And by Platinum, I mean One Million. Normally, I would say that I'm speechless. But apparently I'm not. Because here I am a-speechin'.

When I pitched dekePod to my sponsors, I set it as my goal to achieve 250,000 views in 2008. Today, I was just made aware that in a little more than six months since our June 24 debut (which coincides exactly with the launch of dekeOnline), we have amassed some 1,004,837 streaming views and downloads. To give you some perspective, it took me 20 years to sell 4 million books. dekePod hit 25% that number in 2% the time. Hell, back when cable was king, I hosted more than 90 episodes of "Digital Gurus" for Jones Computer Network, and we nailed 100 thousand eyeballs maybe. (That includes 50,000 left and 50,000 right.) Just goes to show you what you can accomplish when you eliminate The Man.

And in a down economy, no less. Which is weird because the damn thing is free. Read more » 

We kicked off Macworld week last night with an "Ask the Experts" panel at the wonderful independent bookstore Book Passage in Corte Madera. Alan Alda once appeared there, people, Hawkeye himself. And now they can add Deke McClelland to their list of luminaries. Deke joined three other O'Reilly authors--Derrick Story, Mikkel Aaland, and Lesa King--to discuss Photoshop, Lightroom, and other DigiPhoto stuff.

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Beloved attendees of the dekeFestival, here is your second-helping of video goodness, "The Anatomy of a Mask," which I stole from Deke's new book, Photoshop CS4 Channels and Masks One-on-One. As Deke notes (and I'm completely plagiarizing him here), masks tend to intimidate a lot of people. But they’re really just the digital equivalent of the traditional stencil. Read more » 

Immediately after Macworld Expo, I fly off to join my wife's family for a week-long Caribbean cruise. Don't envy me; it's my first vacation since I went to the Grand Canyon with The Brady Bunch in 1971. You may remember me as the blonde, bespectacled Cousin Oliver. (If you so much as think, "But Robby Rist, aka Oliver, didn't join the cast until 1974," I will label you a Brady Nerd and tell everyone to mock you.)

Anyway, I mentioned that I'll be doing some diving to a terribly helpful Olympus rep, and she took it upon herself to loan me a 10-megapixel Stylus 1030 SW. Which is a pocket-sized, quite stylish point-and-shoot camera that is waterproof down to 10 meters (33 ft). Billed as "the camera that redefines tough," this diminutive, shorter-but-thicker-than-an-iPhone camera is my favorite gadget of the first few days of the New Year.

Time has not afforded me the opportunity to take this camera lower than a few feet. I'll get back to you after the cruise. But in the meantime, I was able to test out its toughness. And I'm here to tell you, this little camera is scrappy. Read more » 

Happy New Year, dekeOmaniacs. To get 2009 off on the right foot, (and seriously, put that last insane bit of 2008 behind us), we've decided to share something special with you, our beloved community. Frankly, we can't thank you enough for all the love, humor, and patience you showed us last year. (Especially the patience during the month of December where we both pulled off the miracle submission of the book and reintroduced ourselves to our families who were wondering who those smelly if vaguely familiar people who were always chained to the computer screen were.) Read more »