Disruptive Conversations

Last week as I packed for the trip to our corporate office in Ottawa, I naturally grabbed my bag of audio gear in case I was inclined to do any recording while I was up there.  Unfortunately, the one piece of gear I am still missing is a small audio mixer that I can carry with me.  What I want to do is fairly simple.  It's one of the following:

1. Connect two condenser mics (or lapel mics) to a mixer and have the audio output go into a recording device (either my PC or my Marantz PMD-660).
2. Connect one mic to the mixer and a laptop (running a softphone) to the mixer with the output going to a recording device - and with a mix-minus bringing the microphone audio back to the laptop PC.  (so that the person on the softphone can hear me through my microphone)

It's #2 that is a killer so far.  The usual route to do this is to have a mixer with an AUX or FX port.  You take the headphone output of your laptop and connect it to one of the channels.  You then connect the AUX (or FX) port back to the microphone jack on your laptop.  On the channel coming from the laptop you turn the AUX send (or FX send) to 0 so that the person on the laptop softphone doesn't hear themself (and get any kind of echo or other feedback loops).  It works great and this is how I record pretty much all my podcasts (both Blue Box and others).

But I can't seem to find this in a small mixer.  I can get my #1 fairly easily- the picture here is of the Tapco Mix 50 and, let me tell you, it's wonderfully small!  About 5 x 7 inches.  Perfect to stick in a travel bag... but it doesn't do a mix-minus.  For that you have to go to a Mix 60, which is just a bit bigger.  The Behringer UB502 is similar in size... but it, too, doesn't do a mix-minus.  I've looked at some of the USB or Firewire audio interfaces... but I want the simplicity of an analog mixer - and when I'm doing a mix-minus I'm very often recording to my Marantz PMD-660 so an audio interface doesn't help much there.

Anyone have a suggestion for a nice small mixer that also has an AUX or FX port?

Extremely astute observers of this blog - who happen to be visiting the web page versus reading it via RSS - will notice that the banner at the top of the page changed a wee bit over the weekend.  Over at the right side there are now two "conversation balloons" a la comic strips.  (Refresh your browser if you don't see them.)  This was part of the vision of my original "blog split-up" back in January.  Each of the blogs (well, currently only this one and Disruptive Telephony, but I've probably got another in the queue) has a unique color for the banner but I also wanted a unique graphic. 

However - and this was a key point - I wanted the blog width to be "fluid" and the text to expand to the size of the browser window.  This naturally ruled out any fixed-size banner images and I knew that I was going to have to use CSS or something like that.  The answer appeared the other week when I noticed what a web designer was doing to change the format of an internal blog we are developing.  The code was really exceedingly trivial:

<div style="float:right;"><img src="imagename" align=left alt="somealttext"></div>

Now I also added a "margin-top:2px;" into the style attribute to move the image down a little bit, and you could also turn the image into a link if you wanted to. 

So now the trick is simply to put this into the right place in your TypePad templates.  As I mentioned previously, I used a "menu bar hack" from TypePadHacks.org to get the menu bar you see across the top of the page.  Because of that, I'm already deep inside TypePad's "Advanced Templates" and already have a customized "banner-header" template.  I just inserted this one line (filled in with names, of course) into that template, republished the site and... ta da... I've got a graphic on the right side of my banner.  Well, I also had to create the image as a transparent GIF, but that's a minor detail.  You'll see I also have this over on Disruptive Telephony, although I'm probably going to change the image because I'm not sure that the white phone as I have it there is overly compelling or useful.  Need something a bit larger and more interesting... although I'm not sure exactly what.  For the record, I found that the images that worked best were about 50 pixels high.  (Larger images forced the banner to be thicker, and that's not what I want.)

At some point when I have the time, I'll write it up for John Unger's TypePadHacks website.  I'd like to write up a bit more info about how to get the "banner-header" template if you don't already have it.  Anyway, if you play with it, have fun...

As I wrote before, Inside PR co-host Terry Fallis has written a "satirical novel" about Canadian politics called "The Best Laid Plans" and, in an experiment, is using social media as a way to see about attracting a publisher.  He is podcasting a chapter of his book each week and now has 4 segments up online. Today he lets us know that he has been interviewed on TV about the project. The TV show is "The Agenda", hosted by Steve Paikin on Ontario station TVO. Kudos to Terry for all the work he's done and I look forward to seeing if he is successful in attracting a publisher.

Also congrats to Terry for having his book listed at Podiobooks... all good stuff.

By way of her linking to this blog, I discovered that Christie Goodman over at the PRSA San Antonio blog has started posting an online "crash course" to help PR practitioners learn about social media. 

She started the series on January 4th, with "Lesson One: Learning About Social Media From Your Desk" and then followed that with a series of posts about RSS and feeds. 

Yesterday, she posted "Lesson Two: Get Acquainted with the Blogs" and I'm going to guess that she's going to focus on that this month... is that correct, Christie?

P.S. Thanks for mentioning this blog and, gee, isn't this a neat example of the power of links to generate links back to your own material! ;-)

For those interested in things related to Second Life, Lee Hopkins has now taken the plunge and rolled out a new blog... "Lee's Second Life" focused on SL.  As he explains here, the blog is primarily to document the research he is doing toward a PhD.  Nicely, he's gone in and back-filled the blog with entries from his main blog that relate to Second Life.  Also, as he noted in an email, I'm very pleased to see that he included a graphic that let's me promote his blog (as I continue to rant about).  Nicely done, Lee!

Best of luck with your PhD research, Lee, and we'll look forward to reading about what you find and explore.

Why are we stuck using a keyboard and a mouse?  Why is the dominant paradigm for our computing?  Why can't we do things another way... perhaps like Tom Cruise's character did in the movie "Minority Report?"

Well, for some time now I've wanted to post about the demonstration done at TED 2006 by Jeff Han of a NY university.. the video is just far too interesting.  But then along comes Jeff Pulver yesterday pointing to this video:

It seems that this new company, Perception Pixel, is founded by none other than Jeff Han of the TED demo! Pretty cool stuff. (Do check out the video of the TED demo as well.)  Now it's just a question of when we might ever see this type of thing actually available...   I'd like one.  I'd far rather just be using my fingers to point then using the mouse.  And for typing... well, why not have the keyboard popup where you want it to be on the screen?  With large enough screens, you could have several keyboards. I don't know... maybe the ergonomics aren't good enough.

Anyway, it's good to see this kind of R&D going on... and hopefully we can see it out in the commercial world some year soon.

How would you like your text and a link to your blog(s) to show up at the very top of a Technorati search as the #1 result? As shown in the picture to the right, I just did that.  If you do a Technorati search on "Michael Keren", with or without quotes around his name, you wind up with a screen like the one I've shown, and right up on top is a peach-ish/tan-ish box with a flame next to it that has a headline, some text and a link to my Technorati profile.  I just put that up there a few minutes ago.

It turns out that two days ago, Technorati released a new feature called "WTF", which they are defining as the more "work-safe" acronym of "Where's The Fire?" [1]  Essentially, you can create a "blurb" explaining why there's a "fire" around a certain search term and post it. Other Technorati users can then vote on the blurb and the blurb with the most votes is the one that lands on top of the list.  As explained on Technorati:

Ever wonder why something is sooooo popular? Why are the hot topics hot? WTFs explain the buzz around people, things, and events. Who writes these WTFs? You do! Anyone can write one on any topic, and everyone can vote for the best explanations. The ones with the most votes rise up and the dreck sinks. Let millions of other people benefit from your genius… no blog required!

Dave Sifry writes more about the new feature and says this:

Here at Technorati HQ, we know that we're taking a pretty risky step - we're putting our highest-value real estate - the topmost search result - in the hands of our community. This is a big social experiment to see if people will work together to help create something great and useful, and will use the voting system to push up the best explanations to the top.

Indeed they are taking a risk... and the experimentation is great to see.  Now let's see how successful it is.  I can see the power of it... but I can also see the abuse.  Since anyone who is a Technorati user can create WTF blurbs for any search, there is nothing to prevent people from leaving blurbs that are quite negative.  For instance, in light of today's economic news, I could (but won't) go leave a blurb on the Exxon Mobil search that says:

Exxon Mobil is a sleazy oil company that announced a quarterly profit of $39.5 billion which works out to a *profit* of $4.5 million dollars *per hour*, while the US Senate is debating whether the minimum wage should be bumped up to $7/hour.

Uh, oh... sounds like yet one more thing that PR and marketing folks need to pay attention to!  I'm guessing the PR folks could put a counter-definition up there as a WTF blurb, but then you've got to get the most votes to wind up on the top!  (And in today's climate, gee, which one is going to get more votes?)   Of course, you could do it for individuals as well.  For instance, because Mitch is just way too easy to pick on, I could (but won't) add to the "mitch joel" Technorati search:

Bald black-wearing blogger from "beautiful Montreal" with tons of groupies who raves about Second Life and pronounces "image" a funny way.

I don't know what happens if Mitch then posts a WTF blurb of his own and both have no votes.  Does the latest blurb win?

So the question is - will bloggers in search of links go through and populate Technorati with WTF blurbs that might get people to view their Technorati profile and then their blog?  Will we see "fights" to determine whose blurb gets on top?  How long will it be until unethical people start WTF-spamming to drive links to their profile and blogs?

Interestingly, there doesn't seem to yet be an overly easy way to monitor if there is a "WTF" blurb written for your company... obviously you can look at the page for your search.  If there is already at least 1 blurb, you can monitor the URL "www.technorati.com/wtf/<name>", as in  http://www.technorati.com/wtf/michael-keren, but it's not clear to me that there is yet an automated way to do this (like an RSS feed).

 It will be fascinating to see how people use - and abuse - this system.  So the question, if you are a Technorati user, have you written a WTF blurb for the searches that relate to you?  Will you do so?  Or will you let others...   (and no, Mitch, I won't be submitting that one for you!)

[1] Non-English readers may not realize that "WTF" is also translated in at least American slang as "What The F___?" with the commonly used profanity that sounds a lot like "duck" (as Dan continues to try to keep his blog work-safe).

C.C. Chapman writes about today's craziness in Boston caused by an advertising campaign gone wrong.   Reading the news out of the Boston Globe, it sounds like a pretty crazy day there.  More news here.  And it's not just Boston... these packages are in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco and Philadelphia.  You can almost see someone thinking about it... "why don't we place these signs around cities and encourage people to go out and find them?"

But... duh!... in this day and age, to go and plant things under bridges? and other similar locations?  What in the world were they thinking?  Very unbelievable?

On the other hand, Turner Broadcasting has now received more attention that they could ever have imagined for this cartoon series.  I imagine someone's head will roll at Turner... but I also have to wonder how many people will at least know of the series name by now.

Crazy stuff...

If you have multiple blogs, how do you easily create a single RSS feed that aggregates all of your blogs?  I have faced this issue directly with my migration from a single weblog into a network of blogs.  Some of my readers may, for whatever reason, still want to read all my writing (and to my amazement something like 15 people have subscribed to this feed I'm talking about below).

As I first wrote about over on my personal blog, there is a way now to do this. By using FeedBurner's relatively new "Networks" feature (FAQ here), I have now created the "Dan York - All Feeds" network. There is now a webpage with recent posts and links to the blogs and then an aggregated RSS feed that combines posts in all blogs.

Now, if you look at FeedBurner's list of Networks, you'll see a wide range of uses.  Dave Jones put together one that may be of interest to readers (if you are not already aware) called the Public Relations feed.  It provides a nice list of PR-related feeds and, like mine above, gives you a webpage with sample posts and an aggregated feed.  Each blog included can use a "badge" to promote their inclusion in the network.  For instance, you can look at Dave Jones' blog to see the PR network badge in the top of his right sidebar.  Note that you can click a link to advertise in the network or you can explore network members.

Which gets to the larger point -  FeedBurner is really targeting its "Networks" as a way to enable advertisers to advertise across a series of feeds, i.e. a bunch of feed publishers can band together and then, if they want, get advertising that goes across all their feeds.  Presumably they will have far greater numbers together and thus be able to attract bigger advertisers.

So obviously by building my own private network, I'm twisting the intent a bit.  And the advertisting focus did impact my efforts a bit because in order to create a FeedBurner Network, you have to have a blog that is a member of the FeedBurner Ad Network (FAN).  With a FAN-activated feed, you can then create a Network.  NOTE: None of the other feeds HAVE to be FAN members, but at least one must.  Once you have created a Network, you can invite other people to add feeds via email, or you can add one of your other FAN-activated feeds.

Given this, my steps to create the network were basically:

1. Login to FeedBurner, go to "My Networks" and click "Create a network"
2. Choose one of my FAN-activated feeds to "anchor" the network.
3. Fill out the form and, under "Privacy", switch it from the default of "Public" to "Private".
4. Submit the form and proceed to the page to invite members.
5. Add any of your other FAN-activated feeds to the network using the easy form.
6. Send yourself an email invitation for each of the other feeds to invite them in.
7. For each invitation, accept it on behalf of each different feed.
8. Sit back and enjoy your aggregated feed and site.

Now, if you think about step #6 for a moment... I have 8 feeds I wanted to aggregate, yet only 3 of those are FAN members.  So, yes, indeed, I sent 5 separate invites to my own inbox. I then clicked the link in each separate email and entered FeedBurner to accept membership in my new network for each of the different feeds.  In the end, I did wind up with my "one giant Dan York feed", but the separate email invites was a bit tedious.

Of course, I do understand perhaps why FeedBurner doesn't make this overly easy for non-FAN feeds.  FeedBurner is a business and they are experimenting with the whole FAN idea and the concept of getting advertisers to insert ads in feeds.  So it's in their interest to encourage feeds to be in the FAN so that they have more feeds for advertisers to join into.  So it makes sense in that way.  It may also very well be that the folks at FeedBurner didn't really think people would do what I did here. 

In any event, I thought I'd post this for those of you who: a) use FeedBurner; and b) have multiple blogs/podcasts/feeds/etc.

Let me know what you think... and if for some reason you really want to see all my writing across all my blogs, the feed is now there (well, actually, that's the web page... the feed is down in the lower right marked "Network Feed").

 Given that it seemed an interesting (and one-time) experiment, I left a comment on Tino Buntic's 2000 Bloggers project page and now have been added to the giant page of photos of the 2000 bloggers (WARNING: The page is (Duh!) graphic heavy!)  Rather than leave the URL for my personal blog, I left the URL for this new blog, partly as an experiment in site traffic.  Being so new, I can get a better view of site-driven traffic... we'll see.  I don't really know how many visitors would actually come over here as a result of my picture (the same standard one I use on this blog).  Now, if my picture had been a bit different or strange or weird, perhaps... Anyway, it's just another part of the ongoing experiment in all these media.

BTW, he says he has not yet his 2000 bloggers, so if you are interested in being included, head on over to his page and leave a comment.  (You just need to have a photo on your blog and have been blogging for a bit.)

Meanwhile, do check out the pictures and see how many people you know... :-)  It's also just quite fun to see the wide range of faces and photos.