Meeting Report: February 4th
January 8, 2007 9 Comments
Boston Media Makers
Sweet Finnish, 761 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain, MA
We had a Super meeting on Sunday.
We started off with mingling out front and gathered around and shared a few stories and enjoyed each other’s company as people came in to join us.
At around 10:30 I started off the meeting by showing the HP laptop that Microsoft sent me for evaluation of Windows Vista. The screen is impressive. I had no problem logging on to the free WiFi at Sweet Finnish.
First off I showed how Vista has a photo application that can bring in photos from your digital still camera. The laptop doesn’t have a slot for a standard SD card, so I explained how I used a USB 2.0 SD card reader. After loading in the photos I brought them into Windows Movie Maker and made an automatic movie from them. It’s pretty straight forward and seems like a nice way for people who are not familiar with video editing to make a quick movie with transitions out of their photos.
I then brought up Windows Media Center to show the features it has to play videos. That’s when the things didn’t go so well.
The error message wants me to restart windows, but gives me no menu option or link to click on to perform the restart. As a Mac user, it was hard to figure out how to actually restart the machine. A Windows XP user suggested the old standby [CTRL][ALT][DEL], so I pressed that old key combination and was presented with this:
This was no help since there isn’t a restart option.
You’ve got to click the little “^” sign to get a pop up menu to display that presents a restart option. I clicked that and then moved on to David Tames to keep the meeting moving along.
David Tames showed up how he uses alligator clips for his iPod Belkin radio adapter to get better reception.
David S. talked about Boston Video Production Discussion Group meetings that take place twice a month in Boston and talked about doing future collaborative projects.
John Herman had a few interesting things to talk about including The Man Who Was Thursday, RPMChallenge.com, Medford Energy Conversation Show, and a secret Behind the Scenes project he’s working on with some people from Futurama!
BJ Hill told us about his WalkAcrossMass project, the culmination of which allowed him to meet with Governor Deval Patrick in his office. He’s got a new project that he’s working on and we talked about ways that he could post photos and video from the road using his cellphone. Blip.tv was mentioned as a good choice.
John from BC asked where and how to host a blog with it’s own domain. Suggestions offered were Blogger, WordPress and hosting sites like 1and1, Dreamhost and Pair. David Tames said to find out how many multiple redundant backbone connections to the internet the hosting service has and also to choose a hosting service that is not a colocation facility the might include spammers.
Matt Searls is creating a new podcast about starting a business of creativity with a Jungian model.
DC Dennison is embedded at Boston.com and has a new video camera that he’s using to shoot over the shoulder videos of people. We helped him figure out the manual focus.
Sue Schardt an independent radio producer and WMBR Green DJ talked about her interests in radio and new media.
Randy Mann is starting up his own TV channel using Neave.tv.
Jason from an interactive media shop, mindshare, ended up the discussion with his interest in getting a video blog started.
It was a very casual and laid back meeting. every one had a chance to talk and ask questions. Fun times.
Here’s David Tamés’ meeting report.
Next Meeting: Sunday March 4th at 10:00 AM
Sweet Finnish, 761 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain, MA
Boston Media Makers 
Recent Comments