BSD Root Error iPhone iPod Touch

The way to get around the BSD root error is as follows: Working from a just restored unnamed by iTunes 1.1.4 firmware. Launch ZiPhone and instead of clicking on Jailbreak start clicking on jailbreak many times and kept clicking on it until the iPod is at the BSD root part. At this point it continues and then close ZiPhone before it finishes.


So why am I sharing this video and these instructions with you?

Well, if you are looking for a way to start creating and monetizing online videos you might get some ideas from watching this video. Is there some hobby or activity that you are into? Do you ever run into problems with that activity? Do you ever go online to find answers for those problems? Creating and sharing videos that solve problems is a great way to get some traction in online video.

The above iPhone Jailbreak ZiPhone video has had over 15,000 views on Revver and the one below has had over 90,000 views on YouTube.




The production value is not great on any of these "How To" videos but it doesn't really matter because viewers just want the info.

WARNING: Don't make videos about things you don't care about.

If you think that something is popular and you should do a video about it and make a series of videos about chances are that if you are not interested in the content you will grow tired, lose interest and you will stop making videos.

Diluting Your Feed

Is your RSS feed powerful enough that you need to dilute it?

I didn't think so but lots of people are diluting their feeds by making other feeds available. I'm guilty of this and I'm not sure how to stop it.

Why does this matter you ask? Well I guess it matters only if you want the free promotion that Apple gives you on the iTunes Store in the podcasting directory and if you want to make money by controlling and selling your own advertising inventory.

It stands to reason that if you make your content available in as many formats as you can that more people will be able to choose what feed they want to subscribe to. Right? Okay, sure but when someone subscribes to your Windows Media feed they are not subscribing to your feed that is featured on the iTunes Store and they don't count as a subscription for the day that will bring you up in the iTunes rankings. What good does moving up in the iTunes ranking do me? Well if you have content that is emotionally compelling and can really build a large audience it means a lot. It took me over a month to get listed on the iTunes Store and once French Maid TV was featured as new and notable we shot up to number one in 3 days and pick up 20,000 subscribers overnight. Then we were mentioned in Wired Magazine and picked up another 20,000 subscribers. Your feed is very important because it allows you to reach a lot of viewers quickly and the iTunes Store is a great way to get new subscribers and be noticed by business development people and media buyers who are looking for "hot" properties.

Youtube has offered subscribing to their videos for a while but that's a separate feed from your own feed and now other sites like Revver are offering subscription buttons for feeds as well. That's all well and good but in the long run where does that get you? You don't control those feeds. Sure they are another way to get more viewers paying attention to your videos but if these "Partner Feeds" go away you lose all those subscribers.

The Apple iTunes Store doesn't control your feed, you do. You create your feed and then you tell Apple where it lives. You can tell Apple about multiple feeds that you have, say an iPod/iPhone feed, an audio only feed and an Apple TV feed but if you do that you are just diluting your feed and diluting your brand when it comes to your ranking at the iTunes Store.

Looking at my stats at Feedburner 43% of the French Maid TV RSS feed subscribers come from Windows iTunes, another 43% come from Mac iTunes and the rest are divided up by up by other readers including 3% that is Zune. (I didn't even know that Zune people could watch French Maid TV. I thought I had to deliver an M4V in oder for them to subscribe.) 86% of French Maid TV's subscribers come from iTunes. They bad part about my Feedburner feed is that I don't know who my subscribers are and the only way I can contact them is by dropping something down my feed and asking them to sign up for my mailing list.

Now at YouTube I only have 2434 subscribers but I can see their YouTube user name/profile and what videos they have uploaded and what videos are their favorites. This has the potential to be valuable but I've not really taken advantage of it yet. At Revver I can't tell how many subscribers I have nor can I tell anything about them.

Having as much information you can about your subscribers that you can share with potential advertisers is very important and moving forward I feel I need to figure out a way to get the kind of info that I have about my subscribers at YouTube on all my delivery channels but beyond that I feel the need to figure out how I can have one feed that I control that is viewable everywhere because I don't want to dilute my feed.

I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on this.

In the above video Brian Chappell offers a simple how to guide on setting up a basic meta refresh to enable tracking of RSS subscribers via google analytics, for sites that use services like feedburner. It is a great method to track where your sub's are coming from.

Unlocking Your iPhone

I've not yet purchased an iPhone for a couple of reasons one of which is that I can't use it on T-Mobile. Now Wired has announced that there is an easy hack for unlocking your iPhone.http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Beyond having an unlocked iPhone I would like to see the iPhone be a little more durable. Nick Douglas from Valleywag posted on Friday that Digg founder Kevin Rose cracked his iPhone. I know I'm much better at breaking things than Kevin Rose is so that really makes me want to wait for the next version of the iPhone. Maybe it will have 60 gigs of storage as well.

All this said I do see the iPhone as a great platform for content producers to create new and exciting content especially when it comes to the world of ARG or Alternative Reality Gaming. Inagine watching a video on your iPhone then getting a phone call or IM from one of the characters in the video asking you to located something for them on a Google Map and text a friend. The possibilities are endless.

Getting a $350 discount on an iPhone

For a video producer one of the many great things about an iPhone is that it’s an iPod that you can load your videos on to and then carry them around with you. You can have your demo reel with you at all times ready to show it anyone you can get to watch it.

On the other hand two of the worst things about the iPhone is that it costs a lot more than most other phones ($600) and you have to sign up for a two year contract with AT&T.

At one of the parties I was at up in San Francisco last week I ran into a guy with a new iPhone who said he had an interesting way to get a cheap iPhone. I asked if he knew someone at Apple and he said, “No.” but all it took was just a little bit of time and a credit card.

The first step he said was to visit a site like Pricegrabber and find the best deal on a new Blackberry Curve 8300 Smartphone. Once you find the best deal, which right now looks like it’s a FREE Blackberry Curve 8300 Smartpnone with a $150, mail-in rebate. Make sure it’s from a well rated dealer then buy it. Next sign up for the cheap activation then wait for the Blackberry Curve to arrive in the mail.

Once the Blackberry Curve shows up, place an ad on Craigslist to sell it for $350 or $400. Keep in mind the more you charge the longer it will take to sell but it should go pretty quick right now. He then went on to say that lots of guys drop their phones in the toilet or break them and they are locked into a two-year contract with AT&T and if they go back into the AT&T phone store they will have to buy a new smartphone at full price ($495 without activation) because Blackberry Curves are subsidized by the carrier so they are more expensive without the two year contract and if you just dropped your new Blackberry Curve down the drain you have to pay full price to replace it because the don’t sell Blackberry Curve Insurance. So getting a replacement for $350 is well worth it. Next he went on to say that once you’ve sold the Blackberry Curve for $350 or more take the cash, go to an AT&T or Apple Store and buy a new iPhone then transfer the service contract you had on the Blackberry Curve to the iPhone by signing a new Two Year contract that cancels out your old one. Keep in mind I haven’t done this so I don’t know that it works for sure and I don’t know if it’s illegal in anyway but it sounds like you could save $350 on an iPhone.