Ranting and Roaring

We’ve just officially launched Sparks! 2.0, our integrated podcast recording, sharing and listening platform.

If you’re interested in giving podcasting a spin and you’re running Windows, download it and give it a spin.

I’ve been heads down since the blogging bash several weeks ago working on this little project. If you have a headset mic and would like to try your hand at podcasting (or this), now’s your chance.

Start here. Here’s the note that I sent to the podcasting mailing list this morning.

We would have announced this a couple of weeks ago but we didn’t realize that you had to have a product before you went to the New York Times.

BlogMatrix is proud to annouce Sparks! 2.0 in limited “beta release”. Sparks! now has

• an integrated multitracker recorder and mixer designed for podcasters … all you need is a headset
• the ability to create accounts and upload your podcasts to the BlogMatrix server
• on the server, your podcasts are automatically converted into a blog with an RSS feed and the podcasts are converted to torrents
• Sparks! can download podcasts via podcast subscription or by dragging torrents directly onto the Sparks!

There’s a number of limitations: in particular, the blogs are very bland because we don’t take user information yet (like your name or what you want to call your podcast). We’ll have this fixed by our official release next Wednesday. We’re going to do a weblog.com style update site and we’ll have a better OPML directory of what’s available soon.

We’re just doing what we’re calling a “soft release” for now to the podcasting community, to make sure our server can handle the loads. We’ve tested with several tens of thousands of torrents being served simultaneously (obviously, only a fraction “hot”) but you never really know till you get a real server load.

Anyway, enjoy. If it breaks … please tell me ASAP (support@blogmatrix.com or if DNS breaks greenflash AT davidjanes.com). If you like, let us know and let your friends know too!

Ok first lesson in blogging, get your facts sorted. I started writing this entry with a long list of bugfixes and feature requests for my common RSS readers. But then I went to the sites for PocketRSS and Blogmatrix Sparks! and realised that they bo…

This website is going to disappear in the next 48 hours and will reappear on Wednesday or Thursday with a brand new look … and lots of interesting toys for you to play with.

Please stand by and sorry for the interruption.

From Jay Currie, we find out that the Olympic host country gets to nominate a demonstration sport. Jay suggests something called “tree jumping” which is ok I guess if you’re into that sort of thing. However, I have a much better suggestion: a competition to see who can run a snowmobile over the longest stretch of open water. This has it all: a Canadian product, spectator friendly, competitors can be stoned or drunk (the later preferred in the East, the former in the West) and it’s compatible with warm weather which they’re likely to get in the mild BC winter.

I’m going to break my “no explicit profanity” rule on this blog to bring you this announcement: the fucking Swiss are so fucking fucked it’s not fucking funny.

Calling Tim Blair. SciFi Wire reports:

Cage Burns For Wicker

Nicolas Cage’s next film will be director Neil LaBute’s remake of the 1973 thriller The Wicker Man, with Millennium Films, Equity Pictures and Emmett/Furla Films producing, Variety reported. LaBute adapted the screenplay, in which a sheriff investigates the disappearance of a young girl on a remote island off the coast of Maine. His hopes of unraveling the girl’s disappearance become increasingly uncertain when he discovers evidence of pagan rituals, the trade paper reported.

The movie will begin production July 15 in Vancouver, B.C.. Millennium acquired the remake rights from Canal Plus.

Hopefully Cage will do his own stunts and they’ll aim for realism.

Damian has photos of last weekend’s blogger bash. I’m there. Hint: sideburns.

CNN reports that Fossett presses on despite fuel problem – Mar 3, 2005. Fossett is quoted:

“Let’s go for it.”

Man, if he doesn’t make those are going to be really cool last words.