Pecha Kucha Vancouver: Kris Krüg

Kris Krüg kicks off Pecha Kucha Night Vancouver volume #5 with his take on where open media, open culture and open software standards are taking us. His themes are particularly close to our hearts here at Singular Productions. Favorite quotes: "If you don't stick it on the internet, it didn't actually happen," and, "Our biggest danger isn't piracy or having our work stolen, it's actually obscurity and being irrelevant."

The Levelator chosen as Friday Favorite

The Unofficial Apple Weblog has chosen The Levelator as their Friday Favorite. This app is the "friend to podcasters everywhere" that my company, Singular Software, developed in partnership with the Conversations Network. It levels out the audio in spoken word recordings by performing "a small miracle". For free! Thanks TUAW, for encouraging podcasters to make the lives of everyone's ears a little better.

Social Media Mores for the Modern Couple

How does your online life affect the relationship with your significant other in real life? Maybe you communicate to your wife in a blog post because it's easier than in person? Do you have an agreement with your SO about what is or is not within bounds?

Two couples who have been online for years talk about how they manage it in this funny and thoughtful session from Northern Voice 2009. Putting it all out there for us are Kate Trgovac and Rosemary Rowe, and Airdrie and Derek K. Miller.

Update: Can't believe I didn't mention the very capable moderation by and contributions from Julie Szabo. (Sorry Julie!)

[Note: The audio is a bit rough at the beginning but it gets better a few minutes in.]

Behind the Scenes with "Sock Puppets, Spammers and Trolls"

The recording and editing of this session followed the procedure discussed here. Very straightforward. It is nice to get such acceptable results from such a simple setup.

Behind the Scenes with "Where Do I Live Online?"

This session was pretty simple: a single camera with an on-camera mic and an Olympus WS210S tossed on a table in front of the presenters. I cleaned up the Olympus audio in the "usual" way. It was good enough that I completely replaced the camera audio with it after synchronizing.

Sock Puppets, Spammers and Trolls

How should you handle angry comments on your blog? How can you recognize the various types of undesirable commenters named in the title? This panel discussion from Northern Voice 2009 has the answers. There are some new insights into the mind of the commenter and suggestions on how to respond (or not respond) from people who have been there. Rebecca Bollwitt and David Eaves lead the way.


Listen to the audio here. (Right-click to download)

[Update: Some technical info on the recording/editing process is here.]

Where Do I Live Online?

Sure, you've heard of blogging and twittering, but there are many other places where people have a presence online. How do they choose to appear: anonymously, pseudonymously or as themselves? From Facebook to knitting communities to fan fiction, this very interactive session covers it all. The panelists are Lauren Wood, Kim Adamson-Sharpe, Hilary Genders, and Tim Bray. From Northern Voice 2009.


Listen to the audio. (Right-click to download.)

[Update: Some technical notes on the recording/editing process are here.]

Behind the Scenes with "Bring Your Blog to Life"

When you show people recordings of themselves, they are inevitably appalled and overly critical of their performance. I am no exception. When it came time to edit my presentation from Northern Voice, I was not happy with the number of um's and ah's. I vowed to edit them all out. The ostensible reason is that it would make the presentation more pleasant to listen to, but it was probably mostly just vanity.

But there was some technical interest too. How to edit um's out of video was asked during my presentation and after some fumbling, we came up with the answer: paste some room tone over the um's. Although I have done tons of this kind of editing for audio, video is different: you can't just cut it out or the video will have a visual discontinuity that would be jarring.

So I took my own advice, looked for a quiet passage in the audio and saved it out to a separate file. Whenever I encountered an um, I would copy a section of the appropriate length from this file and pasted it over the um. By doing a little crossfade at the edges of the paste, the edit was audibly undetectable. And since your mouth doesn't move much when you um, you don't really notice that the sound is missing.

The concept is straightforward but the procedure quickly becomes very tedious. I used Adobe Audition for the edits and wrote a script to automate the process. Audition's scripting capabilities were too limited for the job so I used an absolutely stunningly wonderful scripting program called AutoHotkey. The end result was very nice. You select the region of audio containing the um, press a button and the rest happens automatically. It even leaves the cursor in position to play some preroll so you can hear how the edit sounds in context.

The script proved so easy to use that I also cleaned up breathing sounds and other intrusive mouth noises. I will post the script to our website eventually, but if you're in a hurry drop me a note and I'll send it to you.

Most of the rest of the time on the audio was spent cleaning up the interference on the wireless mics. Ugh. And I brought the audience Q&A sound up so you could hear it better. One test viewer said it was still too hard to hear, so I put brief summaries of what the audience was saying in text in the lower third.

Behind the Scenes with "Coping Digitally"

Coping Digitally was one of the most straightforward videos from Northern Voice so far: a single camera with on-camera audio. The audio came from a camera-mounted shotgun mic. The voices sound distant, but they are intelligible.

I couldn't resist fiddling with the sound and it made a big improvement. This was all done in Adobe Audition, but I am getting better with Soundtrack Pro and may do the next project with that.

Here are the steps:

1. Noise reduction: Fortunately there was a quiet passage to use for the noise profile. That was a bit lucky though. Note to videographers: always record more than you think you need and make sure you get some "room tone" (background sound when no one is speaking). Noise reduction can be tricky but in this case it worked out well without a lot of fiddling.
2. EQ: The voices sounded very thin and distant. I boosted a region around 200Hz by about 6dB to fatten them up a bit.
3. Limiting: There were lots of door slams, microphone bumps, etc. The Levelator (see step 5) can cope with this, but some of the spikes were pretty extreme so I helped it out by doing a limiting step. I find that if I use the "gather statistics" option in Audition to limit no more than .05% of the samples, I can boost the gain a fair amount and it is inaudible.
4. Bandpass filter: A technique I picked up from working with the Conversations Network is to routinely bandpass filter spoken word content between 80Hz-10KHz. There's no useful information outside that band and it just cleans things up a bit for downstream processing.
5. Levelator: Last step was to apply The Levelator. It did a good job of evening out the quite varied levels of the presenters and making the audience Q&A audible.

The end result is pretty listenable, IMHO, especially given the simple setup.

Coping Digitally

Mental illness is increasingly acknowledged openly and publicly. This panel talks about how social media is playing a new role in the discussion. Airdrie Miller, Isabella Mori and Tod Maffin tell their stories in this session from Northern Voice 2009.


Listen to the audio. (Right-click to download.)

Bring Your Blog to Life (complete)

How do you get started creating audio and video for the web? Here is my talk from Northern Voice 2009 where I answer that question. Aimed at the beginner, it covers the end-to-end process of choosing equipment, recording, editing and publishing. I made very specific recommendations for each step so that someone who wants to try their hand at new media would have a good starting point. The audience knew lots of things that I didn't and made some great contributions.

Sorry about the noise in the audio. The wireless mics were acting up.

Also available: slides from the presentation and a list of links to everything mentioned.

Note: This talk is an hour long. I will split it up into shorter pieces and make those available "soon".



iPod-compatible video. (Right-click to download.)

Listen to the audio. (Right-click to download.)

[Update: Some technical notes on the not-so-straightforward recording/editing process are here.]

Launch Party Vancouver 6

More startup action in Vancouver. Six companies showed their stuff at Launch Party 6 and there was a lively crowd at Steamworks in Gastown to mix it up and party. Here's a two minute video to give you the flavor of the event. Be sure to watch for the action-figure trophy prizes near the end.


Listen to the audio. (Right click to download.)

Twit This, Timbuktu

The world is coming to Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics. What role can social media play to best put forward the face of the city? And what should that face be exactly? Who else has done this well? Michael Klassen gets lots of ideas from the audience in this session from Northern Voice 2009.


Listen to the audio. (Right-click to download.)

Behind the Scenes with "Death of Advertising"

This recording had two audio sources: a clip-on wireless mic and a standalone Zoom H2 recorder using its built-in microphones. As was too often the case in this venue, there was a lot of interference on the wireless mic. After synchronizing I opted to go solely with the Zoom recording. It got started late, so there is the somewhat weird transition at about 30 seconds from one mic to the other.

The Zoom recording sounds pretty distant but it's intelligible. It also did a pretty good job of picking up the audience discussion. The Levelator did its thing to balance the levels.

Lessons Learned

1. It's always good to have a backup recording.
2. Build a Faraday cage around the room to kill electrical interference?
3. Well, more practically, use a clip-on mic into a portable audio recorder that the presenter can stick into his/her pocket. We will illustrate this technique in future recordings.
4. Or, have the wireless receiver really close the presenter and record into a portable recorder like the Zoom instead of directly into the camera.

Death of Advertising

Is advertising dead? Chris Heuer thinks it should die, so that it can be reborn. Chris leads a discussion on what is killing advertising and what's coming next. From Northern Voice 2009.

Behind the Scenes with "Letters from Russia"

This was a very simple one-camera setup with audio being recorded directly onto the camera from a mic clipped onto the presenter. It was all great except for a wee bit of clipping when the presenter was too loud for the mic settings. I improved it a little by using the Clip Restoration feature in Adobe Audition, but that rarely helps much and it didn't do a lot in this case. Other than that and normalizing the audio to -18dB RMS, little else was needed.

Letters from Russia

Dave Olson talks about the sources of inspiration, the creative process and publishing your work in this lively mixed-media presentation. Watch this and you'll understand why Dave has been dubbed a "local cultural artifact". From Northern Voice 2009. Note: Contains adult language.



Listen to the audio. (Right click to download.)

Behind the Scenes with "Streaming Media..."

Here's the technical background on the second video from Northern Voice 2009. This one was straightforward: a single HD camera with audio from the on-camera mic. That made it simple, but the audio is pretty rough. It had a nasty whine at 2950Hz (where the heck did that come from?) which I removed with a notch filter using the increasingly loved Adobe Audition. Other than that I did a mostly ineffective attempt at noise reduction, normalized the RMS levels and sent it on its way back into Final Cut Pro for rendering.

The goal here was to get it out quickly rather than spend a lot of time optimizing the quality.

Streaming Media Hits the Big Time

Did you know you can stream video live from your phone over the internet? Roland Tanglao leads a discussion that reveals all about how to do it, what works and what doesn't (yet). From Northern Voice 2009.


Listen to the audio here. (Right click to download.)

Behind the Scenes with "Teh Funny"

Part of the reason for recording and posting the sessions from Northern Voice is to learn and share the experience of doing event videos, which I hope will encourage others to do more of the same. Here's the short story behind the Teh Funny. More extensive details are below.

The video was shot by three cameras, one of which was a cell phone camera. Audio was recorded on a standalone audio recorder. Slides were recorded directly from the presenter's laptop. These five recording sources were synchronized with our software and then edited in Final Cut Pro.

There's a lot more to it as I'll now explain. This is pretty detailed technical info, so hide your eyes if you find it too scary.

Slides

The slides were recorded onto a T61 laptop using an Epiphan VGA2USB and VirtualDub. I used the ffvfw MPEG-4 codec and recorded audio from the laptop built-in mics. That's poor quality audio but it was only needed for synchronization purposes later so it was enough. Unfortunately the quality of the video was not good. The Epiphan box does a good job about 90% of the time, but this was not one of those times. So I asked the presenter for his slides. They were in Apple's Keynote which has an easy way to export all the slides to individual images: look under Share > Export... I did use the Epiphan recording, but just to know where to place the slide images in the timeline.

Video

I recorded video from the back of the room using a Canon XH A1. It was equipped with a Rode shotgun mic for backup audio and to pick up some room tone and audience sounds. Another attendee recorded B-roll footage using a monopod at the front of the hall. (You can see her on the right in some of the early frames.) A third attendee posted live video to Qik which was downloaded later.

Audio

The primary audio was recorded using a wireless lavalier mic into a Zoom H4. Secondary audio was to come from the camera-mounted shotgun mic. These would be mixed after synchronization.

Post-Production

I dumped everything into Final Cut Pro and used our software to automatically synchronize it. It worked like a charm. The Zoom audio had a bit of drift but the software corrected for that and it was perfectly synced with the shotgun audio so they could be mixed. Normally at this point I would throw both audio tracks into The Levelator and then do the editing.

That would be the end of the story, but there was a problem. I'm fussy about the quality of the audio and I've had excellent results using this setup, but in this case the primary audio recording was beyond bad. First of all, the lavalier mic on the presenter's shirt kind of flopped over, so there was lots of bumps and clothing noise. Second there was electrical interference with the wireless system. I'd tested it all beforehand, but once the room was filled with dozens of laptops and all the AV systems fired up, something caused nasty hissing and zapping sounds.

I knew some of this was happening during the shoot, but I couldn't bring myself to interrupt the presenter to tinker with everything. So I decided to fix it as best as possible in post.

It was a nightmare. I spent a loooong time in Adobe Audition cleaning it up and I think I used every trick that program has to offer. There were three different noise profiles used at various times, lots of gating, some EQ, envelope shaping and the healing brush. The more I used Audition the more I appreciated what it can do. Not only are there lots of tools, but they have implemented the algorithms very well.

In the end though, it's garbage in and just slightly less smelly garbage out. After mixing in much more camera audio than was originally intended, it was done. The best that can be said about it is that the speaker is intelligible and it doesn't actually make your ears bleed.

Compared to the audio, the rest of the editing process was a breeze.

Lessons Learned

1. Watch where you clip on those lavalier mics. Get it as close as possible to the mouth but at all costs keep it from rubbing or bumping clothing or anything else.
2. Wireless mics can work well but if you have any reasonable alternative, go for it. In other sessions at this conference, we used an Olympus portable voice recorder with excellent results. With hindsight I wished I had fed the wireless audio into the other audio track on the camera instead of the Zoom and instead just propped up the Zoom on the lectern to record with its own mics (as backup audio).
3. If people are recording to tape, just grab the tapes from them at the end of the day. We ended up having to do a complicated compress-upload-download cycle that slowed things down a lot.
4. It's a good idea to have a USB key handy to grab a copy of the slides from the presenter right after the presentation. As much as I love the Epiphan box, the original slides are better quality and it can make a noticeable difference even at web resolutions.
5. By all means, go with multicamera/multiaudio recording. If you ignore my whining about the audio quality problems, you'll see that the process was amazingly simple despite the number of variables involved. By doing synchronization in post, the cameras and audio don't need to be connected to each other during recording. And by having a precise sync on the audio, you can get a pleasing mix of presenter and room audio.

Teh Funny

Rob Cottingham of Social Signal delivered a hilarious keynote at Northern Voice 2009. Here is the much-requested full length recording of that presentation, in glorious multicamera goodness.

This is the first video to be released in the grand experiment of trying to make all sessions from Northern Voice available online. It was also a great use case for our company's automatic synchronization software which is currently in beta. The technical details are described here.

Slides from my Northern Voice presentation

Here are the slides from my presentation at Northern Voice 2009. Video will be posted "soon". Links for everything mentioned in the talk are here.

Northern Voice 2009 Recordings

Some videos from Northern Voice 2009 are already available (no thanks to me--yet). Several others will be trickling out at a steady rate as we crunch through the material. The hard part is getting everything off people's cameras and into a common location. Unfortunately the files are a little too big (e.g., tens of gigabytes) to be sending through e-mail.

For those of you who just can't wait, there are several Qik videos here and more here.

Stewart Butterfield's keynote is below, thanks to James Cogan.


Stewart Butterfield Keynote - Northern Voice 2009 on Video.ca

Links for Northern Voice Presentaton

[Update 2009-02-27] What looks like the definitive guide to recording phone conversations has been posted here.

Added links for embeddable audio players.[]

I am presenting at Northern Voice 2009 tomorrow. The talk is titled How to Bring Your Blog to Life and is about getting started with audio and video. In this post I gather together all the links to the sites referred to in that presentation.

General Info
Wikipedia entry for podcast

Example Sites
Doug Kaye's blog
Apple Store Opening video
David Howell's short films for the Web
NowPublic crowd powered media
Vancouver Weekly Underground Review Podcast
YouTube unbox video example

Gear
Olympus WS-210 voice recorder
Zoom H4 digital audio recorder
Basic USB mic at Best Buy
BlueMic Snowball USB microphone at Long & McQuade
Shure SM58 at Tom Lee Music
Flip Video site
Velbon C600 at London Drugs
Manfrotto Tripod Kit at B&H Photo
Flourescent light kit at Broadway Camera
Green screen supplies at TubeTape
USB headset at Best Buy
Recording from two USB mics on the Mac

Camera Review Sites
Still cameras: dpreview.com
Camcorders: camcorderinfo.com

Software
Pamela for Mac Skype recording
Audio Hijack Pro
Total Recorder for Window Skype (and other recording)
MX Skype Recorder (free)

Phone Recording
Cheapie phone recorder at The Source
JK Audio
TalkShoe

Screencast Software
Camtasia
SnapZ Pro X
ScreenFlow

Audio Editing
The Levelator
Audacity
GarageBand
GoldWave
Adobe Audition
Soundtrack Pro
Windows Movie Maker
iMovie
Pinnacle Studio
Final Cut Express
Sony Vegas Pro

Resources
iStockPhoto
Voices.com
Lynda.com
MPEG StreamClip
music.download.com
17 Places to Find PodSafe Music
99Designs
Soundsnap (sound effects)

MP3
LAME for Audacity
ID3-TagIT

Hosting and Publishing
Blip.tv
libsyn.com
SlideShare
Resources for WordPress podcasting: PodPress.org
FeedBurner

Embeddable Audio Players
Yahoo media player
Wordpress plugin (MP3 only)
Tutorial: using the Wordpress plugin in non-Wordpress pages

Podcast Directories
iTunes
SpokenWord.org
Podcast Pickle.
BluBrry
Podcast Alley
Odeo

Coding Resources
RentACoder
oDesk
Elance

Embedding F4V Files in Keynote

I just ran into (and solved) a little problem. I'm preparing a presentation for Northern Voice 2009 and am using Keynote for my slides instead of boring old PowerPoint. My talk is about producing audio and video for the Web and I have several F4V videos that I want to include in my slides. (F4V is Adobe's Flash wrapper for H.264-encoded video.)

Keynote lets you easily embed a QuickTime movie, but what about F4V? After many failed attempts here's what works. Fortunately, it's simple.

1. Download and install the Perian drivers so that QuickTime can play Flash video.
2. Select the video file to be embedded, Ctrl-click and choose "Get Info".
3. Set "Open with:" to "QuickTime Player".
4. Change the extension on the file from .f4v to .mov.
5. Drag and drop the file into Keynote.
   

Step #4 in particular is a pretty miserable hack, but it does the job: Keynote should play the file now, just like a "real" QuickTime file.

PNWS: Gerry Chan and The Future of Wireless

Phones made from bamboo, networks of nano robots, RFID biological implants and more. Gerry Chan of the Wireless Research Centre Canada talks about The Future of Wireless in this keynote from the Pacific Northwest Wireless Summit, Jan. 19, 2009.

SpokenWord.org goes live

SpokenWord.org is the latest creation from the indefatigable Doug Kaye, founder of IT Conversations and the Conversations Network. Just out of beta, this new site is a must for anyone who loves podcasts and other Web media content. It provides a number of ways to find, manage and share spoken-word recordings. There's been a lively discussion during development among many enthusiastic alpha and beta testers and Doug has boiled all the ideas down to a site that hangs together nicely. Recommended.

Northern Voice 2009

I'll be giving a presentation at Northern Voice this year. The title is Bringing Your Blog to Life and it's all about getting going with audio and video in your blogging world. (Friday, Feb. 20, 1:30PM)

In addition, I am organizing several of the participants to record as much of Northern Voice as we can. It's a fun and useful conference and deserves to reach a broader audience than its small venue can support. There will be more information about this on the Northern Voice wiki "soon". Watch for videos from the conference to appear on this blog and elsewhere.



Update: The manifesto describing the recording project has now been posted here.

PNWS: Best Keynote (Highlights)

Thomas Huseby is Managing Partner at SeaPoint Ventures, a VC firm based in Seattle. His presentation at the Pacific Northwest Wireless Summit was voted as Best Keynote by the attendees. Click the image below to see some highlights from that presentation.

MoMoVan: zinepal.com

Frank Worsley from zinepal.com describes how to create custom magazines from your favorite blogs, websites or RSS feeds.

From Mobile Monday Vancouver, Nov. 3, 2008.

MoMoVan: Rx Networks and Assisted GPS

When you turn on your GPS device you can wait for a loooong time while it locates the satellites. By the time it does, you may have missed your exit. Peter Mueller and Adrian Stimpson of Rx Networks explain what is happening during that delay and what they are doing to speed it up.

Their first approach has been to have a network of earth stations around the world that keep satellite location information and transmit it to a GPS device over a high speed network. The next level of sophistication is to give the devices the ability to predict where the satellites are going to be.

They describe how their technology has been incorporated into the latest line of Garmin GPS devices to give them an "instant on" capability.

And it doesn't stop there. Things get even more interesting in their next project, a GPS-based self learning system.

From Mobile Monday Vancouver, Nov. 3, 2008.

MoMoVan: CellMap, Canpages and ImmersiFind

Aaron Hilton, Founder and CTO of CellMap gives a personal account of his collaboration with Olivier Vincent, President and CEO of Canpages that recently resulted in the creation of an innovation mobile search platform: ImmersiFind. It all started at a Momovan event last spring.

Along the way, Aaron shares his experience of developing for the iPhone. From Mobile Monday Vancouver, Nov. 3, 2008.

MoMoVan: Entrepreneurship Panel

The panel discussed how their companies organize and promote themselves as well as the challenges of competing in a global market.

• Igor Faletski - Co-Founder of Handi Mobility


• Danny Robinson – Founder & CEO of Bootup Labs


• Ron Klopfer – Serial entrepreneur and angel investor


• Amielle Lake, CEO of Tagga


• Michael Bidu, WINBC (moderator)

From Mobile Monday Vancouver, Oct. 6, 2008.

Click the image below to see a two-minute summary.

Click this image to see the whole discussion.

3 Minute Pitch: Imogo

Stewart Irvine, CEO of Imogo, describes how his company delivers an "integrated, mobile, global office". From Mobile Monday Vancouver, Oct. 6, 2008.

The Art of the Pitch

From Mobile Monday Vancouver: Woodrow Wilson once said, "If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if an hour, I am ready now."

Ron Klopfer, no stranger to the technology industry or raising capital describes the art of the perfect pitch. He makes the point that good pitching skills are important in all aspects of the business, not just for convincing investors. Richly illustrated with examples and pithy advice, Ron speaks to the importance of being clear and concise and how to master being efficient at pitching.

Click the image below to view the presentation.

Generational Communication Gap

Can't figure out the people you work with? Maybe it will help to look at them through the lens of generations.

The Baby Boomers are delaying retirement. Generation X is sandwiched between Baby Boomers and Millennials, waiting their turn at formal leadership. This discussion explores the uniqueness of each of the generations and how to engage them all in your organization despite their differences. From the Oct. 27, 2008 meeting of the High-Tech Communicators' Exchange.

Kathi Irvine is a principal at KLI Associates and a core consultant with Sundance Consulting Inc. The intergenerational workforce is one of her current research projects.

Enjoy Your 25 Hour Day

This blog is called 25 Hour Day for a reason. Several of us will get to experience a 25 hour day today as we adjust our clocks for the end of daylight saving time (DST). Feels good doesn't it? Wouldn't it be nice if you could have that good feeling every day?

Well you can't, unless you adopt my modest proposal. In the meantime, enjoy your 25 hour day and enjoy your 5% reduced risk of a heart attack.

Marketing New Media

An engaging and useful Third Tuesday presentation. Mhairi Petrovic talks about "Overcoming the challenges of marketing new media to traditional decision makers."

The evolution of the Internet has brought about many changes in the way we do business: marketing in particular has seen a sea change as new methods of interacting with target audiences have come to the fore. Many senior decision makers today, however, come from a traditional marketing background and are hesitant to adopt new media marketing techniques. This talk will discuss the common objections old school marketers have to new media and how you can use the basic principles of traditional marketing to educate them to the new way of doing things.

Mhairi Petrovic is Chief Marketing Orchestrator and Founder of Out-Smarts Internet Marketing - a company dedicated to working with small to medium sized businesses to maximize their Internet exposure. Passionate about social media, Mhairi blogs and podcasts regularly and puts her knowledge of the Internet to good use to develop and implement innovative Internet marketing campaigns.

Mhairi's presentation and the audience discussion were live-blogged here, a post which helpfully includes links to all the sites and tools mentioned.

Click the image below to see the presentation. Sorry for the poor video and audio quality, it was a very dark intimate room in a noisy lively setting.

MoMoVan: Mobile Voting Panel

From the MoMoVan E-Zine description of the Oct. 6, 2008 meeting...

John Boxall of Handi Mobility and John Lyotier of Direct Voter carried a lively discussion of how the new technologies are being deployed; how politicians are doing a lousy job of embracing the new tools at their disposal and how secure mobile technologies are going to transform not only search marketing for election campaigns but also the way we vote.

What's up with the hats? Watch this.

Edie Hats and MoMoVan

From the MoMoVan E-Zine description of the Oct. 6, 2008 meeting...

In addition to the informative sessions and discussions, we also selected the new face of MoMoVan for the year (a unique tradition) for the official face on the "Smile, it's Monday!" button.

Edie, owner of Edie Hats, once again provided the props (sexy, crazy, trendy hats). There was some modesty at first, but Natalie (store manager) was relentless and no one was spared from the fashion show or the ensuing photo shoot. A top 5 was chosen from the room and after much deliberation, Igor Faletski passed the mantle to Amielle Lake.

Tagga Makes Instant Mobile Sites

Amielle Lake, CEO of Tagga, describes how this new company lets you create instant SMS and mobile sites. From the lightning pitches at MoMoVan, October 6, 2008.

Video: Apple Store Opening, Vancouver

Just for fun: a mashup of YouTube videos of the opening of the Apple Store in Vancouver on May 24, 2008. The videos from several attendees were synchronized and then edited in Final Cut Pro. The video runs in real time. Yes, the yelling and screaming did go on and on and on...


Picture credit: Retrocactus (who has many other fine pictures of the event)
The original YouTube videos are here: kockgunner, jeffreykao, RunningKelton, GregEhTV, PalluxoMediaOnline, bo5is, azisman

Video: CellMap Presentation

Aaron Hilton, president and CTO of CellMap, talks about how his company is bringing a new kind of map to your cell phone. He explains why it isn't Google Maps and gives a detailed business case example.
From MoMoVan, May 5, 2008.

Click the image below to view the video (length: 12:32).

Video: Mobile Social Networking

Join the panel at MoMoVan May 2008 for a discussion of social networking in the mobile space. Moderated by the always effervescent Roland Tanglao, panel members Jim Udall, Jeff LaPorte and David Vogt mix it up with the audience on topics of the next big thing, what will do for mobile what Google did for search, and is Vancouver a good place to nurture wireless companies?

Video: CTIA Wireless 2008 Quickie

Here is a very short (about 1 minute) overview of a panel discussion reviewing highlights of the recent CTIA conference in Las Vegas.

The panelists are:

Christina Lees, Product Manager, Wavefront
Luni Lebes, Chief Architect, Medio Systems
Razmig Sarkissian, Integration Manager, Mobile Distillery

Moderator is Michael Bidu, Executive Director, WINBC

Click the image below to view. If it sounds interesting to you, you can listen to the complete audio (length 20:40) of the discussion here (Right click to download.).

Video: Wireless Survey in 60 Seconds

Here's a 60 second version of a video that can be seen in full here.
Editing it down to one minute is obviously a bit of an experiment. Let me know what you think!
Michael Bidu, Executive Director of WINBC, gives a quick overview of the results of a 2007 survey of the wireless industry in British Columbia. The sector is healthy with over $1B in revenue and 6,000 employees. It has now reached a level of maturity where substantial investment is needed to fund the sales and marketing needed for the next stage of growth.

From MoMoVan, Mobile Monday in Vancouver, March 3, 2008.

Tags: momovan, wireless, funding, bc, survey

Podcast: Where Will BC's Wireless Companies Find $133M?

By now you've heard that our 2007 BC Wireless Industry Survey uncovered the need of BC's mobile companies to find $133M in financing over the next two years to fund growth and expand their markets. Where will that money come from? That was the main subject of the WINBC MoMoVan at the downtown offices of Fasken Martineau, March 3, 2008 .

The panelists were:

Steve Hnatiuk, from Yaletown Venture Partners. Yaletown is backed by major institutional investors in Canada and the US and invests the majority of its capital in early-stage technology companies in BC. They typically invest up to $2 million in the first round in any start-up they back and up to $6M in a company across multiple rounds. Every year Yaletown sees about 300 new companies seeking funding and invests in 3 or 4.

Jenny Yang, from the Business Development Bank of Canada, a crown corporation with $500 million to invest in early stage companies, especially ones in life sciences, advanced technology, telecommunications and IT.

Earl Hong Tai, from Telefilm Canada's New Media Fund for early stage start-ups.

Riz Kheraj, from NRC/IRAP, which helps small and medium tech companies by providing financial and other support. They have $13 million in R&D funds available to BC technology companies.

Michael Bidu, Executive Director of WINBC, moderator

Listen to the audio here (Right click to download).

Northern Voice 2008: Mobile Video Blogging

Chris Heuer and Roland Tanglao show how to stream video live from a phone, and discuss how it is changing the landscape for blogging. Lots of good interatction with the audience.
The session itself was (of course!) broadcast live from Roland's phone. This video is a mashup of Roland's stream, a GO-HD camera I had in the audience, and audio from a portable recorder stuck near the front of the room.
From MooseCamp at Northern Voice 2008.


Tags: nv08, northernvoice, northernvoice2008, mobile, live, video, blogging

Video: BC Wireless Industry Survey

Michael Bidu, Executive Director of WINBC, gives a quick overview of the results of a 2007 survey of the wireless industry in British Columbia. The sector is healthy with over $1B in revenue and 6,000 employees. It has now reached a level of maturity where substantial investment is needed to fund the sales and marketing needed for the next stage of growth.
From MoMoVan, Mobile Monday in Vancouver, March 3, 2008.

Tags: momovan, wireless, funding, bc, survey

Northern Voice 2008: Achieving a Personal Style

Some pithy comments by Alex Waterhouse-Hayward, renowned photographer, writer and artist, on the role that lighting plays in achieving a personal style in your pictures. Starting with the lament that "right now we are going through the opposite of a renaissance of lighting," and that the world is becoming "Flickr'ed", he identifies both the biggest enemy and the holy grail of photography.
From the PhotoCamp session at Northern Voice 2008.

(A somewhat bigger version of the video is here.)

Piano Phantom

Just for fun, here's a short video I made to test some video sync software I am working on. It may not be obvious at first that there are several media streams being synchronized, but keep watching.

Northern Voice 2008: Best Compact Cameras

Tim Bray gives a quick survey of the state-of-the-art in compact digital still cameras in the PhotoCamp session at MooseCamp, Northern Voice 2008. Tim's talk itself is quite compact, as he cuts to the chase about why you would want to use a pocket camera versus an SLR, what the dream camera would be and how close you can get to that today. The links to the topics and cameras are gathered here.

(A somewhat better quality version of the video is here.)

Experiments in user-generated music videos

R.E.M. has done something innovative with their latest single, Supernatural Superserious. They posted 11 videos of the group performing the song and invited fans to mash them up into their own music videos. The results are here.

Some of the videos are pretty good. My favorite is actually only slightly connected with the concept, but especially after seeing some of the others it really grabs you (or me at least).

My own effort was just a technical exercise in synchronization. Still, it has some charm IMHO.

This is just the latest in band-encouraged fan videos, following on from a 200 contributor effort for a Shins video which was written up in Wired (which gets bonus points for a great headline).

Ultra-budget film-making

Kirk Mastin, a professional photographer, had a great idea on how to compare the quality of a cheap Flip Video camcorder with that of my beloved Canon XH A1, which costs about 20 times as much. He literally taped a Flip onto the side of an A1 and then shot a documentary with both of them simultaneously.

The results are fascinating. They are best viewed in the original Blip.tv form because they get cropped on Kirk's blog.

The Flip version looks not bad at all, even though it was cropped to get a 16:9 aspect ratio. Just shows that technique wins over equipment.

Northern Voice 2008: DOF and Gallery Hack

Derek Miller, with some help from Kris Krug, gives a quick intro to the concept of depth of field and how to control it. He then presents a neat hack to get photo galleries on your blog that look suspiciously Flickr-like. From the PhotoCamp session at MooseCamp, Northern Voice 2008.

Technical note: The image is a little dark because the lights were off in the room! Given that fact, the GO-HD did a pretty good job.

Northern Voice 2008: Modified Light Photography

Reilly Lievers of Blue Olive Photography gives a great tutorial on photographing people using flash and modified light. From the PhotoCamp session at MooseCamp, Northern Voice 2008.

Northern Voice 2008: Natural Light Photography

Miranda Lievers from Blue Olive Photography gives a great instructive presentation on making natural and found light portraits - what to look for when placing your subject(s), and how to get great natural portraits when you find the light. Well-illustrated with several excellent photos illustrating the concepts.

From the PhotoCamp session of Northern Voice 2008. A somewhat bigger and higher-quality version is here.

Northern Voice 2008: Enterprise Social

A well-attended session from Northern Voice 2008. David Orchard leads a discussion on the use of social software (especially wikis) within the enterprise. More notes here.

Technical Notes The first 45 seconds or so is audio-only, because I started the camera late. The video was recorded with an Aiptek GO-HD and the audio was recorded with a Zoom H4. This was literally the first time I had ever used the GO-HD and my camera work is pretty wonky in places as I was playing around with it!

DemoCamp: Scannerfly

Brendan Wilson demos Scannerfly, a Flash component that turns any webcam into a barcode scanner. Presented at DemoCampVancouver05. For a recap of the meeting, go here.

DemoCamp: Twemes

Rochelle Grayson describes how to track Twitter memes with Twemes. Presented at DemoCampVancouver05. For a recap of the whole meeting, see this TechVibes post.

DemoCamp: Localiti

Jason Murphy demos Localiti, a new concept for a web/desktop application that promises to redefine communication and messaging.

From DemoCampVancouver05. Read the meeting recap here.

DemoCamp: pul.se

Weston Triemstra demos pulse, a Facebook application that helps you keep track of your favorite bands and makes recommendations. This recording is from DemoCampVancouver05. A recap of the meeting can be found on TechVibes.

Nonlinear Learning, or Why I Don't Read Books Anymore

I had the good fortune a while ago to have dinner with Don Tapscott, a writer/thinker whose work I quite like. There was an awkward moment when I confessed that not only had I not read his latest book, but I doubted that I ever would. Don's a good writer and the subject area is interesting to me, but I just don't read books anymore. More precisely, sometimes I start reading them but I rarely finish. (I've had about 50 pages to go in Cryptonomicon for several years now.) And I do dip into books frequently, especially electronic editions. But read a book? Uh, no.

The reason has something to do with the fact there are so many other information sources that command my attention. I wasn't able to articulate this very well at the time, and now I don't have to because Scott Karp has clarified it admirably. The crux of his argument is summed up by these questions:

What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?

What if the networked nature of content on the web has changed not just how I consume information but how I process it?

What if I no longer have the patience to read a book because it’s too…. linear.

Yup, that's it (almost).

We home-schooled our three kids for many years. One of the key advantages of unstructured home-schooling over scheduled learning in a classroom is that you can take advantage of the "learning moment". There comes a time when the child asks a question or otherwise lets you know that she is receptive to hearing some information about a specific topic, right now. The amount of learning you can pack into that moment is incomparably more than what gets absorbed from a steady stream of linear information going by.

Call me ADD if you want but I prefer to think of our digital age as enabling a rich variety of learning moments. Mommy isn't around to answer my questions, but Wikipedia is. So is Twitter, Google, the electronic editions of The Vancouver Sun and The New York Times, Safari books online, my social graph, etc. etc. Sure I hop around from topic to topic and can't follow the bread crumbs back to where I started sometimes, but on the whole I am getting more out of it than by following a linear track. Much more.

I disagree with Scott on one point. I don't believe his (or my) style of thinking has changed. Human thought processes are naturally nonlinear and hyperlinked. It's just that now we have information sources that match. Physical books that are read from beginning to end don't fit.

Mathematician Up For Grammy

This article tells the wonderful story of how a mathematician helped restore a bootleg recording of Woody Guthrie performing live. Until recently no such recordings were thought to exist, but in 2001 one appeared. The problem was, it was recorded on flimsy wire that was stretched and twisted. The restoration was so good that the recording has been nominated for a Grammy.

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20080209/mathtrek.asp

A Skeptical Mathematician Loses Weight by the Numbers

I am six feet tall. A few months ago I weighed 190 lb, which is at the 38th percentile of American males. In other words, 62% of males my height weighed more than me. Sounds good, but there's a problem. Says who? Says WHO, that's who. The World Health Organization (WHO) has this nasty thing called the Body Mass Index (BMI) and if you are six feet tall and 190 lb you have a BMI of 25.8 and are deemed to be moderately overweight. My doctor (who is skinny) thought I was moderately overweight too.

This is the story of my journey to figure out how to lose some weight.

For no good reason, I decided I should weigh 170 and it would be all right to take two years to get there. How to do it? We all "know" that diets don't work. (Actually, we don't know much of anything. See Good Calories, Bad Calories.) There is a school of thought that if you just practice intentional eating, or mindful eating, you will eat less. A quick read of Mindless Eating (and Influence) convinced me otherwise.

The more I looked into weight control, the more skeptical I became that anyone knows anything about it. The proliferation of zillions of fad diets seemed all too understandable: diet studies are hard to do with scientific rigor, no one does them right anyway, everyone has a vested interest, etc. etc. The state of the science for all this is depressingly poor. Sigh.

Everyone seems to agree that reducing calories will result in weight loss. That doesn't mean it's true, but everyone agrees. So I decided to count calories. Being a mathematician, I was getting interested now that it was becoming a numbers game. The standard wisdom is that you need a certain number of calories to maintain your weight and if you eat 500 calories a day less than that you will lose one pound in a week. Counting calories is pretty easy because nutritional info for generic food is readily available and (thanks to Ralph Nader apparently) there are calorie counts on pretty well all packaged foods.

So I just needed to know what my maintenance calories were and then eat less than that. The maintenance level is loosely known as the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Fortunately there are many Web sites that tell you how to calculate your BMR. Unfortunately, they all give wildly different answers. But fortunately, I live in a quasi-socialist society where they think the government is supposed to help people and they have a Dial-a-Dietitian service. Forget all the confusion on the Internet, I could ask a professional for the answer!

The dietitian was very nice but was very insistent that she wasn't going to tell me what my BMR might be. Why? "Diets don't work." Well, I'm not really planning to diet exactly, just practice a little portion control perhaps. "You'd have to keep track of your calories and no one does that effectively." I can! I can! "You should try to get more exercise instead." I will, I promise, but maybe I could combine that with a little calorie monitoring? No luck, resistance was futile.

So much for theory. I decided to just experiment on myself, eat a little less, count the calories I was eating and see what happened. Well, a funny thing happened. Counting calories made me aware of how many stupid calories I was taking in. I ended up eating even less than I had planned to and my weight fell faster than I had expected it would. The best part was I didn't feel like I was dieting or starving myself. Somewhere along the way I decided that my target weight should be 162 lb because that would give me a BMI of 21, right smack in the middle of the healthy range. That number was kind of arbitrary, but I liked the idea of performing a "random act of self-discipline" (as Bill Gates supposedly described his temporary adoption of vegetarianism).

The graph above shows the results. Before my little calorie-counting episode, my weight was slowly creeping up. Afterward it went steadily down. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine at what point in the graph the change happened. Just last week, I reached my target weight. I had lost 28 pounds in about five months. Yay!

What did I learn? Lots of things, but they may well apply only to me and no one else. Calories do make a difference. Fat, not so much. My normal diet is not particularly low-fat. Nor is it particularly low-carb. And exercise? Surprisingly, it seemed to have very little impact. For the first third of the five months I was exercising much more than usual. In the middle third, I exercised much less. In the final third, I've been back to normal for me, which is on the light side of moderate. None of this made any difference to my weight. (Ha! Take that, professional dietitian!) Basically I learned that 99.9% of everything you read about dieting, exercise, calories, carbs, fat and everything else is garbage. Evidence-based medicine is a good thing. But you'll be disappointed if you think there is much of that going on in the world of nutrition.

I know what you're thinking. Will he be able to keep it off? I'm actually more concerned about something else: how do I stop losing weight? I know how to lose weight. I don't know how to maintain my weight. I know what the theory says about my BMR. I can put all the data I have collected about myself into a first-order inhomogeneous differential equation and solve that to get my BMR at any given weight level. (Parents: your kids wonder why they should study math? There's your answer.)

But according to that calculation I would need to eat 700 more calories per day to maintain my weight. Um, that would be like a 47% increase. I don't believe it. So I'll experiment some more and explode some other theories in the process no doubt.

The new, new thing in Japan: write a novel on a mobile phone

You think BlackBerry users are weird because because they don't mind hammering out email messages with their thumbs? Well, in Japan a new generation of authors are writing entire novels on their mobile phones. This article relates that "half of Japan's top-10 selling works of fiction in the first six months of the year were composed ... on the tiny handset of a mobile phone."

The writing style is characterized by "clipped one-liners, emoticons and spaces (used to show that a character is thinking), all of which can be read easily on a mobile phone interface."

One such novel is Moshimo Kimiga, written by a nursery school teacher on her mobile phone and originally distributed in installments to mobile phone readers. Now that it is available in hard cover, it has sold 420,000 copies since January.

I still can't decide if this is a wonderful example of making an art previously practiced by a relative few available to the many, or if it's just depressingly weird. You tell me!

Finally, my phone knows where I am

Google announced a new version of Google Maps for mobile phones almost a week ago. It uses cell tower location data to determine approximately where you are, without needing GPS. Now I know you're thinking, "triangulation!" but Google doesn't say that word anywhere.

This was just too cool to pass up so I've been trying valiantly for the last week to get it running on my BlackBerry Pearl 8100 (on the Rogers network in the Vancouver area). I am happy to report that after multiple permutations of installing, uninstalling, power cycling and battery pulling ... it works! It's in beta (what a surprise), and surely Google will figure out how to make it install more reliably soon.

What do I mean by "it works"? Instantly after firing up the application it showed my estimated location with a blue flashing dot and indicated that it was accurate to about 1700m. In fact, it was much closer, about five blocks. And that's indoors where GPS wouldn't work anyway.

For those us used to having GPS locate us to within the correct side of the street, not five blocks away, this may seem like it's not going to be good enough. But if you are as directionally challenged as I am, you'll take what you can get. And Google claims that it will get more accurate as it used more. (How the heck does that work??)

You can find out all about it here. It would be a good idea to check first if your phone is supported.

No more shaky pans?

Isn't it annoying how difficult it is to get a smooth pan or tilt even when using a tripod? You go to all that work to get a rock steady picture, but then discover it is almost impossible to avoid shaking the camera a little when your hands grab the handle to start the movement. A better tripod head might help, but the idea of a motorized device to do the camera moves is pretty attractive.

This sounds like a problem that money could solve and indeed there are many options if you are willing to spend $5,000 and up. But if that's not in your budget, you might want to take a look at the Bescor MP-101 ($120 at B&H). It is a battery-operated (an AC adapter is optional) motorized pan head. I couldn't find reviews or user comments about this unit anywhere, so I took a chance and bought one.

Installation and use is simple. You attach it to your tripod head and then attach the camera to it. The remote is simple and easy to operate. You set the pan speed with a slide control and then press the arrow in the direction you want to move the camera. It will also tilt, at a fixed speed.

There is also has an automatic mode which will continuously pan the camera back and forth between the angles of your choice. Maybe this is good for a security application? I can't think of any time I would use it.

I've made a few sample videos with my Canon XH A1 to show you the results. The first shows a pan of a forest scene at the fastest speed, using a wide angle. Frankly it doesn't look very good but that's not the fault of the Bescor. For reasons I don't fully understand (but which are discussed here), panning doesn't look good with this setup. At the slow speed though it looks great. Fortunately the tilt speed is slow, so that works. Unless you are zoomed in which case it's too fast. Sigh.

Pros

• Inexpensive
• Quiet
• Pretty smooth
• Easy to use
• Good range of travel

Cons

• Motion starts and ends abruptly
• Slowest speed is still too fast (especially on zoom)
• Occasional hesitations during travel
• Some minor glitching when reversing directions
• The wire to the remote control is not very long (but an extension is available)

Summary

If you need an inexpensive motorized pan and tilt head, the Bescor MP-101 could be the one for you. It does a good job within its limitations. For my purposes, the jury is still out as to whether it will be useful. Look at the sample video (about 50MB) and judge for yourself. I bought mine at B&H Photo/Video.

Cherry blossoms in HD

This picture is one frame from an HD movie taken with the XH A1 in 1080i mode. Click on the image to get the full size view. It looks better than most of the images I take with my still camera.

Should I pay 4x for HDV tapes?

Crikey. I've just learned that although you can use regular mini-DV tapes in an HDV camcorder, maybe you shouldn't. According to wikipedia (today, at least): "Because HDV uses the same tape form factor as DV, users should be able to use any high quality MiniDV tape in their HDV camcorder. However, because HDV has a lower tolerance for drop-outs because of its long-GOP compression, many HDV users purchase either 'master' quality Mini-DV tapes or specially formulated HDV tapes."

But tapes advertised as being for HDV cost four times as much as regular mini-DV tapes. Surely this is a rip-off, comparable to the hugely-inflated prices of Monster cables? Please someone tell me that regular tapes from a reputable manufacturer are good enough!

Canon XH A1: Big and Wonderful

As promised in my last post, I bought a Canon XH A1 from Beach Camera. As usual with Beach, the transaction was smooth and the shipping was quick.

I am on a journey that I suspect is common to a lot of semi-serious videographers out there: the first step from a decent SD camcorder to HD. I have had great service from a pair of Panasonic PV-GS400 camcorders for the last couple of years. The PV-GS400 was hands down the best camcorder in its price class and it is very sad that Panasonic no longer produces it and instead has chosen to dumb down its product line.

But it was time to think about HD anyway. The choice was to take a small step up to a consumer HD camera or take a big step up into a prosumer camera. I had gotten used to the nice manual controls on the PV-GS400 and didn't want to give any of that up. So I made the big step forward. The XH A1 is about (gulp) three times the price of the PV-GS400.

The first thing you notice is that the XH A1 is a lot bigger than the PV-GS400. (See picture.) But it is much sexier looking. I mean, come on, look at it!

It's heavier too, weighing in at about 5-1/2 pounds. The little pipsqueak Panasonic is only 1-1/2 pounds. I thought the weight would kill me, but I walked around for about an hour with it, taking pictures of random things, and it wasn't too bad.

The second thing you notice is the quality of the pictures. Oh my! This baby is worth every penny. More on the picture quality in my next post.

Canon offers $250 rebate on XH A1

I've been ready to make the switch to an HD camcorder for a little while now. But it's been hard to choose. The consumer camcorders are amazing for the price, but too dumbed down for the serious hobbyist. And the professional ones are ferociously expensive unless you're, well, a professional.

Based on the not-quite-astronomical price and several rave reviews, I have settled on getting the Canon XH A1. Today I started scouring the Web for the best price from a reputable dealer. (What is it about camera equipment that attracts so many vendors with shady selling practices?) I soon tumbled on to the fact that Canon is offering a $250 rebate for cameras purchased between March and June of 2007. Hooray!

No one legit seems to be offering a better price than Beach Camera, and I've had good experiences with them in the past, so that's where I'll go to buy it.

GPS Text-to-Speech Feature a Must-Have

I have an absolutely atrocious sense of direction, but I have been fortunate enough to be born in an era when the miracle cure is available: GPS.

I am on my second GPS receiver now and have used several in friends' cars and rentals. My latest is a Garmin C340. It's a wonderful little unit that I like the best of any I've used. But it has one feature that really wins the prize for me: text-to-speech.

This feature means that actual names are used in the driving directions instead of generic descriptions. For example, instead of, "In 200 feet, turn right," you are told, "In 200 feet, turn right onto Alameda Parkway." Makes a huge difference.

Now you might expect it would be difficult for a little guy like the C340 to do this perfectly, and you'd be right. It's actually amazingly good, but there are the odd amusing glitches. Examples:

• "Marine Dr" -> "Marine Doctor"
  
• "Granville St S" -> "Granville Saint South"
• And my favorite... Just for laughs I changed the voice to Australian. I was surprised when it then interpreted "WA 451", which should have been "Washington 451", as "Western Australia 451". Switch back to the American voice and it comes out correctly. Ha ha.

The C340 is very easy to use and small enough to throw into your carry-on luggage when you're traveling and can't count on the rental car having GPS. The display is not bright enough on sunny days and the voice could be a little louder, but other than that everything works great. Highly recommended for the directionally-challenged.

Canadians: The usual retail outlets don't carry this model, preferring the C330 for some reason. But the C330 doesn't have text-to-speech. Don't buy it! Order the C340 over the Web or buy it retail in the US.

Note: I have no affiliation with Garmin and I'm not smart enough to figure out how to get affiliate $ from anyone.

Slides from Moose Camp available

My talk, "Great Podcast Sound for Cheap," at Moose Camp went well. Lots of questions and not nearly enough time to answer them all! I've posted the slides here and hope to expand on the topics covered there in subsequent blog posts.

See You at Moose Camp

I'm going to be at Moose Camp this Friday (February 10) where I will give a talk on how to achieve great audio quality in podcasts. I'll share everything I've learned from my work with IT Conversations and will demonstrate several tools that we have developed to make it all painless, technically and financially.

The 28 Hour Day

I have just learned of this interesting variation on the 25 Hour Day concept I advocate here. (And which gives this blog its name.)

The author gets many of the benefits right, but the 25 hour day is more biologically oriented.

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