Traveling Down the Information Backroad

I thought it was extremely rude for members of Congress to be using Twitter during the Presdent’s recent address. Sadly, this seems to be the norm now. Leave it to Stephen Colbert to get to the heart of the matter. The first clip doesn’t get into the Congress Twitter until about 3:50. Enjoy.

Recently, three friends of mine at different times have told me they’ve quit watching news on TV. The main reason given from all three is that TV news is “loud and annoying”. Today, as I was listening to NPR, I heard that the Rocky Mountain News is going out of business and will publish its last edition on Friday. The paper was almost 150 years old, and whenever I visited Colorado I always made sure to pickup a copy.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I became fed-up with television news during the 2008 election coverage. Too loud, and actually too flashy with all of that junk scrolling all over the screen. I miss the days of Huntley-Brinkley, Walter Cronkite, Howard K. Smith etc. They gave me the news without anger, hysterics, or  looniness. I don’t miss television news at all.

I am disturbed by the current and impending loss of newspapers. I’ll be the first to admit that I rarely buy a copy of our local newspaper, but that’s because I was spoiled growing up in Charleston.

Charleston still has two daily papers, and my Dad, who was a news junkie, subscribed to both. The Charleston papers are really good, with just the right amount of world, national, and local news/opinion. The newspaper here in Huntington pales by comparison, so I read that paper online. In addition to subscribing to both newspapers, Dad also subscribed to Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Life, and Look. I can tell you without exaggeration that Dad read all of this stuff cover to cover. In his later years he dropped to only receiving U.S. News and World Report, because by this time he was getting a lot of his news from CNN and C-SPAN. He also still received subscriptions to Consumer Reports and National Geographic.

As I headed off to college I subscribed to Newsweek and Life (it stopped publishing my Sophomore year), Now, I only subscribe to two British photography magazines and the C&O Historical Society magazine. I also want to re-subscribe to Smithsonian, but I keep forgetting.

I haven’t done any real research, but I believe some types of magazines are still doing quite well. This makes sense because there’s a definite comfort zone in receiving your magazine in the mail and sitting down for a comfortable reading experience.

I believe the physical newspaper is losing out to online news not only because of revenue loss from sites such as craigslist, but also because for the most part, news is digested in chunks, unlike longer articles in magazines. It only  takes me a few minutes each day to read through the news in the online version of our newspaper to get everything I need. Still, the thought of physical newspapers being a thing of the past makes me sad. One solution that I think both newspapers and the public could live with is an eNewspaper on devices such as the Kindle. The Kindle and the Sony Reader are both catching on in popularity, but the prices are still too high. I don’t think the prices are going to come down enough to have more readers that could save the newspaper. Too bad, because I think I would subscribe to the Huntington newspaper if it was at a reduced cost for eBook reading, with the added advantage of not having to sit at my computer screen

Goodbye Rocky Mountain News.

 Microsoft starts to screw up Windows 7. It begins! Kindle text-to-speech is not going to ruin audio book business. Dell earnings slide 48-percent. How? Microsoft is slashing pay for contractors. New chip technology designed not to work right. Error-prone chips somehow improve battery life. Google lets you add pictures to street view. Judge makes person give up password to laptop.

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Here’s a small, but nifty new Flickr feature for geotaggers and map viewers called nearby. To use it follow these simple steps:

Go to flickr, find a geotagged photo and click the map link located near the bottom of the right column. The following window will open:

At the bottom of this window, click the link: see nearby photos and videos, and a new window will open with tools for you to choose whose photos you want to view, and the time frame. Tou’ll now see new map markers and thumbnails of other photos in the area.

Windows Mobile 7 to be released in 2010. Boycott has begun to not buy any e-book priced over $9.99. Sources in Asia say that Windows 7 will be out in September for sure. Check out Cranky Geeks for a debate. AMD Istanbul chip being showed. Dell Mini 10 does not have upgradeable memory. Nokia may be in the laptop business. Juniper Network processor delivers 604 Gbps. Wow. HBO on the PC, maybe.

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Look out for Excel bug. Get yours fixed. No Office 14 until 2010. Gmail has another outage. Meanwhile everyone still marching into the cloud. Steve Jobs is 54. Google jumps on the anti-MSFT EU case with Mozilla and Opera. Micron lays off  2000. Dick Tracy watch from LG. I list the MIT 10 Emerging Technologies for 2009. Can you spell bogus?

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Microsoft asks laid off employees to give some money back. Look for the green comet tonight, if you can! Apple may do a Netbook for $599. Why so expensive? Microsoft going to do something called Elevate America — an educational program so people can learn to boot Windows. Steve Jobs may not be at the Apple board meeting. Fired workers are taking confidential data. OMG. Comcast brings out Comcast on Demand. Ballmer’s Big Bet. Ubuntu goes for the cloud. IBM doing a data center in ham country. 10 Tbits/sq inch coming. CeBit will have the 10-inch Netbooks.

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First, thanks to the small community of bloggers I’ve associated with for the past couple of years for inspiring me to try  blogging again.

Recently, I was interviewed for the Marshall University newspaper, The Parthenon, in an article about photo sharing sites. I had a nice conversation with the writer, but of course everything I talked about wouldn’t fit in the article. So, I’ve decided to post here about what I call “niche” communities on the WWW, and why they are valuable.

In spring of 2006 I  purchased a Sony HC1 HDV camcorder. I believe the HC1 was released in 2005 and was the first HD camcorder for consumers, albeit at a still high price of $2,000.00. I bought my HC1 near the end of its product cycle and paid $1,300.00 for it. It is a really good camcorder.

I had made lots of “fun” videos with my old Standard Def camcorders, but I really bought the Sony HD cam to take video of landscapes.  When you think about it, landscape video is a tough concept. After all, mountains don’t move all that much, so why not take a photograph?  Still, from 2006 through spring of 2008, I shot many hours of video, and I have some beautiful clips, but, something was missing. Editing my shots together it soon became apparent that there was a sameness about them. The only real movement came from water shots (lots of water shots). One of the advantages that landscape video offers over landscape still photography is that for video, the camcorder itself can become a participant in the video rather than the typical observer roll of a still camera. A videographer can pan/tilt/move the camera, as well as use the zoom lens or focus effects to blur either the foreground or background (depth of field). I knew these techniques, but what I wanted was to see what others were doing and the techniques they were using. The problem was that in 2006, there really wasn’t anyone doing this stuff on a consumer level.

Fast-forward to 2008. Consumer HD camcorders are now the norm, and in early spring of that year I purchased a small Canon HF10 AVCHD camcorder, mostly because I was tired of the hassle of real-time transfer from the HC1 camcorder to the PC It was around this time that I discovered Vimeo and realized that there is an HD revolution happening right now.

Unlike YouTube, Vimeo is all about creating your own videos. Sure, you’ll find family videos, but the real treasures on this site are the genres that have been created due to the High Definition camcorder being available for advanced amateurs to create works that are fascinating, but certainly not in the mainstream…yet. I was in heaven as I discovered lots of landscape videographers, and whole communities have been built on Vimeo around this concept. You’ll also discover cool experimental work, animations, and groups of teenagers who attach fisheye lenses to their camcorders, and shoot skateboarders, snowboarders, and skaters; often while the videographer is moving on his or her own skates, skateboard, or snowboard.

What I think makes Vimeo great is an excellent site design; easily the best of the three media community sites I use the most, which include YouTube and flickr. The site is easy to navigate, and I really like seeing the suggested videos in my Inbox whenever I logon. Do you want to get an idea of what video looks like from a camcorder you are interested in purchasing? Simply search for the model number and you’re bound to find a bunch of stuff (good and bad) that has been shot. I’ve also used the search feature for purchasing accessories, such as my search last fall for the Glidetrack portable dolly system. The video on Vimeo convinced me it was a solid product.

I’ve also found that the groups and community forums on Vimeo seem to be a cut above what I’ve seen on other sites. Generally you’ll see constructive criticism on the site, and very little of “know it all” attitudes, and people who say you can only shoot or edit one way. I’ve really learned a lot about my chosen genre by viewing video and reading discussions on the site to learn new techniques. This year, armed with some new accessories, I hope to shoot enough video so that I can also curt in a lot of my older (yet still beautiful) static shots from the past three years.

Vimeo is not perfect. For the best online display of HD video, YouTube currently is probably the best on the web. Vimeo HD shooters know there is a stutter problem on Vimeo due to its conversion of all uploaded video to 24P. Vimeo promises the problem will be solved sometime this year. One other niggle I have with the site is that a lot of users still aren’t aware (or don’t care) about copyright issues with the music that is used. Myself, I either use license-free music I’ve puechased, or Creative Commons music (Jamendo is a great site for CC music). I don’t know if Vimeo can police this or not, but I do see other users trying to educate the community on this topic.

Below are some landscape videos I really like on Vimeo, and I think you’ll enjoy them too. You can watch the videos here, but do yourself a favor and watch them in full HD on the Vimeo site. I hope you discover  the cool genres of video on Vimeo whether just for viewing, or to inspire you to try your hand at creating these small gems of art. You can also see other videos that I like here: http://vimeo.com/user510981/likes

Greenwater River from Phoric on Vimeo.

fall foliage from Eugenia Loli-Queru on Vimeo.

Soft Layeth the Land from Wayne Avanson on Vimeo.

Hulu  rethinks everything. Americans conducted 13.5 billion online searches in January. Intel suing nVidia. nVidia says the cpu business of Intel’s is decaying. Pirate Bay guys joking around on stand. Gmail goes offline. A winner. Space junk story never ends. Geneva Motor Show shows baby Rolls. Google sued again. I mock dumb slow news day stories.

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Facebook remains in the news for its terms of service. National Academy of Sciences says USA forensics stinks. Flash on iPhone still a controversy. What’s a Selphy printer? MSFT kills its EQUIPT program. Never heard of it in the first place. Coming soon, the $100 Netbook. Judge throws out privacy suit against Google. Average age of first phone owners in UK is eight-years-old. Cripes!

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