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cathy
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cathy's Blog
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Nov 10 2005 - 4:55pm
This past weekend, USA Today ran an article about senior citizens and their blogs, and it was picked up today by the Boston Herald. It's slightly unfortunate they have to use the word "geezer" in the URL: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-11-06-geezer-blog_x.htm?csp=N007, but get past that and you'll learn about the demographics, aspirations and accomplishments of these seniors. The article features several profiles.
Millie Garfield, Boston citizen and mother of eminent vlogger Steve Garfield, has a blog called My Mom's Blog by Thoroughly Modern Millie. She refers to herself as "eighty years young" and has lots of "link love" in the sidebar. Her posts are mostly in the first person, but sometimes Steve narrates on the vlog posts. She's a videoblogging 80-year-old--yeeha! Check out http://mymomsblog.blogspot.com to view apple crisp recipes and video clips like "I Can't Open It, Again".
Mari Meehan from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, a young'un at 64, publishes a blog called Dogwalk Musings. Go to http://dogwalkmusings.blogspot.com--it's filled with the thoughts that go through her head when she's out with her St. Bernard. As she puts it on her site, "I'm a misplaced animal nut with...
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Nov 9 2005 - 12:41pm
The Princeton Server Group makes some pretty varied products and services--Video On Demand for educational systems, HD broadcast servers for PBS stations and, last but certainly not least, DV broadcast servers for PEG (public, educational and governmental) stations. CCTV isn't actually a PEG--we provide three channels of public programming, and the educational and governmental aspects are covered by other local stations. But anyway, we receive a small amount of programming from producers with access to PSG servers. These people send programs to their servers using FTP, and there the files sit to be downloaded and played back. It beats bicycling a tape from Princeton to Cambridge! The term "bicycling" doesn't necessarily mean two-wheeled transport; it just means sending a tape in a traditional manner such as mail, messenger, foot or car.
This is their site: http://www.princetonservergroup.com
Here's an interesting and very detailed article about the history and development of PSG: http://www.manifest-tech.com/media_pc/psg_video.htm
Here's a PBS station in New Jersey that has their servers: http://www.njn.net
This website has lectures from Princeton University and has recently...
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Oct 31 2005 - 5:59pm
If you're reading about telecommunications in the news these days or if you happen to be subscribed to something like four different Americorps VISTA or Community Technology Center mailing lists (should you be as lucky as I am), you're probably seeing a lot about Internet networking in public housing in the U.S.. Baltimore, Houston, San Francisco…they all have movements and initiatives to bring broadband access coverage to a greater portion of the population.
It looks like our southern neighbors are starting to catch up. Back in August Cofetel, the Mexican agency that regulates telecommunications, approved the use of certain radio spectrum bands without licensing. The purpose of that is to expand wireless broadband signals. It may allow for more privatization in a government-controlled arena where networks have been mostly limited to enclosed areas such as airports and some cafes. However, this initiative is meeting resistance up the line from the transport and communications ministry (SCT). Other resistance comes from commentators who don't see the benefit of Internet access for the poor, such as the ability to further educate themselves, receive money wired to them, etc. The...
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Oct 27 2005 - 5:49pm
Yeah, you read right–BEERCASTING with a "b". It seems like the idea was to take traditional podcasts and make them, you know, more fun.
Beercasting originated about a year ago in November 2004. The concept was to record social conversations in bars which revolve around one particular topic. Of course, it's not exactly spontaneously planned when the host brings a suitcase stuffed with, say, eight mikes, four mixers, 120 feet of microphone cable, 25 feet of extension cords and 4 iRiver mp3 recorders. Greg Narain, considered to be the father of beercasting, explains that podcasting is like talk radio, but beercasting is more like a live talk show. I guess what's distinctive is that participants can chime in whenever they want to, making the whole experience somewhat natural.
There have been "squads" in Vancouver, New York, California, DC, Oregon, Texas and elsewhere. A lot of the archived beercasts I found seem to have been recorded in early 2005. There is a company that grew out of the craze, sparkcasting.com. Newsday and CBS have covered the issue, but unfortunately I couldn't find live links to the full articles. There's part of the Newsday article here. Here's vlogger and...
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Oct 26 2005 - 2:50pm
I've gotten a little deeper into sites which allow you to post video and images, or send all kinds of files. Some of these have commenting and ranking systems and various other community forums. I tried to be pretty exhaustive, but I may well have missed something late and great. Go ahead and share if you know of something I and others should look into. I'm going to select about five from this or my other list from a few weeks ago to send some videos from my public access center. Then I'll post all about THAT. Won't it be fun?
www.zippyvideos.com
This is the self-proclaimed "web's leading FREE video hosting community". It's
free, has a 20 MB limit, and offers a community to interact with. Without an
account, you can upload a 10 MB file as an "anonymous user". The more you upload,
get viewers, leave comments, etc. you get more points and some potential to
win prizes. There was a little stalling for buffering when I watched a video
on my 2+ year old Mac, but a second time it played straight through. Other videos
just weren't great quality (though interesting subject matter sometimes), even
from users with very high points. And the user with the most points...
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Oct 20 2005 - 5:32pm
The moderator of a Yahoo! group called United Stations contacted CCTV and invited us to join in an experiment using the parts that will comprise Digital Bicycle. Essentially, Digital Bicycle will utilize BitTorrent technology using a Drupal server and it will allow MPEG4s to be transmitted. If you're not with me so far, what that means is that various clients will upload different parts of files allowing them all to share them. This will be at a resolution that supports high-quality video images.
So what we're talking about here is a system that would allow public access stations to share content with one another and form a syndication system of sorts. Digital Bicycle is still in Beta phase. Our moderator, from Manhattan Neighborhood Networks, has enlisted some folks from Davis, CA to Burlington, VT and several other places in between to use the program while creation is still in progress. We'll be loading Azureus (a BitTorrent client using Java) onto a dedicated computer and creating torrents of programming to share with one another. They'll be able to be downloaded onto your playback medium of choice, be it tape, DVD, etc.
You can check out the Digital Bicycle in its current...
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Oct 19 2005 - 1:02am
After weeks and months of planning, I knew the Brownout was coming. It was still surprising to see my workplace covered with thick brown paper like an abandoned shopfront. No business was conducted on October 17. No programming went out on CCTV's three channels. No tapes were dropped off by producers. This day-after atmosphere suggested what it would be like if public access centers were no longer able to function.
The only visible activity was a table of employees and interns at an outdoor table, dressed mostly in brown like the natty Jason Crow, armed with information about impending legislation and a box full of postcards to mail to relevant representatives. Around 8:00 PM, I was part of a small army of novice camcorder users taking in the scene. Without public access, a ragtag bunch like us could hardly be out using these cameras to tape spiels about the public interest and become qualified to create our own programming in the blink of an eye. (Hint: I'm pro-ragtag.) Some of the footage people got was really great.
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Oct 7 2005 - 7:03pm
The ways in which we choose and view media is changing dramatically for both the big industries and our community television center here in Cambridge. In the shadow of telecom policy changes in Congress and new media technologies emerging from every direction, a new initiative by CCTV will embrace and integrate new forms of media distribution into our current operations.
For most access centers, the conventional way of transmitting media produced by community members requires producers to submit hard copy tapes to each station in order to be played. Some access centers cablecast media directly from tape or DVD, others encode programs onto in-house digital video servers for playback, and in places like CCTV, we are working on a Frankenstein-like hybrid with a little bit of everything.
It is clear that local cable television infrastructure will no longer be the premium venue for distributing video to viewers and that the internet will offer greater possibilities for access centers like us. The cable television giants are already offering limited web-based programming, many commercial sporting and entertainment events are already streamed across the internet, and now is the...
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Oct 6 2005 - 4:45pm
Here are some sites and services that enable you to upload video to the web. Please comment if you have information or opinions you'd like to share.
Freevlog
http://www.freevlog.org/
This is a site that can host videoblogs (blogs that feature video as the primary
content with a bit of info to set the context, and that often use RSS to syndicate
to other websites and aggregators). It puts you through the whole process of
making a video, taking a screenshot to use on a vlog, registering for the site,
getting free hosting. It's actually The Internet Archive and Ourmedia, partnering
with Freevlog, that let you upload material with no expiration. More about those
organizations shortly. Videos should be less than 20MB. An RSS feed allows people
to subscribe and download videos automatically. The bottom line here is free
space and a community to see and comment on your posts.
The Internet Archive
http://www.archive.org/
This is a type of digital library hosted by a non-profit group that provides
access to digitized historical collections to researchers, scholars and historians
with no time restrictions. It seems to have a broad definition of...
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Sep 21 2005 - 7:46pm
This is an abridged list of towns in Massachusetts with details on the public
access centers there and contact methods. I picked the centers likeliest to
be working on similar types of digital media submission and distribution systems
based on size, scope and staff structure. I'm going to be in contact with these
centers and other sources mentioned below, and will report what they have to
share. The term PEG denotes a station that has Public, Educational and Governmental
programming. This list is in descending order of population for the locales,
according to the 2000 census.
• Boston (pop approaching 600K)—BNN, http://www.bnntv.org/
Looks like there's two stations plus a community bulletin board. Scott
Hillier, Digital Media Coordinator, (617)-442-5807 x15 or e-mail: shillier@bnntv.org;
maybe Tom O'Gara, Cablecast Manager, (617) 720-2113 x18 or e-mail: togara@bnntv.org.
• Worcester (pop circa 170K)—WCCA, http://users.rcn.com/wcca/
WCCA appears to only have one channel, 13. They're a PEG. They clearly
are quite active, but the website is organized strangely. No staff page
that I...
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