VLC is not your average media player.

In addition to supporting every single format known to humans, it has more features than you ever thought you’d need. VLC (which stands for VideoLAN client) just released a new version, 0.8.6.

I’ve always been a loyal user of the application, but in celebration of the release, I decided to learn more about VLC and figure out why it’s unchallenged in its field. Here’s a rundown of three features offered by VLC that bump it up from “average media player” to “uber media player”.

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I was alerted to Twango by its co-founder, Randy Kerr. Kerr described his site as a “new media sharing service”. Twango though, seperates itself from other media sharing sites like YouTube or Odeo. It doesn’t just handle one type of media — it handles them all.

The site is organized similarly to other “Web 2.0″ video sharing sites, like YouTube or Revver. There are tabs along the top where you can select your type of media (they only show audio, video, and photos, however the site also has other types permitted such as Word documents or Flash video). Click into a tab, and you’re given a page of thumbnails - now you can choose a bit of media and enjoy it.

The similarities stop there though. When Twango says it’s for sharing, they really mean it.

Read how, after the infamous jump…

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Just a quick YMM update - we are now offering email subscriptions. These are only available for our full length posts (not the link blog) and are delivered to your inbox via the fantastic FeedBurner. It’s fast, free, and secure - so if you aren’t familiar with RSS news feeds you can use this method to get YMM quickly and painlessly.

If you are interested in getting into the feeds groove, there are a number of resources available that help make this complex sounding format very easy to understand (my favorite is the News Feeds page at the BBC).

YouMakeMedia Email Subscriptions

Everyone has a podcast. There are podcasts about movies, computers, fashion, art, and everything you can dream of. They’re a way that you can communicate with your users in a more personal way - through voice rather than text.

We’re going to help you create your first [solo] podcast in this new three part series. We’ll show you the software to download, the hardware to buy, and the accessories to make. It’s easy, I promise. Here at Oratos Media, we do a few podcasts ourselves using these methods. Pretty soon, you’ll be on your way to “podcast pleasure” as well.

Be warned though - this is a technical guide. I can’t give you an idea or write your script. I can show you tools that help, but ultimately, you need to imagine up an idea.

Get the details after the jump.

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Amanda Congdon has been a busy person lately. Since she’s left Rocketboom (which she still claims 49% ownership in), she’s founded Oxmour Entertainment, completed a videoblog (AmandaAcrossAmerica), and planned two more.

Now, plans have leaked that Amanda will be developing a comedy for HBO. She’ll be writing and starring in the series, and there are plans to make this show span across TV and the net.

Details are sparse, but it’s great to see Amanda flourishing after the Rocketboom disaster.

Via Backstage

Rocketboom (the controversial video podcast that made headlines when a catfight between the founders ousted the host) has a page on its website outlining the tools that they use to produce their podcast.

Their cocktail of tools includes everything from Quicktime Pro to Movable Type. They use Final Cut Pro, iMovie, and Audacity to edit. Rendering and delivery is a bit more difficult for Rocketboom because they have to deliver in so many formats. They have mobile deals, a deal with TiVo, the usual internet site - I imagine it gets crazy it times.

On the web, they render MOV with 3ivx compression (though it’s noted that they offer WMVs thanks to Flip4Mac). They note that they aren’t moving to H.264 because of the slow compression speed and slower adoption rates.

Capturing content on a screen is an important part of Rocketboom (their Mac laptop is probably the second biggest prop, next to the map). To capture the Laptop’s content the Rocketboom team uses Snapz Pro, and boasts of its efficiency and ease in capturing not only simple websites but video onscreen as well.

There are more details about their architecture over at the page. It’s an interesting look into the tools required to make a massive video podcast work!

Hey subscribers! First, thanks for subscribing, I’m glad to have you reading YouMakeMedia!

Second, due to an error on my part, some of you (specifically those who use the Live Bookmarks feature in Firefox, or RSS in Safari - possibly others) might not be reading the blog from the “preferred” feed.

The subscriber feed that comes installed with my blog software is being routed through another service called FeedBurner. I’ll likely go into some detail about how FeedBurner can help you in the future, but for now I’ll say that at its core, FeedBurner allows me to more easily determine some factors such as the number of readers I have.

Unfortunately, due to that error on my part some of you might not be subscribed to the FeedBurner feed, and instead subscribed to the one that I can’t track. This is frustrating because it gives me innaccurate readership numbers, and make figuring out things like advertising prices difficult.

I’d appreciate it if you could check you feed reader, just to check and make sure you have the right feed subscribed. You won’t need to check if you used the two icons on the sidebar of this page - however if your feed reader uses an “auto-discover” feature, it will likely be set to the wrong feed.

Below are the two correct URLs that you’ll want to subscribe to:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/youmakemedia - for entries only
http://feeds.feedburner.com/youmakemedialinks - for the link blog only

I’m sorry to cause this problem in the first place. It was an error on my part, and I apologize for any inconvenience caused. I’ve resolved the problem now though, and in the future feed readers with “auto-discover” enabled will get the proper feeds sent to them.

Thank you,
Chris