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I found this very cool program that you should check out if you are interested in multi-camera webcasting. I stumbled across it one day while actually looking for something else and realized immediately what great product it was. The program is called wirecast. It runs on Mac and PC, however, I have only actually used the Mac version so far.

Basically the program acts as a small production studio for multi-camera broadcasting. Hook up a few firewire cameras and you are ready to go. You can switch between any camera with a multitude of built-in transistions. You can apply titles, link in keynote presentations, graphics, or basically whatever you want.

It was exactly what we were looking for to webcast our church services. We had been wanting to take our webcast up a notch from a guy with a single video camera in the back of the auditorium, to something that would look more professional. However, we also didn’t have thousands of dollars to spend on video mixing equipment. Wirecast has been a great solution. We can achieve a very high quality production without any post-editing.

I think the software is like $400-500, and for what you can do there is no better software for webcasting.

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I’m all moved into my new MacBook Pro, and my Powerbook G4 has reached the hands of its new owner. So here is my ever so important opinion on the MacBook Pro.

Apple has really been marketing the speed improvements of the new Core Duo processor. Now that I have been using it for a few days, my thoughts are that Universal or Native Binaries do seem to have a speed improvement, all though certainly not the 4x’s Apple has been trying to claim.

Apps that run through Rosseta (PowerPC app translator software for you non Apple people) actually do pretty well. For instance Photoshop runs ok for a casual user such as myself, but I recommend that professional graphics designers wait until Adobe gets universal binaries out….which from my reading should be late 2010!

As for the hardware there are some notable enhancements. The built in iSight camera did a lot better than I thought. I have been thinking about startring a video blog, and it might help me. The system is also a little thinner, which I think also means it is a little bit lighter.

I was afraid that I was going to have a rough transition with apps not working and such, however, so far everything I need to get my work done runs well. I think I’m going to have to try dual booting Windows XP on it at some point though.

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My company recently hooked me up with a Verizon XV6600, one of those PDA smart phones. Typically I have been the type of cellphone user that is happy with a small phone that will fit in my pocket and rings when I have a call. However, I have begun to enjoy the new functionality of this new phone.

The XV6600 runs Windows Mobile 2003 and is hooked up on Verizon’s EVDO high speed data network. In a good signal zone the speeds can burst to 2MB, that is faster than my DSL at home! Fast enough for me to remote control my Windows based servers with Remote Desktop Client, or connect to my Linux based boxes with SSH. I have even loaded up a Soft Phone and connect to our IP PBX.

However, the biggest addiction this phone has created is to my email. I was standing on the top of a motor coach at a NASCAR race conducting business via email. With Verizon’s “wireless sync” the Outlook mailbox on my PC is kept in sync with my cell phone. As long as outlook is running on my PC at the office I have access to send and recv email just like I am in the office.

The phone is also bluetooth enabled. According to both Verizon in-store reps and the Level 2 technical support I spoke with….who BTW was more like level -2 based on his knowledge it is not possible to connect your PC to the phone with bluetooth and get on the Internet. Well not true…it works pretty well actually. I just got a new laptop, so I need to go through it again and will probably post more on that in the future.

I have two compliants about this phone;
1. It is too big…but at the same time I think the screen is to small. Unfortunately they can’t fix this for me yet till they come up with some very small projection capability so the screen is whatever flat surface is near.

2. The phone seems to freeze up about once a week. It requires me to pull the battery and hard restart the phone. In all honesty I haven’t had the time to contact Verizon yet to see if they have an update or something.

Well that’s it.

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My MacBook Pro just arrived this morning, and I spent most of the day configuring it. I was a bit fed up with the TCP checksum issue I was working on in our Universal Binary and I surfed over to PC Mag’s website. They usually have some cool stuff on the site. Sure enough they did, they had a store about booting XP on a Mac.

This is something I have wanted to do since I ordered by MacBook. It gives me the best of both worlds. Since I am a cross platform geek, it would be awesome to be able to have a laptop that would run both. Reading PC Mags story a bit more, they benchmarked XP on the Mac, and it performed better than most dual core laptops specifically for XP. Go figure.

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So I went to my first NASCAR event on Friday. It was a pretty cool experience. A friend of my brother’s was kind enough to give us some infield passes. We spent most of the race at the entrance to Pit Row. So we got to see all of the cars go by as they lined up…most of the drivers too.

We watched the Nextel Cup cars qualify, then at 9:00 the Craftsmen Trucks took to the track. I watched the first 30-40 laps from behind the pit of Aaron’s Number 99. I figured that since they painted my name all over the truck, me being there at the pit would bring them good luck. I was wrong.

The biggest disaapointment of the whole event was that I didn’t get any “Fried Oreos”. Yeah, you didn’t misread that. The curiosity of what exactly a “Fried Oreo” tastes like is still killing me. The “Fried Oreo” vendor wasn’t going to make them until the next day, because on Friday he doesn’t get engouh demand.

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During my break from blogging I made a switch that I never thought I would make. Thats right…I’m now a Mac user.

Back in college I had to work tech support for Mac computers. Back in the days of OS9. I thought they pretty much sucked, and as soon as we got enough PC’s on campus I transitioned to working on them instead of the Mac. I hated them with a passion. So for me to make the switch is a pretty big deal.

It all started last year when my company decided we were going to build a Mac version of Safe Eyes. We had an old G4 cube sitting around that I installed a copy of OSX 10.3.9. After once again being forced to work on a Mac for my job I had a completely different reaction.

It wasn’t long and we had purchased a few Mac Minis. Then came the big leap…I replaced my faithful 4 year old Dell Inspiron with a PowerBook G4. So what caused my change of heart?

1. Design - You have to admit Macs hands down rock when it comes to design of the system. Design along would never make me buy one. My keyboard lights up in a dim room so I can see what I’m typing, its the little things that count.
2. Great OS - I have been a long time Linux user, so I am perfectly at home on the OSX platform. It looks great, and I can use command line when I feel like it.
3. Quality - This laptop is actually has metal in it! Not to mention it has great hardware built in. I compared it to a friends brand new dell and there just isn’t a comparision.
4. Good Software Support - It use to be a pain to transfer files from a PC to a Mac. No more, with MS Office for OSX and Windows Filesharing, and a host of other greats things, you aren’t disadvantaged to be on a Mac anymore. I will talk about some cool software I have found in future posts.

So after having my powerbook G4 since August 05, I will bid farewell to it next week, when my new MacBook Pro arrives. I’m selling it to a friend…it will be his first Mac. I have no doubt that he will love it.

It was no small feat for Apple to change my mind to the point that I actually would rather use a Mac than a PC, but it has happened. I actually like it so much I am willing to take crap from all the Mac users I have ridiculed over the years.

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Well I haven’t been on the blog for quite sometime…shame on me. I was chatting with Ronzilla and I realized how much the world really needs to hear what I have to say. Why? Well it really isn’t because what I have to say is astounding, or will change your life forever. But if I (and others) don’t share things they learn we can’t continue to advance as a society. So in a very real way, I am saving the world with my blog. I know what your thinking….no I’m not blowing this out of proportion.

Seriously I do hope to keep the old blog a up-to-date better. I realized when I looked back over the time I haven’t blogged how much cool stuff I have done that should have been blogged. To be continued.

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