FTLComm's new site

 
FTLComm - Tisdale - Tuesday, February 28, 2006

The very first web site we did was Faster Than Light Communication's web site and that was back in 1995. That first site was pretty and emphasised our fascination with the Star Trek television shows, then as Ensign became the main web event the old site was down graded and perhaps lost entirely. It went through two evolutions as a business web site and finally about six months ago the front page was destroyed by accident and it was dormant until this past weekend.

Apple has introduced some new software to go with their shifting emphasis in the computer business to a mix between home entertainment and the average folks who want to have something to use their computers for. About three years ago Apple introduced a set of applications that Steven Jobs labelled iLife to go with the newest multi-media designed iMac, Mac Mini and the rising importance of downloaded music with the introduction of the iPod. This set of applications included iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, iDVD and a quirky thing called Garageband. I hope to be able to tell you more about these applications in tomorrows story about the latest "06" version of iLife.

iLife 06 comes with a new application iWeb which I did not get a chance to test drive until this past weekend when I decided the ideal project would be to re-do the old FTLComm web site.

Designed primarily to work with the other iLife applications and those that are part and parcel of the Macintosh operating system like iChat, iWeb can access directly material from the other media applications. At first you would not consider this such a big deal but the newest versions of these applications have seen them become extremely powerful and having abilities far beyond your own computer. The whole idea is that Apple also has an online server system called ".Mac" which dovetails right into these applications so that from the image handling software, iPhoto you can actually share over the Internet the pictures on your machine. So it is no surprise that when you get the whole combined impact of this software the average user can crane out a sophisticated website with all the features and it will post automatically to the whole world with a single click.


Anything that simple has got to be just to plain and stupid to be of real use, well at least that's what I thought until I discovered the remarkable simplicity and the remarkable resutls which you can see on the FTLComm site. For me the tough issue has been what to do with the three or so video clips I make a week for this site. I needed a working archive of these things and amazingly enough iWeb was specifically designed to create 'blogs", audio blogs and video blogs. Since the iPod can automatically download these things there is a huge audiance out there waiting to listen and watch. I already make the video clips in the 320 by 240 pixel size with H.264 codec designed specifically for the video iPod.

I have my own server system so the .Mac service at $149 a year is not necessary but that is the main problem with the iWeb software. It is tailor made for the .Mac service and each upload to my server is a major undertaking instead of a simple update.

 
 

 

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This page is a story posted on Ensign and/or Saskatchewan News, both of which are daily web sites offering a variety of material from scenic images, political commentary, information and news. These publications are the work of Faster Than Light Communications . If you would like to comment on this story or you wish to contact the editor of these sites please send us email.
 

Editor : Timothy W. Shire
Faster Than Light Communication
Box 1776, Tisdale, Saskatchewan, Canada, S0E 1T0
306 873 2004