So says Ecamm who showed this little bugger at Macworld. George saw it and says the video and audio are pretty good. And if you plug in a little dongle, you can increase the bluetooth range to 100 feet. Standard 640×480 H.264 video with 48 kHz AAC stereo audio and a promised four hours of talk time. Looks like it’s about the size of a deck of playing cards.
Author Archives: Steve Mays
A career in radio prepares you for (new career goes here)
Missouri’s new governor will be sworn in tomorrow and, as part of the transition, about 150 people working at state jobs under the previous administration were terminated. This happens with every four or eight years.
A few days before the state ax fell, I had a routine meeting with the chief public information officer for one of the state departments. Like many in that line of work, he had –I believe– started in radio or spent a number of years in broadcasting. The years of consolidation in that industry had left this person weary from new owners, pay cuts, job elimination… and happy to have a more stable job in state government. Two days later the person is, once again, looking for a job.
It’s only a rumor but I’ve heard many of these communications positions will be filled by attorneys under the new administration. Our new governor was formerly attorney general, but I’m not sure why one would want/need a lawyer in these positions. As I said, that’s just rumor.
All of which reminded me of the dozen years I spent working in local radio. They were more fun than I can describe. Whatever skills I acquired during that time (talking on the radio (??); writing commercials; covering a news story (sort of) seem so… irrelevant now. Okay, it’s a quarter of a century later, so why should this surprise me?
If I had stayed in radio, what would I be doing now? Programming a “cluster” of stations? Managing? (unlikely) And what would those years have prepared me to do?
I have no idea why so many radio people go into public relations or become PIO’s for some association or state agency. I always suspected they were hired for their communications skills. Comfortable in an on-air interview; familiar with writing news releases (?); good voice?
Still a useful skill set. But what else do you need to know how to do in 2009? Blogging? Podcasting? YouTube? Social media? Couldn’t hurt.
I hope everyone that lost their jobs last week finds new ones. And better ones. Free advice every morning from 6:30 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. at the Jefferson City Coffee Zone.
Does size (of your audience) matter or not?
“What we are going to witness in 2009 is the diminished importance of how large your (radio) audience is and the increasing importance of how effectively you connect that audience, whatever its size, with the advertisers and marketers who have the goods and services that audience craves.” — Mark Ramsey Hear 2.0
For some reason this made me think of Apple. I don’t think I’ve ever heard an Apple or Mac or iPod spot on the radio. Lots on TV, of course. And Apple sales are through the roof. I’m trying to think of how I am “connected” with Apple products and how that came to be.
I’m just trying to think of ways radio stations can make –or are making– the connections Mr. Ramsey describes. And what does this trend mean for radio networks?
The best things in life (like Wikipedia) are not free
I was searching Wikipedia for something last month and noticed a big banner at the top of the page, asking for contributions to keep the site going. I didn’t give much but readily hit the PayPal button. Apparently a lot of folks did:
Huffington Post:
“Since November 5, the organization has raised $4.5 million, though the bulk of that came in late December when founder Jimmy Wales posted his annual appeal to the Wikipedia community. Add that to the $2 million in foundation grants and major gifts they’d received since July, and their entire $6 million annual operating budget has been met. The achievement would be remarkable in ordinary times, but it’s all the more impressive given the grim economic climate.”
Wikipedia Fundraising By The Numbers
136,000: number of donors
$35: average donation
16: number of currencies in which people donated
150: number of countries from which people donated
$6.5 million: total amount raised thus far
$3 million: amount raised in ten days in late December
I really like the idea of lots of people kicking in a few dollars to support something they believe is worthwhile.
Inaugural ball: “Like a massive high school prom”
Reply
Latest inauguration horror story (AP):
“Thousands of people converged on the coat check from three balls at the Omni Shoreham hotel. Fur flew, and not always to the rightful owners. Judges, politicians and assorted bigwigs rushed the coatroom and banged on the door.
“It was a mass of finely clothed and jeweled individuals starting to chant ‘We want our coats! We want our coats!'” said Martin, a Washington-area voiceover performer. “There were elderly women in this crowd, and they weren’t going down without a fight.”
Police were called, and the mob was sent out in the freezing cold, coatless.
“It’s like a massive high school prom, is the only way I can describe it, in terms of the crush of people and the level of sophistication,” said Sheila Tate, who was press secretary to Nancy Reagan. “It’s just packed.
The rest of the story describes the kind of situations I have spent my adult life avoiding. Should be some good photo/video ops.
http://twitter.com/inauguration
A week or so ago I got a ping that @inauguration was following my Twitter feed. I assume they just searched all Twitter feeds for “inauguration” and found me. As I always do, I checked the profile page and found:
“Get tips and helpful scoop as you plan for the Presidential Inauguration on January 20, 2009 when Barack Obama takes the oath of office.”
There was a link to a website but I didn’t click it.
@inauguration has been a great source for news about the upcoming event. With links to lots of news sources.
I finally checked the url on the Twitter page and learned that the feed belongs to WUSA-TV in D.C. Thinking back, a lot of the tweets have taken me to pages on the WSUA website.
We’re they being sneaky by not clearly identifying the TV station? Doesn’t feel that way since I now know they pointed me to a variety of sources for relevant news about the inauguration.
My point here is WSUA didn’t just feed the latest news from the station website. They didn’t just promote their coverage. Someone was smart enough to understand how Twitter really works and use it. Cost: zero.
This will be the norm for any big event. And it won’t always be news organizations doing it. It will often be the event organizers. And should be since they will have the most information and have it first.
Yes, I could have set up a Google Alert for “inauguration” but adding @inauguration to my feed was just one-click.
Seasoned Twitter users will remind me there’s a hash tag (#inauguration) that aggregates tweets from ALL Twitter users, not just one source. True, but there’s a lot of noise in that stream. Takes too long to separate the wheat from the chaff.
And to bring it down to the individual level, I could set up a Twitter page just for my tweets from the event, so that my “followers” aren’t drowned in my tweets from DC. Probably won’t be posting enough for that to be a problem, however.
In conclusion… I quickly determined that the @inauguration Twitter feed had useful and interesting information. I didn’t notice or care who was behind the feed.
Butt cheek blogging
“The next time you’re in a public event, such as a lecture, play, or ballgame, look at everyone’s body posture. People who are disengaged are usually leaning back, resting comfortably on both butt cheeks. It’s only when they really get into it that they begin leaning forward, putting all of their weight on a single cheek.” — Copyblogger
Jonathan Morrow explains why this is significant for bloggers. If you’re not a blogger you can skip his post. I just wanted to post the paragraph above. For the record, I’m usually a one butt check kind of guy.
It looks like TV to me
From PoynterOnline’s Al’s Morning Meeting (Al Tompkins):
“Monday morning, WTSP-TV anchor/reporter Janie Porter was on TV, reporting live from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., on the run-up to this week’s national college football championship game. She didn’t have a big live truck accompanying her, or an engineer tuning in a shot or a photojournalist standing behind the camera and setting up lights.”
“Porter set up her own camera, opened her laptop, connected the camera to her computer, slipped a wireless connection card into her laptop, called up Skype and used her Blackberry to establish IFB (the device TV folks wear in their ears to hear the off-air signal). It all looked just great on air.”
So here’s my question: If a reporter didn’t know how to do what Janie did, why wouldn’t he or she make some effort to learn it? If you answered, “I’m not a TV reporter,” go to the back of the line.
iLife ’09
Of all the things I enjoy doing on the computer, messing with images (still and video) has to be near the top of the list. You’ve heard me and others talk about how the Mac –or, more accurately, the software running on a Mac– makes working with media easier and more fun.
Today at Macworld, Apple made a number of announcements, as they do every year, including a new version of iLife, the suite of applications for working with photos, movies, music, etc.
The brief video tours of iPhoto and iMovie illustrate why we Mac users get so excited we pee our pants. My copy is on the way.
Tweeting the legislature and state government
There are several reasons why a reporter covering the state legislature wouldn’t use Twitter to complement their MSM work:
- Don’t have time
- Don’t have access to net
- Against the House/Senate rules
- Don’t see value
- Don’t have laptop or text-enabled phone
…and I’m sure there are others. But with state legislatures coming back into session, I believe this is the year we’ll see Twitter used to cover floor debate, committee hearings, and general under-the-dome gossip.
And I’d look for a flood of Twitter feeds from special interest groups, putting their own 140 character spin on legislation and state government.
Our company has provided live audio feeds of floor debate from the Missouri House and Senate since 2001 (2000?). What we have NOT been able to provide was audio from the committee hearings which, I’m told, is where all the action takes place.
We’ve made repeated attempts to get a live audio stream out of those committee hearing rooms but could never get past the technical/political obstacles. (Translation: the folks in charge would rather NOT have live coverage of the hearings)
But this year there will be folks sitting in the back with iPhones and Twitter pages, clicking away. Initially, these will be savvy folks on one or both sides of the legislation being discussed. And, yes, they’ll be putting their own spin on what’s being said.
With-it news organizations will be using Twitter to cover state legislatures. I did a real quick search and came up with @matt_stiles, a reporter for the Houston Chronicle bureau in Austin, TX. The political parties are all over Twitter: @colosengop is the Twitter page for the Colorado Republican Caucus and @iahousedemocrat promises “short updates on what’s going on inside the caucus and with action on the floor.” @nebraskagov is the “official Twitter feed” for the state of Nebraska.
If you’re aware of others, hit the comment link because I’d like to see what others are doing with Twitter in this space.
UPDATE: In January and February of 2010 we began experimenting with streaming video from committee hearings.