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Ave Maria!
[Update: Some of the links that were broken in this post have been fixed]
Hello friends! We wanted to take this Thanksgiving Day here in the US to thank everyone for your prayers, support and regular viewership of AirMaria. You are the AirMaria community, and we wanted to thank you for making AirMaria a success in spreading devotion to Our Lady.
Also today marks the 2nd anniversary of the first post on AirMaria back on Thanksgiving Day 2006 (a few months before the official start in March 2007, note the “FITVN” in the thumbnail below which was the first name we were intending to use before coming up with AirMaria.)
The video was Fr. Peter in the first of his series, the Golden Thread. It is an introduction to the theology of John Duns Scotus and interestingly talks about the 700th anniversary of his death that just took place at the beginning of this month. Also, the video file for this episode was lost for about a year and I just found a copy while doing the switch to the new server last week. Sooo …in the spirit of thanksgiving we present Fr. Peter’s Golden Thread, the lost episode. We plan on continuing his series with new episodes in the near future.
Speaking of servers, the switch to the new server (or should I say servers) has worked quite well. The speed at which the web pages and videos download has improved dramatically, making viewing on AirMaria much more enjoyable.
Well, the Summer is well over and and we have accomplished our main goal of the summer, uploading all our past videos to the 10 most prominent video share sites on the internet. We had about 500 videos and with ten different sites makes 5000 uploads all in about 3 months. This was accomplished with a team of lay people working with the friars. At the same time we developed a web based system for making the uploading more automatic and for coordinating the effort. So all future videos will be able to be uploaded more easily, enabling a larger volume in the times ahead.
We get at least 1000 views per video from the combined viewership of all these sites, so over 500,000 views have been generated from doing this mass uploading. It is a very fruitful volunteer community effort and now we have extended our viewing community to many different sites. So, welcome to our extended community, and thanks to our entire uploading team!
We have several videos from the summer and fall that have been well received.
Sandals & Fiddlebacks – Franciscan Traditional Latin Mass
FiNews #37 – FI Vocations Video (Short Version)
FiNews #36 – Friars and Friends: Street Hockey
FiNews #35 – Franciscans Conquer Mt Washington
Roving Reporter #34: Our Lady of Guadalupe at Lacrosse, Wisconsin
Roving Reporter #40: Knights of Lepanto Spring Encampment 2008
FiNews – The Organ at OLO Guadalupe Natl Shrine
Video – FiNews #41: All Hallows Eve at Griswold
Mark Miravalle has now produced over one hundred MaryCast videos for AirMaria and is still going strong. This series is a must view. I am continually struck by how informative and inspiring his videos are on Our Lady and her role in Redemption. These will continue to be classics on Marian theology for years and, God willing, ages to come.
Fr. Pablo Straub has made his first regular appearance on AirMaria with his Vote Pro-Life series which he has produced in English and Spanish. So this was also our first foray into Spanish posting.
Fra Joseph has restarted his series on apologetics after moving to our new friary in Lacrosse, WI. His current topic is the Holy Eucharist. He now has over 60 videos in his series.
Padre Pio Daily has started. And is the new series that replaces the St. Maximilian Daily after completing the full year intended.
Sometime next week we should surpass 2,000 posts on AirMaria! Also, our Google Ranking for our site has increased to 5 which is an indication of how many people are linking to us. This helps put AirMaria higher on the search pages and so attracts more viewers. We hope to get a six by this time next year.
New Front Page Design
We are working on a new front page design for AirMaria which should be ready by January 1st 2009. This will involve a switch to new software which should make AirMaria more user-friendly and enjoyable.
Hardware Upgrades
We also plan on moving more toward hard drives for storing and archiving video and even for filming (direct disk capture of video from camera). Hard drives have come down so far in price that it is actually cheaper to use these than to store it on tape. This combined with all the added advantages of instant access to the video, makes this the only logical avenue. In this vein we need to get more hard drives. We want to place 2 1TB hard drives in each one of our desktop editing computers and have a stand-alone network serversto store the video centrally. The cost of the hard drives, server and network upgrades will be $1200. The Cameras will be $1100 each.
All this progress and future planning has been made possible by your prayers, volunteering and donations. We greatly appreciate them. We intend to continue to improve our quality and production rates. To this end and to meet everyday expenses we will continue to need your generous support. May God reward you.
