In this episode: Creative “burnout”, new plans for the future, eventual replenishment.

Even though I love, love LOVE Vimeo, I ultimately decided that blip.tv was the place for the cocktail napkin* to live for one reason alone — iTunes podcast compatibility.

I wanted the cocktail napkin to be a podcast from day one, but it quickly became apparent that I was going to max out my server after about 10-12 episodes, so podcast compatibility was the first feature to get axed. No longer, my friends.

And, blip.tv gives me another option that not everyone is probably going to love — the ability to generate a little revenue through advertising. I opted out of pre-roll ads to keep things as unobtrusive as possible, but hey… Martini wants to get paid, son.

The main downside of blip.tv as opposed to Vimeo is that the Flash video doesn’t look quite as good by default, but I noticed that I can override their FLV conversions with my own. So, it’s extra work for me, but I can continue to deliver high quality video. HD versions of the episodes will still be available via the iTunes podcast. I also don’t see any way to apply custom design to the show’s page. That, however, is only a minor inconvenience.

I hope you’ll join the cocktail napkin* at its new home!

In this episode: The Concho Valley, DFW, early adpoters, taking technology for granted, airplane winglets, kaizen.

If you want to follow the cocktail napkin* discussion on Twitter, just use or search for this hashtag: #thecocktailnapkin. Also, archived episodes are available at thecocktailnapkin.com.

Now, you can see the 6 latest episodes at a glance. If you’re so inclined, you can subscribe to the cocktail napkin* channel on Vimeo and have the ability to subscribe to its RSS feed as well as leave comments and discussion about the videos on the Vimeo community.

I think this is a good solution that benefits everyone. It benefits me because it keeps all the discussion surrounding these videos in one central location and it benefits you that in the even that you aren’t interested in the videos you can more easily ignore them.

In this episode: Observations, Coexist bumper stickers, Bath & Body Works soaps, patchouli, hemp traders, Hooville, presentation clickers, ChipIn to help bring Vimeo Plus to the cocktail napkin. (Just sayin’ right now… I’m persistent)

In this episode: Heart surgery memories.

I had to use the Facebook embed of this episode because My Vimeo account didn’t have enough remaining weekly allowance for this video to fit and YouTube rejected it because it was too long. Vimeo is where I want to keep these videos officially archived, so I need to invest in a Vimeo Plus membership. If you are enjoying these videos, I ask you to consider using the ChipIn widget below to donate a little toward the $60 Vimeo Plus fee. I’d sure appreciate it.

Hey. These videos aren’t all going to be perfect. That’s kind of the point.

In this episode: Creative focus, again with the Merlin Mann, man crush?, fingers in pies, temporally coincidental graffitti, dead camera batteries.

I’m with you on the YouTube and getting totally unrelated “related” videos. I’ve been making an effort to find other video sites like Vimeo (I like viddler and dailymotion) but a lot of the stuff I look for is mostly on YouTube. I think higher quality video sites like Hulu and TV.com will take some users away from YouTube but they’ll still remain king for awhile. This scenario reminds me back in the day when Yahoo Auctions was trying to compete with eBay but in the end eBay’s user base was just too much and really I don’t think Yahoo really tried/cared anyway. Competition is good but it sure is harder to compete on the internets.

My thought about that is this:

YouTube really will never go away because it’s the Wal-Mart of user generated video. Where else can you get music videos, family vacations, and dudes lighting farts right next to each other?

The thing about Vimeo is that I don’t really see it as a YouTube competitor so much because it really does serve a different community. The Vimeo community seems to have more sophisticated taste and are making their content with more sophisticated skills and equipment.

And, Hulu is an even different animal from all the other examples you’ve mentioned. Hulu is kind of the epitome of video sites because it aggregates the highest quality video from the TV networks. To me it doesn’t even begin to compete with YouTube. Crappy copies of DVR-ripped shows don’t stand up to HD streams of the same content.

There’s always a place for YouTube. The problem is that it’s enormous content bloat makes the finding of content (either through recommendations or related links) a little cumbersome and in cases such as the zit popping fiasco completely ineffective.

And if you’re wondering, yes… I watched about 3 zit videos before turning away. It was like this awful train wreck. Each one was more disgusting than the last but I just couldn’t turn away. I spared you all great mental scarring by only showing you the tiniest bit of the video I showed in the last episode. Blech.

!!!WARNING!!!

If you are a fairly squeamish person, there’s about 3 seconds of video in here that may make you vomit on your keyboard. You’ve been warned, and I think you’ll know when it’s coming.

In this episode: Buzz Aldrin conference room, Tim & Eric Awesome Tour 2009, benefits of YouTube vs. Vimeo, zit popping videos on YouTube = bad, thought provoking videos on Vimeo = good, lavalier mics and HD cameras, Most Days by Merlin Mann, Encore by David Liebe Hart.

I also realized after uploading the episode that I called it the cocktail shaker again. Eventually I’ll get it right, won’t I? You would think. It’s my own damn show after all.

In this episode: Mac & Cheese hair, first birthday party, old Nazi pistol, distraction.