ShowMeDo Blog

I’ve been testing ShowMeDo.com on my Nokia 6680 mobile via 3G and a web browser, and you know what…it works. Soon you’ll be able to watch your ShowMeDos from the comfort of your mobile (whether your screen is big enough to make that useful…well, that’s another matter!).

It could be neater and the links need to be easier to select, but it works - thanks TurboGears!. I’ve also figured out how to transcode the ShowMeDos to the 3GP format that plays on mobile phones (our QuickTime 6 videos won’t play on my Nokia or, I think, other mobiles). I’ll convert some of the ShowMeDos next week and put up a tutorial on the steps I went through.

I’m very pleased to say we’ve now served 12,094 videos since we went live on New Year’s Eve 2005. That’s a lot of people watching a lot of videos. If you’d like to share back your knowledge, just like Jerol, we’d love to talk with you!

Jerol’s second video, an Introduction to Python Ojbects using IPython (2), is now on-line - thanks Jerol! It is listed under the set An Introduction to Python Objects using IPython, the final part will be on-line by early next week. This ShowMeDo is 14 minutes long, Jerol gives an excellent introduction to using the class keyword and shows how inheritance works.

It is very exciting for us to have a user-contributed video, and I’m happy to say I learned something from both of the videos - sharing knowledge via video is a great way to learn new skills.

Since our go-live day on Jan 1st we’ve had an amazing 11,938 ShowMeDo downloads, and almost half of these have been in the last few weeks. Kyran and I are very happy that we’re able to provide such a useful service!

The four IPython introduction ShowMeDos continue to be the most popular with 5,801 downloads to date, followed by the two SPE ShowMeDos with 1,901 views. Kyran’s five wxPython ShowMeDos, although new, are showing their popularity with 2,706 downloads in just the last 5 weeks.

We’re also very proud to have our first user-contributed ShowMeDo: Jerol Harrington introduces Python objects using the IPython shell in the first of a three-part set. Get it while it’s hot!

[edit: the video is on-line now]
We’ve had our first video submission from one of our users - most cool!

Jerol Harrington has created an Introduction to Python Objects using IPython, the first in a series of three on Python Objects. Several more videos will follow in the coming weeks. He used HyperCam and VirtualDubMod, we’ve handled the compression and will handle the hosting.

I must apologise for the lack of posting, I’ve been away on holiday, Kyran and I are preparing for a new big push with new features and new videos for April…drop us a line if you’d like to share your knowledge in a video and give something back to the community.

The recent publicity has brought us a new set of video requests, some by very prominent members of the Python community:

• Sean McGrath is interested in knot-tieing videos
• Stani in a wxGlade video
• Swaroop in the Python Imaging Library
• Jerol in an introduction to objects in Python
• Kent in a video on using vnc2swf

Who’d like to share their knowledge in a video? Get in contact with us and we’ll help.

Stani has very kindly offered (half way down) to let us reward ShowMeDo video contributors with a pdf of the SPE manual for his Python development environment.

Normally it is only available if you have donated directly to the SPE project. This is a wonderful example of the gift economy in action.

Many thanks Stani!