Carl Franklin : Multimedia Production

This Blog Has Moved!

Carl Franklin — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 20:53:00 GMT

Introducing Intellectual Hedonism
http://www.intellectualhedonism.com
I will keep this blog for reference only. Please subscribe to my new blog.

Stopping back in New London

Carl Franklin — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 17:16:00 GMT

We're making a pitstop in New London to pick up a few extra things from the home office: an extra laptop, an iMate device, and some CDs from telerik. We'll be in Farmington at around 5:30 to prep.

We still haven't had a chance to put the rest of the decals on the boat due to rain. Hopefully we'll find a place and time to do that in Farmington, or possibly New London.

The web cam is currently pointed out the front of the boat.

The Nintendo Dog Days of Summer podcast is now online.

Carl Franklin — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 01:11:00 GMT

This audio file is about 10 minutes long. I'm glad I had a chance to be a part of this. I love Nintendogs!!

http://nintendo.pwop.com/dogdaysevent.mp3

This post explains everything.

I can't guarantee anything, but it looks like this is the first of a whole series of podcasts that Pwop is going to do for Nintendo.

<bark mode>Tell a Friend</bark mode>

I'll be recording a podcast in New York Tomorrow at the Nintendo World Store

Carl Franklin — Sat, 27 Aug 2005 16:06:00 GMT

I'll be recording a podcast for Nintendo tomorrow (Sunday, August 28, 2005) at the Nintendo World Store at Rockefeller Plaza. The event is called Nintendo's Dog Days of Summer: Girls' Gaming Event and naturally, my 9-year old daughter is coming with me. The focus is on non-competitive games, which have a huge potential market.

In particular, all eyes are on a new game for the Nintendo DS called Nintendogs. The idea is that you buy a puppy, train it, feed it, walk it, play with it, and in general spend as much time with it as you would with a real dog. The graphics are good, and the appeal is obvious just spending a few minutes with it.

The coolest feature is by far "bark mode". In this mode the wi-fi turns on and when you come close to another unit in bark mode, it barks at you. When you flip it up, you can interact with the other players' dogs in this virtual dog park. Interestingly, each player gets a unique experience in this mode. Players will each experience the group of dogs in a different way. In this way, everyone gets to control the group.

This idea is vastly different from first-person shooter games where everyone experiences the grid from their point of view. The emphasis is on the quality of individual experience with the dogs, not on any kind of competitive activity.

Not surprisingly, this kind of game goes over big in Japan. Nintendogs has sold over 700,000 copies in Japan, and stores in the US were sold out on August 22nd when it first hit the shelves.

You may not realize it but girl gamers account for about 44% of habitual video game players. The conclusion is that there's a huge largely untapped market for games where the focus is on the experience, not on scores and competitions.

Anyway, this is the second project I've done for Nintendo, and I'm really excited about it. In the podcast I'll be conducting interviews with gamers, Nintendo Trendspotters, and executives, and it will feature some new music that I composed just for the project as well.

So if you're a New Yawkah and are looking for something to do Sunday afternoon from 2 to 4, come hang out with me at the Nintendo World Store, 10 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan.

BitTorrent Podcasting How-To Video

Carl Franklin — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 03:55:00 GMT

Want to know how to consume podcast feeds that use BitTorrent?

This is a full-screen flash video tutorial of using Azureus with an RSS 2.0 plugin by Geoff Maciolek and Carl Franklin

http://shrinkster.com/39w

In defense of podcasting as a medium

Carl Franklin — Sat, 23 Oct 2004 12:47:00 GMT

My friend and fellow MSDN Regional Director Scott Hanselman thinks "podcasting = verbal incontinence". What he's describing is his experience of listening to the podcasts that are avaliable now, and he has a point. The stuff that people are publishing is sometimes hard to listen to. It's done mostly by bloggers now, and people who have techie commentary, etc. Nothing wrong with that, but that's what we have today.

I want to encourage you all to think about podcasting as a publishing process or a new form of media. When the first video signals were sent across the air and there was no real broadcasting process yet, the content was rough. But the media itself had been established and it was just a matter of time until it was perfected.

From the non-techie perspective, podcasting is about pushing content. It's more than that, however. It's about pushing only the stuff that the customer wants, and filtering out the unwanted stuff. In the age of information overload, that is a breath of fresh air.

Blogging works for the same reason. I subscribe to that which I'm interested.

Now use your imaginiation. I belive that in a very short time, you'll be able to log onto cnn.com, msnbc.com, or any news content provider, provide a list of keywords or topics that you're interested in, which can be very very specific, and let a program like iPodder fill your mp3 player with the news that's relevant to you. Every day.

One of the things I love about blogging is that people can publish to a small crowd effectively. Small in numbers, but large geographically. So, all sorts of really niche shows will pop up, much like magazines. Not for the purpose of reading slides or conveying complex technical info, like Scott says, but for the purpose of creating community and keeping people plugged in and informed about the things they care about.

I see podcasting being used by a new breed of journalists who specialize in not just a topic but a particular story. Better than sending journalists all over the world to cover this and that, immerse them in a story and have them report on it daily, hourly, or what have you. Podcasting gives them a direct connection (effectively) to the people who want the information.

So, while I agree that it's early and the medium doesn't work well for reading code, or trying to convey ideas that are better suited to print, I think that podcasting as a media has just been born, and it (or something that smells like it) will someday soon perhaps be the foundation on which audio and video media, and perhaps even software, will be distributed.

Podcasting Audio Services - Pwop

Carl Franklin — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 07:54:00 GMT

I have started a podcasting audio services company called Pwop Productions. This company actually already existed as a recording studio, but it now has new focus and direction. We have been using the resources of Pwop to produce the .NET Rocks! Internet Talk show since August, 2004, and now that we're podcasting that show, we are subbing out our talents and resources for anyone else interested in producing their own professional podcasts.

On our site at http://www.pwop.com you'll find an explanation of what podcasting is, as well as a description of the services we provide.

Carl Franklin

Successfully burned a dual-layer DVD Movie from source content!

Carl Franklin — Mon, 06 Sep 2004 09:44:00 GMT

I just got one of those nifty NEC dual-layer 8.5 gig DVD burners and have been struggling with a way to burn a long DVD-video on it. Adobe Encore DVD 1.5 doesn't yet burn to dual-layer discs, but Nero Burning Rom does.

I used Adobe Premeire Pro 1.5 to create the DNR movie, and with the built in Media Encoder, mixed it down to a .m2v file for DVD video (as well as a single .wav file for audio) Then I imported those items into Encore, added menus and graphics, and saved it as a DVD folder containing all the files required to create a DVD-video. Then I just added those files to a Nero DVD-Video project and it worked!

That said, I'm going to be sending the movie to the manufacturer on a hard drive, because the consumer media is too prone to error. It's still very cool that I could burn it.