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Yay Boston! January 22, 2010

Posted by Ryan in : Video, , , ; add a comment

It was prohibited to use a camera inside the museum, so I recorded this one in the parking lot.

I had a great time conducting training in Boston and met some great Drupal folks – @starshaped, @finkatronic, @himerus, and @susanmacphee. We hung out and had some good times, and I got a tour of the MIT Media Lab, which is on my short list of places to go if I ever feel insane enough to attempt graduate school. At the very least, that building houses some of the coolest projects that mankind has created in recent years. I’d like to go back, and I may get a shot when the next Desgin4Drupal event comes up.

While I was at the museum I also purchased a Diana F+ Camera by Lomography and proceeded to incorrectly load the film – I’m pretty sure my first sixteen photos on Lomo will be ruined, but we’ll see.

I am finally getting to hang out at Proctors after having built them a new site last spring. It’s cool to actually see this space “IRL”.

Now I should get back to work fixing their Drupal TV displays. I only have a few minutes before I go meet everyone from the theatre.

On the end of Terrestrial TV Broadcasting January 3, 2010

Posted by Ryan in : Local, Podcast, Press, Tech, Video, , , , ; add a comment

There was a big discussion last week on my local geeky mailing list that started because of a mention that local TV stations may stop broadcasting over-the-air for free.

From Yahoo News:

The recession has squeezed advertising further, forcing broadcasters to accelerate their push for new revenue to pay for programming.

That will play out in living rooms across the country. The changes could mean higher cable or satellite TV bills, as the networks and local stations squeeze more fees from pay-TV providers such as Comcast and DirecTV for the right to show broadcast TV channels in their lineups. The networks might even ditch free broadcast signals in the next few years.

I say this can be a good thing for Local Producers looking to grab ad dollars from retailers in their area, and find ways to connect with their local community and economy. The hyper-local video shows we are producing in the dark now will have a hungry audience looking for content.

However, I don’t think that we can be successful unless internet gets a lot more ubiquitous – we either need more competition, or more over-the-air access to the network, or both. Where is all the WiMax we were promised?

Once we get the WiMax, then why doesn’t it come bundled with content, similar to Verizon FiOS? They would do well to throw in a set-top box like a Roku or the upcoming Boxee device with a 2-year contract, and maybe some bonus subscriptions thrown in there.

A small chunk of the ad revenue is being recouped online, where the networks sell episodes for a few dollars each or run ads alongside shows on sites such as Hulu. Media economist Jack Myers projects online video advertising will grow into a $2 billion business by 2012, from just $350 million to $400 million in 2009.

But that is not significant enough to make up for the lost ad revenue on the airwaves. Advertisers spent $34 billion on broadcast commercials in 2008, down by $2.4 billion from two years earlier, according to the Television Bureau of Advertising.

Crybabies! Figure out how to operate lean and mean, trim the fat, and stop paying people who think they know what’s best for their audience – why not try asking us for a change?

If all they’re going to do is keep making reality TV, I’ll be happy that it’s not getting sent over the airwaves – I don’t want to see any more of that crap. I don’t care if they do have Ben Folds now, it’s stupid, mindless and childish.

But tell us how you really feel…

Magazine Reader Concept by Bonnier January 2, 2010

Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Video, , ; 1 comment so far

The parent company of my old employers have hired a design firm to create a concept of an ideal electronic magazine reader.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

One of my favorite parts is when he talks about feeling as though you have “completed” reading the magazine. He says it from the editorial point of view, but for me it has to do with my habits (or you could call it OCD). When I’m reading email or feeds, I get driven by the number, as in the number of remaining articles to be read, or the number of comments to approve, the number of plugins to update, the number of emails to delete. It gives me a sense of how far I’ve gotten, and it’s a powerful motivator for someone like me.

It’s also cool that the spine is e-paper. That and the “heating up” rubbing gesture are two of my favorite parts about this video.

Really, these concept videos are so damn flashy – even though this one is trying to be minimalist. I get frustrated, because I know that actually seeing this device is still several years away, if it ever gets made. I still think of the Optimus Keyboard, which is now finally released 4-5 years later, and with a $2000 price tag. On the other hand, it’s pretty awesome.

Even if we never see this device in the wild, hopefully the good design and user experience will make its way into other applications and devices in the next few years.

How to Upload Podcast Files to Amazon S3 with Firefox November 18, 2009

Posted by Ryan in : HowTo, Podcast, Tech, Video, , ; comments closed

I recently moved several gigabytes of audio podcast files off of my server into the cloud. Amazon S3 is a simple and cost-effective way to reliably and quickly distribute files like podcasts to a large audience.

This video shows how to upload audio files and set public permissions using the Amazon S3 Firefox Organizer and Amazon’s Simple Storage Service. Check my channel for more how-to videos and DrupalEasy.com for Drupal tutorials and podcasts.

Bootstrapping a Videoblogging Army November 16, 2009

Posted by Ryan in : Local, Podcast, Press, Video, , ; comments closed

Every time I happen to catch a few minutes of the nightly news, I kind of want to vomit. The scare tactics, the way they talk down to the audience, the insanely short clips, and the tons of other tricks that mainstream media uses to bolster ratings and viewership really grind my grindable parts.

Then we have the exact polar opposites, like Orlando Event TV – Orlando Event TV this and several other shows produced locally are really trying to show everyone what it really means to be a citizen of this community, and they are all about the transparency. When you watch this video of Mark Baratelli in Winter Park, for example, the voice is completely different than the nightly news. He is much more watchable than a talking head in a TV studio.

I had a similar dream not too long ago, and that manifested itself as Orlando Scene TV and a bunch of other sites, like Orlando Video. The honest truth here is that I was not able to keep the momentum going for long periods of time. Producing video and being an unstoppable advocate for your product take a lot of time, energy, and the cooperation of a passionate community. Then there’s a question of money – how can I pay my rent, etc. if all I’m ever doing is recording people’s rock shows and theatre performances. It just never added up for me.

Then a little while ago I realized that the only way to really get a local indie TV project off the ground would be to distribute the workload as much as possible.

What does this look like? Well, now that I have the idea from The Art of Community to come up with a list of teams and their responsibilities, I see the teams as follows:
Internet TV and Local Events Community
Let me be clear about a few things:

Audience

The role of the audience here is to let us know that we are giving them something they want, and to give us some ideas to keep moving this machine forward. Kickstarter (or something like it) could be a powerful force here: we can hold certain great ideas for ransom unless there is a certain amount of community support. The audience laid out here is really a fraction of the audience, the most passionate 2%. I also think this group will be web-savvy enough to have their own web sites or popular facebook profiles (hundreds of friends), and they will want to use these channels to help us promote our cause.

Tech Leads

Aside from pushing buttons, I also put these people in the role of “product designers”. If Jony Ive has a lot to do with the success of Apple products, then we should be able to assign a few people in our community a similar amount of responsibility. These people are very highly skilled, and may only contribute once every few years, when we redesign the title graphics and the website, or they may help us create fliers, blog badges an mini-sites on a more frequent basis. These are also the User Experience designers – in charge of the overall way in which people interact with the product.

Producers

Here, a producer is anyone who makes something. That means hosts, script or show notes writers, video editors, etc. A production team could be all of one person, or it could be as large as 5 or 6. It really depends on the skills of everyone involved and the scope of the particular project. A large goal here would be to make sure that anyone who counts as a producer could technically do everything by him- or herself if needed, but it’s really a question of time. Like I said before, this is the repetitive and time-hogging part, even if we can streamline the whole process.

The other key is to make sure that everyone owns his or her work, not only from an intellectual property perspective, but in a support fashion as well – if someone has a question about the restaurant you reviewed, you should be the one to get the notification and reply. In this way, people may start to develop a “beat” or even “channels” of information, and it could make sense to give certain producers their own sites. Pulling a line from The Starfish and the Spider, the producers give little more than spiritual guidance to the community. He can suggest large projects or hair-brained schemes, but he will be on his own unless they get a decent number of other community members to support and participate. These ideas can even come from the Audience, but as they don’t often produce content, an audience member will have to find a champion for her great idea.

The last piece of this puzzle for me is the equipment. We only need a few REALLY expensive tools – many people already own a computer, and video editing tools are freely available. Coming by decent video cameras is what used to be difficult, until recently. If you really want to spend some green, go ahead and get a Flip or a Kodak – even most consumer still cameras have pretty nice video capabilities. However, this still costs anywhere from $100 – $350, and that is a large financial barrier right now.

What if we could make the cost of entry $30?
That’s such a small amount, we could probably raise a few hundred dollars from our community and outfit an entire army with these cheap video tools in no time at all!

I heard about the Coby CAM3000 Mini Digital Camcorder on a podcast I regularly listen to, The Daily Giz Wiz. As far as I know, this is the absolutely least expensive (yet decent) tool for capturing video made by a well-known manufacturer. I plan on picking one up just to field test it – it’s so affordable, why not?

The other part of my plan here is to get some training and best practices in the heads of these videobloggers before they get out in the wild. We already have some community spaces and LOTS of events happening, so the material is always out there. We could pair up one new guy with an experienced producer and mentor them in the basics. Make sure they know not to film in too much or too little light, how to get some decent sound, introduce them to some basic video editing, and how to post videos. This might take one long day or a few evenings out, but there will be a certain point when a new producer will just have to get out on her own and start learning by doing.

We won’t just “give” out these cameras – they will have to be earned. If we apply some sort of a value to the camera – say, 10 points, and videos another – say 1 point for a video shorter than 3 minutes, 2 points for a video 4 minutes or longer of a reasonable quality – later when we can offer better equipment – the Kodak Zi8, or the Flip Mino HD, or perhaps even other stuff to barter for. I also have this thought right now that if we have any advertising revenue to share, it will be based on your continued contribution of at least X points in a 1-3 month period – we would probably need a way to make sure that we always have fresh content coming in, so we need to assign deadlines to keep people from getting lazy. As soon as this machine loses a certain amount of momentum, it might as well not be running at all.

That’s as far as I’m going to wander into this thought experiment for now. I don’t have a great picture of how other organizations do it, and this is just something I’ve been stewing on for a few months when I really get the chance to think about it, which is not very often at all. I’d love to take a look at how NowPublic and a whole bunch of other public media entities handle this. There are lots of questions unanswered here, but I’ve been struggling to really write down and communicate this idea to a large group for a while now.

If you’d like to talk more, I think we should wake up the PodCamp Orlando mailing list. I’m going to send this same text out there to see if we get any bites. Please blog about this, tweet it, point to the list page, get everyone who might be interested involved in the discussion.

Tonight is a Florida Creatives Happy Hour, and Friday is MOOM. We should be having a Likemind on December 4th, and another Happy Hour on December 21st. If you’d like to talk in person, these days are really good ones to engage me and others who are interested in making Orlando more awesome.

Update: We now have a project planning site – if you want to get an invite, leave a comment below, and make sure you fill in the email field.

My Pipes to Retweet Article as a Video May 28, 2009

Posted by Ryan in : HowTo, Tech, Video, , , , , ; comments closed

I’ve been getting lots of good karma and feedback from people about my retweeting recipe using Yahoo Pipes. In truth, the tutorial can be a bit hard to swallow if you aren’t familiar with pipes or a node-based editing system.

Xavier Vespa from Hyve Up has done an easy to follow, step-by-step version of a retweeting recipe based on the content of my original tutorial.

From: HU Twitter: How-to Retweet Automatically – Video Demo

JetPack, Bespin, Ubiquity… and beyond May 21, 2009

Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Video, , , , , ; comments closed

Mozilla Labs announced a new product called JetPack, which reminds me of the kinds of features you’ve seen in Adobe Air, Flock and Songbird, but the tool makes creating said features very simple.

Mozilla Labs Jetpack – Intro & Tutorial from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

In the video, the developer mentioned two other Mozilla Labs projects, the first of which I hadn’t seen before. It’s called Bespin, and it’s a cloud-based code editor. Right now, they are hosting the app for open source developers, but I’d love to be able to host an instance on my own server in the future.

Introducing Bespin from Dion Almaer on Vimeo.

Last but not least is what’s basically an implementation of QuickSilver (the application launcher) in your Firefox browser, but instead of launching desktop apps, you’re accessing web services, search and browser actions. The project is called Ubiquity, and it’s cool (for people who like using the keyboard).

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Then they just get downright insane…

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

This video really takes the idea of web browsing away from just a bunch of flashing data and gives some good context. I can’t say I would like to use that exact interface, but extra points for effort.

Or if you’d rather see something that’s not so far in the future, this MIT student builds on some ideas that are already out there and improves them. It still has some of the “spatial history” ideas, and takes the idea of “pages” out of the browser, but if you ask me, it doesn’t go far enough.

Firefox Concept Video from liyan chang on Vimeo.

TED Video: Serious Play April 28, 2009

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If we’re “Creatives”, one of the things that helps define us as such is that we have not lost our ability to engage in play. This video has more on the subject:

Stuart Brown: Why play is vital — no matter your age

Stuart Brown’s research shows play is not just joyful and energizing — it’s deeply involved with human development and intelligence. Through the National Institute for Play, he’s working to better understand its significance.

Dr. Stuart Brown came to research play through research on murderers — unlikely as that seems — after he found a stunning common thread in killers’ stories: lack of play in childhood. Since then, he’s interviewed thousands of people to catalog their relationships with play, noting a strong correlation between success and playful activity.

One thing you see and hear often is about the “creative types” who work at ad agencies is that they know how to have fun at work. Take MindComet, for example – the building is built with all these crooked lines and rounded corners, to encourage the fun and playful culture they have cultivated – they even have Tequila Fridays, Cakeplow parties, and dress-up days.

Not all creatives work in ad agencies, but when you put them all in one room like that, they can often come up with some great and innovative stuff. Take this video, for example:

Lip Dub – Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo.

’nuff said.

Have you incorporated play in your work and home life? I want some of those “wearable meetings”.

The Least Pretentious Demo I’ve Seen in Ages April 26, 2009

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Everybody can take a hint from Ryland Haggis and Lisa Bettany over at redpilot media in vancouver, b.c. (that’s in Canada, yo). It’s simply designed, the edits are not too fast, and they have a very clear message to communicate.

Redpilot Media from Redpilot Media on Vimeo.
Most Demo Reels or Trailers you see for companies try to jam as many different styles, media, bright colors, fast motion and buzzwords as they possibly can. What Ryland and Lisa have done here is notable, because, unlike all the other guys, they’re not trying too hard.

Don’t agree? Concur? Tell me why.

BarCamp people can Learn from Dead Chickens April 13, 2009

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While I was at DrupalCon DC I went to a session about how to give a presentation. Emma Jane Hogbin had a slide where she was talking about different presentation styles, and she brought up “Selena talks dead chickens“. With some creative googling, I discovered that the presentation was from Ignite Portland, and that someone had videotaped it.

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play

This is why you have to love events like Pecha Kucha Night and Ignite – people will present on any subject, as long as it fits the time limit. At the same time, they are almost always very personal and gripping.

We have a BarCamp coming up in Orlando this weekend, and I’m really looking forward to what everyone comes up with this year. While I will really enjoy yet another OAuth session, I’m wondering who will be the “dead chickens” of #barcamporlando.