Boston Media Makers meet hte first Sunday of every month at Doyle's in Jamaica Plain, MA. Here's a quick roll call everyone who attended this month. Join us: http://bostonmediamakers.wordpress.com

Rob Blatt took Chris Brogan's free eBook on personal branding and made it into an audiobook. I wanted to try the same for a couple of paragraphs of his eBook. Here's how I did it: 1. Record audio with QuickTime Pro 2. Edit together with QuickTime Pro 3. Export as AIFF 4. Open with Final Cut Pro 5. Additional editing, add music bed 6. Export as AIFF 7. Open in iTunes 8. Convert to mp3 http://www.chrisbrogan.com/personal-branding-audio-file/

Ted Schilowitz of RED, presents the Red Digital Cinema Camera with the Artemis stabilizing system. (1:54) http://stevegarfield.com http://red.com http://artemis-hd.com http://bosfcpug.org Excerpt from: Final Cut Studio Tour: Boston Presented by Apple, Rule Broadcast Systems and the Boston Final Cut Pro User Group Wednesday, August 20, 2008 Yawkey Theater and Atrium WGBH Boston One Guest Street, Boston, MA

It costs 59 cents to mail an absentee ballot into the City of Boston election department. There is no documentation in the absentee ballot mailing package or on the City Election Department website about postage cost. A call to the election department was inconclusive. Read more here: It Costs 59 Cents to Vote in Massachusetts Steve Garfield CC BY-NC-SA

Carol and I visited Barnett Vineyards on the recomendation of Gary Vaynerchuck of Wine Library TV. Excellent take in. It was quite an experience to drive up the mountain to the vineyard, but once we got there is was worth the trip. Say hi to Jacquelyn if you visit. Tours and tastings are private and arranged by appointment only, between 10:00 am to 4:00 pm daily. Please call (707)963-7075 to schedule an appointment. Our office is open Monday - Friday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. Barnett Vineyards http://www.barnettvineyards.com/ Gary Vaynerchuk http://winelibrary.tv Carol and Steve Show http://stevegarfield.com

I made a hardcover book of 'My Mom's Blog' using Blurb.com. http://blurb.com/ The book came out great and my mom loved it. My Mom's Blog http://mymomsblog.blogspot.com/ I had two problems. The first is that you can't do a global search and replace on the text from within the Blurb booksmart software. The second problem is that once you edit your book with the blurb booksmart software, you can't save it as a clean PDF without the blurb branding. My Mom's Blog Book on Blurb. http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/292620 The Best Gift: My mom's post and video about receiving the book as a gift. http://mymomsblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/best-gift.html Two books seen in the video: The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott. http://www.davidmeermanscott.com/books.htm Be the Media compiled by David Mathison. http://www.bethemedia.org/

No so exciting. Panorama by Michael Sto : http://news360.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/barack-obama-fordert-gemeinsames-handeln-ein/

Boston City Councillor John Tobin takes us down to Centre Street in Jamaica Plain to report on the progress of the paving over of the trolley tracks, and talk about the history of the project.

I added a comfort grip to my shotgun mic for $2.97. Handles for shotgun mics usually start at $30. Picked it up at Home Depot. Unger Comfort Grip Part # 962620 Fits poles from 7/8" to 1 1/8" in diameter.

Carol and Steve visit The Columbia Icefield in Jasper National Park and taste the water direct from the glacier! http://www.columbiaicefield.com/ "The Icefield ? the largest sub-polar body of ice in North America ? is one of the reasons why the United Nations declared Canada's four Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Sites. The Icefield covers 325 square kilometres with solid ice up to 365 metres (1200 feet) deep. Meltwater from the Icefield flows to three oceans: the Pacific, Arctic and Atlantic via Hudson Bay."

Here's an excerpt from the ABC World News piece, Rethinking Retirement. I've edited together the clips of my mom. Look at the timing: :42 Intro :44 My mom ( :20 seconds of actual talking ) :06 Outro They spent almost as much time introducing the segment as they gave to my mom. Granted, there was a feature on another couple in there, but when you look at it from this perspective, they sure did spend a lot of time interviewing my mom to end up with :44 seconds of video. My mom says: "Twitter, I use Google, and Flickr." "My friends in retirement, most of them don't know anything about blogging," Garfield said. "I think they lead unproductive, dull lives because they are doing the same old thing ? talking about the same old thing." "It's been a big comfort to me because a number of my friends they have either passed away or become ill, now I have new friends." Interesting what they chose to feature. Visit My Mom's Blog and her post ABC - Here I come to see an 11:00 behind the scenes video I filmed of hte first part of her interview.

Gary Vaynerchuk has a new version of his show on Revision3. It's called Wine Library Reserve and takes his regular 20 minute show and edits it down to a manageable 5 minutes. It's a pleasure to watch, and has fun graphics. Great editing by Glenn McElhose. Wine Library Reserve http://revision3.com/winelibraryreserve/ Vlog Soup http://stevegarfield.blogs.com/vlogsoup/

Anne-Marie Dorning from ABC news interviewed my mom, Millie Garfield, for a segment on retirement and blogging. Here's her blog: http://mymomsblog.blogspot.com I set up my Nokia N82 cellphone to record the first part of the interview. The segment is scheduled to air on Wednesday July 2nd on ABC World News with Charlie Gibson.

Join James Fritland as he introduces an episode of the original Wine Library Theatre in this recently discovered film.

Media Tech Tonic is a series of monthly demos/seminars on media technology topics for media makers and artists. Meetings are (usually) held on the third Wednesday of each month and are organized by David Tames, presented in collaboration with Boston Media Makers, and hosted by MassArt Professional and Continuing Education. Topic: This session will cover social networking with video and the uses of seesmic for communication and art. Philippe Lejeune has been experimenting with novel uses of seesmic and will discusses how he?s been using this fascinating service. Location: MassArt, Alumni Room, Tower Building, 11th Floor Date/Time: Wednesday, June 18, 2008, 6:30pm - 9:30pm Presenter: Philippe Lejeune http://mediatechtonic.org http://bostonmediamakers.wordpress.com

This afternoon I attended a wonderful event - the engagement of a cousin of mine who met a lovely young lady on the internet. They live a short distance from each other but their paths had never crossed. Isn't there a song with that theme? "She travels all over the world searching for someone - doesn't meet anyone - returns home and finds someone right next door." I've heard many performers sing it and enjoy it every time and today I witnessed the real thing! Sharing this special occasion with family and friends was a pleasure, the music was great, the food was great but one thing was missing. When the waitress came around to ask who wanted decaf coffee, she served them, didn't ask who wanted regular coffee and just disappeared. I never got my coffee!! When you view this video you will get "the rest of the story." Enjoy.

Lots of people are interested in streaming live video using the iPhone. I rigged up this add on that works pretty well. :-)

Join Boston City Councillor John Tobin at at West Roxbury s Millennium Park on Saturday, June 14, from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Lindsay Campbell hosts Moblogic.tv. I love Moblogic because you get BIASED news coverage. It's Lindsay Campbell. Her take on the news. It's very refreshing, there's nothing like it on the web. Check it out at Moblogic.tv.

My father was a magician. I found a bag of his tricks today and that brought back memories of the shows he performed. He started out doing a magic show for one of my birthday parties, then he did shows for friends, and ended up doing shows at local hospitals. Some of the tricks I found are pretty old. I also found some index cards that listed which trick would go into which of his pockets. He was organized, as am I.

Here's an introduction to videoblogging I presented at Podcast Academy in May 2006. It's fun to look back at this moment in time from two years ago.

Testing out the Nokia N95 with a Shotgun Microphone. Parts List: http://offonatangent.blogspot.com/2008/05/nokia-n95-with-shotgun-microphone.html http://stevegarfield.com

Blue tape works on standard windows, but when you've got six panes of glass in one window, using blue tape would be a pain. :-) So I show you how to use cardboard to paint the window. Makes it easy.

Boston University MFA Painting and Sculpture Exhibition 2008 Music: Moi Caprice "Artboy Meets Artgirl" (mp3) from "Once Upon A Time in the North" (GLORIOUS RECORDS) Buy at iTunes Music Store Buy at Amazon More On This Album Video: Steve Garfield

Boston City Councilor John Tobin at his Annual Spring Breakfast Fundraiser, Saturday, April 19 at the Corrib Restaurant.

Carol and Steve show you the Boston Public Garden, established in 1837, and The Swan Boats of Boston. The Swan Boats open Saturday April 19th for the season. Note: Steve also did the web site for the Swan Boats. Replay from 7/18/07

Governer of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, Boston City Councillor John Tobin, Representative Jeffrey Sanchez and others turned out to stock Jamaica Pond in Jamaica Plain, MA.

Governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick turned out to stock Jamaica Pond in Jamaica Plain, MA with fish.

Prior to painting, pour some vanilla extract into the paint. Dave suggested this and I tried it. See what happens. In the end, I had vanilla White Paint!

Last skiing of the season at Waterville Valley, NH. Here's a quick view of the ski lift and some skiers.