than MP3 files (as they are universal) and avoid any DRM mess.  The other cool thing about Amazon is that they have lots of free MP3s – which appeals to a cheapskate like me.  You can follow them on twitter by #amazonmp3 – which notifies you of cool deals.  Right now they have their 25 days of christmas – so snag you free songs now! (and maybe buy some in appreciation).

That said – now iTunes for songs is DRM free – so that’s a big relief – things will work well now.  I understand why DRM exists – it can just be such a pain to work with.  The main reason I use iTunes is that I’m addicted to podcasts (especially the TWIT network) and iTunes works so well with them – minimal intervention from me to get my podcasts…

Remote Desktop Tools

Recently I’ve been playing around with remote desktop tools – to get back to my home network.  It’s great having access back to your home PC from out of town -as that avoids the mess of trying to keep things synchronized.  I try to put things on my laptop but it’s just more efficient to put keep things on the home PC as that’s where I keep all my data.

I’ve tried and used a few services and here’s what I’ve found:

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