Years ago, it took us a couple of weeks to set up a “re-creation” of the O.J. Simpson-Nicole Brown-Ron Goldman murder chain of events (special shout-out to Yasmin Brennan for finding us someone to play OJ … before she had to flee to Australia to avoid extradition). Last year, it took 3 days or so [...] [...more]
Last year, it took 3 days or so to come up with an animated sequence showing a plane crash, using Flash.
Now, only hours after a colorful incident, “machinamation” (done by Next Media Animation in Taiwan) has come out with a short animated video showing their take on what happened on Flight 1052.
$8 billion a year to POTS; “we are no longer on the right track” Anyone who’s traveled around the world has probably noticed what Janine and I have these last couple of years: we can usually access the internet much faster in other countries than we can here in the good ol’ US of A, [...] [...more]
$8 billion a year to POTS; “we are no longer on the right track”
Anyone who’s traveled around the world has probably noticed what Janine and I have these last couple of years: we can usually access the internet much faster in other countries than we can here in the good ol’ US of A, where the internet was invented (take a bow, Al Gore!). When we were in Costa Rica, even in a hotel lobby, web pages just zoomed into view; we attributed the speed to the massive online gambling infrastructure that’s been built in Costa Rica recently. (It’ll be interesting to see what happens long-term to Costa Rica; it’s my hope that the law of unintended consquences will kick in, and the somewhat sordid gambling biz will actually result in more legit businesses using that bandwidth to grow & flourish.)
“The report points out the great broadband successes in the United States, including as many as 290 million Americans who have gained access to broadband over the past decade,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said. “But the statute requires more. It requires the agency to reach a conclusion about whether all — not some, not most — Americans are being served in a reasonable and timely fashion.”
That’s not happening, he added.
Additionally, it appears that the revenues from the tax on long-distance service that we all grit our teeth and pay each month, and that was supposedly earmarked for improving service just like this has been instead diverted to Plain Old Telephone service (POTS).
More and more, we’re seeing governmental agencies starting to recognize that bringing high-speed internet to communities is an essential ingredient to lifting the local economy. This might have particular impact in the rural areas of the U.S. where coverage is lagging (and where the challenges are most severe), because the farmers/loggers/fishermen might be able to circumvent the supply bottlenecks that are eating up any hope of profits.
Still, I am reminded of the statistic that was widely quoted early last decade, where AT&T got the “gulp-adjust-your-collar” number of $90 billion just for the landscaping costs of stringing fiber-optic in the Western U.S. So what’s the solution?
Well, an interesting experiment was featured on Scobelizer – and the genesis was the big skyward-pointing light atop the Luxor Casino in Las Vegas. As I understand it, a giant laser system in the purple band could provide more than five (5) times the bandwidth than even the fiber-optic lines (Fiber To The House or “FTTH”) that are the fervent dream of all us techno-nerds still being held captive by Time-Warner Cable/Adelphia/Comcast/whatever. Basically, the information is streamed up into the sky, and
A purple laser which is almost invisible to the human eye and which is inexpensive to buy (they are the lasers inside every Blu-Ray disk player — the lasers are actually purple light, the “blu” in the name is marketing) is aimed at the sky and an array of sensors reads data from the beam of light. Readable due to scattering of light due to the atmosphere. He showed me how this works: you aim a laser at the sky and everyone can see the beam. If your human eye can see it, sensors can see it too and due to some tricks can get massive amounts of bandwidth out of the laser.
What would this mean for mobile bandwidth? Plenty. The problems I’ve seen with cell coverage in rural areas have less to do with the bandwidth coming from the towers than they do with the capabilities of the radios in the handsets to make the connections. Or, to put it another way, if you make the transmitter in your mobile strong enough to send a signal to a tower 4 miles away, it’s also strong enough to make the hair on the side of your head warm from the microwaves (anyone else remember this phenomenon?). Or to cook your retinas.
But if the bandwidth/connectivity issues can be solved by having some cheap Wi-Fi routers spaced around, connected to sensors pointing at the purple laser beam, then all of a sudden, we have a lot faster, cheaper and more reliable coverage. Even having a little Blu-ray laser integrated into the various existing 3G antenna arrays would be a massive improvement (if their various whitepapers aren’t just hokum).
This could really have an effect in some of the more rugged countries that I’ve done work in – I’m thinking of the mountainous regions of Chile, Colombia, Kazakhstan, and most recently, Georgia. The upstream bandwidth is probably still pretty limited, so in a certain sense, this is just a variation on the DirecTV/satellite internet service paradigm, but still, most users tend to download about 1,000 times more information than they upload.
Dave at the Tower Bridge, originally uploaded by Wordyeti. Walking around London, I was struck by how much I recognized from old episodes of Dr. Who and Monty Python. Also, by the helpful little painted warnings at every intersection, warning the no-doubt “thick as two planks Yanks” to look in the proper direction for oncoming [...] [...more]
Walking around London, I was struck by how much I recognized from old episodes of Dr. Who and Monty Python. Also, by the helpful little painted warnings at every intersection, warning the no-doubt “thick as two planks Yanks” to look in the proper direction for oncoming traffic.
It was quite chilly in the morning when I began my stroll around the Old City; by the time this picture was taken, I had been walking for more than eight hours, and my feet were throbbing. Still, the blue sky and fleecy clouds were so cheerful that I almost discounted all the griping and grousing that the Fleet Streeters had always filled my ears with, when justifying their move to L.A.
Tbilisi Journalist Graduation, originally uploaded by Wordyeti. These are the journalists from the smaller cities & towns outside of Tbilisi, Georgia. They’re all grinning happily, because they’ve managed to survive my intense one-week course, where I set them all up with their own blogs, and then sent them into the field to shoot, edit and [...] [...more]
These are the journalists from the smaller cities & towns outside of Tbilisi, Georgia. They’re all grinning happily, because they’ve managed to survive my intense one-week course, where I set them all up with their own blogs, and then sent them into the field to shoot, edit and post online news videos.
A crucial part of every learning process is making mistakes. They learned not to try to take on too ambitious a project when using makeshift multimedia tools. I learned not to use Adobe’s Premiere Elements 8. That has got to be the buggiest video editing system ever inflicted on an unsuspecting public. I use Premiere Pro all the time and love the rest of Adobe’s various iterations of the Creative Suites … but Elements is Satan on a CD. My students were throwing their headsets across the room in frustration as it crashed … lost work … necessitated a hard reboot of the system … crashed again … corrupted the footage … (rinse, repeat).
I finally installed Sony’s Vegas Video on their systems; not as user-friendly for beginners as the “Grandma-ware” that Elements is known as … but it at least would make a J-cut or an L-cut without locking up the system. Unfortunately, Vegas Video wouldn’t import the footage from the Flip cameras with the audio attached. So we had to export the audio tracks from Premiere, and then import them into Vegas and sync the audio with the visuals.
I was told that this was actually a quite valuable experience, because real-world conditions for indie journalists in Georgia are pretty much like this. Working on cobbled-together secondhand equipment in sweltering offices, where the electrical power is subject to sporadic outages. And when the wind shifts to blow in over the nearby market … well, you want to close the windows, no matter how hot & humid it is.
I just noticed – my arms look inordinately long in this photo.
Helping Hand, originally uploaded by Wordyeti. This is the latest from my class of regional journalists in Tbilisi, Georgia. Of course, shortly after this picture was taken, Premiere Elements 8 crashed – yet again. Man, if I had known that Adobe had really neglected this product so much, I never would have touted it as [...] [...more]
This is the latest from my class of regional journalists in Tbilisi, Georgia. Of course, shortly after this picture was taken, Premiere Elements 8 crashed – yet again. Man, if I had known that Adobe had really neglected this product so much, I never would have touted it as a solution for video-editing here. It seemed like a good choice – usually the Elements line of products is good for developing countries, since they are cheaper, easier to use, and light enough in their system requirements that these poor guys don’t have to toss two years salary for the latest multimedia powerhouse computer just to run the software.
Not this time. Boo! Premiere Elements just crashed again! I’ve been forced to download a trial version of Sony Vegas Video. We’ll see how that turns out…
Stalin’s Uniform, originally uploaded by Wordyeti. Man, this was tempting. A true WWII relic; this jolly guy spoke pretty good English and kept trying to get me to buy the Medal of Meritorious Motherhood, given to a sturdy Georgian woman who had produced 18 (eighteen) children. In service to the glorious state, of course. It [...] [...more]
Man, this was tempting. A true WWII relic; this jolly guy spoke pretty good English and kept trying to get me to buy the Medal of Meritorious Motherhood, given to a sturdy Georgian woman who had produced 18 (eighteen) children. In service to the glorious state, of course.
It was about 100 degrees in the shade here, but the old ladies sitting and arguing next to their blankets coated with tattered junk didn’t seem to feel a think. The area next to this is called “Dry Bridge.” It’s kinda near the odd brick domes that are the Turkish Baths here … which is where Tbilisi gets its name.
Apparently, back in the 2nd century, one of the Great Kings was hunting in these here parts with his pet eagle, and the raptor knocked another bird (allegedly a pheasant) out of the air and into one of the bubbling pools of water. Which, as any good farm kid knows, makes it dead easy to strip all the feathers off — a feature of the area that made it seem quite handy to that king of yore, who decided this was just the kind of place to build a little hunting chalet. Which became a mansion. And then a castle.
The feelings of the locals here towards their Soviet past are decidedly mixed. There’s still some pride and recognition of winning WWII, and there’s even the village where Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili (aka Stalin) was born, that stubbornly maintains a statue of bloody Uncle Joe. But by and large, the stirring bear to the north has made people hereabouts feel as nervous as a sociology professor who has errantly wandered into a Tea Party rally.
Flip Cameras, originally uploaded by Wordyeti. My students from the small towns sprinkled around Georgia were initially a little reticent and puzzled at the prospect of adding video to their skillsets. These little Flip cameras are about the simplest possible devices I know of for creating surprisingly decent online video. Already, they’ve learned some of [...] [...more]
My students from the small towns sprinkled around Georgia were initially a little reticent and puzzled at the prospect of adding video to their skillsets.
These little Flip cameras are about the simplest possible devices I know of for creating surprisingly decent online video. Already, they’ve learned some of the differences between print and video – mainly, that to do a video story you actually need someone looking into the camera and talking to you. And that is not as easy as it sounds … particularly when you take on an edgy project, like the one Team #3 did. They wanted to do a report on all the idle layabouts that line up for free beer from the beer factories, and then lie down on the river banks, arguing about soccer.
Abandoned Lab, originally uploaded by Wordyeti. The Resonance Newspaper here in Tbilisi once had its door nailed/welded shut by the government to try to put them out of business. Apparently, they just crawled thru the windows. Now they’re located in this building – formerly the site of a bioweapons lab. I’m guessing nobody really wants [...] [...more]
The Resonance Newspaper here in Tbilisi once had its door nailed/welded shut by the government to try to put them out of business. Apparently, they just crawled thru the windows. Now they’re located in this building – formerly the site of a bioweapons lab. I’m guessing nobody really wants to kick down the door now.
To the left of this shot is the office cat/mascot, a friendly little yellow cat named Anthrax (I think – they could have just been messing with me). The staff here was smart & eager to learn; I felt bad when the power went out as I was wrapping up. As Eliso Chapidze, the intrepid investigative reporter groused, “How can we do all the internet stuff you taught us when we have no electricity?”
This is a test of Google Wave for the Green Wave radio station. // < ![CDATA[ google.load("wave", "1"); google.setOnLoadCallback(function() { new google.wave.WavePanel({target: document.getElementById("waveframe")}).loadWave("googlewave.com!w+JLlKwRKyD");}); // ]]> [...more]
This is a test of Google Wave for the Green Wave radio station.
Citadel on the Hill, originally uploaded by Wordyeti. It was 105 degrees today, a reminder that I am in the quote-unquote Middle East (a little north of it, actually), where this time of year, the sun is beating down like a hammer. So I didn’t get out to take my customary stroll to acquaint myself [...] [...more]
It was 105 degrees today, a reminder that I am in the quote-unquote Middle East (a little north of it, actually), where this time of year, the sun is beating down like a hammer. So I didn’t get out to take my customary stroll to acquaint myself with the local architecture, street signs or quirks here in Tbilisi. However, I did have an excellent lunch of walnut-based salads & other local delicacies, and from that restaurant, I just had to take a picture of this old fortress, built into the side of the steep hills in this long, narrow river valley.
This city is a study in contrasts – between the reminders of all the waves of history that have washed over this area, and the glass/steel structures of ultramodern hope for the future.
One thing I did note: I have seen no signs whatsoever of the former Soviet Union. Not even the torn-off stumps and twisted, rusted steel bolts that I saw in Moscow, Kiev and Astana, where the old Lenin/Marx/Stalin statues used to stand. Not even the chiseled-out and defaced hammer&sickle insignias in the walls.
Someone went to a great deal of effort to remove even the remnants of the Soviet era here.
The fortress was established in the 4th century as Shuris-tsikhe (i.e., “Invidious Fort”). It was considerably expanded by the Umayyads in the 7th century and later by King David the Builder (1089-1125). The Mongols renamed it “Narin Qala” (i.e., “Little Fortress”). Most of the extant fortifications date from the 16th and 17th centuries. In 1827, parts of the fortress were damaged by an earthquake and were subsequently demolished.
The ruins of the ancient boundary wall of the mother castle of Narikala still stand on the western ridge of Sololaki (in the Old Tbilisi district). The name Narikala first appeared in the 18th century, until then it was called simply Kala. In the 6th century King Dachi, son of legendary Georgian king Vakhtang Gorgasali, strengthened and widened the old castle on the site and the Kala castle thus became the most important defensive castle and royal residence in newly-founded Tbilisi. The citadel has several times been stormed by foreign invaders and many times restored by Georgians when they regained it.
Because surfing the Internet is like drinking from a firehose, David LaFontaine braves the torrent to tell you what trends and technologies to gulp down, swirl in your mouth, or spit out.
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Well, an interesting experiment was featured on
