Happy Halloween

Oh ya, and Happy Halloween to all you jack-o-lanterns out there... geeky jack-o-lanterns, that is.
photo courtesy of: http://www.technophobic.com/824/rss-pumpkin/
Andrew Venegas , San Jose , SJSU , Soapbox Prophet ,Tech , Halloween,

Word from The Colbert Nation

In case you didn't hear, the suits at Viacom demanded this week that YouTube pull most of its comedy central shows of the website.
MediaShift's Mark Glaser responded by posting this great open-ended letter to Stephen Colbert (of The Colbert Report) yesterday. I wonder if anyone at Viacom read it...

Andrew Venegas , San Jose , SJSU , Soapbox Prophet ,Tech , Youtube, Stephen Colbert

Political Digging

There's a new political site out there making some waves in the Web 2.0 community; it's a new approach on some old (we're talking Ancient Greece) ideas.


The site is called HOTSOUP, and it's a completely immersive community with forums, shareable booklists, news, and a whole bunch more. Check it out - apparently Clinton thinks that the site is pretty cool too.


Andrew Venegas , San Jose , SJSU , Soapbox Prophet ,Tech , Hotsoup, Clinton

The Guardian's Gonna Get Busy

Here's something out in The Guardian today that I didn't read in the American press. I'm sure it'll gather some steam in the coming days though; not even the CIA can keep a lid on this one in an election year.

It seems that the CIA has been conducting those flights to get around human rights watchers after all. And I'm supposed to be afraid terrorists in the Middle East getting me? Yikes.

Andrew Venegas , San Jose , SJSU , Soapbox Prophet ,Tech , Guardian, CIA

David Weinberger: Everything Is Miscellaneous

I stumbled upon this video by David Weinberger (Cluetrain co-author) on YouTube. Fascinating, especially if you're into data organization, web make-up, or philosophy.

Andrew Venegas , San Jose , SJSU , Soapbox Prophet ,Tech , Cluetrain Manifesto, David Weinberger

The Merc is going as a Skeleton this Halloween

That's right, all skin and bones already, the San Jose Mercury News has decided to cut another 101 staff members, according to the AP.

The newspaper will eliminate 41 newsroom positions or about 15 percent of its editorial staff by Dec. 19, with the rest of the cuts coming from other departments including circulation, finance, marketing and human resources, said Dan Breeden, a Mercury News spokesman.

I'm wondering where the news is going to be coming from soon... the unemployment office?

Andrew Venegas , San Jose , SJSU , Soapbox Prophet ,Tech , AP, San Jose Mercury

iTunes University at SJSU (and the NEED for webspace)

I'm diggin' the notion of letting students store content on a central server, accessible from anywhere on the internet as part of a student's portfolio or as a class project, but how are SJSU student's supposed to access it?


The story first broke when Invisible Inkling's own Ryan Sholin wrote in the Spartan Daily a piece entitled, "Apple to serve up SJSU podcasts" in March of 2006. The story resurfaced September 25 when Tyanne Roberts wrote about a podcasting class for teachers in the Spartan Daily. Then dead air.

More has been said in the blogosphere by students than anywhere else by anyone else.

But there has been no explanation from the University or iTunes about how STUDENTS can access the server. That's like writing the PHP for Digg and then removing the submit button!

Especially when other faculty, attempting to start a wiki site for SJSU students, need space for students to post their video and audio content (props to Stephen Greene and the other teachers working on that, btw).


It's amazing that a University in the heart of the Silicon Valley is essentially telling students to buy their own server space if they want to produce content, because the University doesn't feel that new media is a NECESSITY in the new job markets.

That'd be a hoot - except for the fact that our school is now competing with every other school in the nation - no, the world - for the same jobs.

image taken from: http://www.hlbiznartz.com/kandles.html

And if students aren't given the tools they need to practice the skills they MUST develop, San Jose will soon be in a world of hurt.

Andrew Venegas , San Jose , SJSU , Soapbox Prophet ,Tech , Stephen Greene, iTunes U

Robert Scoble Sneaked a Peak at Zune

He talked yesterday with Matt Jubelirer, Zune project manager.
Image taken from Wikipedia.
The interview highlighted what the future of music sharing may become (sharing of unprotected files via wi-fi networks), but it also highlighted the very thing that brought Microsoft back from the PR wasteland of the 1990's - personality (remember the Evil Empire?)!



In other words, Matt Jubelirer - a Robert Scoble, he is not not.

Don't get me wrong, I've never met Matt, and I'm sure that he's a genuinely nice guy, but it seems that he's been told to JUST PUSH THE PRODUCT.

The brilliance of Microsoft with Scoble was that it allowed him to talk normally. No "markets" or other sterile, calculated words. It was fresh, and altogether... well, human.

Cluetrain, and all that stuff.

Maybe this concept is like talking to dinosaurs ten seconds before the comet hits, but conversation, not spin, is where the future - and people - are going to be living and spending their money.

So why not join them?

Andrew Venegas , San Jose , SJSU , Soapbox Prophet ,Tech , Zune, Robert Scoble

Steve Gilmor Killed TV

He put out a great post yesterday, saying that TV and broadcast are dead - aggregated to death.

The irony is that it's because of him, or rather content like his, which can be viewed at anytime from any place, that TV is finally getting strangled like telegraphs did by the telephone industry.

Image taken from Wikipedia. Article: TV.
The time and effort it took to send a telegram wasn't as convenient as the ease at which any Joe Smoe could pick up the tele and get Granny Mae.

Note to broadcast execs: Diversify your portfolio now if you don't want to lose your shirts.

Andrew Venegas , San Jose , SJSU , Soapbox Prophet ,Tech , TV, Dan Gilmore

AP Photographers on Campus at SJSU

Associated Press photographers Marcio Sanchez and Jeff Chiu will be speaking at SJSU in DBH 133 at 6:00 PM on November 2nd for those of you that are interested.

Image by AP photographer Jeff Chiu .The event is also being put on by the NPPA (National Press Photographers Association) at SJSU. Kudos to SJSU for getting them to come. I don't think that they're even being paid to be here, so they're really just scouting for talent/engaging with students. The more people that go, the more events like this that will come. It's free, so check it out.

Andrew Venegas , San Jose , SJSU , Soapbox Prophet ,Tech , Marcio Sanchez, Jeff Chiu

Pinnacle and SJSU NPPA Class

As promised, here's the info on the free class this Saturday. It's here at SJSU (October 28th):

8:00 AM Breakfast in DBH 133.

9:00 AM DBH 222 - "Photoshop for Journalists" session, where industry insiders will critique photos on digital media brought by the students.

12:15 PM, DBH 133 - there will be a workshop on "Working with Natural Light",

2:30 PM, DBH 133 - there will be a workshop on "Using Flash Effectively".


Stop by and check it out - if nothing else, it's a great way of meeting some interesting people from the video/photo industry.

For more info, check out the SJSU NPPA website here.

Andrew Venegas , San Jose , SJSU , Soapbox Prophet ,Tech , NPPA,
flash ,

Last post on Roger, and Free Editing Class

I promise.

Campus Movie fest is over, and no, we didn't get the grand prize... or any prize for that matter. But I'll be doing it again next year, and I'm working on my flash and editing skills right now to prepare.

The movie guys put all the movies from San Jose up, including Roger - check them out. And yes, it streams, so you don't have to download it. Sheesh!

Speaking of skills, there's going to a class on Editing and on Flash design this Saturday, all day. I'll have more info on it by tonight; stay tuned.

Andrew Venegas , San Jose , SJSU , Soapbox Prophet ,Tech , Campus Movie Fest,
flash ,

It's been awhile... God love school papers.

Hey, in case you hadn't already checked it out - Firefox 2.0 is out of Beta baby! They've integrated most of the add-ons from 1.5 into it too, so they should work just fine.
The only thing that was better about 1.5 is their website, which doesn't have as good UI.

But the software is just as good as the last one was, with the ability to reload tabs and doubleclick on the task bar to add tabs. Good stuff, that is. I hear the security's improved too, although I've never had a problem since the creation of Adblock and NoScript.

...oh ya... and did anyone get excited about IE7? Neither did I...

Andrew Venegas , San Jose , SJSU , Soapbox Prophet ,Tech , Firefox 2.0 ,

Posting from the Grave

Don't worry, I'm not dead - but my computer is.


That's right, I got home from Vegas Sunday night to a fried motherboard, chip, and graphics card. So this week has been spent catching up on classes and frantically performing brain surgery on my baby.

Here's the good news, if there is any.

I'm running the GeForce 7950 now on a brand new motherboard with an AMD Dualcore chip. BLAZING! Yes, I know some of Intel's chips are a little better right now, but there's still something to be said for brand loyalty. Isn't Intel still an evil empire?

Plus I finally got a 4GB memory chip for my camera, so video posting for this site is right around the corner.

This is going to be a work in progress for a while, till I get the hang of all the editing.

Off to Vegas

So, I've been sick the last few days, and thank God I'm finally starting to feel better.

It's a good thing my girlfriend, Jules, is taking me to the airport today. It's my friend Jordan's birthday today, and we're sending off his liver with style.

Oh ya, happy birthday to Duarte too (that's right, I know you read this). He's 21 today.

If you see this guy around, buy him a drink. Grrr. Mean face.
For those of you that don't know him, he's the tennis club president here at SJSU.

Oh! Unrelated, check out Jessica Drnek's new website; I have a feeling she's going to start posting a lot.

Good thing too; we need more student bloggers at SJSU.

Andrew Venegas , San Jose , SJSU , Soapbox Prophet ,Tech , Jessica Drnek ,

Roger

After much sweat and blood, I finally think I've gotten Roger onto my server. Here goes nothing.

It is a DivX movie, but you should be able to play it just fine in Quicktime. Enjoy!

Andrew Venegas , San Jose , SJSU , Soapbox Prophet ,Tech ,JMC163 , Roger

Keep On Chugging

For those of you that doubt Comcast's slow internet connection around campus... that's after two days of uploading. Maybe tomorrow; sorry to everyone that's waiting for it to go online.


Also, I've been having trouble posting my podcast mp3 links from Hipcast onto Blogger Beta (since it's beta), so I just did the next logical thing. I bought andrewvenegas.com from GoDaddy with a 100 GB of space. I'll start hosting all my content there as soon as I get the FTP configured.

I'm not sure how to transfer my site here over to GoDaddy without losing all my Google juice, so anyone with some tips would be listened to eagerly.

P.S. Thanks to Diggnation for the promo code. Saved a bunch.

Andrew Venegas , San Jose , SJSU , Soapbox Prophet ,Tech , Go Daddy ,

Uploading May Take Awhile

Just thought this was funny; and to think, I was going to post the DVD quality. It'll be up by tomorrow - just cross your fingers.

Andrew Venegas , San Jose , SJSU , Soapbox Prophet ,Tech , campusmoviefest ,

Good Op-Ed Piece in Spartan Daily

The piece is refering to the law just passed, allowing for the suspension of Habeas Corpus for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It's straight to the point, (don't mind the typos in it) and a healthy dose of sanity.



Andrew Venegas , San Jose , SJSU , Soapbox Prophet ,Tech , Spartan Daily ,

Campusmoviefest Ends Today

Sorry I didn't post yesterday; I was too caught up in watching the first rain of the season - I wish!

Campusmoviefest ends today, which means that yesterday, team JMC was busy shuffling files and cropping clips to move our product. I really hope more people get into it next year. We learned a lot bunch about editing on a low budget, and the result was pretty decent.

I'll post the movie here as soon as Google approves it.

Andrew Venegas , San Jose , SJSU , Soapbox Prophet ,Tech , campusmoviefest ,