Tag Archives: mobile phones

TiVo Guru Guide

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The guys at TiVo have rounded up a bunch of critics, editors and experts to pick as many as 10 of the best programs in their interest areas for each week and update their lists at least once a month. They’re calling it the TiVo Guru Guide. TiVo users who share their interests can elect to have the shows recorded and have a selection ready whenever they sit down. Program pickers will come from Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly, Billboard, H2O (Hip-Hop on Demand),CNet.com and Automobile Magazine. The Guru Guide will be available on the roughly 1.5 million TiVo units owned by direct subscribers to TiVo service. It won’t be available to the 2.9 million who get TiVo via DirecTV. So it’s a cool idea I can’t take advantage of.

I might actually use this (if I could) because I like/trust TiVo. I’d like it even more if I could rate the pickers. For example, they could offer movie picks from 5 different “experts.” Over time, based on their picks, I might narrow that down to just one or two whose opinions most closely match my own. [via Buzz Machine]

Blog phone

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Sony Ericsson has introduced a couple of new Cyber-shot digital camera phones that come with 3.2-megapixel cameras and are designed to work with Blogger. Snap a picture…bada-bing…it’s on your blog. The cameras are equipped with more goodies than most manual cameras, including autofocus, red-eye reduction, digital zoom and a flash. They also come with a music player, video player, FM radio, push e-mail, a memory stick slot and 64MB of internal memory. Google will also be made the standard search engine on all Sony Ericsson phones with Internet access. [Thanks, Morris]

The Multimedia Reporter

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The News-Press in Florida has dedicated two reporters called mobile journalists, or mojos who are equipped with digital cameras, MP3 recorders and wireless laptops. Their job is to find hyper-local stories that don’t get into the newspaper and to train members of the community to file directly to the Web site. [Blogspotting]

Does that sound like a fun job, or what? I wonder what kind of stories we might get if we accepted audio reports from people throughout the states we serve? (That sound you heard was the people in our newsrooms, screaming.) I can’t beleive someone isn’t already doing this. Think Flickr but “news” audio instead of images. Upload MP3 files to a big database, tagging each one (politics, St. Louis, sports, etc). Sure, you’d get a lot of crap but people would sort that out with some kind of “trust” rating system. The better stuff would float to the top…the crap would sink to the bottom.

As a statewide radio network, we sometimes struggle to get news from areas where we have no affiliate. Would it make sense for us to be recruiting and training “citizen reporters?” We have about 60 radio station affiliates in each of the states we serve. And not all of them have full-time reporters. What if we had digital stringers in 600 cities and towns throughout the state? What if we weren’t limited to 4 minute newscasts and 10 second sound bites?

Local radio stations could building this kind of news gathering effort. I remember when newspapers featured “community highlight” columns written by people in the small towns they served. It’s probably still being done.

Okay. I’m tired of thinking about this.

The difference between TV stations and newspapers

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Terry Heaton on the Washington Post’s matter-of-fact streaming of the Alito confirmation hearing: “There is now officially no difference — online at least — between TV stations (and networks) and newspapers.” Is this equally true for radio stations and networks? If so, what might that mean?

Let’s say, for example, that a local newspaper in Anytown, Iowa, covers the very same news events as the local radio station. (Just for fun, let’s say they cover more events because they have more news people.) And they stick a little MP3 recorder in front of the newsmaker and immediately post a couple of paragraphs –including the sound file– to the newspaper website. Along with an image.

The remaining ‘defining difference’ between the newspaper and the local radio station is the method of delivering that news ‘content’ to the good people of Anytown (and the world). It’s still easier to turn on the radio and listen to the story (assuming I happened to tune in at the right moment) than to get in front of a computer to look/listen. Unless the ‘computer’ happens to be my Treo 700 mobile phone.

Thinking about all of this made me wonder about the definition of “radio station”: n: station for the production and transmission of radio broadcasts.

That’s just not gonna work anymore. We need a better definition, fast. I have not worked at a radio station for almost 22 years so I’m not qualified to come up with one. But it can no longer be about hardware (transmitters and towers). It has to be about people.

I think I’d be looking for smart, interesting (sometimes funny) people who live, work and play in the community your station serves; good writers; informed, well-read people who know how to do an interesting interview; people who know how to record/edit good, quality audio (video?).

If you stopped recruiting and hiring those people because it was no longer “cost-effective,” I suggest you find some, quick-like-a-bunny. But will they want to come work at the radio station if they can better use their talents and creativity on the local “newsaper” website?

Randy and Warren (and maybe Nate) are a lot closer to the world of terrestrial radio than I, so maybe they can help me answer a question I’ve been wondering about lately. How hard/easy is it in 2006 to find and recruit people to work at the local radio station? Where do the prospective hires come from? What are they looking for? What kind of skills do they have? Just click the comments link below.

Ford squeezes office into truck

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Ford Motor unveiled a mobile office designed for the new F-Series truck that includes a touch-screen computer, printer, wireless broadband access and Global Positioning System. Ford, which introduced its mobile office at last week’s Specialty Equipment Market Association show in Las Vegas, is targeting general contractors but the first thing I thought of was farmers and ranchers. [C|net]

When we first started repurposing content from our farm network for the web, everyone said, “Farmers don’t have access to the Internet.” When we started streaming our audio reports, they pointed out, “Farmers are on very slow dial-ups and can’t access rich media.”

I’m no visionary. I just pull my head out of my ass a couple of times a day and take a look around. If your pick-up is your office, this is gonna make sense to a lot of farmers.

Radio: Media comfort food

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A couple of new services from Sprint allows “some subscribers to stream live music to the phone in a radio-type format without having to buy a new phone or have lots of storage.”

I don’t have a mobile phone and wouldn’t buy one to stream live music (I didn’t think I’d buy and iPod either) but that’s not the point of this post. When I read this story (in the Seattle Times) I thought, “Where in the hell are the stories about cool things happening in radio?” I realize it is a “mature technology” but, come on… there’s got to be something going on out in radio land. Help me out here.

Dave, you work in/for/around radio. What’s the buzz? What has radio juices flowing? Bob, Morris… tell me something to get me excited. Send me a link and I’ll read/post it.

Then again, maybe radio is like your mom’s cooking. You take it for granted. No, it’s not hot or new or sexy…but it’s always there for you. A funnel cloud was sited near (?) Jefferson City tonight and I turned on my little transistor radio and listened to some pretty good coverage. Not very high tech but reliable and…comforting.

SoundCover phone app

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“Did you wake up late for work and you want your boss to think you’re caught in traffic? Select the Traffic Jam background and give him a call from your bedroom. He will hear your voice on top of (traffic sfx). Is one of your mates a chronic talker that just doesn’t know when to stop? Use the Phone Ring background and your friend will hear a phone ring 6 times, 15 seconds into the call. Tell him that your other phone is ringing and that you have to go. Pretend you’re at the dentist, in the park, on the street, caught in a thunderstorm, near heavy machinery or at a circus parade.”

CNN to stream live on mobile phones.

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“CNN International is going to be streamed live on mobile phones in Austria starting in March. This is the first streaming mobile deal for CNN; other channels such as CNBC have been experimenting with streaming video clips.” CyberJournalist.net has some links and sample audio. Is this sort of “radio” that I can get anywhere, anytime I want?