jeremyvaught

Sheila Dee, Evo Terra’s wife, contacted me the other day and talked me into speaking at the upcoming Podcamp Arizona in November. Here is my page :)

We agreed my two topics will be “How I Use Social Media to Make Real Money” and “Is video conversation going to thrive, or fade away?” So I guess I’ll be speaking twice, once each day.

I keep forgetting to post this, but as you can see, I have finally done it. And I stuck the landing.

So this is me when I visited San Francisco and Loic (founder and CEO of Seesmic) interviewed me for the now defunct Seesmic Du Jour. Matt Galligan from SocialThing is in the first part, then I come on at about 2:20. Please ignore my gum chewing.

So you read I have a new N95… so as long as my batter holds up, I’ll be taking pictures and posting videos of what is happening. You can follow the action at these file destinations on the internet…

Seesmic - video
Flickr - pictures
Qik - live video
Twitter - micro blog (you know what Twitter is, it’s Twitter)

If you want to get a hold of me, dm me on Twitter, or txt me at 623.670.2365. You can call too I suppose, but I let numbers I don’t recognize to go voicemail.

I originally wrote this to post on blog.seesmic.com, but it was pointed out to me that the mobile client cannot be pushed on the corporate blog. So I’m putting it here. I’m getting questions from people about purchasing an N95 and once there, how to set up the Seesmic client. So this is not Seesmic official, but it’s a little informative post from me. (also, there is a comment I make about Loic, and it’s full intention is to just be funny. Nothing negative about Loic) Here goes…

I’ve recently purchased a Nokia N95, primarily for the purposes of Seesmicing on the move.  I don’t Seesmic as much as I would like to since I haven’t yet found a webcam that is compatible with Flash for my Linux laptop.  When I suggested on Twitter that I need to buy a webcam that works, Loic helpfully suggested that a Mac comes with one preinstalled, however he failed to point out the price difference between a webcam and the Macbook.  I looked it up, the price difference is significant.  As I have pointed out previously, I have been using my digital camera to do all my Seesmicing, a daunting process after a while. 

So I bought this phone.  The first thing I did was check out the new mobile Seesmic application at m.seesmic.com.  It’s in an even more alpha stage than the pre-Alpha Seesmic web app, but I can Seesmic on the move, and straight to Seesmic.  In all honestly, one of the things I have enjoyed pre-N95 is Seesmicing on the move with my digital camera in video mode, but now the rest of the steps are cut out.  Easy peasy.

If you have the N95, and you haven’t tried the mobile Seesmic app, you are so 2007.  So in the interest of sharing knowledge, I’m going to lay down some info about what I have done because I’m getting asked that question regularly on teh interwebs.  Keep in mind I am in the U.S. and I have little idea about how they do these things in Europe and other parts of the world.  If you do, please leave a comment :)

1. First thing I did was go get an AT&T account.  I’ve been a Verizon customer for too many 2 year contracts, so I have just decided to bite the bullet and pay the fee to drop them.  (I could go on about how they canceled my EVDO card because I used my unlimited connection too much, or every time I make a change, it starts my 2 years over, or their phones are lame, and on and on, but I won’t)  I wanted to get the account first in the off chance they wouldn’t let me after I paid for my phone.  They let me have my account.
   1. A point about why AT&T.  They are currently the only provider in North America with 3G for data.  You want 3G.  T-mobile promised 3G, but they don’t have it yet, and it is said that it will be a different band than what the N95 supports.  So sign up for AT&T, and get the unlimited data plan.  My plan, unlimited Data, Txt, & Email (meh, I use gmail) with 900 minutes of talk a month, is US$94.  It was pointed out to me that AT&T has a video plan as well for phones that stream video.  But since the N95 uses the data plan, it doesn’t use the video specific plan.  However, the AT&T clerk pointed out that AT&T may one day take a dim view of all that bandwidth for video being used without paying for a video plan.  FYI.
2. I purchased the phone.  First I purchased it through TigerDirect from a link I found somewhere on Mahalo.  That’s also a long story in that they refused to send it to my mailing address so I canceled the order and they still charged me 4 days later and I had to spend hours on the phone resolving that.  So I ended up ultimately purchasing my phone at Amazon.  But the actual supplier for the phone is DavaVision.  The reason I make this point is that I can’t find the phone on Amazon right now, it says it is not available.
   1. BE VERY CAREFUL ABOUT WHICH N95 YOU GET.  There a several on Amazon that are labeled as the N95-3 (which is the North American Version) but are in fact N95s and N95-2, both of which are the European versions, the dash 2 being 8Gb version.  The N95-3 currently doesn’t come in red, plum or anything else other than black.  Don’t be deceived.  I paid US$610 for my phone, if you are paying only US$300 or US$400, is it probably not the N95-3.  Now the N95-4 is coming out soon, and that will be the 8Gb North American version, but personally, I don’t see the point.  It won’t have a microSD slot like the dash 3, and the 12Gb microSD card was just released, and the 16Gb microSD card was just announced.  Stick with the microSD card IMHO.
3. Now I’m rockin’ and rollin’ on my N95-3 on the AT&T unlimited data plan.  This really is a superior phone that I’ve been amazed with constantly.  The video quality is amazing, even through a live connection on the data network and not wifi (which of course it has also, and is also awesome)

If you have any questions, please comment on this post or email me at vaught@seesmic.com.  I’m here to help :)

Seesmic rant
Need Mobile Seesmic

I’m trying not to talk about Seesmic all the time, sorry. But it is what is occupying my brain as of late. Well, that and RSS… hey, why don’t I post about RSS! Great idea, coming up.

Check out my newest post on seesmicblog.com, New Competition.

I’ve been blogging away about Seesmic at SeesmicBlog.com. Not sure how to do this, so for now I’ll just give you a summary of what I’ve been writing:

Renamed: It’s all about community
Adobe Flex
Seesmic tip for Wordpress users
Seesmic menu update
I use my digital camera
My biggest frustration, right now
The beginnings of seesmix
I’ve got goals baby

Anyone know of a way to do this automatically. Ideally, I would love it when I blogged over there, it put an entry in this blog saying to go check out that blog. Initially I was going to post in both places, but that splits up the conversation if one starts in the comments.

I came across this post from LoicLeMeur.com from October 24th, 2007. (And just for my own point of reference, I met Loic on October 30th, 6 days later, at Jeff Pulver’s party at the Roxy in Boston. Sadly that was my last night in town since I flew out the next morning)

Anyway, the post has the first two seesmix posted. Which if you are not aware what a seesmix is, it is a collection of seesmic posts in a 24 hour period, or the weekend. All edited masterfully by Giselle Kennedy btw. Always entertaining, it is is a fantastic idea, and a daily digest of videos I look forward to every day.

So if you are new to Seesmic, or an old pro, these are fun to watch, and these two are the first two. (and if you are new to Seesmic, or Seesmix anyway, they improved quickly, so skip ahead a few if you don’t particularly enjoy those two originals) More to be found on the under the user, Seesmix, on youtube.