How to share a streaming video on your own website for free

Would you like to share a video with friends and family, but not share it with the world?  I’ll tell you how to do just that in this post.

This article is written assuming that you already have a site hosted by one of the many hosting services out there, like 1and1, go daddy, host monster, etc.  These hosting services usually give you many GB of storage space, but don’t usually make it easy to share your videos via a streaming server.

There are services out there that let you stream your videos without making them public, but you usually have to pay for these services.  For instance, MotionBox charges $24.99/month(!) for a Pro account, and the free account has too many limitations to be useful.

The best option for streaming video from any regular web server is probably FLV video.  This is the same format that the ‘big boys’ like YouTube use.  You can plunk down $620 for Adobe Flash CS4 so you can create a streaming video, or you can cobble one together using a couple of free tools.

If you have your video in one of several standard formats (avi, mp4, wmv, qt, etc.), you can use Free FLV Converter to convert your video to the FLV format.  This tool not only converts your video to FLV, but it produces accompanying SWF files and an html file you can put directly on your website.

The Free FLV Converter will create a video file with a name like VIDxxxxxx.flv (the xxxxxx is a date and timestamp).  It will also create FLVPlayer.swf and Skin.swf which are required for the client browser to play the video.  Also created is a VIDxxxxxxx.html file. This is a standard html file with all the code necessary to play the video.  You can just place all these files on your web server and create a link to that VIDxxxxxx.html file on another page.

If you are like me, though, you usually wind up forgetting your good video camera when going out and have to shoot video on your phone.  If this is the case, you probably have the video in 3GP format.  Unfortunately, Free FLV Converter does not convert from 3GP to FLV.  To convert a video from 3GP to one of the formats supported by Free FLV Converter, you can use the Free 3GP Video Converter to get the video into a more desirable format first.

Snow Leopard is still buggy.

So, I took the plunge and installed Snow Leopard on my brand new MacBook Pro. Big mistake!

First, let me say that I love the way Apple makes people pay for minor upgrades. Upgrade 10.5.8 to 10.6 for $30; come on, it should be free! They did the same thing with the iPod Touch from 2.2 to 3.0 for $10.

As soon as I installed the Snow Leopard upgrade, my WiFi (or Airport, in Apple parlance) began acting up. Every time I logged in, the Airport status would show an exclamation point, meaning it couldn’t get an IP address. If I turned Airport on then off, it would work just fine. It would work fine, that is, until it didn’t.

I would be browsing away, and all of a sudden I would get the “Your computer is not connected to the internet” message in Safari. The Airport status said everything was just fine, but I had no connectivity in any network applications. Again, turning Airport off then on fixed the problem, until it happened again.

I reinstalled the OS, no deal. I tried some things listed in the forums where many people say they had the same issue (just google snow leopard airport problem), no deal. I talked to Apple support three times and tried all of their suggestions, no deal.

So, I downgraded back to Leopard and kissed my $30 goodbye.

“It just works.” Yeah, right….

Relative file linking in Word 2007

Microsoft Word has been around for 26 years now, and it still lacks some common-sense features. For instance, you can’t use a relative path to point to linked documents. This means, if you put together a master document and use “Insert->Object->Text from file” to add a link to other documents, Word will insert the complete path to this linked document. If you move the master and linked documents to another folder, you will get a bunch of these: “Error! Not a valid filename”.

If you expand the field codes to see what is going on (select the item and hit Shift-F9), you’ll see that the link is pointing to the old path. If you edit the field code text and remove the path, but leave the file name, Word will prepend the path that is defined in “Word Options->Advanced->General->File Locations->Documents” (Oh, and if you’re wondering how to get to the “Word Options” menu, look under the oh-so-obvious Office Symbol at the upper left of the Word window).

So, here’s a work-around to enable relative paths to linked documents. You can create a custom document property that contains the path name to the active document’s path and include it in the file name of the INCLUDETEXT field code. This technique is mentioned here.

Linked files use the INCLUDETEXT field code to link to documents like this: {INCLUDETEXT “filename”}. If your linked file is RTF, it looks like this {INCLUDETEXT “filename” \c MSRTF}. You can embed a field code inside a field code to use a custom document property that contains a path like this: {INCLUDETEXT “{DOCPROPERTY pathString}\\fileName”}, where pathString defines the location of the document folder where the files exist, and fileName is the name of the file to link.

Now, you need to automatically set the custom document property pathString to the path of the active document. To do this, you can use a VBA script. You first need a method to write to a custom document property. Here is one that works well. Place that code into “ThisDocument” in you document's VBA editor tree (go to Developer->Visual Basic) to open the VBA editor. If you don’t see the Developer tab, go to the Office Icon->Word Options->Popular and check “Show Developer tab in the Ribbon”.

Now, place this code into the VBA script:

Private Sub Document_Open()

Call WriteProp(sPropName:="pathString",_
sValue:=ActiveDocument.Path,_
lType:=msoPropertyTypeString)

End Sub

Every time the document opens, it will assign the active document’s path to the “pathString” document property.

Maybe Microsoft knew about this super simple method and figured there was no need for relative paths;-)

meta-iPod: the iTunes Cleaner

I finally took the step of giving the kids their own iTunes install in each of their accounts. As usual, with Apple's inflexible software, when doing things that are slightly different that what the designers thought you "should" do, the process was a bit painful.

I wanted to share my library with the kids, so we all had access to the same music. I first moved all my music to the "Public" folder in Vista, but then had second thoughts. If one of the kids mistakenly deleted a file, it would be gone from my library and I wouldn't know it until I tried to play it or sync it to my iPod. I then moved the files back to my own iTunes Music folder and enabled sharing. In this process, iTunes temporarily lost its mind and started to reorganize some files into folders based on their tags. This resulted in about 150 duplicate files. Arghhhh...

Since iTunes library management (including its pitiful, unconfigurable duplicate finder) utterly stinks, I had to find a better (automated) way to remove the duplicates in a way that made sense.

This is where meta-iPod came in. It did the job wonderfully and was a breeze to use.

meta-iPod: the iTunes Cleaner

Managing my digital life

Over the past couple of years, I’ve gathered a set of tools for managing my digital life.  Most of the tools were discovered by reading feeds from Lifehacker, gHacks, Download Squad, and Tech Crunch using a Netvibes start page in Firefox.

For managing my passwords, keeping encrypted notes about accounts, and automatically filling web based forms, I use RoboForm.  It is by far, the best password manager and form filler out there.  I just wish they had a mac version for my macbook.

For keeping general notes that sync across my multiple machines, I use EverNote.  If you install the desktop app, you can clip any part of a web page (or any other document, for that matter) and include it in your note with a picture and a link.  The notes are accessible via the desktop app, or the web interface from any computer.  You can make multiple notebooks to organize things and can tag each of the notes.

For taking notes on the road, or when I can’t get to a computer, I use ReQall.  If you call ReQall from a phone, you can add a note by just talking into the phone.  ReQall will transcribe the note and email it to you.  Right now, I just use ReQall for this purpose, but this only scratches the surface of what this free service can do.

To keep certain documents in sync across machines, I use the free version of Dropbox.  It sets up a Dropbox folder on each local computer onto which you install the app.  Whatever you place in the dropbox will be synced on all of the machines. The size limit for the free account is 2 GB.

Since I have many photos and other irreplaceable files, I perform daily backups using SyncBack SE.  It is a great program for syncing local folders or doing backups.  The free version is great for most things, but I liked the advanced features that were only available in the SE version.  I prefer using SyncBack to the Windows backup utility because I like to have the actual files on the backup drive, not some compressed version of them.  If I need to go back to get an old version of a file, I just browse the directory structure of the backup drive and pull out the file.  I have SyncBack scheduled for daily and weekly backups in different locations.

To raise the paranoia level even higher, I think of the case where a fire takes out both my main machine and the backup drives.  To avoid this kind of data disaster, I backup to a remote site using Jungle Disk.  For large amounts of data, Jungle Disk is a bit more expensive than Mozy or Carbonite, but since it uses Amazon S3 and Rackspace servers, I think it might be more reliable.  I have also found that upload/download speeds are better with Jungle Disk. Another nice thing about Jungle Disk is that your files are available via a web interface if you need to access them from another machine.  If you are concerned about privacy, Jungle Disk gives you the option of encrypting the files with a private key that only you know (the upload/download stream is encrypted automatically using keys stored by Jungle Disk) .

Whenever I come across a site I like, or think I need to visit later, I use del.icio.us to bookmark it.  I LOVE del.icio.us.  I have about 1200 bookmarked sites right now.  You can tag the bookmarks with categories, so you can find stuff related to a certain topic.  You can share bookmarks with other del.icio.us users by just tagging it with for:username.  You can choose which bookmarks are public and which are private.  Most of my bookmarks are public, so I can easily share them with others by just linking to my page.

Well, that’s it for now.  I’ll post again with some other ideas for streamlining you life online.

Firefox keyboard shortcuts

Since my short term memory is totally shot, every time I learn something new, I have to write it down.  Since some of the stuff I learn may be useful to others, I sometimes write it here.

Being that I’m remarkably lazy, I don’t like making making the extra effort required to move my arm 8 inches from my keyboard to my mouse to perform tasks while in Firefox.  This is where keyboard shortcuts come in.  There is a great list of Firefox keyboard shortcuts on the mozilla site.  Some highlights:

• Open a new tab: Ctrl-T
• Close the active tab: Ctrl-W
• Undo close tab: Ctrl-Shift-T
• Next tab: Ctrl-Tab
• Previous tab: Ctrl-Shift-Tab
• Select the location bar: Alt-D or Ctrl-L

That last one is pretty useful when combined with Firefox quick searches.  A quick search can be defined by right-clicking inside a search box and choosing “Add a Keyword for this Search…” from the context menu.  You then get the bookmark dialog that looks like this:

You type in a name for the quick search and a keyword.  Once this is out of the way, if you go to the location bar, type your keyword then a space followed by search terms, the search will be performed.

For example, if I associate a “g” keyword with a google search, I can hit Alt-D to get to the location bar, type “g tony triolo” and I get a google results page with results about me (and a bunch of other Tony Triolos).

If you have the google toolbar installed, you can get to the search box on the toolbar by hitting Alt-G.  This keyboard shortcut for the google toolbar is not one that is easily found elsewhere on the interwebs.  If you don’t have google toolbar, or you prefer using the built in Firefox search bar (at the upper right), you can hit Ctrl-K to put the cursor in there.