The Gadget Report
Just in time for CES, I’ve launched a new Gadget News show called The Gadget Report at GadgetReport.TV. I’m using the first couple episodes to work out my workflow and attempt to get it up to speed by Monday.
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.
Read MoreVocal iPhone Dictation App Mentioned on Rush Limbaugh May have Made 17-Year-Old Developer Very Rich in a Day
You might be shocked to learn one of the main inspirations behind GeekBrief.TV is Rush Limbaugh. I listen to a lot of NPR, but I also grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern. While Rush over simplifies and over generalizes the positions of the people he opposes politically, there are a couple of non political things he does on his show that happen randomly and I love them both. Rush is a huge Apple fan. He reads Apple rumor sites and it’s awesome when he gets giddy about a new release. The other thing he does from time to time is talk about the media business and his how he came to dominate radio ratings.
Today he started his show talking about an amazing new App for iPhone 4S called Vocal. It works with a companion Mac App and give you the ability vocally control a Mac and dictate into writing applications from the iPhone. Rush spent a good fifteen minutes raving about how great it is. Listeners were emailing asking questions because they couldn’t find it in the App Store. Rush talked about the App more and referred listeners to the developer’s website, spelling out the URL: http://mtrbts.me/vocal. To help listeners find the right App, Rush told listeners it was developed by Matt Roberts. He said, “You’ll know you’ve found the right App if it’s by Matt Roberts. He also recommended listeners go to Matt’s site to watch the demo video I’ve embedded below.
In all, Vocal probably got about 20-minutes of air time on a show with 20-Million listeners.
I watched the video planning to write a post about the App. I had no plans to include details about Rush, until I clicked on Matt Roberts Twitter link. Matt is a 17-year-old student in Australia who had never heard of Limbaugh until today. Matt says, Limbaugh’s listeners are making up a majority of his support requests.
http://twitter.com/#!/ma_ttie/status/149623075246313472
I think it’s very cool that we live in a world where a 17-year-old can build an App that can get 20 minutes of praise on a show that is supposed to be about conservative politics!
Read MoreIs Kicksend the File Exchange Answer?
As a content creator, I’m always looking for tools to make the process faster and smoother. Most things I publish are not time sensitive, but I still want to produce quickly so that I can produce more.
Something that has frequently frustrated me is how complicated it is to move files from one device to another. I use two iPads, an iPhone, a Mac Pro and a MacBook Pro. There are some things that are more fun to produce on iPad and others that are more fun to produce on a Mac. The Cloud promises a central location for files we need everywhere, but no cloud solution I’ve found is good enough. I’ve tried Dropbox, Airdrop and countless services I can’t name. Usually, I end up just emailing the file I need to get it from one device to another.
Kicksend is the new kid on the file sharing block. They have a desktop app, and this past week, they released an iPhone App. With no file size limits, Kicksend lets users send photos, video and documents. If you send the file to a friend using a Kicksend App, it’s immediately available to them in the App inbox. If they don’t have the App, they get a download link via email.
They’ve launched during the holiday social season, and this is a good time to try it. When you’re with friends and family, someone will inevitably shoot a video of a kid doing something especially cute. That video can immediately be shared using Kicksend with everyone at the gathering who wants a copy.
It’s free to download both the the desktop and the iPhone app. You get some amount of exchange a month for free. I think it’s around 1GB, but there seem to be some promotional things you can do to get more for free. If you need to exchange more data, you can upgrade. $5/month gets you 5GB/month. $10/month gets you 10GB/month. $20/month gets you 30GB/month. Files are stored longer with premium accounts.
If, like me, you haven’t fallen in love with a file exchange service yet, Kicksend seems worth a try. So far, I kind of dig it.
Read MoreA Tribute to Dennis Ritchie | Guest Post by AndrewUK
Whilst there was some mention at the time of his death, Dennis Ritchie will never remain in the public conscious as much as Steve Jobs, who died a few days before him. Steve Jobs’ achievements are clear for all to see, the rise of the iMac (and the translucent plastic colours that appeared in all types of products soon after from staplers to buckets); the iPod and iTunes; the iPhone; and then the iPad. As consumers we all have, or know someone who has, purchased one of those products. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ continue to mention Steve Jobs and his Apple achievements. But what of Dennis Ritchie and the legacy he has left us?
To a Geek the answer will be as the author of the programming language C and as a major partner in the development of UNIX. I sat in the pub many years ago hearing the hushed conversations of those versed in C or C++, never one of them, but able to appreciate the power it gave them to produce great software.
But to a consumer what did he do for us? A large number of things that we just accept as the infrastructure of our digital lives;
Dennis Ritchie 9/9/1941 - 10/8/2011
To send this post to Neal, my email will have traversed many systems running on UNIX/Linux;
Of the websites on which I research data every day, many are running on Linux servers;
If you accept the statistics quoted by Wikipedia, 90% of todays supercomputers run a variant of Linux. Scientific research that affects us all is probably facilitated by Dennis Richie’s work.
Use a Mac Mini, MacBook, Mac Pro, iMac running OS X? There’s UNIX at the core of that;
Use a programme on a computer, there’s a good chance it was written in C or one of the programming languages that spawned from it.
Use a set-top box for cable, satellite or as a Personal Video Recorder, yes you’ve guessed it, Linux could be in there too.
The list could go on and on. And it will no doubt continue to grow as Linux and OS X form the heart of many new consumer implementations we can only dream of now,
To some he will remain an unsung hero of our digital age, to many a name to search for on Google or Bing if they can be bothered. And to me? Whenever I hear mention of Steve Jobs’ death, I will think of Dennis Richie, as the New York Times so succinctly put it, a “Trailblazer in Digital Era, Dies at 70.”
printf("Never Forgetn");
AndrewUK
Read MoreAndrewUK is the most loyal commenter on NealCampbell.com. He wrote suggesting I write a blog post about Dennis Ritchie. I posted links to other people’s tributes at the time of Ritchie’s death on social networks. I’m ashamed to say, Dennis Ritchie wasn’t a name I knew until we found out about his death. I have a connection to his work, obviously, but no emotional connection to the man. Believing it’s better not to write at all than to write without an emotional connection to the subject, I asked Andrew to write the first guest post on NealCampbell.com. Andrew doesn’t have anything he wants to promote. He doesn’t do social media and doesn’t want a link, so instead, he gets my gratitude for sharing what Dennis Ritchie meant to him.
Hidden Radio and Bluetooth Speaker
Early in the days of GeekBrief.TV, when we had quit the day job to produce the show full-time, I had a need that wasn’t being met by any available technology. I used the show to lobby for wireless speakers that could be placed around a house or an apartment so whatever podcast I played in iTunes would fill the place.
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.