Be sure to check out Tech Podcast Network’s Coverage of the 2012 Consumer Electronic Show. I will be streaming it live on geekofthenorth.com and retrotechpodcast.com.

I will be in Vegas behind the scenes helping get all the great content out to you. Also check out TPN.TV for the Backchannel video all next week LIVE from Vegas!

I also discuss changes in my podcasting lineup. I’m dropping 3 shows and keeping 3 shows.

Catch Me Later!

-Mike

Geek of the North is back!

After working on the studio setup for the last 3 months, I’m very excited to be back on the Mic and Camera for Geek of the North Podcast.

I talk about my Galaxy Nexus and Kindle Fire (both are new to me) and my trip to Ford plus, the upcoming trip to Vegas and CES 2012 with Tech Podcast Network.

Hope you enjoy the show.

Let me know!

Follow me on Google Plus, Facebook and Twitter.

Today I play some music and chat about a few things going on.

Relaunch of Geek of the North on Jan. 3rd
Relaunch of Aviation History this Week on Jan. 4th
Going to CES with Tech Podcast Network
I got to go to Ford for a press event

Man in the Mirror – By Song of the Lakes
The Splendor of the Bender – By The Deadly Gentlemen
Every Color – By Matthew Ebel (.net) (.com)
Taylor’s Freebird – By Todd Taylor

Happy New Year! Drive Carefully!

-Mike

Just a quick test video playing with the green screen in the new studio.

ANYWAY

-Mike

Here is the podcast I put out over at geekofthenorth.com about the HamVention 2011 that I went to last weekend.

From the 2009 Sugar Island Fest – My friend Jeni and her band play live on the stage at Sugar Island.

Sorry for the unstable camera, but it’s the best I could do

Catch me later!

-Mike

In The Know: Should The Nation’s Unemployed Be Buying New Apple Computers?

Winter Storm Warning for tonight – 4-15 inches of snow! WTF?

An audio and / or video update depending on what you are playing here

Phelm-fest 2011

Catch me later!

-Mike

A quick video using my webcam and my new lights. I think it looks a little yellow, but what do you think?

-Mike

Video from the 2009 Sugar Island Fest
Rudy, Jeni, Tom, Evelyn and Bob playing on stage.

I’m still learning my video editing software (Corel VideoStudio Pro)

Catch me Later!
-Mike

A quick video of my drive though the Northern Michigan back roads in winter.

-Mike

This is an unboxing video you will likely Not see anywhere else.

On July 4th 2009 we were camping at the KOA in Gaylord Michigan and went out and got a new Blue Rino Grill for the camper.

1 hour 15min. after unboxing it it was put together and working.

*** I plan on putting out quite a few videos over the next 30 days as I get to edit them. ***
*** I also know the last video was labeled #5. Well this is #7 because it’s the 7th video in the feed. Live with it! ***
Catch me Later!

-Mike

Check this out!

And I thought white Squirrels were weird!

A quick update.

Going to be live on the radio tonight early playing Blues, Country and Folk on the American Crossroads show. Listen live at www.wnmc.org

This will also be a video update as soon as everything updates.

Catch me later!

-Mike

Gotta love it!

-Mike

A quick update from the Basement Studio at Mike Dell’s World. I spend the weekend rewiring and just cleaning up down here in preparation for doing some guest hosting on Video podcasts. I’m useing the Logitech Quickcam 9000 in the video.

Catch me later!

-Mike

Here is a short tour of the radio station studio I work in.

It’s WNMC 90.7 FM in Traverse City Michigan – www.wnmc.org

I’m working though all my old flip video and posting the ones that I think are cool!

-Mike

I just added an all inclusive feed. This is where you can subscribe and get everything I do on all my podcasts. In the feed will be Mike Dell’s World, Mike Dell unplugged, Geek of the North, Aviation History This Week, So, You Want To Podcast?, What’s Up With That?, Mike Dell’s World Video, Ham Radio Podclass and anything else I do where I have a link to it.

I will, at some point, add back episodes to the feed but right now it’s just everything I’m doing from here on out.

Just an easier way for you to subscribe to everything I do in the podcasting space.

To subscribe, cut in paste this into your podcatcher of choice: http://mikedell.com/feed/all

Enjoy!
Catch me later!
-Mike

Just a quick video we took while playing tourist near Petosky Michigan (about an hour north of Traverse City)

I’m not the best with a camera but, here it is anyway. I’m learning.

This was shot using the original Flip Video camera (The first one to come out a few years ago)

I give a tour of my house in Lake Ann. Originally meant for a Crag’s List ad. I ended up renting the place about an hour after I finished filming this tour.

Anyway, I’m still learning this Video Stuff so bare with me:)

-Mike

Just a test of my video feed. I plan on putting up videos that are NOT just videos of my audio podcasts, but unique podcasts of their own. I also didn’t want to put video in my main audio feed. So, here is another feed to subscribe to get all of Mike Dell’s World Podcasts.

With what is going on with the digital transition and the economy, not to mention the “new media”, I think that broadcasting as we know it is going to die off or at least change into something we would never recognize if we were to jump ahead 10 years. That’s right, 10 years, at most, is all these traditional broadcasters have as a business.

The problem with Broadcast TV (over the air local stations) is that the networks are getting close to not paying the stations to carry their programing. Once the networks quit paying local TV stations, most of them will be forced to go out of business.. Just turn off the transmitters and go home. My thought is that most markets will only support one over the air TV station that is all local with no network affiliation. It will be the local news channel and they might have some sort of syndicated programing on there to fill time, but mostly it will be for local news, weather , sports and whatever. It’s just like the newspaper business. Back in the day, it wasn’t too uncommon for a big city to have 2 or 3 newspapers. Now there seems to be just one in most big cities. It will be the same for broadcast TV.

Cable TV will survive but it will be a different busness then it is today. The cable outlets will be mostly internet service providers. The channels they carry will be IP based instead of RF based. Instead of getting your ESPN channels on channel 17 and 35 it will just be a menu item on the cable company’s set top box.

Satilite TV may not survive. They will have a hard time competing with streaming internet channels because of the coming improvements to wireless internet. Right now EVDO (which isn’t really fast enough to watch TV on) is just about everywhere in the USA. Once that gets improved enough and the streams compressed enough, then people will have wireless internet everywhere their cable doesn’t go.. In cars, RV’s, Trucks and wherever else. They will be able to watch that ESPN Stream live on their phones. Who’s going to want to pay $50 a month for a satellite connection?

10 years ago, having radio stations in the sky seemed like a great idea, and it was. But in the 10 years it took XM and Sirius to get up to speed, the business model changed on them. They had to merge just to stay alive. So far they are holding their own. This won’t last. As with TV, and to a much greater extent, people will be able to stream audio to their cars (which is the major part of XM/Sirius’ market) though their telephone connection. Once this takes off, the XM network will dry up and blow away. I give them 5 years.. Maybe less.

IPTV which is the streaming content put out by CNET, HULU, Ustream and many others will be the wave of the future. The only thing they are not good at is live events (for now). Thats where the local tv stations will have hope. The broadcasters could use their bandwidth to stream data to cars and other wireless devices. There are already phones that can pick up special broadcasts on digital TV. Also, podcasts such as those put out by revision3 and others will remain strong as long as the distribution costs stay reasonable.

Broadcast radio (you know AM/FM) will be similar to TV in that these big groups of radio stations such as Clear Channel will not survive. We can get all the national syndicated shows via podcasting or streaming the same as video. That will leave the real local stations. Maybe a small AM transmitter in every town. Something that can be used to pass along emergency messages and local news. The rest of the time they will just be background noise.

The good old days of broadcasting are over. There are way too many outlets of information, entertainment and sports out there for the big expensive transmitters to survive. The power of the media will drop with the demise of the big central outlets. It might be a good thing and it might not. One thing for sure, it’s going to be interesting to watch. Being on both sides of the broadcast world is a lot of fun for me, but I wouldn’t put a long term bet on it. Just do it as a hobby as I have been.

Here is my Video of a Blizzard in Traverse City from a week or two ago.

PART 2

Could be?

-Mike

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Well, it’s official. MY flip mino HD camera is dead. It suffered from Infant mortality.

When I unboxed it after Christmas I charged it up and made that test video that I posted on Viddler and here. We then took it to my inlaw’s house for a Christmas party and about 10 seconds into recording it died.. Totally dead and it wouldn’t even charge.

After that, I plugged it into my Vista machine and it started to charge with no problem.. I thought OK.. This must be a fluke. I made a couple of other short videos and it seemed to work. Then, Saturday night I took it out to do some video and this time it lasted about 15 seconds and died again.

I put an email into tech support at the Flip website. I will update you on how it goes. It seems to be a great product and I just happened to get one with a loose something inside.

***UPDATE: Flip is sending me a return number so maybe they will replace it. Had to jump though some hoops to get that far.

-Mike

This one is a little inside baseball but I got a new mixer and wanted to try it out.

Let me know what you think!

For a better version on Viddler.com, click HERE

Here is the radio station studio that I work at on Saturday. I’m testing my other flip camera The flip Ultra.

Complete with cute cat photos

I’m now feeling the Christmas spirit.. I’m done for this week at work and only work 1 day next week and 2 days the week after. Now that’s the way it should be! I would like that schedule all year around.

We don’t have to travel much this year for the holiday. Only trip planned is a trip to Grand Haven on the 25th and home on the 26th. The Teenager is heading to Florida this weekend for 2 weeks so the house will be quiet and it will be nice to get some stuff done.

One of the projects I have is to re-arrange the Ham Shack / Podcast Studio / Office in the basement. My plan is to take an older PC and make that the Podcast only machine. With that one, I will just have the audio apps and have the mic / mixer hooked up to it. That way I can can go back to Windows Xp and have castblaster work the way it should. The Vista machine will be the one I use for Skype and patch that into the mixer so I can record directly in castblaster. The Vista machine will also be the Video machine (along with the macbook sometimes) . I will also use that for my writing.

The other project is to get the wife’s new cloths hanger…err… I mean Treadmill setup in the house. It’s currently in the garage and it’s only 9 degrees out there now.. Not a good place to work out in the winter.

I hope to get the office/studio done on Sunday so I should be able to try out the new podcast machine and put out a podcast on Monday. I’m also going to be working on the new and improved Strange Today show. That will be starting season 2 the first week of January. Stay tuned to that (www.strangetoday.com)

Hope your year end / Holidays are nice and I hope you have time to spend time with Friends and Family or just get your stuff done.

Have a good one! (or two if you wish!)
-Mike

PS. I will be on the Geek News Central 24 hour podcast at http://geeknewscentral.com at 3am Hawaii time (8am Eastern time) on Sunday morning pimping the Ham Radio Podclass (www.hamradioclass.org) – Come join me there!

Excuse me if this seems too direct, but someone has to say it.

I don’t want the Forward that you think is so funny. I spend a few minutes a day weeding though all the jokes that people send me. Some are funny, most are not. I get upwards of 200 messages a day and it takes a lot of time going though the spam and adding jokes to that doesn’t help.

I think it’s rude to bombard people with jokes instead of a well thought out “letter” of a personal nature. Besides, Most likely, I’ve seen it before. Sorry, but most of the jokes going around on email have a life of their own and have been going around and around for years! Same with that funny video, photo, PowerPoint, or whatever. If it is something new, and you want me to see it. Post it someplace (see below) and send me a link.

Don’t send me the chain letters and virus warnings. No, Bill Gates is not going to send money to someone just because this email goes to 1000′s of people. It doesn’t mean I don’t like you if you send me a stupid chain letter about friendship and I don’t send it back to you. I just don’t do that. The virus you heard about via some sort of forwarded email is likely from last century or non-existent. I can take care of my own security just fine thank you. If you get something like that, please go to snopes.com and check it out before you send it to others. Please don’t send it to me either way. If something says “Send this to everyone in your address book” Please, just delete it.

IF you still MUST email me something that was forwarded to you, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE clean it up. Cut and paste is your friend! Cut the funny/important forwarded message into a new message and write something personal to show that it really did come from you. If I see “Fwd: Fwd: Fwd:” in the subject line, it gets deleted. No questions asked. I don’t want to have to work so hard to figure out what you sent me. Also, if you just hit forward on these messages, you are exposing everyone in the chain’s email addresses (also rude). Also forwarding to a bunch of people in the “to” box or the “CC” box exposes all those email addresses. Please use the “bcc” which stands for Blind Copy.

With all the free services out there, you can share all the stuff you would be sending out in email without bombing someone with a large attachment. Also, know this about me, I don’t care how cool you think that big attachment is, I don’t see it. PERIOD. Don’t ask me about it, don’t be mad, I just don’t look at things like that.

A better way of doing that is to use the free services available in this new Web 2.0 space. They are easy to use and as a bonus, the people you send the link to (instead of the video, photo or whatever) do not have to have special software to use it. I know that most people have high speed internet now. But, some of us (like me) don’t have high speed all the time. In my case, I use my BlackBerry handheld as my email when I’m away from a computer. At other times I use it as my access. It connects to the network at 1xRT speed (about double dial up) most of the time. Sometimes it’s faster but it’s still not fast enough to download that BIG video you have. It will, however, do just fine downloading your link. When I do get to a high speed connection, I might just look at it.

Here is a list of free stuff that will help you distribute your “stuff”.

Blogs:

Podcasts:

Videos:

Photos:

Websites:

Just to be clear, I didn’t write this to piss you off. I just want people to think a little about the person on the other end of that email. I don’t like you any less if you do send me something every once in a while. I’m just trying to help. Really I am

-Mike

Hey, If you do a podcast and use podpress, here is a new plugin from the people at RawVoice / blubrry. it’s called powerpress. I’m using it here and will be switching my other podcast sites over to it.

Check it out at: http://www.blubrry.com/powerpress/. Seems to work great so far and I really like the player it puts in the posts. Check it out on my posts below.

Here is what Dr. WordPress had to say about it: http://www.thewordpressdoctor.com/2008/08/20/blubrry-powerpress-plugin-for-wordpress/

The guys at Rawvoice and Blubrry really know how to make something simple but powerful!

Kudos!

-Mike

I just returned from the New Media Expo out in Vegas. Had a great time, and met many people. When I would give my business card to someone and they looked at “The Benziod Report” they were confused at what it was about. I would tell them it’s just my little audio blog that was basically me talking to friends and playing a little music sometimes. It was hard to explain why the name “Benzoid Report”.

Here is how the name happened:

A good ham radio friend of mine, Big Al Snyder, KB8FJB lived in Benzie County Michigan ( a few miles from where I was at the time) and he used to call people from Benzie County “Benzoids” (not to be confused with the drug class of the same name) . So, a few years later, I moved to a small town in Benzie County called Lake Ann. When I started podcasting (late 2004) I thought, Benzoid Report would be a good name for it, and it was. Lots of people know of it by the funny name. Lots of new people I meet don’t understand what it’s about.

So, from here on out, this podcast and blog will be called Mike Dell’s World which more accurately describes what you are going to hear and see on the blog, videos and podcasts. In this case, YES, it is all about me. The webiste will be moved at some point to www.mikedell.com but you will not have to change any bookmarks or feed settings as I will have things forward from www.benzoidreport.com

Now I will get people that confuse me with the other Michael Dell at Dell Inc. (by the way, YES, I am THE REAL Michael Dell!)

I’m going to keep the numbering of the show so the next one out will be Mike Dell’s World #92.

Talk to you then!

-Mike

© 2008 Michael G. Dell

Sitting down taking a break with Leo’s Twit Live booth behind me.

Lots of fun going on here in Vegas! Wish you were here.

New Media Expo 2008

-Mike

I know, People hate videos in Audio feeds.. I won’t do it that often.. Just testing out one MacBook while I unbox another Macbook from the Apple Refurbished store.

It’s not much, but it should work one iPods and other players..

Let me know what you think!

-Mike