I may have mentioned before that my mom is very cool and hip in all sorts of ways including technology and the internet. Gmail, iPhoto, flickr, Time Machine backups… she uses them all. She also uses me as her mac / internet helpdesk. So it was only a matter of time before I received this help request from her:

I am uploading a video with sound on You tube w/470mb. After about 2 hours of “loading” it stops with “problem loading page”. What’s the problem kaya?

How to optimize your video for YouTube upload using Apple iMove on a Mac

YouTube has two main video file upload limitations: no more than 10 minutes per video and no larger than 100MB per video. If your video is too large, YouTube won’t accept it after you’ve uploaded it. But my mom ran into another problem before she even got to the rejection - uploading a 470 megabyte file takes forever. And chances are, her upload connection to YouTube was disrupted sometime in those 2 hours of loading.

So before she tries to re-upload, she needs to make the file smaller. (Technically, Youtube works best when the aspect ratio of the movie is to 320 x 240 pixels at QVGA) You can do this using a video editing application - one comes already installed on your mac called “iMovie”. The application icon is shown here on the right.

1. Find and launch the iMovie application
2. Choose “Start a new project”
3. Import your original clip (go to File > Import… from the application menu)
4. Export your clip:
   a. go to File > Share…
   b. Select the “Quicktime” option from the icons at the top of the dialog window (not Mail, Homepage, Videocamera, iDVD or Bluetooth)
   
   c. From the “Compress movie for:” dropdown, select “Expert Settings”
   d. Click the “Share” button
   e. A new window will pop-up with more options
   
   f. Name your movie and choose where you want it to be saved on your computer
   g. From the “Export” dropdown, select “Movie to MPEG-4″
   h. From the “Use:” menu, select “Streaming - Medium”
   i. Click “save”

Before you try and upload this new file to YouTube, make sure it is 100MB or less. If it isn’t, I suggest you crop your movie until it is. Alternately, you can try for a lower quality video by resaving using the steps above, but instead of choosing “Streaming - Medium”, choose “Streaming - Low” from the final dialog box.

There are many other things you can do to your movie while in iMovie - shorten it if it is too long, edit out unwanted sections of your movie, add titles and subtitles or a soundtrack. For that tutorial, you’ll have to wait until my mom asks for it.

Here is my saga:

I have 58 frollowers on twitter so at 9:00 PM PST I tried a wee experiment. live improv standup comedy. problem was, I couldn’t get anyone to wave.

I mean srsly, you’d think that twits and twats everywhere would be up for a little group-choreographed hands-in-the-air send-a-wave-around-the-stadium action. come join and and post this message to twitter:

anybody listening? I’d like to start a ‘wave’ across twitter. copy this twit and pass it on.

Now I’m enlisting the facebooksters and the diggsters to help. Things you can do:

1. post this to your twitter feed:

anybody listening? I’d like to start a ‘wave’ across twitter. copy this twit and pass it on.

2. digg this story on digg:
Twitter wave not spreading.

This illustration from Portfolio’s Daily Brief succinctly captures my thought process today.

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Good creative interwoven with product placement. Like giving candy to babies.

Uniqlock

Cadbury Gorilla

When I was in college, I worked at the local Berkeley REI to earn enough money (gear) to fuel a trekking pilgrimage to Tibet. Among other fun areas, I worked in the backpack department, where I learned from the masters about fitting and wearing backpacks. Backpack fitting requires knowledge of anatomy, ergonomics, packing physics, trail dynamics and bodily hygiene - none of which I had.

When my baby arrived, I had no idea that any of that would matter.

Nearly 18 months and 5 baby carrying devices later I realize it would have been handy if someone pointed me at a list of baby-carrying options. What should you look for in a baby carrier, sling, backpack or carryall?

The BMW Gina Light takes the construction paradigm of the eskimo kayak, applies it to the automobile and wraps it in advanced material fabric. I love it. The construction allows for much more organic shapes and anthropomorphic actions like the way its headlights open like an eyelid or it’s hood feels like a sexual orofice.

From Radst3r

When I was working at My Yahoo, we noticed a statistical pattern in the ‘most emailed photos’ that showed up in the ‘popular photos’ module. Of the 3 photos, 2 were usually pictures of women’s breasts or butts. The third was a photo of a baby furry animal. Sometimes there was one woman part and 2 baby furries.

Obviously it was because men were generally more active at sending girlie photos to their mates than the women were at sending cutsie photos.

So what is it with baby animals that make them viral? Looking at them obviously gives some people as much pleasure as looking at women’s body parts. They (or we as adults) are designed to trigger (or have triggered) strong emotions at the sight of a furry baby animal. Cuddle. Stroke. Feed.

• huge head
• smooth fur
• huge feet

Now if I could somehow tap this psychological response in graphical design… I would have…. a typical product ad.

See more polar bears, big and small.