As some of you know, I’ve been producing an audio podcast, Bwana.org Radio, since 2005. I’ve had a lot of fun doing it and what started as a hobby, turned into something that people really enjoy. This is why it saddens me to inform my listeners that I will no longer be producing Bwana.org Radio as of episode #250.

Why am I doing this? Time. I simply don’t have it.

I’ve given this a lot of thought. I’ve been experimenting with various formats for my video show, Bwana.TV, and have polled my users for their preferences. As a result, I’m going to continue producing content that was on Bwana.org Radio, but in a different format. There won’t be an audio only format and it won’t be 20-40 minutes in length. Instead, I will produce shorter videos on the same content, kind of like my “Story of the day” experiment I conducted on Youtube a few months ago.

I thank all of you who have supported me by subscribing to my audio podcast, by downloading the episodes, which have given me the funds to pay for web hosting and even conduct a few giveaways. The time has come to change, and I look forward to it.

No related posts.

Having come from Ustream.TV, I found Justin.TV to be a different live streaming experience than what I was used to. Thanks to the help of seasoned users such as jrblaze, I was able to create a decent channel of my own. I used Justin.TV in the past, but I felt loyal to Ustream since they integrated IRC so well. Since Ustream has dumped IRC and I continue to have issues with them, I decided to go Justin.TV for a while and see how things pan out.

I’ve been impressed so far.

It isn’t the feature set (which is impressive) that intrigues me, but it’s the stability. On Ustream, I couldn’t go a week without issue. My stream would crash, lose connectivity, or fail in the middle of a crucial recording. I haven’t had one issue on Justin.TV yet. Not one. This is why when I heard about Justin.TV pro accounts, I decided to try it for a month. These guys have put together great technology that seems to work very well. I’ll gladly give them $10 based on the couple of weeks of stable usage I’ve gotten out of the deal.

I know the main features pro accounts gives you is less ads, gifts, and an attention grabbing “pro” tag in chat, (the attention is not always good) but my main motivation behind buying a pro account was to thank Justin.TV for easing the pain that Ustream.TV has caused me. I love Ustream, and the guys over there are great, but I consistently had issues that I don’t have at Justin.TV with the same exact hardware. I’m hoping Ustream works out their issues, because I’d love to return, but for now, I’m happily streaming at Justin.TV as a pro user. Come by and check me out. I’m going to give the Pro account a month to see how it all works out and I’ll decide on whether I want to keep it after then. For now, I’m a happy camper over at Justin.TV.

Related posts:

• Broadcasting Audio to Ustream.tv
• Enhance Your Ustream Video Feed

Most of you know, I do a video podcast/blog at bwana.tv. I often get complimented on the quality of the videos that I publish. These videos have a great look and do not have large file sizes. While I credit some of the high quality video to my camera (Canon Powershot TX1), I believe the bulk of the credit should go to VisualHub. I did a video on VisualHub back in April:

Click to Play

Yesterday, I learned that the company behind VisualHub, Techspansion, has decided to close its doors and discontinue VisualHub. Naturally, I was saddened by this decision since I use this program at least 5 times a week for my day to day video production. I’m going to continue to use VisualHub for as long as it works (think: software updates could break it without support) and attempt to find another solution in the meantime. The main thing I want to extract from VisualHub is the ffmpeg flags for most of the presets I use in the software. (My favorite is “All Devices” on the iTunes tab)

The power of VisualHub is not necessarily the internals, since most of them are open sourced, but the real power lies in the ease of use and the quality of the outcome. Video conversion can be intimidating and VisualHub made it painless and simple. I thank you, Techspansion, for making my life easier, and I’m sad to see you go.

Related posts:

• Flickr Video: I like it.