I taught New Media Tools for Journalism at BU today and had the best time. The students were enthusiastic and excited to learn new ways to tell stories using a cellphone. This class could have gone on all day long since there's so much to cover. We had lots of fun using the new tools in class.
In this class we take a tour though the tools you can use to report stories with a cellphone. Text, photo, audio and video, using tools like twitter, flickr, utterli, blogtalkradio, ustream, and qik. Auto post to twitter when you send a photo in to flickr.
Mobile phones. The video cameras in newer cell phones have become live-reporting tools, courtesy of new services that send moving images over the Internet as they're being captured. These services include Qik, Kyte, ComVu and Flixwagon. When paired with certain cutting-edge handsets, such as Nokia's N95, video journalism becomes possible.
Reuters has paired N95s with the ComVu service as part of a Mobile Journalism Toolkit experiment. Minnesota-based Technology Evangelist, which specializes in Web-based video coverage of technology topics, used Qik for live reporting from the Consumer Electronics Show late last year. During the recent Super Tuesday of U.S. presidential primaries and caucuses, MTV sponsored 51 citizen journalists using phones equipped with Flixwagon.
Likewise, the UpTake has harnessed Qik with several N95s for live webcasting on the group's home page. It accomplished this with a first-ever melding of Qik with Mogulus, which permitted N95-packing UpTake correspondents in St. Paul and Boston to zap their video directly to that little window on the group's home page.
Super Tuesday became a tech tour de force for the UpTake.
Chuck Olsen was in a New Orleans bar during Mardi Gras celebrations (Super Tuesday and Fat Tuesday happened to coincide this year), webcasting live via Mogulus and the iSight videocam built into his MacBook Pro laptop. This permitted him to co-anchor the UpTake's national coverage of that night's political mega-event (despite a few technical glitches) alongside volunteers in St. Paul.
UpTake executive director Jason Barnett was in St. Paul with one of the organization's two N95s, transmitting footage of inner-city Democratic caucusing. Video blogger Steve Garfield had the other N95 in Boston, transmitting from a bar near Fenway Park as he solicited the political views of fellow tech-heads. This event was a technical coup for Garfield, a veteran Qik user, who negotiated the agreement between Mogulus and Qik so the services could interact for the first time.
Jim Long is in Ghana with the president as a cameraman for NBC News.
Jim says on his blog:
In nine days we will have traveled to Israel, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. My job with NBC News allows me unique access to history and I take advantage of these moments to share what we’re covering with friends on Twitter.
American Idol Winner Jordin Sparks will make an appearance during the President and Mrs. Bush’s trip to Ghana tomorrow, in an effort to highlight malaria’s devastating effect on mothers and children throughout Africa. Last year’s Idol Gives Back charity special educated tens of millions of Americans about the malaria crisis in Africa and raised more than $17 million to fight malaria in Africa.
"UpTake cut to Steve Garfield, another phone-packing correspondent, reporting from a Boston bar near Fenway Park.
It was a seminal Web-video moment. UpTake viewers could participate during the live webcasts by sending text-based queries and comments, which Barnett and Garfield could see on their handsets and answer."
Here's some more background on my Massachusetts Primary coverage by cellphone over ATT via Qik to Mogulus:
I got a call on my iPhone tht Corrine was ready to have me go online from Boston, so I put the ear buds in and listened to her over the phone while I started the Qik software on the N95 and got my first guest ready to join me outside.
I went out side and turned n the stream and started reporting from Boston. Then I interviewed my first guest and then towards the end of the interview when I spoke with Corrine it seems like there was an issue and she had to switch to Chuck Olsen and go live with him since the battery on his laptop was dying.
So that stream was saved on Qik, but not stream at the same time to Mogulus. We tried again, and this time I went live and reported for 23 minutes from the streets of Boston out side Boston Beer Works near Fenway park.
The guests spoke about the election and viewers could chat directly to my phone and ask questions.
Throughout the interviews I propped up the N95 with both arms to keep it steady and also used the building as a pseudo tripod.
Having years experience using these small cameras I know where to hold it to get myself in the frame and then turned to my interviewee to get them in the frame.
The sound was good both inside and out.
When I got home I was able to watch the streams and see how they looked. Pretty clear for both audio and video.
Then I turned on The UpTake to see what was online, and it someone was doing a microphone check, so I went to bed nad turned on CNN for election results.
Tried out Yahoo! LIVE this morning and had over 100 people watching from around the world. Had problem listening to others in the chat and then it degraded fast when spammers entered the chat room and I had to turn into a moderator. Then the browser crashed so I left to eat breakfast.
Here's a 23:41 video of my LIVE broadcast from Boston Beer Works on Primary night 2/5/08.
It was the first integrated LIVE broadcast between Qik and Mogulus. I was excited to be able to work with both companies to make this happen. Thanks a lot. It gives us a glimpse of the future.
You can go to the page on Qik for this video and see all the comments I was getting while broadcasting live from my Nokia N95-3 cellphone over the 3G network to Qik. Comments people make while I am online get streamed to the phone where I can read them while shooting the video.
The stream was then directed to Mogulus which broadcast my stream live to The UpTake viewers.
After I ended the stream the video was posted to Seesmic, where people could post video replies around the video and have a conversation about it.
Head over to qik.com/stevegarfield to watch the ten videos I broadcast live from the Obama rally last night in Boston. I started out using the ATT 3G network and then switched to the free WiFi.
People how were watching live could chat with me live as I streamed and I could ajust my coverage based on their comments.
Best moment, when the viewers guided me over to the C-SPAN camera nd I talked to the C-Span cmaera guy for a moment and tehn got my N95 on C-SPAN... Ha ha. When I got home and listened to the audio, I was amazed at the good quality. Steve-Span!
"My learning using them in Davos is that in Seesmic people did not like the fact that mobile posting via Qik and Shozu to Seesmic was a one way posting. Both Scoble and myself were just broadcasting and not listening or open to conversations. We will fix this very soon.
Back to the learning: it's more about the conversation than the mobile posting."
This is a good lesson.
When broadcasting live with Qik, you can have a real-time conversation with viewers, by watching the display on the Nokia N95 and talking back.
When you enable Qik to post your archived stream to Seesmic, you need to then log on to Seesmic to participate in the followup conversation. In the meantime, anyone who is logged on to Seesmic can participate in the discussion.
So a couple of things are happening here.
1. Live two-way communication while broadcasting.
2. Follow up conversations about archived streams.
I think both can work as long as you can be selective about which live streams you send over to Seeesmic. As part of the Seesmic community, I'm trying to be careful about what I post there, since unlike Twitter, people can't unsubscribe to me for periods of time when I'm posting a lot.
I wanted to be able to stream live from the street using my cellphone into Seesmic, so I made an introduction between Qik and Seesmic.
Their technical teams got together, and now, if you have an account on Seesmic, you can enter your Seesmic username/password in Qik, and choose to send your videos to Seesmic.
Today I was amazed by what Steve Garfield and CashHustleInc did - live 2-way video conferencing usig Qik.
How you ask? It was ridiculously simple - now that I think about it. Steve had 2 browser windows open side-by-side one with his video stream and the other with the stream from CashHustleInc. and CashHustleInc had the same. It was amazing to watch as they started this and then invited their Twitter friends to chat and all of a sudden we we were all chatting and experiencing the video conference going on between the two.
Here at Qik HQ, we talk about the million and one uses of Qik. Well, thanks to Steve Garfield and CashHustleInc we found yet another one. Pretty darn cool!
///The thing is that the new technology lets you PARTICIPATE with the people who are in front of the camera. You got a taste of this while I was walking around CES with a cell phone and you could ask questions WHILE I WAS FILMING LIVE. That really changes the equation a lot and that’ll be a key differentiator on FastCompany.tv. After all, if we’re talking to Fast Companies, why shouldn’t they answer YOUR questions live as well as mine?
I left him a comment:
Hey Robert congratulations!
My experience up in NH covering the primary with Qik really got me excited all over again about the PARTICIPATORY aspect of this. I love that it's one of hte things you are focusing on.
I've experimented with Mogulus and hope to try some LIVE broadcasting with it. Finding the right technical solution that works is the tricky part here. I've tried a lot of the live streaming solutions at Boston Media Makers meetings and most times there have been issues that keep the stream from working. Computer issues, configuration issues, bandwith issues... I'll be experimenting more with these technologies to find something that works for me all the time.
And finally Seesmic. Although the videos are recorded, they are live. Alive with people, and timely. On New Years Eve Carol and I had dinner with the world as we watched everyone celebrate and recorded our own toast.
2008 is going to be an exciting year.
See you in the internet and in person...
--Steve
I'd like to make a side note to Jeff Pulver. He asked me to participate in his Bucket List meme. I've been really busy so far this year and have spent some time thinking about goals for 2008. As I responded to Robert Scoble's post, those points are going to be a technology focus of mine in 2008.
My Bucket List For 2008 - Technology
1. Mobile Video Journalism - I am going to be experimenting with mobile video journalism tools like Qik that allow you to broadcast LIVE from the street. I first talked about this at a journalism conference at Harvard in 2006 and now we can make it a reality. It's very exciting. I'll be practicing Journalism By Wandering Around.
2. LIVE Participatory Broadcasts - I love the idea of two-way broadcasts that include viewers. WBZ TV in Boston started experimenting with this using a text chat. Jeff Pulver and Jonny Goldstein have been very active in this space, John Herman has also started experimenting with live improv, and Chuck Olsen has been following the campaign. I like some of the things I've seen MTV do with viewers too. I'm going to be experimenting with tools and technologies in this space to find a reliable solution.
3. The Village Square - As an investor and advisor to Seesmic, I'm excited to be working with them, enabling people to easily participate in video conversations. Since the early days of videoblogging I've been interested in subscribing to people. Seesmic is people. It'll be fun to see where this goes...
I'll be posting more Bucket Lists when I can... stay tuned.
Steve Garfield reported 3 minutes ago that Congressman Duncan Hunter will not give up in his bid for presidency. Steve captured this video as he was walking towards the CNN interview. Using his N95 and qik.com, Steve Garfield beat CNN. Watch out news world, here comes instant media.
As I was walking down the sidewalk in Manchester, NH I asked what was goign on. The response I got was that Duncan Hunter was going on CNN to make a major announcement. I asked if I could interview him live about it. An aide told me to walk back down the sidewalk and talk to another staff member. I replied, "No. I can interview him RIGHT NOW with this cell phone!" So the aide said, go right ahead. then I ran up to him and started streaming live video from the cellphone.
Here's a TV Newser report that is reprinted on the Duncan Hunter campaign blog:
The Hunter campaign alerted the media to a major campaign announcement coming at 2pmET today, which some may have thought involved dropping out of the race. Instead, he used the opportunity to lash out against ABC News and Fox News Channel for excluding him from their debates/forum this weekend.
“Some knucklehead executives in ABC closed me out. Similarly, Fox News decided not to allow me to take part in the Fox News debate on Sunday,” he said.
Hunter said that he picked up one delegate in the Wyoming caucus, which put him ahead, at least until tomorrow night, of candidates like Rudy Guiliani and John McCain.
Hunter wasn’t done. “A guy who actually had some points on the scoreboard, that was myself, was not allowed to attend,” he said. “Knucklehead, arrogant executives in the corporate media world at ABC and Fox News, in some third or fourth story glass offices, decided my campaign was over.”
It wasn’t, as he announced to applause from the gathered crowd. Interestingly, CNN was the only network to pick up the speech live, despite it being advertised earlier in the afternoon on Fox News Channel. MSNBC came in a few minutes after the announcement.
Categories:
I commented:
Hi Duncan,
You might remember me interviewing you on the sidewalk on your way to CNN. I also covered this announcement and streamed it LIVE from the sidewalk of New Hampshire from my cellphone to the internet.
Citizen media will help cover stories that mainstream media will not. With new technology that allows people to stream live video from cell phones to the web, you start to see more news from the street. Real news.
Thanks again.
All my LIVE streamed reports from Manchester are over here:
HAPPY NEW YEAR Happy 2008. That's a video I recorded with Carol last night in my kitchen. It was easy to make. Using Seesmic, I just pressed record and the video was saved and posted to the web. It wasn't just posted to a web page somewhere, it was added to a community. A social community of friends.
SOCIAL VIDEOBLOGGING As we enter 2008, I see a future where more people will be capturing and sharing unedited moments with friends via social videoblogging.
It's going to be a lot more social for a number of reasons, most important is that it'll be easy for people to have video conversations.
VIDEOBLOGGING BEGINNINGS OF A CONVERSATION Let's take a look at how we got here.
Four years ago I started Steve Garfield's Video Blog and posted my first video.
That video was posted to a brand new blog. The blog allowed comments. That's where the conversation happened. Sometimes people would record response videos, and post them on thier own blogs and in my commnets, provide a link back.
Sometimes people talked about a certain video on the Yahoo! videoblogging group.
VIDEO HOSTING - A COMMUNITY SQUARE Then video hosting sites like OurMedia, Vimeo, YouTube and Blip.tv came out which had the added feature of providing a central location where you could post and discuss the videos.
I SUBSCRIBE TO PEOPLE When RSS 2.0 with Media Enclosures came out, it allowed you to subscribe to someone's feed of videos, so you'd get every new one delivered to you.
What I said about that advancement was that "I Subscribe to People."
I was making a commitment to watch every new video that someone produced.
FROM QUICK TO FULL Now people are producing videos that span the continuum from a quick, unedited moments, up to a fully produced show.
RECORDING LIVE FROM A COMPUTER Sites like Seemic, let you record a video using a webcam. Once recorded, the video is immediately available for everyone visiting the site to view. The video sits there at the top of the river of new videos until someone else records something. The conversation happens when someone clocks 'reply', and adds their video to the river of videos, in response.
STREAMING LIVE FROM A COMPUTER Lot's of sites are now available to stream live video with the ability to chat live. Check out Ustream.tv, Operator 11, Blogtv, justin.tv, ijustine.tv
STREAMING LIVE FROM A CELLPHONE I've recently been experimenting with Qik, which let's me broadcast a live stream from my cellphone up to the web. While broadcasting, people who are watching live, can type in comments which are then displayed on the cellphone's screen.
After ending the stream, the resultant video can be embeded into a blog.
WHAT'S NEXT Social videoblogging frees people from expectations. Much like MySpace or Facebook, where you can join to communicate with a group of people you already know, you can do the same on social video sites.
Watch a video, post a response.
Watch the responses flow into a river of video.
Stand on the shore or jump in.
In addition, like on MySpace or Facebook, you can also make friends.
One tip, ignore the negative people. There are always going to be people who criticize what to them looks mundane.
Mobile phones. The video cameras in newer cell phones have become live-reporting tools, courtesy of new services that send moving images over the Internet as they're being captured. These services include Qik, Kyte, ComVu and Flixwagon. When paired with certain cutting-edge handsets, such as Nokia's N95, video journalism becomes possible.
