After years on hold, I've started using my home page again: ephealy.com

I'll still watch my friends here on LiveJournal, but I'll be posting there from now on. Feel free to drop by and keep in touch.

I bought my first domain eleven years ago - for the Conspiracy X RPG. Over the years, I've purchased, hosted and transferred a number of domains. Back 'in the day', domain maintenance took a decent amount of time. If you wanted to transfer a domain from one person to the next, it often felt like brain surgery.

Times have changed.

For years, I hosted my ephealy.com domain with a small service back in New York. I used to have an online journal, what would now qualify as a blog I suppose, but took it down when I deployed to Iraq. Since then, I’ve only used my domain for email.

Last week, I decided to change that - to make an actual site where I can talk about all the nifty things I’ve been up to. To do that, I wanted to move my domain, but was concerned about the transfer. Sure, I don’t have a site right now, but I was worried about losing access to my email account for days or weeks. It had to be done, though, so last night I pulled the trigger.

Man, was a surprised, and pleasantly so. Not two hours later, my domain was transferred and my email was working at the new mail server. I think I may have experienced 20 minutes of down time in the middle of the night. That’s it.

I’m in awe of how far internet technology has come. Not only can I buy domains for a couple dollars (as opposed to the $30 I paid back in 1997), but the maintenance of these basic building blocks of internet communication is now fluid and easy.

What a difference a decade can make.

Radio Rivendell is a non-commercial, non-profiting web radio station that plays fantasy music 24x7. The station has been online since 2001, growing out of a Shoutcast experiment.

Blah blah blah, right? Well, I think it's a cool little site. I won't bore you with all the reasons why I like the idea of a 24x7 stream of fantasy music. If you're into the genre, you already get it. Here are a couple other things I like about Rivendell:

Interviews: Everyone can do interviews, but the Council has integrated then into the site in a slick way, giving each group their own mini-page on the site. On the mini-pages, you can see a complete list of albums, and even a list of all the composer's songs.

Just Played: I'm loving this page, where you can see what has recently played on Rivendell. Each song/album/artist is linked to internal pages.

Anyway, check the channel out.

Have you ever used UStream? How hard is it to set up a stream? How does streaming live video differ from recording for later release? How would you handle multiple video streams coming in at the same time? Is there an easy way to toggle between two contributing video feeds? For instance, if I wanted one camera on the audience and one on a presented, is that possible with UStream? If so, how hard is it to set up?

If you have a blog, and you talk about products, it’s nice to link to places where people can purchase those products. It’s also smart, if you want to generate a little extra income, to join affiliate programs so that, when someone does purchase a product based on your recommendation, you can generate revenue.

I wonder if there is a way to find out which of your visitors are taking your advice. On some sites, vendors can see the contact information for any customer that purchases their product. But what about affiliate marketers?

Do you know of any affiliate programs that allow the affiliate to see who is purchasing, based on their recommendations?

I've decided to try my hand at creating a site for an upcoming podcast, instead of having someone else do it. I've never do it before, though, so I'm a little... OK, I'm petrified. There is so much I don't know.

I think I've found the theme I will be customizing: WP Premium.

The big question right now is this: What plug-ins do I need to know about, if I want to do this podcast right, from the start?

Pretend for a moment that I have an audio feed that is constantly being updated - perhaps it's a live stream, a list of MP3 files that play back-to-back, or a single podcast feed with a regular (consistent) release schedule. How can I make it convenient for my listeners to get to that content?

Many listeners will subscribe to the RSS feed, getting alerts on Google Reader, or some other service. Many will also subscribe via iTunes. if the content is updated regularly - let's say daily - wouldn't it be cool if listeners had a player embedded in the toolbar of their browser, so all they had to do was press PLAY and they could get the most current info on the spot?

I made a quick mock-up of what a possible Firefox add-on might look like. Check out the top right corner of the below image:



Pressing PLAY serves up the latest MP3 from the target podcast feed. It could also serve a live stream from an internet radio station, or other network. Clicking the RSS icon brings the user to the feed URL. Added functions could include the ability to create a custom play list or static MP3s, or feed URLs.

A long time ago, back when EverQuest was a free (mostly text chat) game on AOL, I signed up for an AOL account. In 1996, everyone used AOL. If you wanted to communicate with people online, AOL was the method of choice. In fact, I got my first website client using AOL Instant Messaging.

Unfortunately, for me, I didn't maintain my AOL account, and lost my username of choice: ephealy.

Here I am, more than a decade later, and I'd like to re-secure my old username. Every time I sign up for a new site or service, I use the same username: ephealy. But, when it comes to AOL/AIM, I can't. After all this time, AOL still has my old, now defunct, screen name in their database. What more, I can't figure out how to get in touch with them so I can recover it. As far as I can tell, they want you to use an automated service, but that service can only recover accounts that have lapsed for less than six months.

So, I'm stuck. But, I am holding out hope that (some day) I can recover the first username I ever had.

If you happen to know how I can recover my old account, please let me know.

I now have a del.icio.us account... http://del.icio.us/ephealy

Utterz allows you to share A/V using your phone, or through Utterz.com - though you can't sign up for an account without a cell phone. This last fact is bumming me out right now. I'm in transition between the US and Europe, which means I don't have a cell phone, which means I can't sign up for Utterz, which means I can't play with the shiny good good.

So... since I can't play, I ask you all: "Have you used Utterz? What do you think of it?"

BTW, if you're on facebook, you can add the Utterz widget. Yay for data portability....