∞
What Is oEmbed and Why You Should Use It - WordCamp Orange County 2016
[wordpress.tv/2016/07/1...](https://wordpress.tv/2016/07/11/jason-tucker-what-is-oembed-and-why-you-should-use-it/) At WordCamp Orange County 2016 I spoke about something that I thought was going to be very simple, oEmbeds. What I found was that oEmbeds are very complicated under the hood yet make things super simple for the end user.
What is oEmbed? oEmbed is a format for allowing an embedded representation of a URL on third party sites. The simple API allows a website to display embedded content (such as photos or videos) when a user posts a link to that resource, without having to parse the resource directly.
∞
Google Hangouts On Air - 3 ways on how to invite people
I get this question a lot about how to invite other people to be on a Google Hangouts On Air call; I thought I'd share with you how I go about doing this on my YouTube channel WPwatercooler. As you may or may not know Google Hangouts is a way to get up to 10 people on a video call and interact with one another. Google Hangouts On Air is a way for you to stream the conversation you are having on YouTube for others to see.
∞
Tips for optimizing live broadcasting from your Mac
When streaming audio or video out to the Internet be it a podcast, a Google Hangout or just talking to your mom over Facetime from your computer you want to have the highest quality you can get sent from your computer to the Internet. Aside from asking the bandwidth hogs in your family to stop streaming NetFlix and 4K YouTube videos while you are broadcasting online (my family knows when I go upstairs to record to only watch local content) I wanted to share some tips that I have for optimizing the broadcasting bandwidth potential from your computer.
∞
Copying a VM from Parallels to another computer
My coworker Philip and I have been working on getting a VM on each of our computers setup so we can do some work with Casper Suite’s Composer and get some apps pkg’d up and added into the JSS. I made a base VM and got it setup and ready to copy. When I sent him a copy of that file and he started it up and got things going, after it booted he installed QuickAdd.
∞
Organizing all of JAMF's Casper Suite on the OS X dock
My company recently purchased and implemented JAMF Software’s Casper Suite and I ended up putting all of the apps from the suite in the Applications folder. In a previous post I wrote how you can group items using OS X tags and then later do some saved searches to wrangle them all together.
Tagging I tagged each of the apps in the Casper Suite with the "casper" tag. Just open the Get Info sheet for that application, click the white box and type in the tag and press enter.
∞
Create realistic looking iOS screenshots with hardware interface
So I’ve been working on a documentation project at work and needed a way to make fast screenshots that also indicate that the screenshot they are looking at is coming from and iPhone or iPad. The documentation site I’m putting these on has a white background and most of my screenshots have a white background too, my message was getting lost to the users and I needed a better way.
∞
How to make Chrome Profile Manager better
If you are like me you have quite a few profiles in Google Chrome and you switch between them all the time. The new Chrome person switcher just sucks and requires too many clicks to switch a user (click name in upper right, click switch user and then click user in popup)
There has to be a better way so I started digging. Google has this “chrome://flags” page you can go to to make change to your Chrome settings.
∞
OS X Clipboard Management with Alfred 2
Don’t you hate it when you are looking for a solution to a problem and you already have the solution and didn’t know it? Well, that happened to me just now. I was looking for a way to manage my Mac’s clipboard so if I copied more than one thing I could go back and paste the first one and then the second one. Typically a clipboard only allows for one item at a time to remain in it, if you copy something new the old one is removed and the new one replaces it.
∞
Enable CMD ENTER to send an email in OS X Mail.app
I’ve been forcing myself to use the built in Mail.app lately, I’m the IT Manager at a church and one of the things I try to do is use the exact same hardware and software that my users use. I really I hate when they call me up and asked me a question and I don’t know the answer to it, not because I’ve never done it before but because it’s not in my muscle memory so I end up having to either look it up or try it myself.
∞
How to setup a YouTube live video stream using FFMPEG
My wife Jen recently noticed that we had a bird’s nest in our DirecTV satellite dish. The Momma bird recently laid some eggs in it and we’ve been curious about them so I thought it would be fun to set up a webcam so we can keep tabs on what’s going on up there without disturbing the nest.
www.youtube.com/watch
I used to run a live webcam when I was a kid As you can see above we have a 24/7 webcam running (as of March 24th 2015) streaming what is going on in the bird’s nest.
∞
Make it harder to Command Q an app on OS X
We’ve all done it, we’re knee-deep in some research or we’re writing an extra long email or throwing items into a shopping cart on some website and all of a sudden you press ⌘ Q (Command Q) and there goes all that hard work you have been working on, especially if you neglected to save and the app doesn’t have autosave.
So what's the solution? The one solution I’ve found is by using a free app called Karabiner that has a custom shortcut titled “Press Command+Q twice to Quit Application”.
∞
Working with Tags in OS X
Yesterday I wrote about how to use tags to group applications and how to use Alfred to search for them. This post will be how to work with Tags in OS X and ways to work with them from both the GUI and the Command Line.
How to add tags to files The easiest way to add tags to your files is by selecting the file, pressing ⌘ and i to open the Get Info window for that file.
∞
What was that app's name again?
I suck at names, I know this and I deal with it. My issue with names isn’t just for people, apparently I suck at remembering an app’s name too. “What was that again? Remote something? Screen? Microsoft Remote something..”
When you’re in the heat of the moment and you are looking for that app so you can remote desktop to some Windows or Mac I just wanna find it and be done with it.
∞
How to keep your Mac awake during presentations - Caffeine
One of the most useful apps I have on my Mac barely has an interface to interact with yet stops me from breaking my flow when presenting at work. This app’s name is Caffeine and it stops my MacBook dimming, sleeping or starting the screen saver with a simple click.
So how does it work? Caffeine is a tiny program that puts an icon in the menu bar of your Mac that looks like an empty coffee cup.
∞
Setup a custom Web Search with Alfred
I work at a church and I’m constantly looking up bible verses on my Macs (and iOS devices too). On the Mac I’ve been using this tool called Alfred which is a Spotlight replacement tool for searching your mac. But it does more… so much more than that. You see, Alfred is also a workflow system and has custom Web Search capabilities. Today I’m going to show you how you can add any website search to Alfred.
∞
How to switch the keyboard shortcut for Spotlight to Alfred
My friend Brandon Dove did a bad thing last night he showed me something awesome, you see at my local WordPress meetup he reintroduced me to Alfred and after watching his set of workflows I’m hooked… again. I’ve jumped around between LaunchBar, the new Spotlight and Alfred over the years (I even used Quicksilver when that was a big thing). In a later post I’ll circle back around to some of the cool workflow things that Brandon is using and how I’m incorporating it into my daily computer life.
∞
How to use SoundCloud for podcast hosting
www.youtube.com/watch
Hosting your podcast with a reliable host will insure you that your listeners are downloading from a reputable company, they will have fast downloads and that each download is tracked. In this video I go over how to take a recently uploaded mp3 file to SoundCloud and turn on a few settings so that the file can be downloaded or used in a podcast.
In the video I mention that I don’t use the RSS feed feature as my “podcast feed” in iTunes (or any other aggregator) because I believe that I should “own my feed”.
∞
Automate WordCamp WordPress.TV videos to social media
In a recent post I talked about how I went about recording, rendering and uploading the videos from a recent WordCamp. Today I’m going to share with you a little trick that I hope more WordCamps will use in notifying their attendees that their videos have been uploaded to WordPress.tv. As you know when the WordCamp is done there is still more work to be done: updating pages with links to the videos and updating the pages with links to the speakers slides.
∞
How to get more user interactions with your Google Hangout On Air event
I host a WordPress video show called WPwatercooler, we record weekly and I try to promote the heck out of the episodes we put out each week. While promoting I’m always looking for more ways to get the word out regardless of the extra amount of work that it takes me. Lets talk through some of the latest ways I’ve been promoting that may help you get more views and live interactions for your event.
∞
Techniques for using video on your WordPress site
In this post I plan to help you understand what oEmbed is and why it’s so awesome, how to make your embedded videos from YouTube or Vimeo be 100% width with the correct aspect ratio for the height, and help you set a featured image for your post from your embedded video’s thumbnail saving you time. Let’s get stated.
What is oEmbed oEmbed is simply a way for WordPress authors to include audio, video and other media in their blog posts without using a standard embed code to make it happen.
∞
WordCamp Speakers.. let's talk about mic control
During today’s episode 66 of WPwatercooler titled Tips for WordCamp Speakers I mentioned towards the tail in of it that some speakers presenting at WordCamps lack mic control, there is a right and a wrong way to hold a hand-held mic so let’s discuss.
What is a hand-held mic? The term “hand-mic” or hand-held mic generally means any microphone held in the hand that picks up anything the holder is saying.
∞
Create Google Hangouts quickly with these easy URLs
If you are like me you spend a lot of time in Google Hangouts either for your podcasts or for a quick video conversation with someone. Google doesn’t make it easy to generate a hangout and then provide you with a sharable URL to someone. Digging around online I found two URLs that I’ll keep bookmarked:
Standard Google Hangout URL http://hangouts.google.com/start
This will create a standard Google Hangout that you can invite your friends to.
∞
Push to Talk lets you quickly mute your mic during online chats
If you are like me you audio or video chat from your computer a lot, I sometimes use Skype, Google Hangout, and even FaceTime. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to quickly mute yourself regardless of what app you are using?
What problem does this solve? Weekly I do a WordPress web show called WPwatercooler that we record over Google Hangout. Sometimes the environment that I’m recording from isn’t under my control so I end up with loud background noise.
∞
How to start a podcast using WordPress and PowerPress
I’ve been doing podcasts for since early 2006 where I was running two different podcasts and was also president of the OC Podcasters (the website is still up too). Back then I was rolling my own RSS feeds and then got into using a plugin for WordPress called podPress. This plugin still exists and is maintained, but I have since moved from that podcast over to PowerPress.
Back in my day.
∞
Website Demo Reel
Recently I've seen this new trend that companies are doing where they navigate a website they are demoing and do a few zooms and tight angles to tour the website. I took a few minutes to recreate this experience using my favorite screencasting app, ScreenFlow. Version 1 [leadplayer_vid id=“5149EC0CB3E20”]
I showed this demo to a few of my WordPress friends and thought I’d do one that isn’t as crazy.
Version 2 [leadplayer_vid id=“5149FF6251066”]