latakoo … this is important
When Luria and I launched GeekBrief.TV in 2005, we bumped up against a lot of limitations. Bandwidth was only as good as we could get. The first batch of shows was in standard definition, and I wanted us to be HD. Even when we started shooting in HD, the show couldn’t be delivered in anything like real HD.
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.
Read MoreMarc Maron’s WTF Podcast
In the last couple weeks I’ve been wrapping up a DVD project and listening to a podcast called, “WTF with Marc Maron.” It’s a remarkable show for a number of reasons. Marc is a comedian who had some success on TV and stage but he’s not a household name like Robin Williams or Jerry Seinfeld. He started the show as he was going through a divorce. He knows a lot of comics and he interviews them on his show.
The funny thing about his show, though is that it isn’t always funny. Carol Burnett said, “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” On WTF, Marc talks to famous comedians about hardship and pain … both his own and theirs. He also talks to them about the good times. WTF has a very unique hopeful feel to it. It has a sense of real humanity. Maybe the best word to describe it is kinda … deep.
I appreciate people who speak openly about hardship and pain because I just can’t relate to people who present their lives as perfect … like they’re always “winning!” Real life has ups and downs, and real people I can relate to talk about both.
If you know me personally, I’m a fan of God, but not so much a fan of the Bible. One of the things I do love about the Bible though is that it stars people who lived very flawed lives. King David (the Bible calls him a “man after God’s own heart”} lusted for another man’s wife and had the husband killed so he could be with her. If you believe the Bible, even after David did something truly bad, he maintained his friendship with God.
Every once in awhile people question me for sharing all I’m going through online. It isn’t about wanting pity. That’s usually the criticism I get. It’s about being real. I expect to get through what happened to me, but I’m not there yet. Some days it’s great. Some days it sucks. That’s life.
Marc Maron says, “Before it, I was sort of an isolated artist. I was respected within the standup community, and obviously I knew a lot of people, but I didn’t know them well. And sort of through my own attitude and my own insanity, I saw myself as a marginalized character.” That’s exactly how I feel about my place in new media and tech. I’ve been a winner. Right now I’m a loser. I’ll be a winner again.
Marc’s show is about show biz a little. Mostly though, it’s about people who make a living on stage making people laugh. It’s wonderful, and if you haven’t listened, I hope you will.
Read MoreDawn and Drew
The story of me falling in love with work and starting GeekBrief.TV starts with me hearing about a couple in Wisconsin called Dawn and Drew back in July, 2005. I can remember exactly where I was standing in our apartment above the store where we worked when I heard the opening of the show with Dawn Miceli saying, “Get ready. Get ready, baby! It’s the Dawn and Drew Show.”
I woke up at 2AM Friday morning and started editing. When stuff renders in Final Cut, I check Facebook and Twitter. When I checked Facebook, I saw a post by Drew that he and Dawn were robbed in their home by guys with guns and machettes. Most of their valuables were taken and Dawn and Drew were left bloodied. They are now going to leave their home in Costa Rica and move back the U.S.
I’m not in a position to help them in any way that matters right now but there always seem to be angels everywhere in the form of people who can. Dawn and Drew need money to get back home. So I thought I’d share what happened just in case someone reads my blog who can help in a way I can’t. They are two of the best people I’ve ever met.
http://thedawnanddrewshow.com/support/
Read MoreWe Live in Public
Jason Calacanis tweeted about a documentary called, We Live in Public. The title sounded relevant to my life, so I looked it up on Netflix and watched it today … gotta love the Netflix iPad App. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant film to watch, but there are lessons anyone participating in social media can learn from it.
The film is about Josh Harris. Harris made a lot of money in the early .com days. He had a vision for Internet TV back when most of us were still on dial-up. He started a company called Pseudo.com and when his personality made investors uncomfortable, he moved on to invent lifecasting. He and his girlfriend lived in a loft with cameras and microphones everywhere until the experiment cost them his money, their relationship, and maybe some sanity.
For about a year before we launched GeekBrief.TV, I studied attention economics in an effort to understand how to share information people can get from a wide variety of sources in a way that is special enough that they would want to get it from us. As a shy, retreating, bookish couple, we had to stretch outside our comfort zone in order to accomplish our goal. It helped immensely that Luria has that special something when she’s on camera. Stretching beyond what felt comfortable enabled us to accomplish what I thought we could.
Tools of social media give us all access to the world any time we want it. It’s then up to us to choose how much we live in public. As Luria and I walk through the pain of ending our marriage, it feels improper to talk about the personal stuff and disingenuous to say nothing at all. Our goal is to make it through this gracefully. I’m inclined to share my personal pain because it has helped me to read other people’s stories. Anytime I do that though, I have to do it in a way that is respectful of Luria’s desire for privacy. It’s tricky so my default is now set to Not Share.
Everything we’re going through is new. I’m sure we’ll both make mistakes. I’m more sure I’ll make more mistakes than she will. I’m not convinced it was the right thing to announce this on our blogs. I just don’t know, but one thing she and I both believe is that the geek world is better than the cool world because geeks are concerned about perfecting our tech while accepting one another just as we are. Beyond that, living in public is a tricky proposition, so if you choose to do it, it’s probably best to proceed with caution.
Read MoreHow We’re Doing GeekBrief.TV from Two Locations
I’ve said all I’m going to say about the personal part of what’s happening, but I thought it would be kind of cool to share how we’ve been producing the show from two locations.
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.
Read More
