Marina’s Bloggariffic

Recently, I’ve been lusting over the iMovie. But I did not want to spend 2k to aquire a macbook solely to play with iMovie alone.

That was until I stumbled upon a website which hailed Adobe Premiere elements 4 to be THE window answer to iMovie. And at long last, I finally acquired a copy and man, it was heck loads of fun to play!

Here is my quick demo :

Premiere Elements 4 is fun! from rinaz on Vimeo

Woot! Rinaz Vloggariffic, here I come! :D

You may also be interested in

• My first look at the EEE PC
• Vimeo - Cooler than youtube!
• Comiqs.com - Fierce competitor to Comic Life
• A demo of my Logitech Quickcam Fusion Webcam

After learning about the Asus EEE PC, I was completely enamoured. I was fortunate enough to loan a set for a test drive.

Here is a video overview of my first encounter :

Watch in Vimeo

And the verdict? I want one! In green!

Links

• The Asus EEE PC Website
• How to enable full desktop mode

You may be interested in

• Vimeo - Cooler than youtube!
• Comiqs.com - Fierce competitor to Comic Life
• A demo of my Logitech Quickcam Fusion Webcam

Updated : After a month of using the eee pc

I’m really loving vimeo heaps. I’ve never seen a better quality video streaming sharing site before!

When I started using youtube in late 2005, I thought that that was the bomb. Having used to have to download large video files and had to wait a long time to download the clips we wanted, youtube was rather revolutionary.

Thus the start of this year, when I got my 2GB SD card and my logitech webcam, I started to be an avid videoblogger. I’ve been pretty much satisfied wth youtube. So far I have over 60 video clips in there, which is not bad :)

So when Moby mentioned that he liked vimeo so much that he was going to abandon his youtube account, I just had to sign up just to see what it was like for myself. The first time I went there, the website was bonkers, I had problem uploading videos, couldnt edit my profile, and when I uploaded a video, I couldnt view them!

I found out later that the site was undergoing some bugs and was relatively stable and decided to give them a try again.

Vimeo has a very cute uploading interface :

Vimeo even tells you how long it will take to convert your video :

But what really blew my mind was the quality of the video that was converted. Take a look at Malique who is eating his ice cream here in youtube:

Its pretty not bad right? But take a look at Malique in the same still in Vimeo

My gosh, its much sharper and clearer that I was just stunned. For a streaming video site, this is very impressive.

One of the things that I like about Vimeo is that unlike other sites, it has a forum that allows you to ask questions from the staff or the community directly. Vimeo doesnt seem to be as active as youtube, judging from the amount of comments in the forum - which could be a good thing, as I had countless of juvenile comments from youtube.

One thing that I dont fancy about Vimeo though, is the length of time to take to upload it. Typically, a video of about 50megs would take about 45 mins to an hour to be uploaded and ready to be viewed. But at the same time, it could be due to Starhub’s uploading speed (which is a huge pet peeve for Singaporean videobloggers like me)

Currently, Vimeo also has a weekly 500megs limit which is relatively unheard of in a video sharing website. But on the flipside, it makes people think twice on uploading the videos that is really important to them.

Moreoever with the advanced settings, I could replace a video, without having to delete the erring video and start all over again. This feature, I really like. I can also pick from a generous 12 thumbnails from the movie stills so that I could prevent embarassing opening pictures like these :

To these :

Also, Vimeo has no embedded logos or ads on their clips, which I find very refreshing. Next year, Youtube is starting a 10 sec advertisment prior to the video, which I find very intrusive. I cant wait to port all my videos in Vimeo, which coincidentally, you could download the original video format too!

Woah!

But I cant right now because I’ve used up all my 500megs. Now I have to wait a while for the upload limit to be refreshed.

Have you used Vimeo before? What do you think of it?

Links :

• My vimeo page
• My youtube page

Random sidenote : I really would like an Imac and a Canon Ixus 860, solely to make more videoblogs. So expensive. Le sigh.

If you like comic life, you will love comiqs

During the ping.sg tshirt launch, I had the fortune of meeting Jarius and Michael. They did a demo of comiqs.com which I am quite excited about.

Having played with Comic life in the middle of the year, I saw the similarities between these two programs. Using very little time, users are able to create comics like these :

But the additional nice feature about comiqs is that everything is done completely online, has a high resolution of 400 which is wonderful for printing, has multipages and multipanels, can be embedded directly to blogs (!) integrates with online photographs like flickr (!!) and its free (!!!)

Jarius also tells me that Comiqs is being supported by The Singapore MDA, so you know its good. Unfortunately, Comiqs is currently in closed beta, but do sign up for an invitation for their beta and hassle Mike and Jarius hope that these awesome guys starts their open beta soon :)

Watch a short clip of us playing with Comiqs

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

view in vimeo

Links :

• Comiqs website
• Comic Life website

Update : Comiqs.com is now open for all! Go forth and have fun!

Congratulations to Tech65 on their 50th podcast! And here’s to many more to come :)

click image for a larger version

Tech65 is a weekly based podcast which focuses on technology in a Singaporean point of view.

I knew about tech65 when NTT, introduced the podcast to me and asked me to have a listen. And at the first listen, I was impressed by how effortlessly natural they were bantering with each other. Even though I am not up to their level of technophilia, these guys are easy to listen to.

One of my favourite episodes was when the tech65 crew were live blogging at the launch of the new Creative Zen and they managed to aquire a unit to review.

When the tech65 invited listeners to a live recording in liew of of their 50th episode, I couldnt help but to join in. I’ve always wanted to see the behind the scenes.

There, I met the hosts, Daniel, Jerrick, NTT, Farinelli and Kai Yi, as well as a couple of pingsters like Nicole, Mic, Brennan, Ridz, DK, Bernard and a couple of new faces like Christine and Hei Man.

I saw a camera being set up for the live video stream, NTT’s awesome H4 audio recorder and everyone else ready with their laptops maximizing the internet connection at Geek Terminal as they started their podcast.

Despite interruptions such as construction works all around the cafe, it was interesting to sit in and watch the recording live.

Here’s a behind the scenes clip :

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

watch in youtube

Congratulations again to 65bits! You’ve come a long way! :-)

Links :

• 50th episode podcast / shownotes
• Send your predictions of how tech will be in 2008
• Bernard’s blog entry

Blogs are evolving.

When I first subscribed to the internet in 1996, we recorded our thoughts with newsgroups (remember those?) We used outlook express to search and subscribe for threads and to discuss with other people.

Later on, we learnt HTML to code for webpages like geocities and tripod (which was commonly used at the time). We used guestbooks or forums to communicate with others.

These online logs was refined to what we know as blogs, with one of the first sites to offer them being blog city and blogger. Archiving thoughts has become musch easier. It not even mandatory to know HTML - just insert content and hit publish to update.

Now, blogs are evolving to include a more variety of media, such as podcasts, video blogs and even sketchcasts. These has been made easier, as compared to several years ago with the technology that we have now.

As much as I enjoy blogging, there are times when I just want to record my stream of consciousness. For me, blogging can be a tedious process with the editing of pictures and videos et al. There are times where I would like to record my thoughts as it is without having to think and plan what I would like to write.

This is where the microblog comes in. Microblogs is where you could record short burst of thoughts. The two microblogs that I use currently are tumblr and twitter. I found out about these services quite by chance and I started an account just for experimental purposes and I am surprised at how much I enjoy using them both.

Both of them function differently

Twitter is a convenient way to keep up with friends to see what they were doing in real time. And because one could set it to their mobile, one could send and receive messages as they were sent. Organizing events became so much easier when you could twitter it once, as compared to calling up a person one by one. Although tech guru, Kathy Sierra, does have a point in the dangers of twitter, its still a convenient tool nevertheless.

Twitter has been gaining popularity that even the tv show, CSI, has featured twitter in its series. Twitter has alot of potential for mysteries. A while back, a victim’s murderer was found through his blog. I can imagine something similar for twitter.

For all the new functions, I still kind of miss the days when twitter used lolcats as an icon.

Tumbler on the other hand, can be compared to as a mini blog. It doesn’t send short messages to your friends, however, you could post short thoughts and other mediums that twitter cant do. Because Tumblr is not as serious as a regular blog, I feel that I have the freedom to post up any stream of consciousness I have, without the need to journalize it as I would do in my regular blog posts.

My tumblr page might not be impressive or even useful to anyone who stumble upon it, but I think that its a wonderful outlet of self expression. Especially now with the improvements done to tumblr, such as the search function as well as the pictorial archive, its easier for me to look back and remember past experiences.

But as much as I like tumblr and twitter, I dont think that it will be a replacement to blogs, but a convenient complement.

Do you microblog? What are your thoughts about it?

Links :

• Tumblr
• Twitter

Sidenote :

• Ping.sg is having a bloggers outing cum official tee shirt launch. Come! Come!
• Mus is playing in a gamelan jamming session this friday. Join me?

Arzhou, Uzyn, Estee, me and DK trying to form the letters ping

Ping.sg is a Singaporean based blog aggregate where members will have a higher chance of having their blogs read by other members.

Somewhere in mid August, Uzyn asked Arzhou, DK, Daphne and me to join him in an interview for blogbuzz.tv - an online video channel for bloggers.

We met Estee who will be hosting, and then introduced to a Todd Murray, of Activechannel.tv who will be filming.

Here is a short clip of some behind the scenes footage, taken by Daphne! :D

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Watch in youtube

Links :

• Watch the complete episode at blogbuzz.tv - Episodes 7 & 8
• Ping.sg - Singaporean Blog Aggregate
• Blog entry by Estee
• Blog entry by DK

Sidenote : My exams are almost over with only literature to go! :D