Category Archives: Internet

“10 Survival Tools for the Digital Age”

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Professor Kristin Cherry teaches a beginning Radio course at Central Methodist University in Fayette, MO, and was kind enough to invite me come talk about… radio. I didn’t know what to say about “radio” so I made a list (“10 Survival Tools for the Digital Age”) of things I was pretty sure they already knew about. They didn’t. [Just click a slide to see the next one] The photo below was taken just as my presentation peaked.

I don’t have the opportunity to spend a lot of time around young people but I’ve come to believe they are no more web savvy than the population at large. They’re great at texting and know the ends and outs of Facebook… but very few are creating media or exploring.

In my group of about 25 students, only one had uploaded a video to YouTube and that was for a class assignment. Twitter, UStream, flickr? Never heard of them.

I tried to convey the idea that these –and similar tools– will be useful no matter what they do after college. What I forgot (it was a very long time ago) was that they had very little interest in next semester, let alone The Rest of Their Lives.

The instructors (and the administration!) were incredibly gracious hosts and the campus is really pretty. As always, I got much more out of this experience than the students. More on that in a future post. [Wikipedia entry for “film strip”]

Online future of journalism?

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Here's what Mindy McAdams foresees:

  1. Breaking news will be online before it’s on television.  
  2. Breaking news — especially disasters and attacks in the middle of a city — will be covered first by non-journalists.
  3. The non-journalists will continue providing new information even after the trained journalists arrive on the scene.
  4. Cell phones will be the primary reporting tool at first, and possibly for hours.
  5. Cell phones that can use a wireless Internet connection in addition to a cellular phone network are a more versatile reporting tool than a phone alone.
  6. Still photos, transmitted by citizens on the ground, will tell more than most videos.
  7. The right video will get so many views, your servers might crash (I’m not aware of this happening with any videos from Mumbai).
  8. Live streaming video becomes a user magnet during a crisis. (CNN.com Live: 1.4 million views as of 11:30 a.m. EST today, according to Beet.tv.)
  9. Your print reporters need to know how to dictate over the phone. If they can get a line to the newsroom, it might be necessary.
  10. Your Web team must be prepared for this kind of crisis reporting.

She concludes by wondering "…whether the mainstream media are superfluous in these situations — or can they perform a useful service to the public by sifting and filtering the incoming reports from the center of the events?"

I hope Ms. McAdams will forgive my reposting here. She, like Seth Godin, is a blogger who deserves not to be edited or excerpted.

People with news, and people who want news

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Those are two points of view examined in a recent post by Dave Winer.

“If the people with the news can publish it themselves, and they can; what’s to stop the people who want the news from reading it directly.”

Which puts me in mind of High Street Beat, a blog written by the mayor of Jefferson City. Ultimately, his readers get to decide if what he writes is “fair and honest,” but he can speak directly to them, as well as through MSM.

“When professional news people consider the Internet they think of it replacing them. Not so. It reduces their role to a bare minimum, makes them less necessary. I still want soundbites from the sources, but I want them to link to the full blog post behind the quote.”

“If reporters are to remain relevant they have to recast themselves, more humbly. Don’t think about “deputizing” us to do what you do. Instead think of the value of your rolodex, your sources. Cultivate and develop that rolodex. To the extent that you know who to call when a bit of news breaks, that’s the extent of your value in the new world, the one we live in now.”

Most of the reporters I’ve known and worked with work very hard. For not much money. But more than a few of them have viewed the companies they work for a the necessary infrastructure that makes it possible for them to report the news.

While the people running those companies viewed the newsrooms as a cog –a BIG cog, but a cog– in a machine whose purpose was to turn a profit. A classic dog and tail situation.

I’m reminded of that classic scene in Network where Arthur Jensen explains things to Howard Beale:

Jensen: The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale! It has been since man crawled out of the slime, and our children, Mr.Beale, will live to see that perfect world in which there is no war and famine, oppression and brutality –one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you to preach this evangel, Mr. Beale.

Howard: (humble whisper) Why me?

Jensen: Because you’re on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.

One thing, not the only thing, but one important thing that has distinguished reporters from their readers/viewers/listeners is the reporters had a platform or medium from which to report. That distinction has blurred, if not disappeared.

The first Web President

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I’m working my way through a stack stories and columns examining how the Obama campaign used the web, social networks, email and other online tools. They went so far beyond just “click here to send us some money.” Somebody on the team (some bodies) really understands this space where so many of us choose to live and work.

Here’s a couple of snippets to get started and I’ll update as we go under the category: Obama Online

Washington Post: “The nucleus of that (campaign) effort is an e-mail database of more than 10 million supporters. The list is considered so valuable that the Obama camp briefly offered it as collateral during a cash-flow crunch late in the campaign, though it wound up never needing the loan, senior aides said. At least 3.1 million people on the list donated money to Obama.”

New York Times: “The juxtaposition of a networked, open-source campaign and a historically imperial office will have profound implications and raise significant questions. Special-interest groups and lobbyists will now contend with an environment of transparency and a president who owes them nothing. The news media will now contend with an administration that can take its case directly to its base without even booking time on the networks.

More profoundly, while many people think that President-elect Obama is a gift to the Democratic Party, he could actually hasten its demise. Political parties supply brand, ground troops, money and relationships, all things that Mr. Obama already owns.”

I’ve felt since I first got hooked on Obama’s campaign that my affinity is to this particular man (and his ideas), not the Democratic Party.

An excellent source for this kind of info is techPresident.

NYT/Bits: “Mr. Obama’s campaign took advantage of YouTube for free advertising. (Joe) Trippi argued that those videos were more effective than television ads because viewers chose to watch them or received them from a friend instead of having their television shows interrupted.

“The campaign’s official stuff they created for YouTube was watched for 14.5 million hours,” Mr. Trippi said. “To buy 14.5 million hours on broadcast TV is $47 million.”

There has also been a sea change in fact-checking, with citizens using the Internet to find past speeches that prove a politician wrong and then using the Web to alert their fellow citizens.”

When every game is webcast

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A few months ago I got a call from Brian Slawin. Someone told him I fooled around with streaming live video and he wanted some ideas on how to stream his daughter’s softball games so family members could watch her play. He gave Qik and Kyte a try but wasn’t happy with the results but he kept at it. This past weekend he packed up his laptop, webcam and Sprint cellular card and headed for the ball field.

“Initially, I was concerned that a wireless cellular card wouldn’t allow enough upload bandwidth to actually stream the signal, but it turned out that even at 100kbps upstream, the signal was rock solid and remarkably clear. My gear includes an HP Pavilion PC, the Sprint card, a Logitech QuickCam Vision Pro, a power strip with 1400 joules filtering and some other cables, etc…

“Turns out I got lucky…my Sprint signal was 5×5 and there was power right at the backstop plus an angled desk/bench that made for the perfect setup.  I used the Justin.tv streaming system and it was tons of fun to have about a dozen parents/friends watch each game and join in the chat with Justin’s embedded chat feature. I made like a play-by-play narrator typing out what was going on…and every now and then playing “Joe Buck” for fun.”

Webcam“I’ll need a better setup than just hanging the web cam from a couple of lanyards and a bag…when it got windy, or when there was a foul ball, the camera shook and I had to reposition it numerous times.  Likely a tripod or perhaps a platform that is more securely attached to the fence and would allow for a higher angle is what I’m going to experiment with next.”

Brian’s company has some big plans.

“I can see a time where we’d actually hire broadcast teams (students in broadcasting programs in local high schools or colleges) to broadcast the games. We’ve already begun working with a softball tournament company on the East coast and are going to try and bring this forward for next summer’s tournaments in the New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey area.”

“But for now, I’ll continue to enjoy traipsing after my daughter this fall and into next summer as we travel to Junior Olympic softball tournaments throughout the Midwest.  Be sure to visit Warcats18Gold.com for more information about the team and if you’re nearby, be sure to come by and say hello at the Eleventh Annual St. Louis Softball Showcase in Chesterfield, MO Oct 31 – Nov 2.”

During my early radio days (’70s) there was tremendous pressure on the radio station to broadcast high school football and basketball games. We did some high school baseball but I don’t know that we ever found air time for girls softball. There just wasn’t enough time, staff or advertising support. And if one of the local radio stations didn’t broadcast the game… you had to be in the stands.

No more.

Webcasting high school football games

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“Beginning this Friday, Gannett will have 12 live high school football games showing on widgets posted to USAToday.com and many of our local broadcast and newspaper sites. The games are being produced by our broadcast and newspaper sites as well as a high school AV department. Most of the games are single cam, laptop, aircard + Mogulus productions.” — Liz Foreman, Lost Remote:

“Virtual Immortality Made Easy”

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Grannyfinal228x300Regular readers know  smays.com is all about getting those photos and home movies out of the closet and up on flickr and YouTube. I’ve even posted a time or two about digital immortality.

Scott Maentz and his wife are actually doing something about it. From their website: “Our mission at RememberGranny.com is to help technology challenged Baby Boomers create a legacy for future generations using today’s rich digital media and the latest Internet applications.”

RG.com has packages starting at just $99 but my favorite is the Complete Virtual Immortality Package ($499). Need some f2f help? Then you’ll want to consider the Virtual Immortality Mini-Vacation.

PS: I just went looking for some of my earlier posts where I talk about putting your life on line; paying flickr to keep your pix up forever and a day… and I can’t find them. Poor tagging. If anyone remembers some of these posts and happened to bookmark or link, drop me a line.

I’m closing in on 4,000 posts and it’s getting damned hard to find stuff.

No satellite or cable TV? No problem.

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Our DirecTV works great until a heavy rain rolls in and blocks the signal. It’s called “rain fade” and you lose your signal a couple of minutes before the rain actually reaches earth.

That happened last night while we were watching the Democratic National Convention. It wa getting close to time for Obama to speak and, since we didn’t know how long it would last, I grabbed the MacBook and started streaming CNN’s live feed.

It was a little small and I didn’t bother to go full-screen because we were on the floor in the bedroom and could see it fine.

This has become so easy and mundane, it’s hardly worth mentioning. But that’s my point. Distribution is becoming –has become– a non-issue. In four years I have no doubt I would just swipe the iPhone and watch the speeh there.

Perhaps I’m still awestruck by this because I remember a time before color TV, cable, VCR, DVD, computers, web, etc.

Wi-Fi on some American flights

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American Airlines passengers will now have Wi-Fi access on some flights. The airline said Wednesday that it has finally launched its in-flight Internet access service via Wi-Fi on 15 of its 767-200 airplanes. The service, called Gogo, will be offered on nonstop flights between New York and San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, and New York and Miami. The cost is $12.95 per flight. Passengers will be able to sign up when they boot up their browsers.– [More at C|Net

Now that would make the flight from STL to Seattle whiz by. Would happily pay $13. Have to believe all flights will have it eventually.

Public Access TV in a YouTube world

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If you watch any TV or cable news, you hear references to this or that video on YouTube. It reminds me of the days when the big three networks referred something on CNN. YouTube is starting to feel like another network. NBC doesn’t want to cover my speech? No problem. I’ll just post it to YouTube.

My next thought was the similarity to public access TV. Let the record show I know almost nothing about public access TV. I think it works something like this:

The local cable company (or someone) sets aside a channel for the public to produce programming. I assume there is a local board or committee that manages the channel and decides what programming to air and when.

Putting Tivo aside for a moment, the public access channel is limited to 24 hours of programming each days. And to keep the math simple, let’s say every program is an hour long and airs once a week. That’s 168 programs a week. And many of those would “air” in the middle of the night.

I think it would be difficult to fill that much time. And what if I had something that was only 5 or 10 minutes long?

Here’s my question: Why won’t YouTube (and similar services) make public access television obsolete? [This is where I show my ignorance of PATV] If local relevance is the raison d’etra of PATV, why not just invite the people of your community (or people who visit your community) to post their videos to YouTube and tag them with the name of the city/town?

But wait, what about our live coverage of the weekly city council meeting? It runs 2 hours or longer and YouTube limits videos to 10 minutes.

Hmm. I guess I’d stream it on Ustream and then pull “highlights” and post those on YouTube.

I expect the Big Question would be, “What about all the people who don’t have computers and access to the Internet?” For the answer, see: “What About People Who Don’t Have TV Sets?”

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not suggesting for a moment that public access TV isn’t a good or necessary thing. There must be people who watch it or it wouldn’t exist. It just feels like one of those things –like classified adds– that would work better and cheaper online.

My friend Jeff knows a LOT about public access TV and I encourage him to comment and help me understand how technology is evolving in this area.