Posts from — January 2008

1. I have been officially called out for being a mid-adopter and not owning a larger, flat-ish TV. I have no excuse, other that I don’t do much TV watching. On a related note, I just discovered that 30 Rock is funny. How’s that for street cred?

2. In another blow to my domain name, I am currently using Firefox 3 Beta to write this. But look, it’s on a mac and Mike Arrington says it’s ok. He’s right - much more stable than FF2, even on my aging G4.

I’m sure there will be a lot of journo-blogging on the much-anticipated release of Everyblock. My initial impressions: nice interface, although I find myself clicking a lot to get to information I want. It’s a lot more fully-formed than Gannett’s data center concept, and a lot more informative than outside.in. It also only applies to Chicago, New York and San Francisco - boo. I had seen something about the EB folks releasing the source code under an Open Source license, but there’s no mention of that in the launch post. One more site that aggregates (much) more than it produces…

Of note: Adsense appears on a few pages, but not near data gleaned from news sources, craigslist or Yelp.

Tons of quick hit pieces like this: Mindy, Matthew, TechCrunch, Screenwerk, etc, etc, etc

I keep seeing articles about how the level of spam has increased exponentially in the last n years, and x out of y emails are spam, but that’s in complete disconnect with what I’m seeing on the user end. Our corporate email server uses an intercept service that rarely lets UCMs through, and my gmail and yahoo mail accounts are surprisingly under control as well - impressive, considering my yahoo account was completely overrun three years ago to the point that I had abandoned it. Akismet, regsitration and captcha all seem to keep it in check on the CMS front.

So are we in for another round of spam innovation? Or is the real activity moving to social networks? Curious to know your thoughts…

Over the Holiday break, I received two items that I’ll be playing around with a lot over the next few months - the Flip video camera from Pure Digital and the lightweight, flexible gorillapod from Joby.

I’m not a journalist, but I’m extremely interested in these two items for what they can do for journalists - namely replacing the audio recorder while expanding the reporter’s capabilities for the web.

I wanted the Flip for one reason other options for a few reasons - it’s dead simple to use. The Flip has eight buttons total, and nearly all of them are single-use, which makes the learning curve virtually non-existant. The Flip comes with very spare instructions- the packaging teaches you how to use it before you’ve even split open the blister pack. The import and (very basic) editing software is contained on the camera itself- which means you can dump to any computer and immediately upload a file to youtube or another site. No installation necessary.

The Flip is about embracing restraints - it has a pretty feeble zoom function, and the interface does not obviate the zoom controls. This seems like a good thing for people learning videography, as it makes them focus on capture and framing - and ignore the terrible zoom-frenzy that most untrained videographers fall into on their early attempts. The video quality is “good enough” and can’t be changed - another reason to just focus on capture and content.

The gorillapod is the second half of the equation here… I think it’s pretty obvious why this is a boon to the mobile journalist. Wrap the legs around a tree branch or stop sign if you don’t have a flat surface to stand it on, or prop it up like a normal tripod if you do.

This isn’t even backpack journalism - these two objects can fit in a coat pocket or a clutch purse, or a child’s lunchbox.

Unfortunately, the two don’t work together. The Flip, for no other explanation than Pure Digital wants you to pay $50 more for the Flip Ultra, does not come with a tripod mount. So here’s some handy advice on how to work around that - I’ll be modding mine this weekend.

Further reading:

Howard Owens: Advice for Mojos, Posts on Video
Ryan Sholin: Why Shoot Newspaper Video?

Mindy McAdams:  Kit for the multimedia reporter