Web Standards, Accessibility & More » Web Axe podcast

Feeling Guilty about (lack of) Podcast

Dennis — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 17:09:21 +0000

I’m feeling guilty because I haven’t done a Web Axe podcast in over 2 weeks now. I don’t make any money from it, but the Feedburner subscription rate is growing and I’m feeling responsible for providing more than just a web accessibility news post. And today, I was named in the Top 5 design podcasts for designers by Dustin Brewer (you can Digg the article here), so I’m feeling the heat!

Gotta get motivated again. Like most folks, I’ve just been so busy lately with higher priority work, family, etc., you know how it is. Well, I have a podcast lined up for tonight, as I’ve been pushing it off for the last 4 nights…wish me luck…

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Podcast Bandwidth Hogging

Dennis — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:40:07 +0000

Podcasts are great. Hard drives are large. But for non-music podcasts, why waste bandwidth, download time, and disk storage with an MP3 encoded at anything more than 32kbps 22khz? Just so the intro song comes in stereo? I say no!

I have an iPod Nano, and it’s “only” 2 Gigs of storage. To some it may seem like a lot of space, and to some it may seem very limited. Either way, I like to squeeze as much music onto it as possible. When I put several 45-minute non-music podcasts that are encoded at a high rate (such as 64kbps 44khz), it sure starts to take a lot of room. The non-music podcasts are usually technical podcasts with just dialog, and a real high quality is just not needed. It’s like driving a Ford Shelby GT 25MPH to the corner store–what a waste! And using smaller MP3 files also saves on internet bandwidth.

The Web Axe podcast is a technical podcast that I run, and it is mostly dialog. I encode at 32kbps 22khz, and each podcast files runs about 3-7MB each. At this rate, the download is very fast, and you can store all 44 episodes one on flash drive! So it ain’t the greatest quality, but I think it’s manageable and user-friendly.

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O.D. Mag Gone!

Dennis — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 18:31:57 +0000

My long-time “flagship” web site O.D. Mag is gone. It was an online magazine that I created with friend Mike Pfeiffer (see Most People Are DJs) way back in 1996. It featured poetry and prose, music articles, movie reviews, etc. The web site spawned from the O.D. fanzine that we has published during the two years prior.

O.D. had gone through several design revisions and had become quite interactive (with the power of PHP!). But the site was requiring too much time to maintain, and without making a buck (gotta feed the kids). So sorry to see you go, Opinion Dominatrix.

I’ve canceled a hosting account with CIHost that hosted the O.D. Mag site and others. I wouldn’t recommend them, try StartLogic. It was quite the hassle to cancel the account since it was connected to other projects. I had to move another web site and domain from this account and had to move a fair amount of files to another server for my Web Axe podcast. Then I had to fax a confirmation form to CIHost.

So now it’s all done. Good-bye O.D. Mag, it’s been fun.

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Declaration of Standards Compliance

Dennis — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 20:47:50 +0000

Check out the Declaration of Standards Compliance from ptvGuy. It’s a very unique, entertaining, and valid perspective on using web standards. Play the audio right off the page, and/or read the content. (The humor is more evident if you’re familiar with the verbiage of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.) Also, Ross Johnson and I will be interviewing ptvGuy sometime soon for the Web Axe podcast.

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