Gotta Keep Reading Video on Oprah’s Show Today

Got an unusual email from the boss, Dr. Ludgate, this morning saying that she wasn’t going to be able to make today’s graduation ceremony. Bummer. The reason for the absence was because the “Gotta Keep Reading“ video that we’d assisted in creating with Ocoee Middle School was going to be a segment on the Oprah Winfrey show today. What? Oprah’s people set up a satellite connection this morning so that she could talk to Ocoee Middle School principal Sharyn Gabriel, reading coach Janet Bergh and two students about the video, with the student body gathered in the same quad area where the video had been filmed last December. How’s that for a Friday morning wake-up call?

The segment featured a shorter version of the video and a little Q&A between Winfrey, Gabriel, Bergh and the students, and ended with Oprah announcing that Target Stores had been enlisted to help upgrade Ocoee’s library. Below is the original video and beneath that several stills of the 1,285 that I shot during the video shoot.

Hard to imagine that an idea shared last Fall in a downtown Orlando restaurant has resulted in an inspirational video that’ll be a life-long memory for the 1,700 students who participated and now has become part of the national conversation on the importance of reading.

sources:
all images by Joe Bustillos.

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Moving Media Around the House

By definition, this is a “first world” problem. In the news gap between CES and the Apple event next week, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I might manage my media collections between all of my computers. The buzz around the Boxee box and anticipating the need to have most of my working data in the cloud so that I can access it regardless of what computer or platform I’m using has inspired me to find a better way to work with my media. Actually this is a “problem” that I didn’t have until I moved from my one-room studio to my one-bedroom apartment and then two-bedroom townhouse. I have four macs floating around the house (and anticipate a fifth Apple in the form of an iPad-netbook-media-thingy), each with their own full copies of my iTunes library, DVDs ripped to a couple macs, and daily podcasts downloaded to all four computers. In the past I manually erased podcasts I’d already listened to on one of the four computer and my iPhone, but given how many podcasts I listen to this method is just too much work. I’d also been hoping to store my DVDs on one computer and be able to view them on any of the other devices. The upcoming release of the Boxee box has me rethinking my media sharing scheme.

Boxee Beta from boxee on Vimeo.

One of the things that I’ve learned so far is that even though I’m using fast wireless “N” and or a fast “power” Ethernet connection between the first and second floors, ripped DVDs stored on hard drives in their original Mpeg2 format won’t play across the network without lots of buffering or dropped frames. Unacceptable. I was anticipating using my PS3 as the movie/media player downstairs (still working on that), so I had previous converted some movies to mp4 and those videos seemed to play nicely across the network. So, even though I’m a firm believer in having access to all of the “extra features” that I look for with my DVDs (and how convenient they are to access using the DVD menu system), I’ll need to rip and convert my media to a more network friendly format, like mp4 (which makes each extra feature into it’s own separate video file). Grrr.

I have a huge DVD and music collection and get most of my more daily news and entertainment via video and audio podcasts, so I need some kind of box attached to my TVs so that I can get my Internet/network media. I was hoping to use my PS3 as the player in my living room, but it has a crappy web-browser and doesn’t do RSS, so it can’t natively do podcasts. More work needed here. At the moment my mac mini is doing living room media duties. I love the Front Row interface, but it seems a bit confused that my episodes of StarTrek (classic and Next Gen) are not movies and won’t let me organize things. So maybe the updated Boxee interface will do the job.

I’ve played with Boxee previously, but couldn’t break away from my iTunes addiction. With the software upgrade and set-top box, I’m thinking that this might be the solution to my Internet TV/podcast thing, either the software or the set-top box. Depending on my success using the PS3 as a media player, I still might need another set-top box for the bedroom TV. I’m also thinking that I need to plug into the NetFlix thing (streaming and disc) so that I don’t find myself buying every movie I want to see. So whatever box I get needs to do Netflix, access my music and DVDs across the network and either grab podcasts off the net or the ones stored on my other computers. Having invested in the PS3, I’m aware of the problems of getting a box that isn’t as expandable to handle all of the twists and turns that tends to happen in the media market.

Sources:
* Boxee Demo. http://www.boxee.tv/box retrieved on 1/23/2010
* FrontRow image by Joe Bustillos
* Tekzilla » Episode 124: “Should I buy a Boxee Box or a Roku or Stick With My xbox?” http://revision3.com/tekzilla/veronicapc/should-i-buy-a-boxee-box-or-a-roku-or-stick-with-my-xbox-360- retrieved on 1/23/2010
* Tekzilla » Episode 121: Boxee Box. http://revision3.com/tekzilla/2010newyear/boxee-box retrieved on 1/23/2010

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Convergence Culture: The Power of Media in the Hands of Users

Jenkin’s “Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide” is part of my course reading and students are always finding great videos of Jenkins on the Interwebs. Here’s a great one that sums it his take on the evolution of media and what it means for the culture and the media industry. Thanks Seann G.

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Unexpected Restfulness in Moving

I’ve lived a great stretch of my adult life in one room studio apartments, so when I stepped up last year and moved to a one-bedroom apartment I didn’t think twice about putting my home office in my bedroom. The novelty was having the option to have a front room for entertaining. Of course I then discovered that I needed to buy a second TV for the bedroom because I like working with the TV going. No surprise there. So I just assumed that I was now going to have to buy a third TV as i tried to visualize how things were going to be when I moved to the two-bedroom townhouse. But as I prepped for the move I discovered something unexpected that made me change my mind about TV #3.

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Star Trek (TNG) Saturday

I did something today that I haven’t done in a long time. I reconnected an external drive that had my collection of Star Trek TNG as part of consolidating my tech in preparation for the move. Anyway, I’ve pretty much spent the whole day playing episode after episode. And stayed out of chat. Ha!

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Camelot by Star Trek

In honor of the upcoming J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek”…

Movies: Star Trek X: Nemesis

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The Lie of the 4th Screen

The following video was brought to my attention by a coworker as we both love watching stuff being presented at the TED conference. Alas, this video continues what I believe is a false cultural perception about the increasing general dehumanizing nature of technology. Admittedly it needs to be a bit bias, it’s a Nokia ad. But there is something that the ad misses about why these technologies succeed.

From the big screen to the small, the ad would have us believe that what was once shared (the big screen), was lost in the next two steps (TV & computers) but wonderfully recaptured in this latest iteration, specifically the N-Series Nokia devices. Um… bullshit.

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Apple Fights Back – MS Still Doesn’t Get It

Buzz was that Microsoft’s last three ads changed the effectiveness of Apple’s “I’m a PC/I’m a Mac” ads. To recap: the first Seinfeld/Gates “Churro” ad left the techies wondering WTF and the general public wondering when Gates and Seinfeld’s new sitcom was going to be airing. The general public got their wish with the second “move in with the typical dysfunctional American family” ad… kind’a. The TV-version cut out all of the funny bits and what was left was even more WTF than the “Churro” ad. Adding insult to injury, probably only the techies saw the four and a half minute much funnier YouTube version, laughed and then moved on to the next YouTube video. The third “quit picking on me, I’m not a stereotype” ad was the most pathetic. The company that single-handedly killed IBM’s OS/2 operating system (thus eventually ending IBM’s role in the microcomputer world) and out-maneuvered Apple with it’s own graphical user interface “revolution” in the 80’s and 90’s is now whining, “Hey, I’m cool too!” And where do all three of these ads fail? Well, just compare a Bill Gates’ keynote with a Steve Jobs’ keynote. Which one perfectly balances the graphical message with an easy to remember verbal hook and which one clutters the screen with words and drones on with no decipherable message?

So, with two new 30-second “I’m a PC/I’m a Mac” ads, Apple redirects the conversation back to Microsoft’s failed Vista OS and points out that throwing money at ads or choosing to banish the “V” word won’t change Microsoft’s uncoolness. Nothing flashy, no WTF factor, no “churros” or subplots, just a silly little observation that Microsoft continues to miss the point.

This has got to piss off someone at Microsoft. $700-million in advertising undercut by two simple 30-second spots. That’s gotta hurt. jbb

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If You Don’t Vote You’re a Moron & Don’t Listen to the Fearmongers

First, a few words from one concerned citizen about how the media is handling the upcoming election:

A few weeks ago my oldest sister forwarded a Republican slanted presidential candidate comparison chart to the whole family. I glanced at it and immediately recognized the fearmongering and misrepresentation of the facts geared toward fear. My brother Matt was motivated to write a response to the chart. Even without the original chart, his response was so powerful that I wanted to publish it in this blog (with his permission!). Without further ado… brother Matt gets political:

First of all, whoever wrote this up should learn how to spell the candidate names. It’s Barack, not Barak.

Next, offshore drilling will never solve our energy problems. The oil that would be produced is ten years down the road and there is no correlation between the recent price increases and increase on demand. Oil futures markets, lack of leadership at the administrative level, a middle east war and record profits have more to do with recent prices than supply.

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If You Have To Spend Time & Money Saying, “I’m Cool Too,” Then You Aren’t

After the first Gates/Seinfeld commercial Leo Laporte predicted that the next Gates/Seinfeld commercial would be about them moving in together. It was said as a joke, but not long afterward Microsoft sent out a bizarre second Gates/Seinfeld commercial with the pair living with a family because, according to Seinfeld, “We’re out of touch.” Unfortunately most people who saw the commercial only saw the short TV version that had none of the charm of the longer YouTube version. And then, just like that Microsoft pulled the ad and replaced with the pathetic “I’m a PC” ad. Sad. I mean, none of the ads made me feel like jumping up and buying a copy of Vista. And if the intent was to make me feel better of Microsoft then they really failed. And pulling the second ad only added to my sense that they are clueless. Too bad, at least the second longer version was pretty funny.

What happened to the company that buried IBM and killed off Netscape? Apparently as they’ve aged they’ve lost that edge. As much as Apple often comes off smug and elitist, this Microsoft comes off whiny and pathetic. And while we’re at it, why the hell is Bill Gates in all the commercials? Didn’t he just retire from the company? jbb

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