first post from the touch
this is a post typed from the iPod touch to see how easy it isto use. Aside from not having a proper keyboard it seems to work fine. Great for blogging on the move.
Since I had some free time I went over to the Old Theatre of the London school of economics and what we found out from that conversation is that people don’t trust television. According to one of the chairs this was at a ratio of 4:3. This is an interesting situation since the question of trust is one that as academics we all worry about.
Any student, whether a primary school child, an undergrad or a grad knows one thing. Get as many sources as you can and from the information you find work out what the reality of the situation is. If you’re starting a research project then find out who’s written about it and compile this information. This is important whether it’s from books, magazine articles or documentaries. That’s the purpose of academic writing; to become an expert in a specific field.
Now I want to ask why it is that people don’t trust television. There have been a spate of fake phone ins, some miss-information and more but what does this really mean. Does this mean that program makers are untrustworthy? In reality most of these problems had two things in common. The first of these is that they’re phone in’s for the most part. In other words their aim is to generate some form of income and to promote audience participation. The second is ratings. With the Queengate, as some call it, the problem was a little error in editing which meant that they woul have to apologise for the editing. At the same time it’s attracted a lot of media interest therefore the promoters may have acheived their aim.
Part of the discussion also focused around the idea of training. If everyone is allowed to apply for media jobs yet none of them need to display their credentials vis-a-vis the ability to research and document their programmes properly then there is a disparity between the standards that are expected between broadcaster and audience. This aspect of the conversation was interesting because there are so many runner jobs where the aim is to prepare coffee, tea, get tapes and more yet how many of these running jobs promote the academic riguour you’d expect from university students within the realm of programme making?
As someone who is currently looking for opportunities to work within certain production companies I liked the comment that people should be taking into internships and properly trained to be good researchers and accurate content creators. It seems logical that for those who want to create quality factual programming they should be trained more about accuracy. Maybe there are certain fields of study that take this far more seriously than others.
It was interesting to listen to Roger Graef at this event. I had heard and read about him for so many years that when I saw he was one of the guests it was a great moment to see in person one of these personalities of documentary history. He was asked about noddygate among other things. When asked his opinions on noddies he did say that they’re part of the conventions but that when noddy is used to fake one person being in location when they are not that is misleading to the audience. One speaker later on commented, quite rightly that the noddy is lazy programme making since there are a number of other ways of transitioning from one topic to another.
MTV have their own style, they take two video cameras, one is a random shot of the room and the other is framed on the interviewee that way there are constant cut aways. That’s a luxury (although mediocre in itself) for the aquiring and use of cut aways.
In thinking about this topic I’m wondering what people mean when they say that television can’t be trusted. Do they mean that it’s a more devious medium than other mediums? If so then why is this. Should television, like the printed press show it’s bias. We know Fox News’s bias but with a body such as the BBC we expect it to be neutral, a great feat in itself. Impartiality is hard to come by and there are documentaries that are so well researched it’s amazing. In some cases I have watched documentaries that may easily have had more than thirty to fourty interviews with well known and respected views on the topics they are discussing and as such provide a great insight into the topic. If you’re watching Panorama do you trust what you see after they have worked on each programme for extended periods of time. Do you trust programs like Hard Talk or Meet the Press. There are a lot of programmes that have high production value but most people do not have the time or inclination to watch the well researched sources of programmes because they are “long and boring” yet they complain because something is over simplified and innacurate.
The audience needs to think about how it consumes the media before it complains about issues of fairness and accuracy. If you can’t sit through heavily fact driven documentaries because you prefer a one minute summary every hour then the complaint is void. In the same way you don’t read the Sun for an informed view of the world so you should not tune into a sensationalist tabloid news source.
My final point takes a look at accuracy on television in contrast to that of bloggers and user generated content. As more and more people may produce and distribute content so some of them will have high production values, making sure to get many points of view across and get an accurate and complete image of what is taking place whilst others will take whatever view is most comfortable and speak about that. There is a great deal of accountability on the web and one of the great things about research on the web is the hyperlink. With every statement you make you may take the time to source that comment and so the audience will understand what bias is relevant to that quote. In so doing there is a great, and practical, method by which to assess how accurate the content you are viewing is.
Over the next few months and years we shall see many more arguments of accuracy and as the audience becomes more media literate so the debate may finally slow down and a new media landscape will be the norm once again.
Feedly is an application that takes google reader’s feeds and displays them in a more appealing manner. The browsing experience is more enjoyable as a result. The first item is displays on a splash page as ou see on the left. Flick to the right and you get a list of articles. This list fits articles to fill the screen. You must flick to the right to get to the next article.
Click on the article and the text goes full screen. You can  then bookmark articles, like them or share. Sharing is the standard tweet, mail, copy url, open in browser and mobilize.
Feedly navigation is done via the bottom left corner of the screen as you see in the image to the right. Click on this and you get a list of feeds you have subscribed to. This is the google reader list. Reading of feeds can be either by individual rss feed or by category. The number of unread posts is visible to the right. Active feeds can be read individually.
One of the most interesting features of feedly is it’s ability to auto-generate smart lists of interesting blog posts according to popularity/buzz, whether they were saved for later, essentials, latest and more. Buzz allows you to see which of the posts are most interesting according to popularity within the RSS feeds you and your contacts are subscribed to.
There is no ability to comment on articles at this moment in time and integration into google buzz is not possible yet. As a result you can quickly skim through articles but should you want to offer an opinion you will have to resort to another app.
Everything that Feedly offered to it’s users on computers and laptops is now available to it’s users via the mobile application. As a result your user experience will be the same across both platforms. With the iPhone version of this product you can read all articles while on the move, on trains in cars, or when waiting for a queue to move forward.
Yesterday I decided to play with the Common Unix Printing system (CUPS). I followed this tutorial and within a reasonable amount of time I had set up a pi 3 to serve as a print server for an old printer. Sometimes you use printers and scanners by plugging them in to the laptop you’re currently using. With modern macs this means finding a USB 2 to USB C connector, moving to the room with the printer or scanner, plugging in, printing or scanning and then moving on.
With CUPS you can setup the PI to be a print server. You navigate to a web page, add the printer that it detects and then you can print or scan documents, without having to move the computer or printer. During my test I connected to the printer, and scanned documents via the document feeder. With little annoyance I achieved my goal and moved on.
Although everything worked in browser as I expected to setup the printer, and then connect with a mac and a windows machine I am not sure whether I was able to print because the wifi was already setup or because CUPS installed the printer/scanner as I had requested. Rationally my experiment was a success but I should duplicate it, to be certain.
With this specific printer my old work flow was that I would get the documents to scan, and a USB key, scan the documents to the key, transfer the documents from the key to a laptop, rename them, and then use them. Now I get the post, scan the documents within five minutes and then the documents are just for archive, in physical form, and accessible in digital form.
Although printing and scanning are a chore, because you need to get the scanner and laptops to recognise each other, if you setup CUPS then they’re ready, within seconds, for you to use, with little effort or thought. It simplifies document scanning and more.
Although setting up a printer with CUPS may appear dull and boring it is very useful.
Slashdot today quoted Small fries as saying that the Net Neutrality Debate crosses the Atlantic.
Analysts believe that ISPs will be forced to place stringent caps on consumers’ internet use and raise prices to curb usage. Attempts have been made by players in the industry to form a united front against the BBC by asking the Internet Service Providers’ Association to lead the campaign on the iPlayer issue.
There is a golden age for video sharing online. With services like operator 11, I can’t help but look forward to future versions as bandwidth increases. The idea that an ISP would think of “stringent caps on consumers’ internet use…” appears counterproductive. Apple has recently sold over 3 billion songs on iTunes, now imagine how many films they could sell if only they provided movies to Europe and the rest of the world. Tell those people they need to pay extra for the bandwidth and see how they respond.
Add to this the recent article about a grandmother in Sweden getting 40Gbs per second to her home, taking into account that countries such as Japan have 100+ Mb/s and the recent increase of bandwidth in Switzerland and you may conclude that there is no need to increase the cost of bandwidth or throttle packets from programs such as the iplayer because other countries are doing the opposite.
With the “BBC … being asked to cough up to pay for bandwidth charges, otherwise, traffic shaping will be used to limit access to the iPlayer” is surprising because of its role as a public service broadcaster and because of the user license fee paid by all television owners in the UK. This content is already available to the British public and they have paid for it. Various ISP thinking of getting more money out of new developments goes against the purpose of the World Wide Web and current social trends which require increased bandwidth.
A decade ago the web was static pages of text with the occasional image whereas now it’s video and radio on demand where the user creates their experience according to their feelings. As people spend more time online so their need for interesting activities increases hence photo sharing and increasingly video sharing websites. These websites need bandwidth and a lot of it. As I write this article I’m listening to a stream coming from Last.fm. Last night I was watching three simultaneous streams from Operator 11 and found that I could stream from two laptops at once to this website. I was using a lot of bandwidth and it worked flawlessly.
By giving the user the freedom they desire for how they use the internet and a variety of websites so you allow new phenomena to occur. With restrictions on photo-sharing Flickr would never have been and it’s the same with Youtube. Restrictions stifle creativity and markets that should have been stagnant rather than improving. As a result, I am for net neutrality because of how many great things are currently accessible online. I also believe that those analysts should experiment with the medium and see what doors are open as a result of new trends and see whether they can subsidise these startups.
Their arguments sound hollow, on one hand they urge subscribers to sign-up for faster download plans, and pay premium prices. And yet, they complain when subscribers finally find an application that puts their web speed to work.
For 92 CHF you can buy the Casio GBD-800-1B from conrad via Galaxus and it will track you steps 24hrs a day and map your walks without you pressing a single button. This means that you can track your life, without thinking about it.
The problem with watches from the last five or so years is that they track steps, heart rate and more 24hrs a day, but need to be charged, and want to know what you’re doing. They invade your life. “Are you walking now”, “you should get up and walk for one minute”, “you should go to sleep.”
Today I thought of a new term. Feature watches. We have smart watches and more. They try to get us addicted to their apps, and to tracking everything we do. Feature watches are the opposite. You put them on, and in theory you can wear them for three years before you remove them.
When I go for a run I will take the Garmin or the Apple watch, because they track heart rate and provide an idea of the fitness progression over time but the rest of the time I’d be happy with the Casio.
The advantage of a feature watch was demonstrated today. I put the watch on this morning and when I decided to go for a walk the phone’s GPS tracked my movements automatically. The watch tracked the number of steps I took. When the walk the watch synced the step data with the phone app. I had a map of the walk I did, automatically.
Initially I had been tempted by a higher spec casio, specifically the Casio Pro Trek PRT-B50. It has many of the same features minus thermometer, barometer, altimeter and compass but for 110 francs more and it is large. It is nice to have watches that fit under sleeves.
Although this watch promotes itself as a step tracker it offers more than that, by allowing you to automatically track walks, hikes, runs and more, without having to press any buttons or pay attention to the walk. It starts when you start, and it ends when you end. I need to experiment with cycling and driving, to see how it reacts in those situations. I am still forming my opinion but so far it feels good.
Today whilst surfing through the webapps I found one that’s great for what I do, share video content via the web. I found Vtap, a video sharing website that allows you to search through, select and stream videos straight through to your iphone or Ipod touch without either converting it to an ipod compatible format or using the youtube website.
For certain videos it gave me a feedreader rather than playing the videos but for those that are already indexed it works well. It’s definitely worth a try and it’s a taste of the future.