If you want to catch up on my WordPress related goings-on, head over to Michael On WordPress.

If you want to check out my pics and stuff, have a peep at Jolt++, a Flickr blog.

And if it’s video/animation/personal experiments you crave, hit up Smashcut.tv.

Thanks for reading or stopping by!

Automattic are the folks that make WordPress, (the blogging software that powers these very words), BBPress and Gravatar, among other goodies. I’ve been working closely with them recently on a series of screencasts, so was amazed and delighted to be invited to join the crew full time.

At Automattic I’ll be continuing my work with video how-tos in a big way. We have some awesome plans brewing for the weeks and months ahead as to how we’ll be putting video to use, alongside other handy-dandy documentation to make the WordPress experience even easier than it is already.

Look forward to seeing you over at my WordPress.com blog, and to updating the content here more often.

Of course if you have any ideas or feedback on the WordPress video tip, I’m all ears - send me an email at michaelp (at) automattic (dot) com

If you didn’t catch it already, you might want to check out the video we put together for the WordPress 2.6 launch. So far it’s been watched about 650k times, and is still doing some very nice numbers daily:

I think there’s plenty of potential for editing existing posts, and knocking out longer form content on the move using the app. But with sausage-sized fingers like mine and the hilarious predictive text of the iPhone interface, it feels better suited to a different blogging style, something more Tumblr like.

So I thought I’d set up a little experiment with one of my dormant domain names, Jolt++, to see about adding a different, more shot-from-the-hip arrow to my bow, authored on the run from the iPhone and with the WordPress app.

My JoltStream

I had a good look around and found that there are quite a few decent Tumblog style themes for WordPress these days (there are six here to get you started), but in the end settled on the minimalist charms of Typographic thanks to its clean look and ease of posting.

It automatically formats content depending on the categories you assign it to, such as quotes, conversations, videos and so on - much like Tumblr, which makes it a nice lightweight tool that gets out my way and lets me get on with my micro-posting out on the streets.

So if you really have too much time on your hands - or a good BS filter on your feed reader - feel free to add Jolt++ to your feeds and see what happens when iPhone meets world via WP.

Sayonara Smashcut

For those of you not accustomed to squinting, the gist is that I’m shutting up shop on Smashcut Media.

Which wasn’t something I planned on doing. The last year has been awesome, and I’d reached the stage where I was turning away jobs on a pretty much daily basis. Would-be pro-screencasters take note - this is a huge underdeveloped niche, and less screencasters with chops than there are jobs to keep them busy year round.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with some incredible, passionate start-ups from all over the world, and will probably put together some kind of retrospective at some point. And been able to do what I love best (motion design, editing into the small hours, working from home over countless cups of hi-octane coffee) day in, day out.

So why the hell am I soaping up the windows?

In short, I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse by an incredible company I have huge amounts of respect and time for, and will be announcing the details of that sometime very soon.

You’ll be seeing a lot more of me over there, and I’m also planning (in choice morcels of downtime) to post here, and my pending micro-animation video blog, along with the iPhone powered Tumblelog type thing I’ve set up here.

 In short, I’d had a couple of shots where a tiny pixel had attached itself to a particular type of cursor. The type of thing that you would never even notice if the footage weren’t super-magnified. Not a biggy.

Within a few minutes, Vara had picked up on my tweet, replied to me and asked if I’d like to submit a support email. Which was awesome - I see Twitter used and abused in a lot of ways, and it’s great to see it being used so proactively by a developer to monitor and respond to feedback.

That would have been cool enough, but what followed was pretty much mind-blowing.

Within another hour I had a copy of the problem file sent over to Vara for them to check out, and maybe an hour or less later than that I’d been given a link to a new, as-of-yet-unreleased build of the software. Problem fixed.

This is a company that is consistently listening to feedback, creating updates that really do add additional features (rather than just bug fixes), and evidently care about their commitment to “making ScreenFlow the best screencasting solution out there,” as Brian from Vara put it.

They’re doing an incredible job of it, and I’m excited to see what’s coming next.

The  last update, from 1.0 to 1.1 threw in some incredibly useful new features based on feedback from users, and this thing just keeps getting better.

In short if you want some ideas about how to improve your web based business, take a leaf from Vara’s book.

  NB - I’m not affiliated with Vara in any way, neither are any of the above links affiliate links or suchlike. Just want to spread the word on a company that is passionate about what they do, and making an app that kicks ass on so many levels.  

Having battled with the horror of SnapzProX, found temporary solace and then abject misery in the frame dropping antics of iShowU, with it’s delightful blinking cursor “feature”, and then switched to Screenflick (formerly Screencast) only to get frustrated with its constant crashing, tiresome interface and slooooow start-up procedure, I find myself in a rapture of delight having discovered today the majesty of ScreenFlow.

If I sound breathless, it’s because I am. I just shelled out the $99 price tag faster than it took me to finish watching the demo screencast.

Why? I mean, isn’t that pricey?

Trust me, if you screencast every single day of your life, on a mac, under the glitches of Leopard (sorry pre-upgrade people, this is a Leopard only app), you will be jumping for joy when you see what’s on offer here.

This is what mac screencasters have been waiting for, and for a long, long time.

Those cool zoom and pan features in Camtasia? Check.

Executed in a far better way in a beautiful interface? Check.

Time line editing that doesn’t totally suck - oh yes.

Call outs, mouseposé style highlighting and OmniDazzle style zooming of a portion of your screen? On screen keyboard commands? Naturally.

Amazing, no-drop frame, crystal clear, HD quality visuals.

This is the kind of thing that is going to hugely reduce my screencasting workflow. No more hand keyframing those zooms and pans in Final Cut or Motion… No more having to have to perform simple editing in a different app (yes, I might still do some of the fancier stuff in FCP/Premiere, but you get the idea).

No more creating fancy reflections by copying the video source and using masking, blur, rotation etc. because fancy reflections come as standard here.

Other stand out features include highlighting of the cursor, or the foreground window; awesome full screen presentations from Keynote, with our without picture in picture video (from your isight or the cam of your choice). I can even bring in media from other sources and mix it in.

Output using a range of presets OR full quicktime support for your custom specs.

Basically, short of titling and all the fancy motion graphics wizardry I do, this is a complete package, and it rocks, rocks, rocks.

If you make screencasts, want to make screencasts, and want a powerhouse piece of kit for a measly $99, ScreenFlow is it.

Trust me when I say that this is a game changer. I know people that use FCP for doing the tasks that this thing will do alone. The only thing missing here is titling, but smart folk will use something like Keynote to sort that out. Am I going to stop using FCP, Premiere, After Effects etc? No, because a lot of my work now is much more motion graphics based. But if I were just making regular screencasts, this would be more than enough for the entire workflow, and I don’t doubt that it will be saving me a whole lot of time.

Software companies, would-be video podcasters, trainers, educators and a lot more folk besides are going to find a lot of use for this.

And, and… It even has built in screencast tutorials for the different features. Talk about eating your own dog food.

Expect an in-depth review when I get a day off, but basically, just go, now, and buy this.

TechSmith had better come up with something very special when they release Camtasia at the end of the year in it’s all new mac format, because this one is going to be hard to trump.

If you’re wondering, this is not a paid post and I have no affiliation with Vara at all. Merely a song of joy and delight at what I’ve been waiting for this last 18 months or so doing this full time for a living.

Hat tip to awesome e-learning blog eQuixotic for breaking the news (and that of the forthcoming Camtasia, which I am on the beta waiting list for)!

Expect an all new blog, website, greatly updated portfolio and more… soon.

As in, when I get a day off.

In the meantime, check out a small sample of recent work at KickDeveloper (the KickApps developer site), ReviewBasics, Planjam, and Scientific American’s 60 Second Science project The Monitor, where I am lending some weekly screencasting muscle to new friend and producer John Pavlus on his very imaginative project.

Much more to follow, when it goes live to the intrawebs and I’ve had chance to take stock of things.

Thanks for keeping your ears open

Beth has worked tirelessly on making this happen, and now she is about 30 donors away from the prize being a reality.

Please be awesome and donate below, or check out Beth’s blog for more information.

DataPortability - Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut Media on Vimeo.

Enjoy!

Today I stumbled across a grotesquely unformatted parody of my Michael-Pick.com blog which even has all of the deep links altered and copied, as well as my entire Smashcut-Media.com website (minus images and video).

It’s a Japanese website and following back the links it seems to be a great new service that steals entire websites, makes them fit for mobile phone consumption and throws in a ton of sexy ads in Japanese.

So, if you’re Japanese, reading this on your keitai on the commute home and haven’t yet been tempted into singles dating or sexy chat antics, welcome to the wonderful, apparently erotic, world of a screencaster for hire.

If you feel compelled to check out this monstrosity, I’m not giving them Google Juice, but you can do so here: http://poke.u.la/pcview.cgi/michael-pick.com

Surreal.