Today I attended the Sup*r B*wl Sund*y meeting of the Boston Media Makers and rather than prepare for the big game, several media makers gathered for what has become a first Sunday of the month tradition at Sweet Finnish in Jamaica Plain.
Microsoft sent Steve Garfield a shiny new HP DV9000 laptop, apparently in the hope he will blog about how amazing Vista is, well, from what I saw, “yawn” is the kindest word I can muster. I’ll try to be civil here, from my perspective, I saw a demo of very pretty error messages, the video that came with the machine would not play. I wonder, was it stage fright because a Mac OSX laptop was watching? I failed to see what’s so exciting about Vista, looks like yet another copy of the Macintosh. From what I saw, I don’t see any Mac users giving up on Mac OS X anytime soon, and the upward climb of Macintosh sales should continue unabated.
I talked about the two seminars I’ll be doing at the 17th Annual Pro Video Show coming up in March, “Delivering Video on the Web” and “Champagne Production Values on a Beer Production Budget.” I also did a little show and tell on how to improve the reception of the Belkin TuneBase FM (a device for playing your iPod through the FM trasmitter in your car) using some copper wire with an alligator clip on the end in order to attach it to the gooseneck of the TuneBase, which yields better reception and less interference from other cars. I’m not sure if this mod changes the antenna characteristics in a detrimental manner, I’m no RF engineer, but, so far, so good.
Matt Searles said he’s starting a business dealing with creativity following a Jungian model, this sounded intriguing, especially since Carl Jung brought dreams, mythology, spirituality, and philosophy into the study of psychology and his theoretical framework blends rational science and the realm of art and creativity (my comments).
Jason Alcorn from Mindshare (an interactive communications agency) talked about his work with non-profits and said he’ll be talking at the Social Media Club meeting on Thursday from 6:00 to 8:30 PM at Lois Paul & Partners.
John Coyne is looking into hosting solutions for blogging and video. The group suggested looking into Blogger for carefree blog hosting (and they now support using your own domain name). For hosting your own site, pair networks is a stong contender (mentioned by Sue and yours truly). For video, it’s best to host on a video sharing service, separate from your hosting provider, in order to avoid any bandwidth overages. Three services mentioned were You Tube, blip.tv, and Brightcove, all strong contenders for video hosting. In my opinion, blip.tv has the most media maker friendly terms of use.
Randy Mann is working on a new video experience where you can go and watch 15 to 20 minutes of the best video that’s currently available on the web from a variety of sources and he’s building the experience using an interface based on the amazing Neave.tv interface, should be cool. Neave.tv presents you a stream of one web video after another from blip.tv, Google video, and YouTube television style, the experience was developed by Paul Neave.
BJ Hill reported on his Walk Across Massachusetts project. With a backpack and a tent and starting in Williamstown, Massachusetts, he walked for almost 300 miles across the state. Four-weeks later, he arrived in Provincetown. Along the way he compiled a notebook of messages for the next governor of the state, the messages included thoughts on Cape Wind, the war in Iraq, taxes, education, and more. BJ finally met with Governor Deval Patrick (after initially being blown-off by his staff) and presented the governor with the notebook with hundreds of notes. The meeting between the two went very well. Read more about the project at the Walk Across Massachusetts web site.
D.C. Dennison, an editor for The Boston Globe and involved in Boston.com has started a project shooting video “over people’s shoulders” doing stuff. He shot my demo of the alligator clip and wire hack for the TuneBase, we’ll see where it ends up. It’s a cool idea. John Coyne (involved with Media Technology at Boston College) suggested shooting over people’s shoulders with a fish-eye mirror in front of them so you’ll see both over the shoulder and people’s faces. That’s a cool idea.
John Herman talked about the RPM Challenge and he continues to do The Eye and will also be working on an environmental reality show, his video blogging is starting to pay off, that’s great for John. The fact that John is empowering high-school kids to video blog and become media literate in a 21st century sense of the word is very cool.
Sue Schardt (independent radio producer, In the Margin of the Other on WMBR) spoke about collaborating with Steve Garfield and the potential of “radio” in this new media space.
David S. and Co. have been holding two meetings per month of the Boston Video Production Discussion Group and they are interested in collaborating in productions.
It was another outstanding meeting, check out more photos in the Boston Media Makers Pool on Flickr.
wow it sounded so cool when you diescribed it in you blog.now if i only could get the damn thing working.
randy
Randy, are you talking about neave.tv or the alligator clip and wire hack?
i was talking the way you discribed my little prodject.the great rip off of neave.tv
randy
its great to see me mentioned in someone else’s blog.. and with such gravitas.. and I suppose its more of a podcast then a business.. though business aspirations.. I feel terribly rude for mentioning as much, and so hope you can forgive me.. but what a great meeting, I always feel like I learn so much from these things… And yeah.. I’m afraid my next laptop is going to have to be one of them 17″ Mac Book Pros.. although I was really impressed by the screen of the HP DV9000.. wow, and your pictures are awesome to…
Great write up David. Thanks, it was almost like being there. One of these days, perhaps I should actually attend.
Brian, maybe I’ll see you at the next meeting?
With regards to the tunebase hack…
You connect a copper wire with an alligator clip to the neck of the tunebase. What happens to the other end of the wire? Does it clip somewhere else? Does it just hang around?
Thanks!
Tim, I hook the other end in my car to the AC vent. Basically it’s extending the antenna. Move it around and you’ll see how reception changes., Fine a location that works best in your car. In my car it’s tricky cause the car’s antenna is in the back of the car. — David.
I use the alligator clip antenna with the tunebase and clip it directly to the antenna terminals in one of the back windows of my Subaru Forester. It works as well as an aux input. No static — ever!