OK, the big day is here…I get to sit in a university classroom as a student for the first time in 24 years. I’ll be blogging about the experience of working on graduate degrees in mass communications, with (I hope) special attention on the tools and technologies involved.

Last week was orientation, and I learned a number of interesting things. Among them:

There are over 10,150 graduate students at the University of Florida

Of those, 10,000+ students, 7 are entering the master’s program in journalism.

A number of people have asked why I’m doing this, and the simplest answer is that I’d like to be able to teach at the college level. I’ve always enjoyed working with young writers, and I believe I could help people become better journalists. There are other reasons, of course, and one of them is that this is a very exciting time to be a journalist. Heaven knows there are stories begging to be told, and the ways they can be told keep expanding. I’m fascinated by the “class warfare” that’s broken out between those who blog and those who don’t (I suspect you can tell which side I’m on), and would like to help figure out ways to keep everyone who commits journalism on the same side. Jay Rosen’s piece in the L.A. Times has good examples of the good work bloggers can do–we just need much more of the good work.

There will be more later in the day…this is going to be quite the adventure.

Technorati Tags: journalism, university, graduate, blog

Categories: Grad School, Media
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If you’re into graphics (and if you’re working on the web, you need to be into graphics) then the list of resources Snap2Object has put together in this post will be useful. You’ll find everything from libraries of company logos to tutorials, and most will be helpful, especially if you’re not a professional art director. Highly recommended reading.

Technorati Tags: graphics, resource, art, web

Categories: Media, Software
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One of the things that blogging does well is put together lists of resources. Snap2Objects has done a great job of building a list free design programs and posting it here. Highly recommended reading.

Technorati Tags: design, software, free

Categories: Media, Software
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One of the tools I’m having fun with right now is ScribeFire, a Firefox add-in that makes blogging much easier. I wasn’t initially convinced about the need for a tool beyond the WordPress editor, but I find that ScribeFire makes this sort of quick post much faster and easier. I’m sold.

Technorati Tags: software, mozilla, blog, tool

Categories: Media, Software
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Following up a link to blogging resources, here’s list of more than 70 podcasting tools and resources. Looking through the list, there are a variety of different ways of podcasting represented, so if you’re not ready to take the plunge with a home studio you’ll still find tools to help.

Get out there, and get podcasting! The world is always looking for great stories…

Categories: Consumer, Media
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I know that one of my big needs is more frequency–I’m working on it, really I am. I’m also going to be reading the posts that Matt Huggins has collected in this post on better blogging. Everyone needs coaching now and again–there are 55 coaching sessions listed in Matt’s post. Enjoy.

Powered by ScribeFire.

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I also had a chance to do a couple of interviews for the Enterprise 2.0 conference in June. All the conference podcasts are here. I interviewed Bob McCandless and Irwin Lazar on the characteristics of Enterprise 2.0–and why an organization would want to embrace the new model. Thanks, on all these podcasts, to Carol. She’s the producer who makes the recordings sound far better than they would without her touch.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Categories: General computing, Housekeeping, Media
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Last week I was up in Washington, D.C. speaking at the Publishing for Impact conference sponsored by the World Bank. On the one hand, it was fairly heady stuff for a guy who’s spent most of his career talking to fellow geeks. On the other hand, it was exciting to hear people talking about using new technologies to reach audiences in developing nations. I was talking about podcasting, and was interested to hear folks discussing the possibility of podcasts for distributing public health information in Africa. In nations where neither electricity nor telephone service can be counted on as a 24 x 7 commodity, podcasts are a great tool, since they can be downloaded to a battery-powered device during connection times and listened to sometime later.

More important for me was hearing people talking about technology that’s critical to someone’s life. We get used to thinking about technology as convenient or important to the way we do business–for most of us, a podcast isn’t going to be a life or death issue. There are places and people for whom it is that important, though–and it’s good for me to remember that as I work on these systems.

I haven’t mentioned the book in a while, so I’ll put a link down here in this post. If you haven’t read it, yet, I can certainly recommend it. the book is The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Podcasting.

Categories: Enterprise, General computing, Media
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Sorry about the break of the last fortnight–it was unplanned. It’s not that nothing was going on worth blogging about, rather the contrary. It’s more a case of life intruding, as it sometimes will, on plans we mortals make.

First comment back doesn’t have anything to do with technology, though. I went to the Region 3 conference of the Society of Professional Journalists a couple of weeks ago and had a chance to hear Rick Bragg speak. I’ve told a number of folks that, if they want to know something about the place where I grew up, they should read his book All Over but the Shoutin’. Rick and I grew up in different circumstances, but in the same time and place. He describes it far better than I could.

At the conference, he was talking about narrative journalism–basically committing journalism by telling compelling stories built on the facts you have. He told a number of stories about the situations he covered–Haiti after Aristide, the Oklahoma City bombing and suesequent trial–and walked everyone through the process by which he’d arrived at his story ledes. After hearing his process and, most impressive, the work that resulted, all I can say is:

 Damn.

Go out and buy his books. He’s one of our seriously good writers, and someone students should read as they’re learning to “feel” good writing.

Categories: Media
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I’m conducting a series of podcasts in support of the Interop conference and trade show this year. The conference will be in May out in Las Vegas–I’m planning to be on-site to conduct more podcast interviews for MediaLive (the producer), and I’ll be blogging the experience as well.

In the meantime, you can listen to some of the podcasts episodes already produced by going here. There are buttons for you to listen without opening your own player, or you can download and listen on your iPod. I’m involved with all the podcasts posted on March 20. Take a listen–and let me know what you think. Comments are open…

Categories: Media
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Earlier this week I wrote about my adventures in Daylight Saving Time. In that post I mentioned that the Cingular support site said that my Samsung Blackjack didn’t need an update–that everything should be fine. That turned out not to be the case; I found the necessary patches and fixed my system. All worked out just fine.

Today, March 15, I received a text message from Cingular letting me know that we are going to change to Daylight Saving Time on March 11. Oh yes, my Blackjack will need a software update last Sunday. When I went to check this out on the Cingular Support Page, I found that the page had been updated to say that, yes indeed, I will need to update my Blackjack on or before the 11th.

I draw several lessons from this. First, it’s to Cingular’s credit that they did eventually figure it out and deliver correct information to their customers–I’m going to assume that other Blackjack owners got a similar message in their in-box today. Next, in a company the size of Cingular/AT&T you’d think they could find someone who has mastered verb tenses. They need some work on the whole past/present/future thing. Finally, while I give them credit for eventually sending out correct information, why wasn’t it available, oh, last Saturday (March 10th)? It’s not like this whole Daylight Saving Time were some last-minute surprise tossed at the phone company. There were announcements about this. It was in all the larger papers.

Of course, I shouldn’t complain too loudly, since Cingular is far from the only small business to have trouble with the shift to Daylight Saving Time. Yesterday when I flew back from San Francisco our Delta Air Lines 767 gave us the local time at our destination. Yep, their clock hadn’t gotten its new marching orders. It’s hard to explain just how much confidence that gave me as we soared into the sky. It was enough to make me forget all about my cell phone…

Categories: Consumer Technology, Embedded, General computing, Media
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In some ways, my search for a podcast recorder is like my search for a briefcast or backpack–everything I see would be just perfect if only this one little thing were a bit different. i’ve used several different recorders, starting with a Tascam PocketStudio 5 digital recorder that seemed super when I bought it–which turned out to be about three months before they discontinued it. It has limited memory and is (by today’s standard) large, but it is a decent recorder and I’ve recorded some very nice podcasts using the box and a Samson dynamic mic. Most of the time, though, I’ve recorded straight to my computer using Propaganda or Audacity software. On the whole, the setup has worked well, though I’m interested in doing more audio tours and remote work in the near future, so…

I’m looking at new recorders. Right now, my number one choice is the Zoom H4. It has most of what I’m looking for, though I’ve heard some complaints about the user interface complexity and a “light” feeling to the construction. Since I may do some music recording in addition to the basic podcast work, it seems like it would be a good choice. I’m also big on the phantom power capabilities and the ability to use it as an A/D interface when I do want to record directly to the computer.

Now, if money were no object I might consider the Sony Professional Portable 24-bit Linear Recorder, though I have serious reservations about the DRM Sony tends to stick on any of their recording equipment. Between that and the $1,600 price tag, the Zoom looks pretty good.

The other recorder that seems to be serious competition for the Zoom is the Edirol R-09. I’ve used Edirol recorders in the past, and found them to be quite adequate machines. The word from users is that the user interface is considerably simpler than that of the Zoom, and the physical dimensions a bit smaller. I suspect that, if speaking-voice recording is your only task, the Edirol would do a fine job. Since the feature set is smaller and the street price a bit higher, I suspect I’ll stick with the Zoom, though I’m open to suggestion.

I’d be interested in hearing your suggestions–what recorder are you using for podcasting? Comments are open…

Categories: Consumer Technology, Media
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When teenagers use social-networking software there’s no news. When IBM decides that social networking has a place in the enterprise, though, it’s big news. At this week’s Lotusphere conference in Orlando, IBM announced that it will bring technology powering on-line applications like FaceBook and MySpace to corporate computing. In the announcement, IBM says that they will “tap the wisdom of crowds”. A New York Times article points out that the IBM product will have five separate modules, and is designed to compete with Microsoft offerings like Groove and SharePoint.

I am a huge believer in the power of electronic collaboration. For most of the last 15 years I’ve worked in an office at least 800 miles removed from most of my colleagues. While I think I’m pretty good at using collaboration tools, I look at the way my 18 year old son moves around a dozen IM screens and social networking sites and realize that I will never grok on-line collaboration the way he does. By building the software platforms now, IBM, Microsoft, and others are positioning the business infrastructure to take advantage of the skills that are just now beginning to enter the workplace. I think it’s a great sign. I also think it’s going to be interesting to watch older, less tech-savvy managers demand the mis-use of these platforms for the next few years until the younger workers force them to catch up.

Categories: General computing, Media
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If you’ve read more than a day or two worth of posts here, you know how I feel about systems that assume all customers are cheats and thieves. Digital Rights Management (DRM) is the way most of us will come into contact with one of hese systems, and the marketplace is full of truly rediculous DRM schemes. Now, however, comes a report that some record labels might be ready to do the unthinkable and release music without DRM crippleware attached.

When you read the article, it’s obvious that this isn’t a move that’s going to happen tomorrow, but as I said in an earlier post, when the record companies feel pain, they’ll look at changing their strategies. There’s nothing like a sales number lower than the one you expected to cause pain in the halls of the record companies, so there’s reason for hope–and reason to keep supporting the artists and record companies that have already taken a listener-friendly approach to distributing their music.

Categories: Entertainment, Media
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…then you might not want Vista running your Media PC. The issue is whether or not you’ll see a true HD image from an HD DVD or BluRay disc played under Vista. If the disc in question is a commercial, copy-protected program, then the answer is…no. You’ll see regular old television quality. The Team Vista Blog has a 20-questions FAQ. One of the exchanges says:

Will the playback quality be reduced on some video output types?

Image quality constraints are only active when required by the policy associated with the content being played, and then only apply to that specific content — not to any other content on the user’s desktop.  As a practical matter, image constraint will typically result in content being played at no worse than standard definition television resolution.  In the case of HD optical media formats such as HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, the constraint requirement is 520K pixels per frame (i.e., roughly 960×540), which is still higher than the native resolution of content distributed in the DVD-Video format.  We feel that this is still yields a great user experience, even when using a high definition screen.

From my point of view and, I think, that of many other consumers, the issue isn’t whether the delivered resolution is better than a standard DVD. It’s whether the delivered resolution is what we expect it to be when the format promises an HD image.

I gave my opinion of Stupid Copy Protection a couple of posts back. I don’t really blame Microsoft for this–they’re doing what the big studios tell them they must. I have to say, though, that I agree with Glenn Reynolds when he says that the ultimate result might well be to drive more people to pirated programming–which will come without the bits of software that assume every user is a thief.

It’s a vicious cycle, and ultimately the biggest losers are honest, legitimate users, and the artists who try to give them a good show to watch. Unfortunately, there won’t be real incentive for change until the studios and software companies see themselves as coming up with the short end of the stick.

Categories: Entertainment, General computing, Media
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