Next week’s Third Tuesday is once again sponsored by Miss604.com in the form of blog coverage and prize offerings.

What: Third Tuesday with guest speaker Darren Barefoot
Where: Century House, 432 Richards Street
When: Tuesday May 20th, 2008 @ 7:00pm (yes, I know I say 21st in the video)

Stay tuned for live blog coverage (or wrap up post) and your chance to win an Energi to Go prize pack. Click here to view my Energi to Go demo video.

Due to my frustration over missing a few categories in recent posts, I cried out on Twitter this morning about how I’m not too keen on the new placement of the Categories box in the latest version of WordPress. Kulpreet Singh (who presented at WordCamp) came to the rescue with his hack to the edit-form-advanced.php, posted here.

I have to say, it worked beautifully but something I didn’t mention in the screencast above was that in Kulpreet’s notes he removed the “Related” tab to make room for the Categories on the right sidebar. What I have now done is add the code back into the PHP file for “Related” although I customized it so it will only show me the “View Drafts” button.

These are things I use all the time so I’m not missing out at all by completely removing the “View all tags” button (found within the “Related” tab).

The customization went smoothly, only took a few minutes, and I’m really pleased that I have now optimized my Post Editing page. Tinkering of this magnitude is not advised for those who have never before worked with PHP files, I highly recommend this trick as long as you make sure to back up your original files.

A few months ago I was interviewed as a part of a video series by Reachd, a local firm that teaches and preaches the values of SEO. They are now offering video blogging seminars (learn how to make video, how to promote it etc.) and with the cost of signup comes a Flip Camera for all those who register.

Not surprisingly, the workshop registrations soared and they have now sold out the first event. However, you still have a chance to win your way in if you head over to the Techvibes Blog and drop a comment on this post over the next two weeks.

Their first 20-spot session on May 13th is sold-out but they’ve added a 2nd workshop on May 28th and set aside a free seat (and video camera) for a Techvibes reader. [Techvibes]

The workshops are 3 hours long (2pm to 5pm), the registration fee of $200 includes the fancy new camera, and will take place at Ceili’s Irish Pub. I had a chance to use Colleen’s Flip last night and I have to say, it’s a pretty slick compact video-making device.

I just upgraded my WordPress to 2.5.1 and to celebrate as well as promote WordCamp Vancouver this week, I’ve recorded a quick little screencast.

I just used my MacBook’s internal mic so I know some folks will be cringing at the audio quality (and the sound of my keyboard strokes) but hey, it’s more “organic” that way…. isn’t it?.

The super cool plugin in the video that John and I have been using for the last year or so is called “Flickr Photo Album“. This is the latest version and works beautifully with WP 2.5 and up. More to come at Wedneday’s WordCamp.

You may have noticed a small triangle popping up in the corner of your Flickr contact’s images lately. Fear not, there is no small grey triangle conspiracy, it’s actually to indicate that the image you’re seeing is simply a thumbnail of a brand spankin’ new Flickr Video.

Video! Video! Video! The rumours are true and “soon” is now. We’re thrilled to introduce video on Flickr. If you’re a pro member, you can now share videos up to 90 glorious seconds in your photostream.

90 seconds? While this might seem like an arbitrary limit, we thought long and hard about how video would complement the flickrverse. [Flickr Blog]

Things I like about Flickr Video so far:

Dislikes:

It’s been pretty fun during the whole two days I’ve been using it although there are Flickr purists who aren’t as pleased that the photo site is now intermingling with video.

“The big issue is the way it was implemented,” said Jason Bouwmeester, a systems analyst in Canada and one of the group administrators for No Video on Flickr. “There was no public beta…. They just reset everyone’s settings.” Users have complained about the video features causing the whole site to slow down, a possible influx of YouTube junk and the deviation from Flickr’s original purpose — photography. [Wired.com].

Regardless, I don’t think it will replace YouTube by any means (or become YouTube-like), but since I was recently on the lookout for a simple alternative to online video sharing, I’m glad I now have this option.

Not up for writing a post this morning, or yesterday really for that matter, I sat down at our iMac and recorded a quick 17 minute video podcast. Basically I wanted to wrap up the SXSW series, give some shout outs and name drops, and show off a few new tshirts thanks to John Biehler.

I did edit out all my coughing and you can actually see my hair getting dryer as the video goes on but just remember, I’m not a professional, this is just for fun.

Also, I’m having a few issues with Viddler as this video isn’t actually working for me, although it does look like it’s uploaded. Hopefully the good folks over there will be able to figure this out, but in the meantime here it is in lovely flash player form (although now the audio and video are off *sigh*)

Update: It seems as though nothing it working at this point so here’s a photo of the SXSW shirt supplied by John.

Also, here are some links to names of products I mention in the episode:

- VistaPrint.ca
- Altoids
- Vancouver Metblogs
- Utterz

The first thing that probably comes to mind when thinking about online video is YouTube. It’s the most popular service and is pretty darn entertaining but for some of my “day job” needs I wanted something that looked a little more professional and that wouldn’t scrape the encoding quality down like sandpaper.

The alternative I chose was Blip.tv, which allows you to upload videos, have “episodes”, and is conducive to video podcasting offering up RSS feeds, enabling comments, and tags. I was pleased with Blip while it lasted until something with the day job turned things upside down and I had to scramble to find another video service. Honestly I could have just embedded the videos using the amazing flv wizard but I like the social networking features and stats tracking of the video services.

I Googled around, passed over Revver (I forget my reason for ignoring it) and came across Viddler. I signed up for an account and was pretty impressed. They have a sleek interface that allows you to enter titles and tags on the fly in a smooth AJAX-y manner (you don’t have to go to another page to enter this information, it’s kind of like editing details of a photo on Flickr). You can also record directly to their site (without uploading a file) using your webcam.

What ultimately sold me was their batch upload feature. Since we no longer had our half-dozen videos up on Blip, I had to toss them all up again. Viddler helped me do that all in one batch operation which included adding tags and titles to every video while I waited. On the flip side, I’ve already noticed that the embedded videos on my work site don’t load in Firefox 2, but they work fine in Safari and FF 3 Beta 3.

Last night I went to my personal Blip.tv profile and encountered some familiar issues. The upload time was dragging, the thumbnail I uploaded for the video player wasn’t working, and the video wasn’t playing on my profile or while embedded on my blog even after about 30 minutes it still said status “pending”. I decided since Viddler was working out so well at the day job that I would sign up for a Miss604 account on there. I made a Twitter update saying I was moving on to Viddler and the response was astounding.

I received a Twitter request from Rob, the co-founder of Viddler, who also added me as a contact on the video site and made a nice comment about the video I had just uploaded. I then had some friends and contacts message me saying they’re also pleased with Viddler.

This morning I got an email from Eric, the Director of Content Development at Blip.tv. I assume he saw my Twitter as well - yes, Twitter is very public - and he was just asking if I would share some reasons why I left. Eric was really nice to inquire and I gladly shared my story. I explained my reasons for moving over to Viddler and he was all ears. I stand by my statement that Blip.tv is excellent for video bloggers (and I haven’t deleted my account or anything), but I think I’ll be giving Viddler a whirl for the next while and we’ll see how it all pans out.

I’d like to thank Rob and Eric for being so responsive and engaging me in conversations about my satisfaction with their respective services. I’m certainly more inclined to work with them and use their products after all of this. Geez, aren’t the internets great?

When John first downloaded a couple episodes of Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch I was skeptical, but then it sucked me in and has grown to be one of my favourite shows on television. I’m finding myself drawn to those TV shows that make you laugh hysterically, cry, scream at the screen and be amazed all in one episode (a la Rescue Me).

This is reality TV at its best, it’s *real* people working one of the most lethal jobs on the planet. To top it off, their crabbing seasons are narrated by Mike Rowe, whom we all know and love (at least I do) from Dirty Jobs.

Deadliest Catch is a documentary-style television series that documents the events aboard fishing boats in the Bering Sea during the Alaskan king crab and Opilio crab fishing seasons. The Aleutian Islands town of Dutch Harbor is the base of operations for the fishing fleet. The show is named Deadliest Catch because the crew of these boats are at a high risk of death or injury due to the conditions of the sea during the seasons they fish, earning the title of most dangerous job in America (if not the world). [wiki]

Each captain and crew member of the fleet is interesting in their own way, they’re real people, with attitudes, passion and one tough job to do. The men are scruffy and gritty and so is the work - not only do you come to know and appreciate the various personalities on each boat featured, you soon learn the dangers that they face every day that they are out on the water. We watched a “behind the scenes” episode last night where Mike mentioned the Coast Guard has saved 48 lives over the last couple of seasons… although they have also lost 44 to the Bering Sea.

I have a soft spot for every crew member on all the featured vessels which include but are not limited to: Sig of the Northwestern who *knows* his stuff, Johnathan of the Time Bandit whom we saw save a man’s life this season, and Phil from the Cornelia Marie who needs to stop smoking but he’s got a heart of gold and man… his sons must drive him nuts hehe.

Not only are the crew members dynamic and interesting creatures but the cinematography of the show is phenomenal. The unique angles and shots above the water and below are far beyond anything you’ll see in Prime Time. In this last season we saw a shipwreck, open ocean rescue, people getting stitched up, men overboard, mental and emotional meltdowns, broken propellers, busted engines, and 30 foot waves crashing over the bows of these vessels - all with men on deck. You have to wonder what makes these men put it all on the line every season… aside from the thrill, the payout is amazing. We just watched the last episodes of the Opilio crab fishing season and boats that caught over 1,000,000 lbs of crab walked away with over that same amount in dollars. Basically for a week-straight of work during Opilio season a deckhand on a boat that brought in that much made about $40,000.

The show airs Thursdays and Sundays on Discovery Channel, if you’re looking for some good TV this summer (if you’re not out at the beach when we eventually get some sun) I highly recommend giving it a try.