New media is a catchphrase heard everywhere these days, but what is it supposed to mean? To me, new media is but a synonym of citizen’s journalism or independently produced content created by anyone. Wikipedia, however, describes new media as:

…traditional forms of media that have been transformed by advancements in digital technology and digital computing.

Not so exciting anymore, is it?

Since we launched Kitkast in October 2005, we were using the term new media (Rudy has even taken to calling me his “new media celebrity”). It wasn’t until more recently that we felt the word media didn’t fit with our entertainment-based skit show, that we stopped using the term.

Today I found out about the Canadian New Media Awards, an awards show that claims to “recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of individuals and companies in the Canadian new media industry.” I was pleased to find an awards ceremony that seemed so a propos to what we do on Galacticast, but when I had a look at the web site I was thoroughly disappointed.

The flaws:

• There is a fee to enter (I have never believed that one should pay to be nominated for an award)
• Last year’s winners are wolves in sheep’s clothing (ie. old/traditional media who happen to have a web site)

I find it aggravating that this awards ceremony is being sponsored by the Government of Canada and Canadian Heritage. Although my tax dollars are funding it I still have to pay to be nominated? Poppycock.

I don’t care what kind of money people have dished out in the past, it’s time we change awards ceremonies to give awards to the people who truly deserve it, not the highest bidders.

Usually when an IKEA opens in your area everyone knows about it. I feel the same is true for the Apple Store, but I’ve been proven wrong.

Last year I heard rumours of an Apple Store opening in Laval, a flourishing city just north of Montreal. I didn’t believe the rumours because I figured that an Apple Store would open in Montreal before there… BUT… after messaging back and forth with one of our viewers on MySpace, it turns out it’s true!

Apple Store Carrefour Laval

Now that we know about it we’re going to have to take advantage of it. In addition to having them check a broken key on my MacBook’s keyboard, here are a couple of other things we’d like to do there:

• Attend a workshop on Final Cut Pro
• See if we can set up an event for video blogging/podcasting to raise awareness on our craft

This is really exciting… my only fear is that everything might be in French… :P We’ll see.

I think it’s only fair to post a follow-up to my last post about LibSyn support…

I received this e-mail yesterday and am very pleased with their response. They have done what they could to give us access to a file format that is supported by Excel.

I guess you just have to put pressure on them to read the e-mail before they respond…

On 1/22/07, Libsyn Support wrote:

Hi Casey,

Thanks for your patience. We took this issue to heart and have made a few updates:

1) There’s now a link to a CSV containing summary stats for each of your files
2) Instead of the ambiguous blank screen if logging is turned off for an account (it is for yours), there is a message pointing you to the settings option to enable it

We hope you find these updates helpful and would appreciate any feedback you wish to offer.

Regards,

Marty Mulligan

Galacticast was hosted by LibSyn for the first two-three months of it’s run. However, we found that paying $30-50/month for hosting was ridiculous and quickly switched to Blip, a company that actually listened to our ideas on how a host should be organized.

Since we already had so many videos uploaded to LibSyn and such little extra time to transfer them over to Blip we felt it was easier to just keep paying $5/month to keep our LibSyn account running. Now, after paying them hundreds of dollars over the span of 1.5 years for three different accounts (galacticast, kitkast and coderonin), we’ve decided it’s time to cut the cord.

We’ve already uploaded all our Galacticast videos to Blip and the galacticast LibSyn account is ready to be canceled. Our only issue now is to get a copy of our stats for those first few episodes before we nuke the account. The problem, however, is that their stats are offered in an unprintable flash and as you can see from the below conversation their support team doesn’t pay close attention to the e-mails we send… our main reason for switching to Blip.

On 1/19/07, Casey McKinnon wrote:

Every time I try to print my stats or save them as pdf, this is what I get:

I would like to know how to print all of my stats to date.

Thanks,
Casey

–
Casey McKinnon
Executive Producer, Galacticast

http://www.galacticast.com/

On 1/19/07, Libsyn Support wrote:

You cant print the page due to the fact its flash it wont print. You will need to click the apache logs download the desired month and print that.

Ken

On 1/19/07, Casey McKinnon wrote:

Hi Ken,

That doesn’t work for us and we’ve tried it on multiple browsers (on Mac and Windows XP). Is there any way you can get us the information in a decent visual format (perhaps in Excel)? This information is vitally important to us.

Thank you,
Casey

On 1/19/07, Libsyn Support wrote:

You can download tools that will process the files for you into a readable format. The only think I can think of would to be to highligh all the text and such in stats area and copy and past it into word. It might take a little editing there but that is as far as we would be able to go.

Ken

On 1/19/07, Casey McKinnon wrote:

Maybe you misunderstood our last e-mail. We do not have access to the apache log or xml files. The link from our stats page leads to an empty page. Our only information is coming from the flash stats application that we cannot copy and paste from.

Could you send us the files, or make them available to us?

Thank you,
Casey

On 1/21/07, Casey McKinnon wrote:

I have not heard back from LibSyn in two days and would appreciate it if someone would go through this email in its entirety to solve the issue as soon as possible.

Thank you,
Casey

Ugh… the worst part of dealing with LibSyn is that everytime you send them an e-mail they delete your previous message so they don’t follow the thread of conversation, but reply as if it’s a whole new question.

Wish us luck on getting those stats.