Stilgherrian » radio

Links for 17 July 2008 through 18 July 2008

del.icio.us — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 01:44:59 +0000

Stilgherrian’s links for 17 July 2008 through 18 July 2008, gathered according to the ancient rituals:

Who is watching YouTube? The US courts want to know | ABC News: Are IP addresses personal information? Peter Black's take on the recent YouTube vs Viacom decision. With a lengthy comment by yours truly.
stripe - what you want on radio: A new multi-channel "Internet radio" service due to go live on 29 July. Subscription model, based in Australia. Investors include Glenn Wheatley and Alan Jones.
"Is St Isidore of Seville really the Patron Saint of the Internet?": Short answer: Yes.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Well that was a strange little disaster!

Stilgherrian — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:08:59 +0000

The “live recording” of Stilgherrian Live Alpha Episode 1 didn’t exactly go according to plan. You can see the resulting video now, but I’ll write up some notes during the day.

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Stilgherrian Live Alpha: episode 1 tonight!

Stilgherrian — Wed, 07 May 2008 22:51:35 +0000

I’ve just organised by first guest(s) for tonight’s inaugural episode of Stilgherrian Live Alpha. And, as you can see, we’ve spent half the night playing with graphics too.

I’ll be speaking with Adam Purcell and/or Jared Madden from Emerge.tv about tune-out.com campaign — their counter-campaign to the music industry’s propaganda film, Australian Music In Tune, which I wrote about the other day.

How can the music industry respond to the dramatic changed happening around them? Is it actually too late for them to change? And it’s interesting to note that the film on their website right now isn’t quite the same as the one originally released…

Since it’s the first program, I’ll probably tell you a bit about myself and what’s been on my radar this week. If there’s anything you’ve wanted to ask me, now’s the time.

Stilgherrian Live Alpha is recorded live at stilgherrian.com/live at 9.30pm Sydney time (1130 UTC), and I’ll be talking “talkback” via audio and video.

If you turn up early, you’ll probably see us doing some last-minute technical tests. And once the program is recorded, I’ll turn it in a podcast — details later.

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Stilgherrian Live Alpha: a program brief

Stilgherrian — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:28:02 +0000

Decided! The first episode of Stilgherrian Live Alpha will be “recorded live” on the Internet this Thursday 8 May at 9.30pm Sydney time. Oh shit! That’s tomorrow!

I won’t repeat what I’ve already written about my plans [1, 2]. This post presents a Program Brief — so I can clarify my thinking as much as anything else — and gathers a few recent thoughts. I’m intending to make the entire process transparent in the immodest hope that someone might find it useful.

Aims

Continue my process of moving from doing hands-on technical work to media production, executive production and consulting.
Build upon the “Stilgherrian as a blogger” brand to establish the core personal media global microbrand of “Stilgherrian as a presenter”, around which I can gather other projects.
Establish a regular audience who can become the core of my 1000 True Fans.
Develop and document production workflows so that we can produce similar programs quickly and cheaply.
Experiment with and settle upon a suite of hardware, software and services which works for me in this context.

See, there is method to my madness!

Program Brief

Title: Stilgherrian Live Alpha. Stilgherrian Live is the primary name, and will continue to be used for my personal live programs. The Alpha emphasises that this is pilot material. It will be dropped as soon as we’re happy that we’re moving to a beta product, i.e. all of the components have been individually tested. This may or may not take more than the initial 8 episodes.

In a nutshell: The world from the perspective of a Sydney-based geek. The program will naturally reflect my worldview and interests. However talking to people who have different worldviews will help clarify my own and, with luck, create interesting dialog.

Target Audience: Anyone who’s curious about the world they live in, with a geeky slant. Eventually I’d like to present a general talk show. However I currently work on geek stuff, and the potential audience is primarily geeks. Since I want to build a strong audience initially I need to take that into account.

Format: 8 x 30-minute video programs. The exact format is still to be decided, but I’ve identified some possible elements which I’ll talk about later.

Schedule: Thursdays 9.30pm from 8 May 2008. Live streaming will begin before the program start time for technical tests, and to give the “true fans” a behind-the-scenes view. Recording will start at 9.30pm sharp. Streaming will continue after the live program recording ends so that we can discuss technical issues.

This schedule may change. Tuesday nights probably offer a better audience, and I may need to work around other commitments. Plus there’s our Eurovision thing on Sunday 25 May.

Technical Plan

Live Broadcast & Recording: This is the set-up I’ll be using for the first episode — pretty much what I have lying around. I may upgrade various elements as I go along.

Camera: Logitech Webcam Pro 4000 USB. It’s pretty crappy, sure, but my aim in the first episode is to assemble a broadcast chain, now win an award for cinematography. It will be replaced by the built-in iSight when I get my new Macbook Pro.
Microphone: Logitech ClearChat Pro headset.
Video Mix: CamTwist.
Audio Mix: Audio Hijack Pro?
Video Monitoring: On-screen.
Audio Monitoring: Logitech ClearChat Pro headset.
AV streaming: Ustream.tv.
Primary Recording: Ustream.tv.
Backup Recording: Snapz Pro X?

Podcasting: The program will be podcast as soon as possible after broadcast.

Ustream: Automatic after recording.
YouTube: Automatic cross-post from Ustream.
Stilgherrian.com: Download after broadcast, do a top & tail edit, and post using podPress.
iTunes: Automatic cross-post from podPress.

Talkback

Yes, I will be taking calls. Initially this will be via Ustream’s system, so you’ll need a Ustream account. However I plan to take voice calls via Skype — which in turn will allow be to use SkypeIn to take calls from any phone line.

So, how does all that sound?

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So how will this podcast actually work?

Stilgherrian — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:45:43 +0000

My podcast thoughts are rapidly congealing into a nice creamy chocolate custard pudding filled with cocaine: edgy and invigorating, but still appealing to traditionalists. And deeply, deeply satisfying.

Conversations on Twitter this morning helped provide focus for the evolving plan… and raised some questions. I’m determined to make this program “live”, or at least “recorded live”. But how will it actually work?

I have the technology and experience to produce full “broadcast quality” audio material — see the pretty Sennheiser microphone? However I really want to explore the program format(s) and production techniques needed to produce micro-radio and micro-TV using whatever can be carried in my backpack. While audio quality may not be perfect yet, it’ll eventually catch up. For the time being the novelty value means the audience will endure it. Especially if I can keep the content fresh.

As I said perhaps a little too cruelly this morning, podcasts sound either like ABC Radio National (people talking to themselves), or the worst of community radio (ditto). Being able to interact with people while the program is happening is important. I admit my opinion is coloured by having produced (endured?) 4000+ hours of live talk and talkback radio.

So, further to what I said yesterday…

It will be a general talk show. I was pleased that @deanlk said “You’ve hit the right mix of geekery and [Australian] news & politics.” If I have to write a tag line now, it’s “How the world works, from the perspective of an Australian geek.”
Weekly, 30-minute programs. I know, the Internet doesn’t have to be exact, but it’s still a good discipline.
Format: video. The video is going to be mostly me, sorry, but I’ll always find some imagery to match the conversation. CamTwist allows you to automatically create a live slideshow from a Flickr photo stream, so that shouldn’t be much work.
Schedule: a weekday evening, time TBA. The schedule is the tricky bit. It needs to happen when the audience is available, and that’s either weekday evenings or on weekends. Tuesday night is traditionally the busiest night on the Internet, and hence the biggest potential live audience, but Thursday works better for me. And what time? 9.30pm Sydney time, when it’s 7.30pm in Perth, giving them an opportunity to join too? Whaddyareckon?

I’ve also had some thoughts about what I might cover in early episodes.

It’s my birthday, so introduce me; talk about Baby Boomers vs Generation X vs Generation Y etc and what it means; is it OK to lie about your age? Who should be my first guest?
China (various angles); the Federal Budget.
CeBIT Australia and the current state of geekery. Lots of material there!

I’ll spend the rest of this week brainstorming the possibilities, then decide on Monday 5 May how it’ll actually proceed. Please, more comments!