RobbieTheGeek.Com

Hi again all just figured that after the North Jersey Web Design Meetup last night that there could be new visitors stopping by the blog, so welcome all, especially folks that listened to me rant about Drupal and standards based design last night. It was an interesting meetup, a lot of folks that are new to web stuff, or not in their words, "very technical".

Welcome to 2006 and welcome back to the geek speaks.A quick update to start the year off, this week is the annual CES (International Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas,NV. Lots of tech news, product launches and booth babes for all you nerds and geeks lucky enough to make the trip out there.

Ok so I promised I would return to this subject with my Ubuntu install, and see how I could get podcasts automagically downloaded and ready for my listening pleasure. Ok so after doing a little research, and banging my head against the wall for a few hours, I came across a great way to handle this. A little shell script called BashPodder, a tiny little bash shell that is configured via a flat text file (bp.conf). Ok so I have an account at Odeo, and my queue there can be reached through and RSS feed. So I copied the RSS feed into the config file and ran the shell script and poof!

Today I rebooted my dual booting machine and returned to my Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy the Badger) installation. One thing that I am smacked with immediately is the fact that everything is faster, browsing the web is faster, instant messaging patching,...EVERYTHING. I am home today because of a strike that is in place in New York, the local union Transit Workers Union 100 is striking against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Ok so now you are comfortable with the idea of podcasts how about if I tell you about the next step of portable multimedia goodness. IPTV, this is a video based show distributed on-demand via the internet. IPTV for now is totally free for the end users (you the viewers), all you have to do is find these shows. I can assist you with finding a few technocentric IPTV shows that the Geek watches on the regular.

Here are a few definitions of what a podcast actually is :

a portmanteau of Apple's "iPod" and "broadcasting", is a method of publishing files to the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed and receive new files automatically by subscription, usually at no cost. It first became popular in late 2004, used largely for audio files.

A form of audio blogging created by Adam Curry, a former MTV Host, and Dave Winer, the founder of Userland Software.

I was lucky enough to go to Digital Life at the Javits in New York City for 2 of the 3 days. On the first day of the convention I ran into Robert Heron. He was nice enough to stand around while a friend and I got a few photos and talked a little bit about all the projects he has in the cooker Digital Life TV, This Week In Tech, and PC Mag's HDTV specialist. Over the next 2 days we stopped by the PC Magazine / Ziff Davis Village and chat with Robert about High Definition TV's and all kinds of technology.