Archive for August, 2010

Windstream Soundbytes

So I talked with someone who should know what they’re talking about with regard to Windstream. Not naming names because it isn’t important to do so anyway. Here are are some of the more interesting (though predictable) things that he mentioned:

1. Windstream’s biggest customers are AT&T and Verizon
Telcos buy backhaul from other telcos when it comes to providing cellular service. As long as Verizon and AT&T continue to rule the roost in the wireless biz, Windstream will continue to get a fair chunk of change per month for T1s and fiber Ethernet connections to cell sites in their footprint. In many cases other cellular providers also have to use Windstream for backhauling their cell sites, which generates even more revenue for Windstream, which isn’t particularly forgiving when it comes to T1 pricing either. Read the rest of this entry »

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Picasa Slideshow -> YouTube? Not so fast…

You’d think that going from one Google product (Picasa) to another (YouTube) would be quick and painless. However when it comes to exporting slideshows to YouTube, I must say, Au Contraire…at least from the Mac version of the desktop photo manager, which by the way is 100% awesome. There is a fix, however…

The problem in my case had to do with embedding videos into the slideshow. You see, when Picasa exports a slideshow it takes advantage of some of the more esoteric specs of the MPEG-4 container, saving video clips, unmodified, with their accompanying audio alongside the photo slideshow, which includes your music track, captions, etc. So you get multiple video and audio streams “neatly” packaged into a single MPEG-4 container. Cool, right?

Right…as long as you have something that won’t roll over and die when it sees a multi-stream, multi-resolution container file coming down the pike. Read the rest of this entry »

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