January 2005

New microphone for podcasters

January 14, 2005

Griffin Technology has a new Lapel Mic, a stereo microphone that will work with the Griffin iMic. Touted as being good for "reporters, presenters, and students," this microphone should pair nicely with an iPod for mopdcasting (mobile podcasting).

Off to the Woods

January 14, 2005

I am leaving tomorrow at 0600 for a week of training in the woods. I will be in a six person team practicing evasion and surival skills. I expect to be cold and hungry most of the time. It should be some good training.

The past few days in the classroom have been good training, as well. We are learning about you to survive in different environments, how to resist interrogation, and how to escape from activity. We are also learning some classified stuff about how to avoid becoming a POW in the first place.

I will let you all know how things went when I get back.

Take care,
James

Apple is going to laugh all the way to the bank

January 13, 2005

Playlist.com has an article quoting Dan Torres, vice-president for product marketing at Rio, "Apple shipped a somewhat neutered product." He was speaking of the iPod Shuffle. In the interest of full disclosure I ordered one today.

It is amazing that these companies are either so disconnected or just don't get it. Perhaps they have been drinking too much of the podcasting Flavor-aid lately but most users don't want all the junk they're putting on them. Take a look at CD players. How well did CD players combined with FM radios do? Not well.

So as the argument from these companies the iPod Shuffle will fail because it doesn't have a display. They fail to see or understand that if a person wants a display they will spend the extra $100 dollars and get the iPod Mini with a display and four times the capacity. The other companies all sell larger units, some with more features and all with higher price tags. How well does the iRiver hook into the front of your stereo in the car? What about how many batteries you need to pack to keep your power hungry Rio Forge alive for a day.

The amazing thing is that the Rio Forge, for only 10 dollars more have a quarter of the capacity of the iPod Shuffle. Nevermind that to use it in more than one place you'll need your extra cable kits.

At the end of the day Apple will be getting the last laugh... all the way to the bank.

Netscape.com breaks for Safari users

January 13, 2005

Until last month Apple used netscape.com to provide the default home page to its Safari users. Apple made a change last month and until today the old page continued to work. Now, however, a user of Safari who goes to www.netscape.com is treated to a redirect loop (the previous URL was home.netscape.com/apple.adp). Oddly changing Safari's user agent doesn't solve the problem. Internet Explorer on OS X continues to work. For now it appears it's just the users of Safari who have to go without the Netscape Network home page. cnn.netscape.cnn.com which is not on Netscape's servers does still work for Safari.

Telegraph article on deserters

January 13, 2005

The UK paper Telegraph posted a story late last week saying "5,500 men and women have deserted since the invasion of Iraq." A search of Google shows a few articles from last year, even covering President Bush speaking on the topic, but very little is said about it in the mainstream press. There has been pretty widespread coverage of the casualties of the invasion of Iraq, but few mentions of the deserters who according to this article seem to be nearly five times as numerous.

Treo650 Update

January 13, 2005

It has been about six weeks since I got the Treo650 cell phone. I've been quite happy with it and thought I'd share a little bit about how it has worked so far. To start with here, in order, are the applications I use the most:

  • Business Connect (Lotus Notes)
  • Solitare
  • VersaMail
  • Phone
  • Web Browser
  • Camera Phone
  • others....

The email function has worked much better than I expected. It is a little frustrating because the Lotus Notes client, by marking the messages as read, prevents the POP client from downloading them until they are marked as unread again. I've also had problems with VersaMail, one corespondent of mine sends mail to a group of people including me. When this happens and I attempt to read the email the Treo does a reset and reboots. It has something to do with his long "To:" list I suspect since emails only to me don't cause the same reaction.

Web browsing has been pretty good. The main use I've had is directions and lookup of how to get places. It is not fast, but it does work pretty well as long as you have time to devote to it, and don't think about doing it while driving.

After effect

January 13, 2005

Talking with Criag Huntington yesterday about this year's Nevada Boys' State program has me thinking. There is a big part of me that really wants to include a lot of discussion of new media and encourage the participants to understand just how much a part of the process they can be, even if they are not full time journalists or communicators.

The challenge is that the days are already just jam packed, a part of what makes the program so very good, not only is it great content but the days are jam packed with great content. So the solution appears to me to be to encourage the alumni from the program to continue to participate by encouraging them to write about local issues and local happenings after their time at Boys' State.

Respect

January 11, 2005

Earlier this evening was my first meeting on the Sandy Valley Citizen's Advisory Council. It was a well attended meeting (read there was something contentious on the agenda). The young people who run Sandy Valley Motocross were at the meeting to present information about their pending application for new terms in their business permit.

For some background look at this story. The letter says a lot. So while I don't know it will be heeded, here is my advice to businesses who get off on the wrong foot.

The most critical thing is don't issue hollow apologies. I'm not saying that they aren't heartfelt, but they are hollow. It is very difficult to eat crow gracefully. It is impossible if you want to maintain you are right and have been wronged by those who you are apologizing to. It is impossible to apologize and say in the next breath somebody else is wrong if you want them to believe you. The proper thing to do is to say you are sorry. And to continue apologizing. If one were to say I'm sorry and we won't make those mistakes again, and keep saying it, they might be believed. When the message is I'm sorry, but you're just as wrong, you're not building credibility.

This "negative" could become a very positive outcome if handled properly. It would take Kit Stokes sitting down with members of the community. If Stokes would take it upon himself to meet regularly with the community and to do it in a way that respects other's opinions a lot could be accomplished. It is not as simple as some in the forum suggest.

The 20 minute podcasting experiment

January 11, 2005

Matt Raible says it well with his review of podcasting. "I'm over it." It would be very good for the podcasting crowd to pay a lot of attention. Raible is a bright guy and very tech savvy who does all kinds of tech things. Podcasting has to grow up very quickly if it wants to be more than a campy echo chamber.

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