Maria’s Guides

Support and additional material for readers of books, articles, and digital media by Maria Langer.


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Video Blogging with Viddler and WordPress, Part II

Posted on February 15th, 2008 at 6:06 am · 2 Comments
Filed in: RSS WordPress Books   

Articles in this Series:
Part I: What’s this All About?
Part II: Setting Blog Options on Viddler
Part III: Recording and Posting a Video
Part IV: Displaying a List of Your Recent Viddler Videos in your WordPress Blog

Setting blog options on Viddler.

Once you’ve set up your Viddler account, you’re ready to set a few options that’ll make blogging from it easy.

  1. Log into your Viddler account at http://www.viddler.com/.
  2. Click the Options button near the top of the page, under the “Hello, yourname” greeting.
  3. In the Account Options screen, click the Blog Settings link. You should see something like this, although there won’t be any blogs listed for you.
    Blog Settings
  4. Click the + Add Blog button to display configuration fields.
  5. Enter your blog’s name in the Blog Name box and select the type of blog from the Blog Type drop-down list. The entry area expands to offer options applicable to your type of blog. Here’s what it looks like for a WordPress blog:
    Viddler WordPress Settings
  6. Fill in the rest of the fields. The Blog API Endpoint is the URL to your blog’s Home page followed by /xmlrpc.php. You should know the Username and Password.
  7. To prevent having to enter your password every time you send a Viddler video to your blog, turn on the Remember Password button.
  8. Click Submit.
  9. Viddler checks the information you entered. If it is correct and provides access to your blog, a green “Success!” message appears. Click the Awesome button. The blog is added to a list under Your Blogs.

You can repeat this process for as many blogs as you have access to. And, as you may have noticed, Viddler supports many different blog types, including TypePad, Blogger, Movable Type, Manilla, and Vox. So even if you’re not a WordPress user, you can use this feature. And yes, it does work with WordPress.com based blogs — not just the server install blogs.

What does this do for you? It sets up your account so that whenever you see a Viddler video that you want to embed in your blog, your account information is already provided and you’re good to go.

Next up: Recording a video on Viddler.

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Video Blogging with Viddler and WordPress, Part I

Posted on February 12th, 2008 at 6:53 pm · 6 Comments
Filed in: RSS WordPress Books   

Articles in this Series:
Part I: What’s this All About?
Part II: Setting Blog Options on Viddler
Part III: Recording and Posting a Video
Part IV: Displaying a List of Your Recent Viddler Videos in your WordPress Blog

What’s this all about?

One of the things I’ve been following from arm’s length is the audio and video blogging phenomena. I’m talking about sites like Utterz, Seesmic, and Viddler.

I’ve tried all three and until I tried Viddler, I couldn’t get excited about any of them. But Viddler has a few features that make video blogging easy and fun — primarily because it works so well with WordPress.

In this series of articles, I’ll explain how you can use Viddler to create video content with any compatible camera attached to your computer and get that content on your blog. And, if you’re a WordPress user, I’ll tell you about two Viddler plugins you can use to make it easy for your blog readers to find your video content on Viddler — even if you didn’t post it on your blog — and even leave video comments for you.

What is Viddler?

Viddler is an online service that enables you to upload or record videos that can then be shared with others. It’s a bit like YouTube, only classier and used by people who want to communicate rather than show off entertainment-based content.

At least that’s my take on it.

Viddler uses Flash to capture video from a camera attached to your computer. It works great with my iMac’s built-in iSight camera and microphone, as well as the iMage camera I bought for traveling with my old PowerBook.

But you don’t have to capture video directly to Viddler. You can take an existing video file and upload it. Viddler supports .mov, .mpg, .wmv, .avi, and .m4v formats. You can’t, however, upload television shows or other material that’s likely to be copyrighted. Viddler doesn’t have the same deep pockets as YouTube and probably doesn’t want to be sued. Besides, you shouldn’t be sharing that stuff anyway.

Once content is on Viddler’s server, it can be set as private, public, or available to just your friends. (Like most social networking sites, you can create a network of friends to share videos you don’t want the general public to see.) You can also share your videos with others on other social networking sites or by embedding them in your blog or e-mail messages.

Getting Started

Viddler Sign UpOf course, to use Viddler, you need an account. Go to http://www.viddler.com/ and click the big green Sign Me Up button. Then follow the prompts to create a user ID and password. You’ll have to provide a real e-mail address, since Viddler will be sending you a confirmation e-mail. Once you get that e-mail, click the link in it to finish setting up your account.

You can now create or upload videos. I’ll discuss both of those tasks in future installments of this series.

Meanwhile, if you have a Viddler account, why not take a moment to share the info about it with us? Use the Comments link or form for this post to provide your Viddler username so we can check out some of your videos.

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First Real Use of Time Machine a Success!

Posted on February 12th, 2008 at 9:05 am · 4 Comments
Filed in: RSS Mac OS Books   RSS WordPress Books   

I finally got to try it in a real-life situation.

I use ecto to compose and post entries on my various WordPress blog-based sites, including this one. One of the things I like about ecto is that is stores all of my posts on my computer, so I don’t need to be online to read something I wrote. This is especially useful when I’m using a laptop out on the road. I can write a blog entry offline and even include links to other existing entries on any of my sites and then post it when I have an Internet connection.

I recently upgraded from ecto 2 to ecto 3, which is still in beta (but looking good). Because of some problems with the updater trying to update the old version of ecto, I decided to delete it and its database of entries and stick to ecto 3. I did that one day last week — I think it was Wednesday.

This morning, I woke remembering that the old version of ecto had, in its post database, a post I’d written but never published. It was a lengthy post with images that I really wanted to save for future publication or other use. But with ecto and its database deleted, the post was gone.

Or was it?

I’d bought a 500GB external hard disk and had set it up for use with Time Machine when I installed Leopard on my iMac last fall. Time Machine is designed precisely for situations like this — when you realize that you’ve deleted something you shouldn’t have.

Time Machine in ActionIn my situation, I needed to recover the ecto 2 application file and the folder containing the blog post database. I started with the application. I opened the Applications folder on my computer and clicked the Time Machine icon in the Dock. The cool (but rather silly) interface kicked in. I used the timeline on the right side of the screen to scroll back a few days. The ecto file did not appear. I scrolled back a few more days to the middle of last week. When the screen refreshed, the file was there. I selected it and clicked the Restore button. Time Machine closed and the file was copied to my current Applications folder.

I repeated this process for the ecto folder in the Application Support folder.

Then I double-clicked the ecto application, re-entered my registration information, and recovered the “lost” blog post.

Based on this experience, I’m thrilled with Time Machine.

Got any stories about how Time Machine saved your files? Use the Comments link or form for this post. I’m sure others would like to read about them.

Additional Information

Product ImageYou can learn more about Time Machine on pages 126-130 of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide.

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February 9 Links

Posted on February 11th, 2008 at 6:36 am · No Comments
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Links worth following.

Here are the links of interest to readers of my books for the week ending February 9:

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WordPress 2.3.3 Urgent Security Update

Posted on February 5th, 2008 at 6:52 am · 1 Comment
Filed in: RSS WordPress Books   

Information from WordPress.org.

WordPress 2.3.3 is an urgent security release. A flaw was found in our XML-RPC implementation such that a specially crafted request would allow any valid user to edit posts of any other user on that blog. In addition to fixing this security flaw, 2.3.3 fixes a few minor bugs. If you are interested only in the security fix, download the fixed version of xmlrpc.php and copy it over your existing xmlrpc.php. Otherwise, you can get the entire release here.

If you run a WordPress server installation, it’s important that you download and install this update now.

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February 2 Links

Posted on February 2nd, 2008 at 11:59 pm · No Comments
Filed in: RSS Links Worth Following   RSS Mac OS Books   RSS WordPress Books   

Links worth following.

Here are the links of interest to readers of my books for the week ending February 2:

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