pirillo

Thanks to Thomas Aleksander from geeks.pirillo.com for this link. A great site with a program that changes your desktop backgrounds as often as you like.

☆ Desktoptopia ☆ .

I started to concentrate on my blog in the last 3-4 months with the hopes of building a core readership that would possibly follow me into other online media formats. I hope to one day be a successful internet broadcaster helping people with technology questions and problems. I like the idea of making video and audio broadcasts from my home and I am inspired by two people, Chris Pirillo and Leo Laporte. The problem is that I am not sure if someone in my position can really reach the same amounts of people that Chris and Leo get today.

I honestly think that the internet is the future of media. An amazing amount of people in North America and Europe already get the majority of their news from the internet and I think that old media will eventually be assimilated into what we call the internet today, or will fall by the wayside. It is an exciting time because we are on the cusp of that change. We already see that old media is integrating itself with the internet starting with news papers a few years ago; who post a lot of content online, and now with TV. The main networks in the US are starting to post content online once it has aired on their network. If we look at radio, even in smaller markets we see that most FM and some AM stations in North America are broadcasting online to try and reach a wider audience.

How does that relate to the topic and how does that relate to people who are already into online broadcasting? Looking first at my aforementioned inspirational subjects Chris and Leo. They both have a successful day job running projects online broadcasting themselves helping people (that’s not to say that they don’t have other online projects that help pay the bills). They didn’t start there however. When I first logged onto Chris’ and Leo’s pages, it was not by mistake. I was actually looking to find content about them. The reason for that was my previously having watched them on TechTV when it was on the air. And for that I am curious to know how popular their current endeavors would be if they had not been in the public eye in the old media format. For some reason we see the TV as a type of validation for their knowledge and expertise. This is not to say that Chris nor Leo doesn’t have the knowledge that is required for what they are doing, but that it was the catalyst that helped them to where they are today.

Now if we look at the question “Can you start blogging now and still become techy famous?”, I think that answer is yes. However the changes are certainly very very slim that you will become as popular as Chris Pirillo or Leo Laporte. There are many other blogs that I read on a regular basis and these people do get quite a lot of readers to their sites. They are very popular in their own right however most have been working at it for 10 plus years, since blogging was first seen on the internet.

Now I think my decision needs to be how I will invest the next 10 years to gain readers or viewers. Is the blog the only answer? No. Is a podcast the answer? No. Is a video stream the answer? No. Is a mix of some or all three? I think it is

For the recent past since I have been posting to my blog on a regular basis, I have been uploading my posts to lockergnome.com and undo.tv. I have been using these sites as sort of a syndication of my blog to gain readership. It’s exciting to get your word out there and have people seeing it.

As some of you know I was on vacation last week so I wasn’t doing any posting. We stay up north where there is no phone, never mind an internet connection. When I got back and started getting ready to post things I was greeted with a 404 error from unto.tv. I did a little looking around and found that the expiration for the domain is July 24th which just happens to be tomorrow! I wonder if the site was emptied before the domain expires.

I am a bit sad that the medium isn’t there any longer but I totally understand why. If you were there in the past couple of months I was the only person contributing content. I think the major players in the endeavor stopped sometime in the spring.

Chris might have some insight into this and I look forward to his comments when he reads the post. I don’t think the idea for the site worked out, Chris and Leo who were the top contributors and also the owners of the site I believe; have moved on to their current projects.

Does anyone know of any other site similar to undo.tv that people can post their content to?

Total creds to Chris Pirillo for this topic. I was reading through some of my RSS feeds and here is a post about a peanut butter taste test. I must say that this is a really cool topic because if you like peanut butter, then you most likely have a brand that you think is SSOOOOO much better than any other. As do I

I am a huge Peter Pan fan and have been since I was a kid. My brother is also that way and I suppose it’s due to our trips to Maine in the summer time. That’s because we can’t buy it up here in Canada

Part of my comment on Chris’ blog post:

“We vacationed a lot as a family when I was young in Maine. I love it there. Peter Pan is all part of the childhood memory that also includes jumping waves in 59° water, drives by the President’s summer place (Bush Sr. in Kennebunkport), the fair and salt water taffy from Goldenrod Kisses in York Beach and the family being together.”

It’s okay though because we stock up! That’s the nice thing about living close to the boarder I suppose. Take a look at his video. His wife Ponzi puts him through his paces

Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes

I have been working on this site more with the back end theme options that posting in the past week. You must all know by now that I have been working off site and that’s adding about 3 hours to my commute everyday. That’s taking time away from my TheSleepyGeek time.

So now that I have WicketPixie setup and running, I want to know what you think! Drop me an email at marcus@hamaker.net. The orange background won’t be the regular colour but I am supporting the Dutch side in the Euro2008 Football tournament. So for now, it’s Oranje!!!

Hup Holland Hup!

As for the theme itself? It is quite complex so there are a lot of things to set up. To get it working correctly I had to make some modifications to code at the php level. Not something that I was completely comfortable doing myself at the beginning but it forced me to learn some php code which was a great byproduct of doing this project. Now I think I am starting to like my layout. I am kind of at the same place I was with the other theme I was using; pages and widgets are in the right spots but now it’s time to move forward.

It’s time to unleash the power of the theme. One of the things that I am most interested in is the social me page. That’s really something that Chris Pirillo came up with for his site but it is so well done I feel the need to copy it outright. Look for that in the near future.

I have been waiting for the new Wicketpixie theme from Chris Pirillo for a couple of weeks. He has released the new version of it and I have installed it on my website.

NOW! I need to configure it There are so many options and possibilities with this theme that I am a little confused as to where to start. There are a few things that Chris recommends on his post such as plugins. I installed those and now I need to customize how the page is laid out. The problem with it is that there is some customizing to do straight in PHP. Not sure how that will work out.

Wish me luck.