Video Edit's project editing screen

Enter Video Edit, an application by Winnipeg developers DHI Inc. Video Edit allows you to easily cut together multiple clips, trim them inside the application, and render them to a new clip, which you can then send to YouTube, email, post on a blog, Facebook, Twitter et cetera.

I got an early look at Video Edit and my experience with the application was good. The editing was quick, easy and the rendering time was fast, as promised. I found only a few shortcomings, which I’m sure will be addressed in later versions of the app.

• You can’t delete project files. Creating a project is easy enough, but when you’re finished rendering it, if there’s no further edits or additions to make, you’d think removing it from the project list would be an option. Not so.
• While every other part of the application operates in either portrait or landscape mode, the Camera Roll screen forces portrait mode.
• Uploading clips to YouTube or posting them to other sites must be done outside the application in the camera roll, after you’ve rendered the clip. I’d like to see an option to upload it inside the application directly following the render.

Video Edit employs help overlays to get you started. It's so simple you barely need them.

But that’s it – just three small gripes on an otherwise great application that fills a much-needed gap in the iPhone’s functionality.

For more info on Video Edit visit www.videoeditapp.com. To be released June 2010.

About a month ago, Calgarypedia’s domains expired due to a miscommunication with the sites owners and the registrar of the domains. Because of this, a domain-scouring bot picked up the domains while they were in internet limbo and gave them those awful “what you need, when you need it” domain parking pages. (Side note: Whoever wrote those pages obviously has no idea what I need or when I need it.)

During the time that Calgarypedia’s domains were taken over, it completely dropped from Google’s index. It took a while to clean up the mess and when everything was rectified and the domains were back online, I could find the content of Calgarypedia back in Google’s index by doing a site: search. But keyword searches, even for the site’s name, came up with nothing. And still come up with nothing a month later.

Now I’m starting to worry that the site has been penalized in some way for messing around with its domains. But it’s hard to tell sometimes what Google sees.

Now that that’s out of the way and I won’t get slammed for stealing precious intellectual property, I have a few things to say to my unborn child.

Stephen Hawking has just announced that time travel is possible. With that in mind, even though I don’t have a large hadron collider and a rocket ship faster than the speed of light, I’d still like to imagine I can visit you 20 years down the road and ask you all the things you wish I would have done differently. My hope is that you’ll love me dearly and tell me you don’t regret one moment of being my son/daughter.

In reality, you’ll probably tell me you really wish I’d bought you that computer/phone/apple gadget you wanted so badly when you were 16. I’d like to think I will teach you not to place such value on material things, but I know I like shiny things with buttons and touch screens and such, so how could I deny you of the same wants?

Here’s a few things I promise to do with you as you grow up. I’ll keep it bulleted, cause I know how kids these days hate reading.

• Take you to your first, seventh and twenty-third concert. Rock, folk, indie, funk, soul … we’ll vary it up. Just no emo/screamo/justin bieber. for the love of all that is sacred. no justin bieber.
• Let you beat around my old guitars. Get a ukulele / mandolin / schroeder’s piano from peanuts in your hands at age 5. maybe sooner, if your mom allows it in between all the books she’ll have you reading.
• Talk to you like a human being (in addition to all the gibberish baby talk).
• Teach you to sing (and harmonize with your dad). Remember it comes from your diaphragm, not your throat! Unless you’re Ray LaMontagne. Then it comes from that cloud of smoke inside your lungs that you never exhaled. On that note, don’t even think about being a smoker.
• Read to you. You’re going to get literature totally crammed down your throat by your mother, but I want some input, too. I’m going to read you cool shit like The Age of Spiritual Machines, High Fidelity and when you’re ready, 1984, For Whom The Bell Tolls and Fight Club. I’ll leave the ones about kids with magic sticks, rings and hats to your mom.

That’s all for now … you’re going to get such an amazing cultural education at home, that I can promise you. Oh, and before I forget, we’re going to love the absolute shit out of you.

Sincerely, your dad.

Imagine

Control (Acoustic) by Doug McArthur

However one significant beef I have with this option is that the controls on the factory system are terrible for selecting music. I have 3770 songs in my library, and scrolling through them with a slow-to-react wheel is definitely not the most efficient method of selecting music. Especially when I need to do it quickly and get back to keeping my attention on the road.

To circumvent this problem I’ve gotten into the habit of picking an album or playlist before I get into the car and then plugging my phone into the USB port. Once that happens, you relinquish control of your music to the car’s controls, which, as previously mentioned, are shitty.

But I shouldn’t have to do that. I want to be able to quickly find what I want to listen to and get on with the driving. I hate to say it, but I think Ford’s Sync technology actually does a great job of this.

One way that I like to listen to my music, and maybe this is weird, is to put my library on shuffle, find a song from an album I like, then turn shuffle off to hear songs from that album. I can’t do this in the CSX, though, because it sorts songs by song name and not by album.

My solution is to create a playlist with all the songs in my library sorted by album name as opposed to song name. It should allow me to do what I want to do – scan through a bunch of songs until I find the one I want and then turn off shuffle to hear that album.

Despite my grief with using the system this way, I should say that the USB port in the car is a really amazing feature and something that sold me on the car originally.

Realizing it’s been a while since I discussed how it’s going, I decided it’s time for a quick update on my situation. Avoiding beer drinking is actually going quite well. Last night I finally rid myself of the Red Stripe that had been lingering around in my fridge, taunting me. Other than that, I”ve been able to do all the fun things I normally do and find great alternatives to drinking beer – either not drinking at all, or enjoying a glass of wine or two.

One interesting effect of my choice to abstain from that most delightful combination of malts and hops is that I just drink less in general. I find myself in situations where normally I’d have a beer or two without thinking about it and since I can’t do that, I decide to have water or nothing at all to drink. And I think that’s where this choice is really going to make an impact for me. I’m not completely cutting myself off, but at the same time, I’m drinking a lot less and that has made me feel much better, health-wise.

I also started playing dodgeball one night a week, which has brought back some familiar injuries originating from my days as a box lacrosse player – specifically my weak knee. It’s been a struggle coming back every week without crumbling but I think the more abuse I give my body, the more it can take.

So I’m starting an ultimate frisbee team for the spring league – but I need more players (girls especially). Any0ne in Winnipeg who is interested, do me a solid and fill out this survey.

Every time Facebook comes out with a redesign of their website, cries from the huddled masses decree it to be the worst atrocity since Snooki was punched in the face.

Well, this time around I’m taking a preemptive strike. I’m calling out all of you who will undoubtedly whine and cry about the impending update to Facebook; start groups petitioning the admins to allow you to go back in time; and eventually come into the present with the rest of us kicking and screaming.  No matter what you do, it’s going to happen anyway, so I’m attempting to save you a lot of the time and effort you’ll waste railing against something you can’t change. Just suck it up.

The fact of the matter is Facebook is free for all and that means, although they’re incredibly receptive to the feedback of their users, they can pretty much do whatever they want with the site.

I believe web developers generally have the best interest of users at heart. They spend hours looking at research about how people use their sites so they can engineer better ways for you to interact. Faster ways. More efficient ways.

That’s a good thing. So cry if you like, but it’s happening.

But then it came down to the nitty gritty. The little daily-use apps that help workflow, help me remember things, and generally get stuff done. So I turned to my friend Mike Tighe, a web developer in Calgary who I met when we were both working at Critical Mass. He’s a wealth of information and he didn’t disappoint when I asked him what applications I should download for my shiny new Mac. So without further ado, I give you Mike’s list of must-have Mac apps.

• 1Password for storing login information and autofilling forms on the web.
• Adium for MSN, Google Talk, AIM and Facebook Chat
• AppZapper for uninstalling programs
• Coda for web development – coding, text editor + file transfer + svn + css + terminal + books + more = whoah.
• Evernote for note taking
• Google Chrome for fast browsing
• Jing for screencasts and screen grabs
• OmniGraffle for diagrams / information architecture
• OmniOutliner for notes
• OmniFocus for time management
• Silverback for UX testing
• Versions for SVN
• Twhirl for Twitter (Mike likes Twhirl, my suggestion is Tweetie)
• Transmit for FTP
• VLC for video

I have to say that I’ve not tried all of these apps just yet but the ones I have started using have been really useful. Below, I’ve added a few of my own favourite apps that weren’t in Mike’s list.

• Skype for cheap long distance / video chat
• Growl for notifications + GrowlTunes for iTunes notifications
• Chromatic Tuner for tuning guitars + other instruments
• Logic Studio for music production
• Final Cut Studio for video editing
• Handbrake for DVD ripping
• Toast for CD/DVD burning
• Picasa for photo organizing (if you don’t like iPhoto)
• Parallels Desktop for running Windows apps

I couldn’t imagine really needing much more software than that … but if you guys can think of anything essential that I’m missing here, by all means, comment away. And by the way, thanks Mike!

So now that I own both the iPhone 3G S and a MacBook Pro, I really don’t see what possible use I could have for the new iPad. First off, what a terrible name. I’ve been reading for weeks that the rumoured names for the device were iSlate, iTablet, iPad … and iPad wins. Get ready for the maxi pad jokes, Apple. Actually, MADtv has that pretty much covered in this sketch from four years ago.

And okay, it’s a nice device for consuming media, and the iBook store is neat, but the iPad falls in its ability to be a do-everything device. It lacks a camera and it doesn’t multitask. I heard one defence for the iPad stating that it was made this way on purpose, as to not pull sales away from the MacBooks. That makes sense, but then what do I need the iPad for? I haven’t quite figured it out.

So the fanfare and the hype that has been building up for weeks didn’t quite deliver what it promised, but when does it ever do that? I’d say rarely ever. Maybe iPad version 2.0 will take some of the critics cries into consideration.

Another disappointment I felt during the whole Apple CES keynote was that I expected iPhone OS 4.0 to be released, but it looks like I’m going to have to wait for that, too. I guess that’s okay, though, as I don’t think I’ll upgrade to OS 4.0 until blackra1n or somebody else figures out how to jailbreak it. And my guess is Apple is going to make it a lot harder to do this time around.

All being said, yes. I’m a total Apple fanboy now.

And look at the super awesome shiny wonderful case I am getting for my MacBook! Excited!