TWiT Live Adobe Air App

Over at Leo Laporte’s site, he has a link to an Adobe Air application to access TWiTLive. It was written by Peter Elstand has the video feed, chat window, and show calendar wrapped up into one lightweight application. I myself still prefer using separate programs, but I am positive most people  would prefer all of it wrapped up into one program. Thanks Peter!

Yet Another New Feature!

Soon I will be adding a new feature to blackleafmedia: Tech Questions! But I need your help. I need a load of questions to answer! So, I need to know what you guys want to know. It can be anything related to technology: cell phones, computers, MP3 players, you name it.

So how can I participate you ask? Just go to the Tech Questions page and enter your question there. Your first name will be featured (or hidden if you would like) when I cover your question. If you have a web site, make sure you enter so I can plug it for you.

Make sure to use the Share This button below this post to add this to social network sites or also to email it to friends and family. Helping to get posts of mine submitted to sites like Digg and making them popular tremendously increases the pairs of eyes my site is seen by. Please help me advertise this new feature as I know I can turn this site into a goldmine of technology information. Thanks for the help!

Inside the Revision3 DDos Attack Part Deux

On this week’s TWiTLive, Jim Louderback is one of Leo’s guests. He elaborates more on exactly what happened with the Memorial Day attack on Revision3.com.

I still can’t fathom that another company can come in and do something like this. By the sound of it, it wasn’t a planned attack. It seems that MediaDefender’s machines reacted to a change in Revision3’s setup. That still does not make it right. Revision3 was not doing anything illegal aside from not having a hole plugged up. I would say that MediaDefender should have just called Revision3 up and said they had a hole to close up. However, MediaDefender is obviously not a company with morals and decided to just be jerks about the whole thing. We shall see how this all goes.

TWiTLive is taking off……

TWiT.tv is the podcast network created by Leo Laporte, of “The Screen Savers” fame. If you have not got into podcasting yet, this is a spectacular place to start.

Contrary to what a lot of “noobs” think, you don’t need an iPod to listen to a podcast, or even an MP3 player. You can listen to them right on your computer.

Leo has just started TWiTLive.tv which is a video feed of him and his other guests and hosts recording the shows on the network. In time they will have downloadable shows available.

Using RSS to build a Personal Start Page

RSS is often a confusing topic for a lot of people. You might have seen icons such as the icon you see pictured here. The link associated with that icon is called a feed. Any major web browser such as Firefox or Internet Explorer can then use these to pull information to your browser.

Let’s say that you are using Firefox (hopefully you are, but that is a different topic for a different day). Click on an RSS icon you come across. Something like the following will pop-up:

Using the dropdown list, you can choose a few different ways to use this feed. Choosing “Live Bookmarks” will pull it into Firefox. You will probably also see Google and Yahoo (if you are using Firefox) on the list. If you use an iGoogle start page, you can choose Google and it will let you add it to your iGoogle page. Now, when you visit your page, any updates to that feed will automatically appear as soon as that feed is updated!

I use RSS to use as a scanning tool; when I do my morning routine I just look over my updated feeds so I don’t have to actually visit a particular website to see if it is updated. I use a website called Netvibes as my start page.

You can create multiple tabs for different topics and even listen to podcasts without leaving Netvibes! You can add RSS feeds to it by clicking on “Add Content” in the left hand side and adding an RSS feed address. Look for a closer look into Netvibes soon. There are also other home page sites like this, such as an iGoogle page as mentioned before or Pageflakes.

Upcoming Things to Look For

One of the many things I have on my plate right now is that I am always learning. One of the main things that really helps people learn is teaching. Being a tech guy, people are always coming to me for advice or to ask me a question about computers and other “tech” topics.

So one thing that I know my readers will enjoy is helping them make sense of all that is going on in tech. I will be covering a bunch of different topics I know a lot of people might have trouble with. I will also take suggestions as well as having some regulars here post their own topics. So visit the Contact page and send in suggestions!

Twitter is crack for Pat

So I finally took the jump and signed myself up for Twitter. For the uninitiated, Twitter is sort of like a micro-blog that can also be used from your cell phone. Twitter itself describes it as such:
“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”
In this completely interconnected world, it is just one more way for us to reach each other. Oddly enough, you would think the 140 character limit would be pretty dumb for each “post” (or as Twitter calls them: “Tweets”), but in a way it actually forces you to be succinct.