Script and High-Res Images at GadgetReport.TV/2

There are a couple major challenges I have being on camera. So far, my biggest problem is bringing enough energy to my presentation. My natural speaking voice is very soft. I kick it up when I talk to strangers. I have to kick it up even more when I talk through a camera. It’s a matter of practice. I’ll get there quick enough. The other challenge for me is a tendency to talk with my hands. People found it distracting on episode 1, especially since my hands don’t necessarily relate to what I’m saying.

In episode 2, which I’m editing now, I calm my hands. It turns out, though, there is some degree of correlation between how much my hands move and the amount of energy I put in my voice. It will be interesting to see if anyone notices that.

When you watch the first episode, I hope you’ll be reminded of the spirit and humor of GeekBrief.TV, and I hope you’ll get a sense of where I’m going with the show. I’m starting with a look back at some of my favorite gadgets, in different categories, from the last year. Tomorrow, I’ll start covering CES remotely the way we did with GeekBrief.TV.

I’m a pretty harsh self-critic, and I have to read the advice Ira Glass from This American Life gives to creatives from time to time …

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” -Ira Glass

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

The first few episodes of The Gadget Report will have flaws, but they’ll give you a taste of what I’ve imagined. It will take a bit of time to work out a workflow that isn’t interminable. I like making extremely produced shows. That takes a lot of time. Episode 1 took at least 20 hours to post-produce. I’m building template elements that are already helping me speed things up. My goal is for it to take six hours from writing to upload. It may take months to get to that point. I expect to release an episode approximately every other day.

If you haven’t seen the first episode of GadgetReport.TV, please watch it now and help me spread the word. Subscribe and give thumbs up at Youtube, and then subscribe in iTunes once it’s available there as a podcast later this week! I appreciate you giving it a shot and need your help in matchmaking the show with the audience that will enjoy it!

The script and transparent .png files of gadgets I cover will be available at GadgetReport.TV / episode number, so for example the script and images for episode 1 of The Gadget Report is at GadgetReport.TV/1.

I worked on things to fit what she said where her dreams. Modeling didn’t work because that business is just weird. She groked it and that business doesn’t like girl who grok it. We then started writing a book. Harry Potter was taking off and we started writing a book set in New Orleans with a flood threat that skidded to a halt with Katrina. My next thing was podcasting inspired by Dawn and Drew. The Crappy Christian Show quickly evolved from Luria and me getting drunk and talking into a mic into a ministry type thing to share the idea that God may love gay people just as they are, without any expectation they change. I didn’t want to be in ministry and Luria certainly didn’t.

Steve Jobs announced the first iPod that played video and I worked to make that iPod play GeekBrief.TV. That worked well. We started making money. Mevio was a great partner. Luria wanted more, and people in her life convinced her she was the character I wrote every day. Her belief that she was Cali Lewis grew into an argument that led her to leave our marriage.

I still want to be writing tech news as Cali Lewis and producing GeekBrief.TV. I don’t get that as an option, and I’ve come close to launching alternative visions. I almost released a gadget show yesterday.

Here’s the deal though … I don’t want to work on a next thing that is anything but temporary. My heart can’t currently believe in long term. I want to work, but I’m not ready to say, “This is the thing that replaces Cali Lewis and GeekBrief.TV for me.” Even my dreams for Bacon.TV in partnership with Wright Brand Bacon isn’t that powerful!

The Mayans predicted the world ends at the end of 2012. Obviously, that’s silly just like when that preacher dude did it twice in 2011. But you know what? So what! What will happen if I live this year like it’s not only my last year, but yours? That’s what I’m going to do.

Tomorrow I launch a temporary thing I can believe in and I think it will inspire you to do something better than you planned to do in 2012. It isn’t serious because I’m not ready to be serious. It’s just about fun.

I’ve lost my life goal of being married to a beautiful, smart, and kind girl. I’m not making that kind of goal again. To make it through. I want to live as though it’s not only my last year but yours too.

I stopped registering domain names with GoDaddy.com long ago.

GoDaddy was a huge part of GeekBrief.TV’s revenue. It wasn’t sponsorship. It was commission. We made money when people registered a domain name using promo code GB1, GB2, or GB3. Enough GeekBrief.TV viewers were using that code that we were making $10,000 a month in commissions. GoDaddy wanted to change our promo codes because so many people were using them. That pissed us off and we told Bob Parsons, “thanks, but no thanks.” We worked hard to brand those codes and we were not willing to give up the power of our back catalog to loose money. We were only willing to continue to work with GoDaddy.com if they were willing to continue to work with GeekBrief.TV

We stopped promoting them, and I started a search for a new domain name registrar. The one I picked and the one I recommend is Name.com

I won’t support GoDaddy.com because I believe Bob Parsons is a bad man for a simple reason. Supporting SOPA matters to me a whole lot less than the fact he shot an elephant. Any person who shoots an elephant is a murderer. It’s not the same as shooting a deer or a pig. If you think I’m wrong, do some research. Elephants mourn their dead in a way other animals don’t. Anyone who would shoot an elephant isn’t worthy of my business.

I’m not a PETA person, either. I love hunters. I’ve got elk and deer meat in my freezer now. Shooting deer or elk for food is not anything like shooting an elephant to prove to yourself that you have a penis.

There are lots of alternatives to GoDaddy.com. I’ve chosen Name.com and I’ve loved the experience working with them. I sincerely apologize to those of you who registered domain names with GoDaddy.com because of GeekBrief.TV. We misjudged them and I’m sorry.

I designed this cube inspired by Tivoli Audio’s Model One as the form factor I wanted.

And then when Griffin Technologies had their Evolve wireless speakers ready, they invited us to preview them at their HQ in Nashville.

We learned about the problems engineers had to overcome to make wireless work without lag and asynchronicity. Those issues have been conquered and now wireless speakers work great. My favorite wireless speaker technology is made by Soundcast. Good stuff.

Industrial Designers, John Van Den Nieuwenhuizen and Vitor Santa Maria have surpassed a goal on Kickstarter to manufacture a gorgeously designed Bluetooth wireless speaker and radio where the whole top is a giant volume knob. About the size of a giant coffee mug, the hidden speaker has a rechargeable battery providing 30-hours of streaming audio.

Here’s the dream for any new media producer. When we’re able to shoot in 4K and get that video to anyone who wants to watch it on a mobile phone or IMAX sized screen within minutes (even better live), then we have a real revolution.

I read about a company today on Techcrunch called latakoo. The story is a group of journalists joined some tech guys to fix a problem. We’ve got gear to shoot amazing footage. Moving that footage from one part of the world to another without lots of quality loss or lots of time to wait makes what we do frustrating. Latakoo says they’re solving that problem.

The best way I can explain how cool this is is to give you a hypothetical case study. With GeekBrief.TV, we never covered CES by going there. It’s expensive to go, and I’m a cheapskate. I was only willing to go if we could get the expense sponsored, but that wasn’t possible because of our deal with Mevio. We covered CES by making several short episodes of GeekBrief.TV based on news coming out of CES.

Here’s the deal, though … there were lots of people attending CES that would have gladly served as GeekBrief.TV corespondents. There was no way to get high quality video from Vegas to Dallas in an amount of time that would have been good enough to make the kind of show I wanted to make.

Latakoo has built a system for moving great quality video from source to production quickly.

I haven’t tried latakoo, but what I read about them sounds like just what wasn’t possible when we were covering events remotely. I hope to have an opportunity to work with this company on a future product because they’re meeting a need in a really important way.

The first part of the year, I worked on trying to save my marriage. I went to counseling, support groups, read books, watched videos. There is nothing I wouldn’t have done to fix it because I didn’t believe in divorce or giving up. I don’t think there was anything I could have done to change her heart, mind or focus. When fixing it didn’t change anything, I started working on me.

I grew up in church and for me nothing feels like home like when I’m in church. I was a close-minded fundamentalist who loved the story of Jesus. As a teenager, I fell in love with the charismatic experience of worship. There is a mystical thing that happens in a charismatic church as the music starts on a high and transitions into a tender, peaceful rest. I wanted to grow up to lead worship because I loved those feelings I got in church.

After I was married, that girl seemed perfect. I couldn’t name a sin she was guilty of, and if she was sin-free, what did I really need with a God I couldn’t see? We stopped going to church and I started worshiping her. I thought she was all I needed. I didn’t think I needed friends. I didn’t think I needed family and I didn’t think I needed God. I gave up on God and gave up worship

It wasn’t fair to her though. It might feel nice to be worshiped a little, but no human can stand to be worshiped with the intensity I worshiped her. When she couldn’t supply the spiritual and emotional needs I used to get from worshiping God … that joy unexplainable and peace that passes all understanding … I began to slowly fall apart. I broke and I wanted to die.

This Summer, I worked on healing. I reconnected with friends and family in beautiful ways. I went to Budapest, Vienna and Prague. I ate, prayed and wondered about the possibility of love. Friends and family sustained me. When I fell apart, they grabbed me and held me back together. I confessed my sins to them and they didn’t run away. They helped me heal. They saw me weak. They saw me cry. They saw me want to give up. The saw me through.

This year, I became a worshiper of God again. I’m not a fundamentalist any more and I can’t come anywhere near thinking you would get the same thing I get from faith, but I know it works for me. I feel like me again. I have joy and peace in the middle of the decimation of my hopes and dreams. My church has a thing called Freedom Ministries and it has been the most transformative experience of my life, on both cognitive and spiritual levels. It’s helped me with depression, fear of rejection, selfishness and I’m just getting started. Freedom classes are available online.

In her book, Mosaic, Amy Grant shares a conversation she had with Sarah Cannon who is more famously known as Minnie Pearl. Amy visited Sarah when Sarah was dying and Sarah asked her, “Amy, do you know what the most important color is in an artist’s palette?” Amy thought about it and then Sarah told her, “Child, it’s black. Black is the most important color for an artist. You see? Without black there is no depth. Without black everything appears flat. But mix black with any color and you can paint an object so real you want to reach out and touch it.” The lyrics to one of my favorite songs say,

So I thank God for the mountains
And I thank Him for the valleys
I thank Him for the storms He’s brought me through
’cause if I never had a problem
I wouldn’t know that He could solve them
I wouldn’t know what faith in His Word could do

This year has been the hardest of my life, but it’s brought depth and meaning like I’ve never had before. I’m starting to build something new and this time it won’t be a frivolous quest for fame and fortune. I want what I do next to be a tool than generates resources to help hurting broken people. It will be just as shiny, happy and fun as GeekBrief.TV, but it will have a deeper purpose.

This last week I was in the home of a dear friend, Pastor Randy McCain. He preached the funeral of Tammy Faye Bakker. There were two things I remember Tammy Faye saying over and over again.

1. You can make it!
2. God loves you! He really, really does!

I have a lot to do! My goal is to build an amazing new media production company that entertains, inspires, funds charity and maybe even changes the world a little bit.

Stay tunned…

Writing the show hasn’t changed much except that Luria writes much more than she did when she was here. It’s been interesting to see the different types of stories she chooses than me. I tend to write about gadgets. She tends to write about tech news and Web services like Google Docs. The Brief we will release today is about stuff we both wanted to cover. I wrote some of today’s show yesterday, some this morning and she wrote some to. Because of Google Docs, it’s always been easy to collaborate on a script.

After the script is done, Luria shoots it herself. She has our lights and the camera and the teleprompter. She shoots in front of a green screen in one take with one fixed shot and then she transfers one HUGE file to me, via FTP. The uncompressed footage is typically 4-8GB per episode. Sometimes it takes five hours, and really, that’s the biggest downside of the setup.

I have all the editing gear. As I download the file, I do preproduction graphics that will be used in the episode. When I have the file, I drag it into Final Cut Pro. It usually takes less than an hour to edit. Occasionally, when there are unusual graphics or video features in a particular episode, it takes longer.

I compress the show into three formats using Sorenson Squeeze. It does an excellent job, but it’s slow (and expensive). Then I upload the four formats to Mevio and post to the GeekBrief.TV Web site.

Except for news that needs to be more timely the workflow has worked well. It’s always fun to trouble shoot our way through new challenges.

My wife and I used to do Web design and development during the time Internet culture was starting to bloom (before the dot com bubble popped). Tech TV was a cable channel about technology that drew geeks together, and for the first time, geeky people started to feel like we could be cool too.

After the bubble burst, we kind of burned out on tech. We stepped away completely and took a job in the glamorous world of self storage. The company we worked for was called Extra Space Storage and although we thought it would be a temporary job, they treated us well and let us open new stores so we could move around the country. Before we knew it, we had been there almost five years. That was 2005, the year podcasting started to gain attention.

We loved the idea of podcasting for the same reasons we were drawn to the Internet. We listened to Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code, then Dawn and Drew and the list just kept growing. When Dawn and Drew quit their job to Podcast full time, we decided that would be our goal.

Around the same time, Steve Jobs announced the first iPod with video. It seemed like there was room for new content. Everyone always said podcast about what you love. The thing Cali and I love in common is technology. We loved Engadget and Gizmodo so we decided to create a gadget video blog.

My idea was that Cali Lewis would be the International Head of the Geek Intelligence Agency and she would issue regular “Briefs” about gadgets and technology. We had no experience with video production, but we were laser-focused. We wanted to make the best looking show we could make and improve it every day. We also wanted to make it a business that would succeed.

It has been very successful, from our perspective, but it has been hard work. The first two years, as we were really learning how to get the show done, we often worked 14-16 hours a day at least six days a week. Mevio, our partner for distribution and advertising, has been an unseen force in what we’ve been able to do too. They made it possible for us to do the show full time and have connected us with advertising dollars that have kept Cali in T-Shirts and both of us in gadgets. It’s been good.

To me, three things all successful new media projects have in common is compelling content, professionalism and a sense that they all just keep doing it and doing it and doing it. Constant content production plus laser-focus is what seems to work.

UPDATE: Shamir Katsu asked two follow-up questions…

(1) How did you get hooked up with Mevio?

It’s easy now. Anyone can sign up for an account and launch a show on the network. They look at shows that perform in terms of audience growth and they reach out with advertising opportunities. Jeff McCord, the host of the Moxie Mo Show is a perfect example. He watched GeekBrief.TV, wanted to do a show of his own, asked us for advice, launched his show and he’s making extra money from it.

(2) How do you maintain that focus and drive to keep going when things are not going well?

There are two different ways to go with that. Some pursuits aren’t worth the effort. If you start something and it doesn’t ever start clicking, it’s probably best to let that go and move on to something else. If you start something with merit, you’ll see some signs of success and you’ll want to focus on what works and abandon what doesn’t.

When things aren’t going well it’s time to be as objective as possible. Sep back and work to understand the problem. Make adjustments a pay close, close attention to the things that bring positive results and do more of those things!