Crossing the Rubicon

Even if you drive a jalopy on the digital highway, you can still embrace an aspect of new media. The journey may be nerve-wracking, but keep in mind four guidelines. One, if you can dream it, it is likely possible. Two, there's more than one way to reach your destination. Three, you may need to test some bumpy freewares before you find the one that's best for you. Four, it's going to take time to sort things out.

Take this example. You've recorded a presentation and created a digital audio file — a feat in itself. Now you want to post it to the Web. What do you do?

Blogger, for one, only accepts image and/or video files, no stand-alone audio files. How are you going to get around this barrier? Simple. You combine audio with just one image to make a video file.

But, say, that mock video file is too large for Blogger, which has its limits. Whatcha gonna do? Well, you upload the heavyweight to an external site. That site, in turn, will generate a URL, which when posted and hyperlinked on Blogger, can be accessed by viewers. Voilà!

It is a circuitous solution, to be sure. And it's only partial. For next, you have to find a hassle-free software, plus an external site to make it all happen. The road can get bumpy.

At least, that was my experience. Exasperated, I was ready to throw in the towel, when all of a sudden, I received some help from a bedroom in Scandinavia. No, no. It was not Sven with his massage oils, you naughty reader. But rather, a boy presenting a how-to on his computer. As a videocam tracked the cursor on his monitor, "spikensbror" patiently showed us how to synch an image to a sound file, then upload the results. His presentation on YouTube made it look so easy. At last, I could solve my problem! I followed spikensbror's example, not before downloading the freeware Movie Maker for my Windows XP. In the process, I jumped another hurdle in the field of new media.

Care to have an overview of that hot field? How about making money from it? Dawn Boshcoff of BOSHmedia and president of the Professional Writers Association of Canada (Toronto chapter) discusses some good stuff here and here. And who do you think put together those photo-audio files of the presentation? Yep, the former jalopy driver that's me. There's no turning back now. I dumped the old clunker. Though the Maserati is a stretch — for now.