Web Stream Recorder

Our daughter has dreamed of playing soccer for Santa Clara University since she was 9 years old (she will begin playing for them in the Fall of 2013). Because of that and since we live only about 35 minutes away from the school, we are season ticket holders and have watched about 10 matches per season for the last few years. One of the nice things about college soccer is that most schools now stream their matches live over the web, so even when Santa Clara is not playing at home, we can still watch. We’ve done that three times so far this year.

But sometimes, even when a match is being streamed over the web, our daughter has a prior commitment (tonight she’s at a practice for her high school’s homecoming activities). I’ve thought about trying to record the live stream so she could watch it later. I tried it once this year using Camtasia Studio, but the quality was not very good (I don’t think that was because of Camtasia Studio - which is not really designed to record live streaming video - it’s a screencast program). So I had resigned myself to not being able to record the live stream.

But today, on a lark, I did a search on Google for software that would record live streaming video and audio. That search took me to a forum thread where someone recommended Web Stream Recorder. I downloaded the free trial this afternoon and just finished recording the live stream of a Santa Clara University match.

When I played back the recording of the live stream, I was honestly astounded at the quality - I can’t see really see a difference between the live stream and the recording. To me, that’s proof of the excellence of the software - it does what it should do, and does it well.
From their website, here are the features of the software:

• It allows you to record various stream types — Windows Media, Real Media, and Shoutcast
• It will capture streaming video automatically while you surf the web
• You can also record YouTube and other Flash videos
• You can save on-demand streams to your hard drive
• It is compatible with native 64 bit apps
• No third-party drivers are installed
• You can schedule recordings

You can download a free, 7-day trial to evaluate the software yourself. From what I can see so far, it meets my needs perfectly.

If you’d like to see the software in action, you can view a video tutorial below:

This Is Fascinating

This is pretty fascinating. My daughter has an interest in robotics, and I was looking at some TED videos. I came across this one that touches on robotics and think I will share it with her for a project she’s working on. In the video, Golan Levin of Carnegie Mellon shares about the hybridization of art and engineering.

Looking For A Great SEO Consultant?

I would highly recommend Gravity Search Marketing. I first came in contact with this company through reading a book written by their principals Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin. The book is called Search Engine Optimization An Hour A Day. When I first read the book years ago, it quickly became my favorite book on SEO, and that hasn’t changed.

Then, when the company I work for was looking for SEO consultants, Gravity was recommended to us by our ecommerce platform provider. It didn’t take me long to realize that the company we were evaluating was run by the authors of my favorite SEO book and we quickly hired Gravity as our consultants.

We haven’t been disappointed! Jennifer and Gradiva spent a lot of effort and time to thoroughly evaluate our site structure, use of relevant keywords, placement in search engine rankings, etc. They have trained us in good SEO copywriting and continue to make helpful recommendations regarding url structure, page titles, etc. They are deeply committed to white-hat SEO techniques, so we don’t have to worry about being banned by search engines. Best of all, since we engaged Gravity, our search engine rankings and performance from natural search have definitely improved.

I would recommend Gravity Search Marketing without hesitation!

New Website For My Daughter

I’ve recently launched a new website for my daughter at EmilyJohnson.tv.

As you can see from the screenshot above, my daughter is a soccer goalkeeper. She is passionate about the sport and wants to play in college. So we decided to create a website for her that would highlight her skills (both athletic and academic), display video of her highlights, and publish her news throughout her social media presence.

If you have any comments or questions about the website, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Samasource

I watched a fascinating video today of Leila Chirayath Janah, the founder of Samasource, speaking at a TEDS conference.

From Samasource’s description of their mission:

Samasource enables marginalized people, from refugees in Kenya to women in rural Pakistan, to receive life-changing work opportunities via the Internet. The core of this concept is microwork - little bits of labor that can be performed anytime and anywhere that add up to a real livelihood for our partners. In parallel, we enable socially responsible companies, small businesses, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs in the US to contribute to economic development by buying services from our workforce at fair prices.

Also, see the Samasourcing blog.