New version of Ubuntu

A new version of the Linux Ubuntu operating system, v 11.04, is being released this week, and it is called Natty Narwhal.  Ubuntu names each new version after an animal. :-)  The first edition was called Warty Warthog. 


Version # and Name
4.10 Warty Warthog
5.04 Hoary Hedgehog
5.10 Breezy Badger
6.06 Dapper Drake
6.10 Edgy Eft
7.04 Feisty Fawn
7.10 Gutsy Gibbon
8.04 Hardy Heron
8.10 Intrepid Ibex
9.04 Jaunty Jackalope
9.10 Karmic Koala
10.04 Lucid Lynx
10.10 Maverick Meerkat
11.04 Natty Narwhal
Next Release 2011-10-13:  
11.10 Oneiric Ocelot

YouTube Founders Buy Delicious From Yahoo

For those of you wondering what would become of Delicious, an interesting
development this week...

• YouTube Founders Buy Delicious From Yahoo, http://tinyurl.com/3wcs8pu

Lecture Capture Boosts Distance Learning at Washington Colleges

Washington's statewide public college system is supporting its ballooning online and blended education programs with lecture capture. The adoption hasn't been painless, but it's helped to further the college system's goals for growth and to support innovation in teaching and learning.
Full article:  http://tinyurl.com/67z3g9f

Source: Campus Technology, by Bridget McCrea

Insider Tips for YouTube Video Marketing Success

Want to know the secrets to success on YouTube? Watch this video :-)

iMovie Review for iPad 2

Amazing Video: Watching People Skydive in Slow Motion

Experience Human Flight from Betty Wants In on Vimeo.

Source: http://vimeo.com/22428395

A must see: "The Internet in Society: Empowering or Censoring Citizens"

Does the internet actually inhibit, not encourage democracy? In this new RSA Animate adapted from a talk given in 2009, Evgeny Morozov presents an alternative take on 'cyber-utopianism' - the seductive idea that the internet plays a largely emancipatory role in global politics.

WDTV Live +

This weekend I installed a new gadget: WD TV Live Plus.

What I like so far: 

• It plays anything! (including ISO Files)
• You can hack it :-) http://b-rad.cc/1295/wdlxtv-plus-for-wdtv-live-plus/
• You can stream audio and video over your LAN.
• Netflix (have not tested it, yet) 

Cons: 

• Remote control isn't the greatest. 
• Youtube HD Disabled.

Extracting audio from a video, save it as Mp3

Command: ffmpeg -i video.avi -vn -ar 44100 -ac 2 -ab 192 -f mp3 sound.mp3

Source video : video.avi
Audio Frequency: (-ar) Set the audio sampling frequency
Audio bitrate :  (-ab) 192kb/s
Output format : mp3
Output file : sound.mp3

OpenMedia.ca Endorses Prime Ministerial Candidate

More info: http://VoteNet.ca
or
http://openmedia.ca/blog/openmediaca-endorses-prime-ministerial-candidate

Google Video Shutting Down

Google Video Shutting Down, and taking your videos with it, unless you download them first.
Google has invited their users to download their videos and upload them to YouTube to keep them alive if they haven't done so already.

Mediainfo, I can't live without this app

What information can I get from MediaInfo?

• General: title, author, director, album, track number, date, duration...
• Video: codec, aspect, fps, bitrate...
• Audio: codec, sample rate, channels, language, bitrate...
• Text: language of subtitle
• Chapters: number of chapters, list of chapters
• ....

Mediainfo website

Ps. Mediainfo is availabe for Win/Mac/Linux ...

Ncast

Just received the delivery of our latest Ncast product: PR-720-D

Some of its specs:
1. Two independent 720p encoders – With identical inputs, one encoder
may be setup to stream and record a high-bandwidth, high-resolution
stream and the second encoder provides for a reduced resolution, reduced
bandwidth stream.
2. Dual wide-screen delivery – One encoder transmits a 720p hi-def
camera stream, and the second transmits a wide-screen presentation.

This box will be mainly used for live streaming events on Campus (Queen's University). Unlike our other boxes from Ncast (Telepresenter M4) that are mainly used for our lecture capture project.

Ncast info: http://www.ncast.com/pr720.html
Queen's Lecture Capture Project: Queen's CTL and Queen's University - ITServices, Lecture Capture Docs

Build ffmpeg

FFmpeg is a free software / open source project that produces libraries and programs for handling multimedia data.  FFmpeg is widely used for media format conversions or encoding.

Building/compiling FFmpeg:

• Ubuntu 10.x or higher 
• Other distros and Mac OS, FFmpeg is developed with Git. Multiple repositories from developers and groups of developers are available. More: http://ffmpeg.org/download.html
• FFmpeg Windows Builds are available at hawkeye.arrozcru.org

Wowza 3

Wowza will preview Wowza Media Server 3 at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show in Las Vegas.

• StreamingMedia article