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Already, 2008 is proving to be an exciting year of growth for Earth-Touch.People all over the world have been logging on to Earth-Touch.com to explore our growing video and story resources, covering everything from anemones to zebras. During February we had visitors from over 70 countries, as far apart as Mexico, Germany and Japan. Sites that are referring readers to Earth-Touch.com include YouTube , Flickr and the popular “green” site Treehugger. Our weekly podcast has over 40 000 subscribers now, and ranks in iTunes’ top 100 podcasts in the TV and film category. For information on how to subscribe, please see the right-hand sidebar. On February 1, we launched the redesigned Earth-Touch Blog, which is already attracting hundreds of visitors a day. (See more on this below.) We appreciate your support and would love to hear your feedback and suggestions about www.earth-touch.com.
 Coming up in the next few weeksOver the next few weeks, Earth-Touch will be bringing you footage of:
 Field crew profile – Pierre Minnie
Pierre Minnie, one of Earth-Touch’s most experienced film crew members, has been involved with the television industry for almost 30 years. Over the past year, he’s brought Earth-Touch users footage from Ecuador, Brazil, South Africa and Botswana, capturing species on film as diverse as leafcutter ants in the Amazon and elephants in the Kalahari Desert. Apart from his superb skills behind the camera, Pierre is known internally for his dry sense of humour, which he sometimes expresses in hugely popular blog posts on the Earth-Touch blog. Asked about himself, Pierre says he is a “wannabe painter and organic gardener, but I’ve never managed to grow garlic successfully”. He drives an old car called Pearl and cannot understand earthlings’ obsessions with chasing balls. Here is a list of some of his musings, on issues ranging from hygiene in the field to coping with the technological demands of working for Earth-Touch: Have plant guilt, need counselling Slouching hammock, hidden pain
 Footage from Sodwana Bay, South AfricaEarth-Touch recently sent a crew to Sodwana Bay, part of the Isimangaliso Wetland Park . This is a World Heritage Site on the Indian Ocean coast of South Africa, near the border with Mozambique. The bay gets the warm, blue, sub-tropical water that supports summer gamefish, turtles and many other organisms, including sharks. Sodwana Bay is regarded as the diving capital of South Africa because of its coral reef system. The reefs or dive sites are named according to their distance from the launch area, like Quarter Mile and Nine Mile Reef. At this time of the year, Quarter Mile Reef is home to gestating ragged-tooth sharks. Pregnant sharks hug the reef and Raggies ride the surge are some of the clips of these creatures. Other video stories that have been published thus far are: Anemones and clownfish work together
 Visit the Earth-Touch blogThe redesigned Earth-Touch Blog was launched this year, and has proved to be a fantastic companion to Earth-Touch.com. The blog has various exciting post categories, including: Wildlife news from around the world You can also find previous newsletters and our growing Flickr group photos. (See more on this below.) Some of the posts that have been most popular with blog readers are “Did you know? Ragged-tooth sharks ”, “Into the future with a ping”, and “Coming unstuck in the Delta”.
 Visit the Earth-Touch Flickr groupEarth-Touch now has its own group in Flickr. It was started in mid-February and is growing at a rapid rate. Photos that users add to the group appear in a Photos section of the Earth-Touch Blog sidebar. Above are two example of photos submitted to the group. The chameleon image is courtesy of Gregor Rohrig, the lion image was contributed by Thomas Retterath. For information on how to join the group, click here. We would love to hear from you. Please leave a comment on the Earth-Touch blog, on Earth-Touch.com itself or e-mail us at info@earth-touch.com
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Every month, starting from 1 March, Earth-Touch.com will be offering visitors free screensavers showcasing our most striking images. These are available for both Mac and PC users, and are downloadable from the Earth-Touch Blog.
Subscribing to the Earth-Touch podcastDid you know you can get Earth-Touch videos delivered to your computer automatically? You can have high-definition video waiting for you to watch at your leisure – on your PC, iPod or any media player. Earth-Touch.com offers a number of different video subscription services which you can use at no charge. All the videos are available in two sizes – standard definition and high definition – and you can decide whether you want to download the videos with or without audio commentary. OK – first you have to log in to the site to gain access to the podcast controls. Once logged in, roll your mouse over the top navigation bar, where there is a little yellow arrow with ‘more’ written above it. You should then see a drop-down menu containing a number of icons. The third icon from the left (it looks like a radar signal) is the podcast and RSS button. Click this button and you’ll see three choices – ‘weekly highlights’, ‘featured stories’ and ‘complete archive’. Click on any of the active buttons and you’ll then see a selection menu slide out to the right. Within this new menu you can select exactly which feed you want to subscribe to – choose between commentary on or off, and 480(SD) and 720(HD) sized videos. Once you’ve decided, click on ‘show me my feed’ and a new window will slide out with the details of the videos that you want to subscribe to. You can use any RSS reader application or subscription software to track and download videos. We use Apple iTunes in the Earth-Touch office as it is really easy – all you have to do is click on the ‘iTunes’ button in the window and it should automatically import the video feed into your iTunes software. The ‘Google’ button next to it takes you to a web interface where you can add the video feed to your Google homepage or into a Google reader tool. You should now be receiving your Earth-Touch videos automatically. We hope you enjoy them – let us know if you get stuck.
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Dear tara, |
© Earth-Touch 2008 |
