Video on the Web

I recently wrote a post for the British Users of Mac Podcast about video on the web. I wanted to share it with my blog readers too, so here’s the original post:

I have done a lot of video work in these past year. I have learned a lot, and been upset about the outcome, but this is all a learning experience. British Users of Mac Podcast is a great podcast, but I want to see more video conversations (which is why I am writing this post), and I also want to show you another side of Apple. We all know about video, and all that good stuff, but the real question is: Do you know how to maximize it?

Trust me, I have asked myself this question numerous times! As of now, I don’t have a definite answer to this. There are so many services on the web that incorporate this, but don’t necessarily maximize video. One of my favorite streaming companies on the web is UStream.tv, which is a live interactive video broadcast platform. It enables anyone with a web cam and a fast Internet connection to quickly and easily broadcast to a global audience of unlimited size. In less than two minutes, anyone can become a broadcaster by creating their own channel on Ustream, empowering them to engage with their audience and further build their brand. I have worked with UStream.tv in many ways, from blogging to podcasting and even working! UStream.tv is just as great a service for “desktop streaming.”

In my opinion, one of the best companies is Qik, who enables you to share moments of your life with your friends, family and the world – directly from your cell phone! Keep your world in the know, share a laugh, tell engaging stories. Just point your cell phone and stream video live to your your friends on Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, etc. OR use your cell phone like a camcorder and stream hours and hours of video without worrying about storage on your cell phone. The things that Qik does are amazing, not because I work there. I’ve held that belief ever since my friend and top blogger Robert Scoble showed Qik to me. Qik really maximizes video from cell phones, and I can’t wait to see where this takes me and Qik!

Now, Apple also has a say in video. Probably not a front-end view, but surely a back-end view. Most of us know Apple because of their amazing hardware and outstanding operation systems, but they also have amazing software. Here is some of Apple’s Video Software:

Final Cut Express 4

Final Cut Studio 2

QuickTime 7 Pro for Mac OS X

(Editors Note: iMovie)

I use two of these three applications:

QuickTime Pro for recording my videos, and starting soon, Final Cut Studio to edit the footage.

Most Apple computers that you can buy from Apple’s online store include an option to buy Final Cut Express 4 and/or Logic Express 8 (Logic Express is Apple’s semi-pro digital audio workstation application).As you can tell, Apple has a nice presence in the video community, but I want to see more! This was my rant about video.T ell me what you think by either leaving a comment, or send an email to daniel@bumpodcast.co.uk.

~Daniel Brusilovsky

Producer & Host, Apple Universe Podcast

Also, remember that Apple Universe is re-launching on Saturday February 16, 2008 at 8:00 PM PST! We will be streaming on Ustream and giving away software, games and having a great time!

Winner of iShowU Contest!

As many of you know, Apple Universe has been holding a contest for a free copy of shinywhitebox’s iShowU. To enter the contest, you send in an email with a video or link to a video saying why you want or need a copy of iShowU, the greatest screen capture software for Mac OS.

With the contest having reached its end, I am very pleased to announce that Jonathan Davies, of England, is the winner of the contest!

The reason Jonathan won is because in the U.K, it is much more difficult to get software at US prices. Jonathan is a great blogger, and I hope iShowU helps him with his video needs!

Apple Universe would like to thank everyone who sent in their videos for the contest, but I’d also like to mention that there still is one more chance to win a FREE copy iShowU! Details are to be announced soon.

Happy Macworld!

Macworld 2008: Day 1

Macworld 2008 has started, and it couldn’t start better off for me! This following blog post will be no ordinary blog post, I will by time, tell the readers my journey to Macworld 2008: Day 1.

5:00 AM- Wake up. At around 5:15 I eat breakfast, and get all my stuff ready for the days journey to Macworld 2008.
5:30 AM- Leave house to BART Station.
6:00 AM- Arrive at BART Station and board train to San Francisco!
6:50 AM- I arrive in San Francisco, and walk to Moscone Center West.
7:10 AM- Get my Super Pass, and go inside of Moscone West.
7:20-8:45 AM- Wait in line until they let us in the keynote room. At this time, I meet new friends, and talk about the Apple Universe podcast recording that night, and stream some live video on Qik.
9:00-10:30 AM- Steve Jobs Keynote! I get my seat, and take LOTS of pictures, and videos. A blog post coming up about the announcements from the keynote.
10:45 AM- THE HIGHLIGHT OF MY DAY!!

At this time I want to talk about what happened after the keynote was over. I had no where to go, since I was waiting for a friend, and I decide to walk to the stage. What I didn’t know, was that the press were taking a lot of pictures. I didn’t know what they were taking pictures, and knowing that I was small enough, I went through some people to find Steve Jobs in front of me! YES! STEVE JOBS WAS IN FRONT ON ME!! Steve needed to go, so he turned around and turned in my direction. I talk to Steve and SHAKE HIS HAND! I SHOKE STVEVE JOBS HAND!!!!

Steve is a really idol to me, it was a great experience to shake Steve Jobs hand. After that, I meet with some Apple Executives like Jonathan Ive, and some iPhone person, that I don’t remember his name 🙂

Going back to the actual story:

11:00 AM- Meet with iPhoneAlley Founder, and Editor-in-Chief, Michael Johnston. We talk about the keynote, and talk, like us all 🙂
12:00-1:00 PM- I go out to lunch with a really good friend of mine, Eric Willis. Eric is now in San Francisco, and I have him a pass to Macworld 2008. We went out to lunch, and had a good time talking nothing other then Apple!
1:00-1:30 PM- Go to Eric’s office, and relax for a little bit before going back to Macworld 2008.
1:50 PM- Meet with Robert and Patrick Scoble in Moscone Center.
2:00- 4:00 PM- Walk around the expo floor with the Scoble’s and Mike Cohen of MacMegasite.
4:15- 5:45 PM- Set-up for my Apple Universe Episode #100 event at Zeum!
6:00- 8:00 PM- Apple Universe #100 with Robert Scoble, Dave Sifry, Shooby, iJustine and Cali Lewis! There will be a blog post about this event coming up.
8:30 PM- Leave the Zeum, and go home after a very long day.

This was basically my day at Macworld 2008. I am still in disbelief that I shook Steve Jobs hand! Apple Universe #100 was great, and I hope my parents let me go back to Macworld later this week, and if not, I had a great time at Macworld 2008!

Apple Universe #100 should be out soon.

Steve Jobs Keynote

If you had the chance to go to someone’s keynote, who’s would it be? My answer: Steve Jobs.

Every Apple fan boy is a Steve Jobs fan, and I am no exception. Steve Jobs has presented so many wonderful keynotes, and my dream is to attend one of those presentations. My dreams have been answered!

I am very proud to say that I will be attending the Steve Jobs Keynote, on January 15 at 9:00 AM! I want to thank a really cool web site, iPhone Alley, for helping both myself Apple Universe by getting me access to the keynote!

Press Release: Apple Introduces New Mac Pro

Apple on January 8th, 2008 introduced the new Mac Pro with eight processor cores and a new system architecture that delivers up to twice the performance of its predecessor. The new Mac Pro combines two of Intel’s new 45 nanometer Quad-Core Xeon processors running up to 3.2 GHz, powerful new graphics and up to 4TB of internal storage to offer the ideal system for creative professionals, 3D digital content creators and scientists. The new Mac Pro can support up to 32 GB. The standard 8-core configuration starts at just $2,799.

The standard 8-core Mac Pro, with a suggested retail price of $2,799 (US), includes:

two 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors with dual-independent 1600 MHz front side buses
2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 ECC fully-buffered DIMM memory, expandable up to 32GB
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT with 256MB of GDDR3 memory
320GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive running at 7200 rpm
16x SuperDrive™ with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
two PCI Express 2.0 slots and two PCI Express slots
Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
the Apple Keyboard and Mighty Mouse

My personal opinion on this new Mac Pro is that it’s unbelievable. When you think about Apple, you see that they really do push everything outside the box, and the keep on making things better and better. I have been playing around with the configurations, and I fully maxed out the Apple Mac Pro. Here is the configuration that I made from the new Mac Pro:

Two 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-core) processors
32GB (8 x 4GB)
Mac Pro RAID Card
4 TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 1.5GB (Stereo 3D, two dual-link DVI)
2 Apple Cinema HD Display (30″ flat panel)
Two 16x SuperDrives
AirPort Extreme card (Wi-Fi)
Quad Channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express Card
Apple USB Modem
Apple wireless Mighty Mouse/Apple Wireless Keyboard (English) + Mac OS X
iWork ’08 preinstalled
Final Cut Express preinstalled
Logic Express preinstalled
AppleCare Protection Plan for Mac Pro (w/or w/o Display) – Auto-enroll

This is the most maxed out computer I have ever configured! I hope to go to the Apple Store and play with the new Mac Pros!

Tell me what think in the comments below, or drop a line at appleuniversepodcast@gmail.com

NOTE: You can find more information on the new Mac Pro at Apple’s Web site. For the information provided in this post, please visit the Apple Press Release Page.

2008: The year of…..

The year of 2008 is already here. In this blog post, I’d like to discuss what I think will really emerge in 2008, and also talk about the companies that I really feel will emerge in 2008.

As we all now, 2007 was a great year for social networking and for all the new companies that emerged in the Silicon Valley. As we all know, Facebook came as probably the best social network in its class. Not only did Facebook grow, but the whole social communication network evolved. We all have a Twitter, Pownce or Jaiku account. These networks paved the way for everything else….

Moving on, the point that I’d like to emphasize here is that video is going to massively erupt sometime soon. The real question is when?

I have been pondering about this thought for a while, and I feel that 2008 is the year of the visual revolution. For streaming live video, Qik broadcasts from cellular phones in real time, with Ustream.TV and Justin.tv streaming from the desktop (among others). Kyte.tv and other related services let you upload short video clips from your phone. These services are simply amazing. They really push technology to the limits, but to me, its not enough.

Video can be pushed harder. There are phones are that are being produced that have a better camera then my Kodak, a dedicated digital camera. It’s impossible to expect what we will see as 2008 progresses.

I would like to quickly shout out to a couple amazing people. Robert Scoble: You have inspired me to do things that I would never thought of doing. Your video show is amazing, and I love everyone who you have featured on it. Also, I’d like to thank Bhaskar Roy of Qik for making such an amazing client in Qik. Qik is so amazing, I don’t know what I would do it without it.

Finally, I’d like to thank everyone for making 2007 such a great year!

Thank you so much,
Daniel Brusilovsky

MacWorld 2008 Predictions

MacWorld 2008 is just around the corner, and thousands of people are hoping for some great things from Apple. In this blog post I will talk about what I would like to happen from Apple coming up at the MacWorld 2008 Conference and Expo.Personally, I’d like to see a slimmer 12-inch MacBook, with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a hard drive holding up to 250GB. It would also be nice if Apple would come to the show with a new line of cheaper, brighter and better Cinema Displays that would include a built-in iSight camera. The Cinema Displays haven’t been updated in over 2 years, and I think it is time Apple refreshed those products.

A fellow blogger, Wesley Yendrys, wrote a great post today about what he would like to see at MacWorld 2008:

I’m hoping for an iPhone release date in Canada, either at MacWorld, or some other time between Q1 and Q2 of 2008. May is when my parents are going to allow me to have an phone, and so, I want to be able to buy an iPhone straight away, rather than waiting for Apple to release one in 2012, when the iPhone has gone through 10 generations. Although, I don’t think we’ll see an iPhone Canada release date, it’s just wishful thinking.As far as software goes, this would be around the time where iLife and iWork ‘08 would be released, but we got that last August. I do think however, we might see some iTunes updates. Maybe even iTunes 8.

There’s the scoop on what I’d like to see at MacWorld 2008. Please remember that Apple Universe will be recording LIVE during MacWorld at the Zeum from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. Please RSVP at Upcoming.

Must-Have Mac Apps for the new Mac Switcher!

A good online friend of mine, Chris24 as he is known, writes great entries for his blog, which is located at www.chris24.ca (or subscribe to Chris’s blog’s RSS feed).

Here’s a quote from a recent article written by Chris, titled “Must-Have Mac Apps for the new Mac Switcher“:

Once you convince your friends to get a Mac, they’ll want to know which applications to use or try out first! Here is a list for all those new Mac users who want a list of the most useful, must-have Mac applications that aren’t included with your Mac. Keep in mind that some of these applications require Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, but most require Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.

Web Development

Transmit for FTP. Transmit provides the best FTP client for the Mac. Transmit is available from Panic, and costs only $29.95.

Cyberduck is a free FTP solution. I’ve had troubles with Cyberduck when connecting to my (mt) grid server, but if you don’t feel the need to pay for Transmit, then Cyberduck is for you.

CSSEdit for CSS editing. CSSEdit provides a sleek interface for editing CSS files. You can even extract any CSS file from any website and preview what the website would look like with your custom CSS! CSSEdit is available from MacRabbit, and costs $29.95.

TextMate for code editing, and specializing in Ruby on Rails development. TextMate provides a lot of features the average code editor doesn’t. TextMate is available from Macromates, and costs $59.

Coda for all-of-the-above. Coda provides a very nice integrated web development environment, with a code editor powered by the SubEtha engine which includes collaborative code editing. Coda is available from Panic, and costs $79.

MAMP for MySQL, PHP, and Apache on your local machine. This is perfect for testing out your next website locally! MAMP is free, and available at mamp.info.

SubEthaEdit for collaborative code editing. SubEthaEdit allows you to share your coding documents with others anywhere around the world! SubEthaEdit is available from the Coding Monkeys, and costs 29 Euros.

MarsEdit for posting to your weblog. MarsEdit is a stand-alone application that allows you to post to your weblog from its great interface. MarsEdit is available from Red Sweater Software and costs $29.95. (full review)

EDIT: Continue reading the post – this is a partial list.

Moving to the Mac!

As you all know, I have been a Mac fan for a while. I still do own two Windows PCs though. I have an HP Pavillion 753n and a Voodoo AMD Gaming Machine that Robert Scoble gave to me.

After talking to my parents, we have decided that there is no point having one PC in the closet, and one PC being used. So, in conclusion, we have decided that I will be moving to the PowerBook G4 full time.

I received my Apple Wireless Keyboard yesterday, and I also have a Logitech LX 7 wireless mouse, and a Gem 17″ Display, which will all be connected to the Mac to make a full set-up. My Alesis MultiMix 8 USB mixer will be connected to the Mac, and the MXL microphone will be used as my main microphone.

If you have any questions, please email me at appleuniversepodcast@gmail.com

P.S. A keyboard update will come soon!

2007 Holiday Presents!

The holiday season is winding down, and all the presents have been opened…..except for Daniel’s! Now that isn’t true, since I got to open my presents today. We will start off with the present that I got my Dad and sister. Since my sister lives in Southern California, I thought to myself, what is the best way to communicate? We talk on IM, we call each other….but I never see her. So I got my dad and sister web cams! I got the GE Easy Cam from Target – Here is a picture:

I gave my Mom a Wireless Notebook Laser Mouse 3000. Here is a picture of the mouse:

Next, here are presents that I recieved. First off, my Dad gave me a Maxtor OneTouch 4 500 GB External Hard Drive! I am very happy about this, and will store a lot of images, podcasts, audio, etc.

Also, I got the new Apple Wireless Keyboard!

I have had my eye on the new keyboards ever since they were released, and I love it!

Thank you very much for these great gifts, and happy holidays!

To conclude, here’s a YouTube video that I made, featuring my presents: