On the product description it says, "Prime members get 2 for $39.98. Enter code DOTPRIME2PK at checkout."
So if you put one Echo Dot into your basket, and checkout with the code, you get an error, "The promotional code you entered cannot be applied to your purchase.
Why?
It's because Amazon isn't going to actually give you two when you ORDER ONE, you have to ORDER TWO, ENTER THE CODE, and then one gets discounted, so the total is $39.98.
BEMISO 104 Led Solar Lights Outdoor Waterproof Solar Motion Sensor Light Outdoor Powered Decorative for Wall Lights,Deck Lights,Backyard and Garden Solar Lights(2PCS)
LED High Bay Light Garage Lights Ceiling LED Shop Light, Multi Point Illumination 12000LM 6500K LED Shop Light for Garage for Garage/Attic/Basement/Home/Office
Besign LS03 Aluminum Laptop Stand, Ergonomic Detachable Computer Stand, Riser Holder Notebook Stand Compatible with MacBook Air Pro, Dell, HP, Lenovo More 10-15.6" Laptops, Black
Getting a 10/10 rating for my room, as seen on Zoom calls, from Room Rater on Twitter required a lot of work.
Having a background in video production and lighting helped, but what tripped me up was thinking about my office as a workspace instead of a studio.
Room Rater rates the visual presentation of people's home offices, or settings that they place themselves in for online interviews. You'll see lots of people's room being reviewed on Room Rater's twitter account.
Start there to get a sense of what makes a good presentation.
Next, take an honest look at your background, in the context of how it will come across on camera. Frame your view with a camera to see what's in the shot and what isn't.
This is a photo that I was using as a Zoom background to make believe I was in a Zoom room paying attention. LOL.
My thoughts:
- The paper shredder has to go.
- The bookcase is off center. I think I need more books behind me.
Here I am, top right, on Streamyard, on Chris Brogan's 'The Backpack Show.'
Here's an update with an added bookcase.
Some of the things in this shot that are great in an office, but have to go away to make the shot look better are:
- tissue box on the right
- The brewery logo sign got moved to the left, but it's still sitting on top of the paper shredder.
I got a ukulele and added that, plus I moved my webcam, so that I'm now centered between the meeting of the walls behind me. I think that the added depth, of having the corner of the office looks better that a flat wall of books. I also changed webcams to get a wider angle view. Switched from a Logitech C920, which is a very good webcam, to a MEVO V1 in webcam mode.
Thanks Chris for including this mention of me and Carol in the revised Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust. 10 Anniversary Edition. Buy Trust Agents on Amazon. [Affiliate Link]
Surprise 🤗 Tonight at midnight I’ll be releasing my 8th studio album, folklore; an entire brand new album of songs I’ve poured all of my whims, dreams, fears, and musings into. Pre-order at https://t.co/zSHpnhUlLbpic.twitter.com/4ZVGy4l23b
folklore will have 16 songs on the standard edition, but the physical deluxe editions will include a bonus track “the lakes.” Because this is my 8th studio album, I made 8 deluxe CDs & 8 deluxe vinyls available for 1 week😄 Each has unique covers & photos https://t.co/zSHpnhUlLbpic.twitter.com/tG34e0MpgJ
In isolation my imagination has run wild and this album is the result. I’ve told these stories to the best of my ability with all the love, wonder, and whimsy they deserve. Now it’s up to you to pass them down. folklore is out now: https://t.co/xdcEDfithq
No, Taylor Swift did not spend her quarantine nurturing her sourdough starter or tie-dying old sweaters. Nor did she use the period to re-record her catalog as promised last year after a label dispute. Instead Swift quietly spent self-isolation at work on a new album, Folklore, released at midnight on July 24.
If you had “surprise Taylor Swift album” on your 2020 bingo card, today is your lucky day. The pop superstar announced Thursday morning that she will release her eighth studio album, Folklore, at midnight EST on Friday, July 24.
TRANSCRIPT:
All right here. Here it is. Hey, everybody, this is Steve, and this is Carol. And another episode of how we live now. mask wearing. mask wearing works. I mean, it's it's proven Massachusetts where we live, the number one state in the country right now at having the least number of cases of Coronavirus and you know who have the most, those those other states where they're not wearing masks.
No one's around. We can not take them down right now. But it's so maddening. And this is, I'm doing a political rant right now. You need national leadership to tell everyone that face mask wearing is mandatory in the whole country, but we have a president that is not doing that. And they leave it up to the States. And then some of the states like Florida are like, Oh, just go party on the beach, whatever. And then they come back and say Oh, you know what, we were Wrong. Don't party on the beach, wear masks, like, obviously we all knew it.
Now we're starting to see a lot of 35 and under. Yeah. we'll test the
they were wrong and then look at the United States.
Rates infection rates versus other countries that have, you know, billions more people who live there. Yeah, we screwed this up so bad. So, bottom line, vote!
And wear a mask.
November 3. I am serious. Okay. Done with my political rant. Okay.
Okay, man. Oh,
okay, that makes me feel better and get that out of my system.
So what else We're going to talk about?
My friend Laura riding is starting a new show today. It's LGOTV: big talks and it's she's @HeyLGO on all the platforms, and you can watch it at 10am on Fridays and Tuesdays Eastern Daylight Time.
Who's she having today?
I forget the name but she has a she's had some good guests so she's been doing a show on her own for a while and now she's gonna use streamyard and have some guests and I think it's gonna be great. So check her out.
There's many people are doing so much more these days online. Yesh, We all are.
All my friends are interviewing all their friends on everyone else's shows.
And I enjoy it.
Steve Carell has a new movie on Netflix today. irresistible, I think it's called. And I've been watching his TV show called spaceforce. I love it. Some people hate it. It's very, get smart. Like, to me. I find the humor very funny and I'm a big Steve Carell fan. I almost thought it was Hamilton time that the plays gonna be on Disney plus on Friday, July 3, I was gonna watch it today but that's big.
excited for that.
A have a rock in my shoe.
You're rocking the rocking issue. Is there a place to stop?
Oh, okay.
My mom's retirement complex is allowing guests. So we've been quarantined for a long time. So we feel it's safe to go up there and I think we're going to go get food and bring it to her. She wants a good burger. So we're going to go to the north shore and try and find a place where we can
take out a nice get a burger. So anybody has any suggestions? Let us know. Yeah. A couple places are closed that we looked at.
Right. I'm surprised Bancroft at the North Shore miles closed. We like that.
So while Carol takes the rock out of her shoe, I'll show you where we are. The Arnold Arboretum in Boston. And it's really really nice acres and acres of places to walk, which are really not crowded and it's a great place to get some exercise. Get outside.
feel good about
at least something
I know well, what else? Do you feel good about?
how healthy we are? Yeah. Oh, good sizing, okay.
We haven't been able to go to the health card, that's where the scale is. And so last week, middle of the night, I bought one of those scales, that connected scale and some scales were expensive, like almost $200 189 159 and then I read the reviews and they weren't that good. So then I found one that was very popular for like $39 and it's a connected scale. So I bought it. We each weighed each other, and we weigh less. It's because we're working out doing those aerobic videos you said which I know I did a lot of weight training but no aerobics now.
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I'm big on Pamela Rief on YouTube. Love her!
...and we kept our goal so far this month, once a week, we do have a merch challenge. How's the merch challenge up? That includes a mile run for you too. I know.
It's amazing. So that's really good. My pants are loose. I need to use the belt more. That is what triggered us to think we were doing a good job. Right Carol? I wasn't quite sure about me. But I still need a second scale but I'll take it for now. These are things so these are some things that have changed during this pandemic and triggered change that we normally would not have. Done The other thing is ordering food online. We're ordering imperfect foods.
You guys might have heard about that.
So imperfect foods, what they do is they take the foods that normally would be thrown away or couldn't be sold to restaurants because you know it's a crooked carrot or a too small apple or certain things like that. So we joined imperfect foods and you can get a delivery once a week or every two weeks. And when I get on there, I find out you can get more than just vegetables, chicken, ground beef,
salmon
sausages are really good. The salmon is amazing. Yeah, so Fever Tree seltzer for like gin and tonics. So we do it every two weeks and then rather than just getting a CSA box that you get what you get, you can go in online and customize what you get. You have a few days before the deadline, and then you choose what you want in the box. And it's great and their customer service is amazing. And their social media team is really fun. So if I put up pictures of some of the things we've gotten, they've interacted with me on social media. Oh, imperfect foods. Actually, I'm going to put a link on this video. And if you sign up through my link, we each get 10 bucks. So I'll do that. You can try it if it's available in your area. I had to wait. We had to wait less than a month, maybe three weeks until they allowed us to sign up. They're really really busy and really popular right now.
Join Imperfect Foods and we each get $10 http://imprfct.us/v/steve_1058
They do take the waiting list like you got on okay.
doing a lot of gardening.
outside.
Things are looking really good.
Now we'll go for a big walk.
Like this walk we do is usually what? Three miles, three or four
it ends up being two hours last week one day and that was a little before mile. It was a big one. It was two hours then we were like, wow, we watched all the way up to amazing. Okay, so we're gonna take the turn now and head up this hill.
Thanks for watching. Be safe, wear a mask vote.
Until next time,
see you later.
What was cool about it was that it looked like it was a YouTube video, playing right on the twitter timeline. But it wasn't! It's actually a native twitter video, playing on the twitter timeline, with a link over to YouTube. Here's the story: Usually, you have to click on the YouTube videos to get them to play on twitter. So this lead me on a search to figure it out. My friend David helped me with a tip, he told me that it was an mp4, uploaded to YouTube, and he provided a link to Google, where people were explaining how to do it. This link was helpful, How To Add Links To Your Twitter Videos. There, Mark Zhuk, explained, in November of 2016, that you need to have a Twitter Ads account to be able to add a link to a video. Further research and testing, confirmed the process. You need to sign up for a twitter ad account at ads.twitter.com. Then you need to add a credit card to the account. Then you can upload a video with a link to the same video on YouTube. The YouTube video link you enter, gets overlayed on to your twitter video with the link text, "Watch now at youtu.be", giving the impression that the video is hosted over on YouTube, but it's not. Here's my tweet with video, linked over to YouTube.
Lots of people are using StreamYard to live stream shows, to sites like Facebook and YouTube, and including guests, with the added ability to share their screen. Streamyard is different from some other solutions since it's web based, you don't have to download any software to use it.
You can get started on a FREE account, and then upgrade if you want additional features.
The easiest way to create professional live streams.
StreamYard is a live streaming studio in your browser. Interview guests, share your screen, and much more. Stream directly to Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and other platforms.
I signed up and can show you the steps to get started to remove the mystery of live streaming. It's easy.
Sign Up
Sign up at StreamYard by entering your email, and then confirming with them that you are a real person and not a robot.
Then you can start a broadcast. I'll show you how.
Here we go!
1. Connect an account to StreamYard. Once connected, you can stream to it as often as you like.
Lots of choices here, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Periscope, Twitch, or Custom RTMP.
2. I'll pick Facebook to start.
Authorize Facebook.
3. Create a broadcast.
Want to try it out before going live? Create a broadcast and choose "Record only".
4. Create a TEST BROADCAST - RECORD ONLY
5. Let's Check your camera and mic
CLICK: ENTER BROADCAST STUDIO
6. Sharing a Single Shot
7. Sharing a Screen
8. Showing Viewer Comments
CONCLUSION
Streamyard is provides an easy was to get started in live streaming that allows you to both include guests, and sharing your desktop. Try it, what have you got to lose? ;-)
Join StreamYard - Disclosure. Join StreamYard and you'll get $10 in credit. Once you've spent $25 with them, I'll get $25 in credit.
If you've watched any late-night TV lately (Jimmy Fallon, SNL, or literally any other show producing remotely), you know that creating quality video from home is NOT easy! Even for TV veterans.
Video blogging pioneer and "Get Seen" author Steve Garfield of SteveGarfield.com shares some tips for creating better video from home.
We'll talk about audio quality, getting your background camera-ready, lighting tips, and more!
AUDIO Q: What's the most important part of video? A: Audio I've done research. If the video quality is less than perfect, but the audio is good, and the content is interesting, people will keep watching your video. If the audio is bad, they will leave. If you are recording with a smartphone, the closer you are to the device, the better your audio will be. - Know where the microphone is, and talk into it. To get better sound, add an external microphone, for a smartphone, video camera, or computer. You can use a set of headphones with an attached microphone, or a standalone microphone. One tip is to get a floor stand, and swing the microphone around to where you are sitting. That reduces any noise you might make by tapping on your desktop. LIGHTING
For lighting, be aware of the light around you. If you are inside and near a window, have the window facing you instead of behind you. If the window is behind you, and you are using a webcam, it probably has auto exposure, and it will set exposure to the light behind you. That's not good.
In the above photo, I sat in front of the window to make sure this location was perfectly bad to start from. The webcam is at desk level, looking up at me. The light is behind me, screwing up the auto exposure of the webcam. This is the shot that lots of people use from their laptops webcams. DO NOT DO THIS. TIP: Raise the level of the webcam in your laptop camera to meet or line up just above your EYE LEVEL. You can easily do this with a stack of books.
In the above photo I've added light from TWO SOURCES, a MAIN light and a FILL light.
The main light is an LED light just to the right of my webcam. The fill light is my desk lamp with an LED bulb. I also added a small LED light pointed up towards my bookcase as a back light to allow the webcam to see added depth, but it's small, and not too big to screw up the auto exposure of the webcam. BACKGROUND
Set up your webcam and take a photo of where you will be sitting. Look at the background. How do you think you might be rated by Room Rater on twitter? Take a look at his twitter feed and see what comments he makes on how to make backgrounds better. In this example, after looking at the photo, I decided to move the webcam towards the left to allow more of the bookcase to show up on both sides of me, rather than having the black bookcase look like it was growing out of the top of my head. ;-) Click through to Steve Garfield's Ultimate Video Gear List: Cameras, Microphones, and Lights to see a list of gear I use.
The pandemic has changed our habits on a number of things.
- No more brand loyalty to coffee, toilet paper, or supermarkets.
- Getting Groceries and Vegetables delivered to our home.
- Watching new movie releases at home on TV.
The newest change happened last night. We watched Baratunde Thurston's live comedy show, in our kitchen, that was streamed from his house in LA over Zoom.
The show started at 9:20 instead of 9:10, and there was a warm-up act that used a handheld microphone that was quite right.
At that point I was worried.
The Main Show
But, when the stream switched over to Baratunde, the sound was perfect.
There were pages and pages of happy faces watching. We got instructions to turn down our mic levels to 1/5, but in my iPad I never saw how to do that, so I remained muted.
Many others figured it out, so as Baratunde performed, you could hear the audience laughing. It really was a perfect show.
I enjoyed hearing Baratunde's takes about the early days of stocking up for the pandemic, living with only one person for 10 weeks, and needing a haircut. ;-)
The ability of Zoom to bring Baratunde into our kitchen was powerful.
It also had the advantage of being able to stay home, not drive, have a good seat, get out own drinks, and have a bathroom nearby.
The people formally known as the audience
As a bonus, Baratunde took questions, over text chat, after the show. Also brilliant. If you paid for VIP access, you could also stay longer for the after show.
Audience interaction via Zoom is going to be a groundbreaking development for entertainers, once they fully understand its power. It's like when I first realized the power of online video. This is a similar time, where the audience can become part of the presentation, and enhance it. Once presenters truly understand the power of this collaborative medium, and how to manage it, we are going to see some creative productions follow.
To catch a glimpse of how this works, watch my friend Joseph Jaffe's CoronaTV and his Zoom after-show. The after show allows the audience to have a conversation with the guest, and valuable discussions happen with much of the value coming from 'the people formally known as the audience'.
I love comedy, and comedians, but maybe I don't like having to go out to comedy clubs?
My mom is one of the Internet's Oldest Bloggers according to The Ageless Project.
wegads - Ed Weiland, born 1923
Age of Rieson - Marie MacBeath, born 1925
Last Quarter - Game of Life - Ralph Leonard, born 1925
My Mom's Blog - Mildred Garfield, born 1925
Not Dead Yet! - Judith Taylor, born 1927
Milts Muse - Milton Rebmann, born 1931
A Little Red Hen - Naomi Dagen Bloom, born 1933
Along The Way - Joared, born 1935
Occasional Pursuits - Patricia Torbert, born 1937
Light Sweet Crud - Rey Barry, born 1937
BLB's Xanga Site - Bonnie, born 1939
justaskjudy - Judy, born 1940
Facebook is now rolling out Messenger Rooms to everyone. I tried it out for the first time, and had a chat with my niece. When I created my room, I allowed ALL FRIENDS to JOIN. After creating my room, on my computer browser, my phone rang with an invitiation!
Opps! Did Facebook Messenger Rooms just invite ALL MY FRIENDS with a message at 8:30 AM. D'OH! I don't think so, but I'm not sure. As I learn more I'll figure it out. I took screen shots of each screen in the process of setting up a room.
Here are the steps to set up a Facebook Messenger Room.
Image: Facebook asks you to Learn More or Create a Room
Image: Create Your Room options:
- Room Activity
- Who is invited?
- Start time
ROOM ACTIVITY:
Image: Room Activity Page 1
Image: Room Activity Page 2
WHI IS INVITED:
Image: Who is invited
Choose all your friends or specific people.
Image: Invite people
START TIME:
Image: Start Time
Select a start time.
Image: Trying Rooms. Invite.
Image: Join room
Image: Continue as YOU!
Image: My first room with my niece.
Facebook rooms. Bringing people together!
Image: Video and Audio controls
Image: What my Facebook page looks like after I left the room.
It looks like my room is still open after I leave it. Oh wiat, Jeff Cutler just asked me to join a room! It's my room!
I guess I can leave this open all day for friends to join.
Interesting.
UPDATE:
If you leave your room open to FRIENDS, any can join, even after you leave you room, if you leave it open. A friend from CT just joined a chat with my nephew. That never would have happened with Zoom.
My mom (94) doesn't have the most recent iMac. Because of this, her browsers are not the latest, because the latest operating system can no longer be downloaded and run.
I wanted to get her Apple TV+, so she could watch Defending Jacob. She wanted to see it. I also think she'll enjoy The Morning Show, and For All Mankind.
So I logged into her computer remotely, and directed her Safari browser to tv.apple.com
.
There, we could watch the trailer for Defending Jacob, but could NOT press the PLAY button.
