EPISODE #15 (September 19th, 2005)

Mikey and Amber hang (looking for Natalie & Zach) out in Yorkville during the Toronto Film Festival to give you the latest tech news, site design tips (including a $1.99 domain name deal - see deets and promo code below), and our weekly web picks.  Jeff interviews VooDoo from Universal Soul, which is a Halifax hip-hop band that you must check out, and Brian magically pulls it all together.

WATCH/DOWNLOAD IT BELOW
H.264 Direct Download

LINKS WE MENTION
Google Blog Search
Yahoo Mail Beta Sign-up
Yahoo Mail Beta Review
iPod Nano Accessories Guidelines
iPod Nano Support Wiki
GoDaddy's $1.99 domain Promo code for 10% off: COMMANDN
Useit
Boxesandarrows
A LIST apart
Universal Soul (Jeff's interview with Dave Adekayode)

WEB PICKS
Microsoft Max (Mikey)
Rainlendar (Amber)
commandN Widget (thx to Jim for sending us this link!)

Comments

[Paul]

Awesome show Amber & Crew! So, whats the status of the Jinx store?

[Amber Mac]

Just emailed our friends at Jinx today, so we'll have an update soon!

I'm going to be a guest on TWiT next Sunday in San Fran and Brian will also be in town to check it out...am hoping we'll have tees by then ;-).

-Amber

[Nahid]

The H.264 version crashes a few minutes from the end. Is it just my computer or is it the actual video? Good show. Missed the end of it but I'm going to bed.

[Rodrigo A. SEPULVEDA SCHULZ]

Amber & Mike> loving your shows, watching them from Paris, France.

Episode 15 does crash both my QT7 (windows) and itunes5 :(

Mike, I'm sure you know this (and I agree with your comment on not wanting to see ads on Flickr): get the Adblock extension for firefox, and block out the URL for those ads...

[Andrew from NC]

Strange. The h.264 video does NOT crash on my PC (WinXP, iTunes 5, QT7). I downloaded from the torrent as soon as it became available on Sunday night.

[Jonathan]

I too had the video to crash using qt7 and itunes and VLC player just around the 5 minute mark on both the h.264 and mpeg4. I am downloading the divx now and will try it.

[Andrew in NC]

Maybe the direct-download copy was corrupted (or truncated) and the torrent copy was OK. I got my copy from the torrent and it is fine.

Nice episode as usual, BTW.

[Dom Fautley]

Torrented mine and it was OK on my mac. Awesome as per usual.

[Andy McArthur]

The downloaded h.264 video worked fine for me (WinXPSP2, QT7, iTunes 5).

CommandoN > Regarding your Nano... give it a few complete charge/discharge cycles (around 5-7) and the battery should last a lot longer after that. It's a Lithium-Ion battery thing. I do it whenever I get new gadgets and it usually doubles the battery life that I get on the first run (My laptop battery life went from around 90 minutes to approximately 200 minutes). Hope that helps.

Amber, Jeff, Brian, CommandoN > You know you guys put the URLs and other stuff at the bottom of the screen in white on grey... I have a real hard time reading that on my screen (I know the links are in the show notes). Can you put it in some other colour combination with higher contrast... like fuchsia and lime (just kidding)?

[Amber Mac]

Thx for the Nano tip! As for the colour combos re: URLs, we're working on some new graphics so we'll take your feedback into account.

Enjoy ;).
-Amber

[Brian DeWitt]

Great job everyone! It seems that with each episode everything just gets better and better.

And you always pick cool places to shoot segments! =) Do you feel you'll run out of places?

[matt]

You should add PayPal subscriptions as a way to donate to the show. You guys are doing a great job putting out the show on a regular basis, in turn I would like to show my support the same way.

I think it's great that you have found some sponsorship from GoDaddy.com. Maybe we'll see Amber as the next "GoDaddy Girl"...

[MissM]

The h.264 version,crashed for me twice. I was using QT7, Ipodder lemon to download it. The last episode did too, now that I think about it, but keep up the great work! Very well produced :)

[Troy Hutchinson]

I'm glad you guys like my widget I did for your show. I'm also glad you mentioned it in your show, Thanks.

[Matt Hooper]

Why is there no update to the xvid RSS feed? As far as I know there are no portable media players that support .mov so please keep xvid alive. BTW keep up the good work. I have really liked the past episodes but missed the newest since the xvid rss was not updated. Lastly, I use FireAnt as my podcatcher and there are a few of us that still don't use iTunes, .mov is more of an apple friendly format.

[Amber Mac]

As for donations, we do accept donations (button/link is now down, but we'll make sure it's back up tomorrow).

The GoDaddy promotion works for us because it fits nicely within the inSITE segment (and we all truly believe GoDaddy is a great service). Our deal with them is that they pay us whenever someone buys a service using the COMMANDN promo code (so if you need domain/hosting services and you use this code, you'll be supporting us). We'll also be launching our J!NX shop next week, which is another way you can support (and promote) us (buy a tee or two!).

We really don't want to ask viewers to pay for the show, so we're trying to stay away from that model. And we don't want to fill the show with ads.

Despite all the time/effort (we all have busy, busy day jobs) it takes us to produce a regular/weekly 22-minute (approx.) show that is always shot in a different location here in Toronto (and includes Jeff's segment from Halifax) we want to keep offering commandN for free to our viewers.

Down the road we may try to get episode sponsors to help to cover some of our costs/time, but we guarantee whatever we do we will make sure we maintain all editorial control over the show's content.

The more of you who watch/download episodes each and every week, the better the chance we have to stick to what has been our vision for commandN from Day 1.

What's that vision? We want to be an informative, educational, and entertaining weekly vidcast that covers what's new in tech (online and offline), with a twist of pop culture thrown in the mix so that there is always something on commandN for everyone.

Longest comment ever! I might post this on the homepage, but not until after we upload our special comic promoting our Sweet Sixteen ;). Stay tuned...

-Amber (and I know Mikey, Brian, and Jeff are on the same page re: comments above)

[Brian McKechnie]

I agree with everything that Amber said and I would like to thank everyone who watches as well. It really is the viewers that keep us going each week.

As for the XviD RSS feed it was updated on Sunday night (after the other versions were up) and is showing episode 15 when I look at it.

Here is the feed link: feed://feeds.feedburner.com/command-n/xvid

Brian

[Dom Fautley]

I think that I can say on behalf of everyone who watches these: Thank you for making them. We know how hard it is to find time to do all the things needed for school/work etc, and then to make and produce a video every week is just amazing.

Thank you for making an awesome show, that is one of the best tech shows from the 'net and TV. (They aren't any techie shows on the TV that I have seen so there's not much competition!)

[Josh]

What happened to the ride in Mikey's car? Or at least a burnout leaving the parking lot? :-p (dont forget to turn off the traction control)

[Barb]

Great show! Really enjoyed Jeff's segment with Dave/Geek was excellent to get musicians view on where the tech is taking them for their craft.

Having issues with h264 QT on my XP Desktop unable to sync the Audio/Video & it will also crash my system at times. Have updated all Video Drivers & everything else can think of & have same poor results. It will play on my Laptop however. Stumped on this problem since QT7 came out! :-(

Xvid won't play at all on either pc! MPEG 4 plays perfectly on both & hope you can keep providing that torrent option.

I will be donating when you get the link back up. ;-)

Kudos to Brian for great Audio & Video quality!Thanks