Waldorf Goes Electric On a Wing and an iPad

On 4/25/20 the San Francisco Waldorf School was to have their annual live fundraising event at a venue in San Francisco. Plans changed. What resulted is a 2 hour YouTube Live event that used Zoom, fotoMagico, mimoLive, Loopback, Final Cut Pro, 2 Macs, 1 Magewell, Speedify, and an iPad. The show had many contributions from the community.

This description of how this show was done is not by any means the only or best way to do something like this. To quote Loren Michaels of Saturday Night Live fame,”The show doesn't go on because it's ready; it goes on because it's 11:30.” In that spirit, this show had to go on April 25th starting at 6:45pm during a pandemic with a number of constraints. That said, I’m pretty happy with the show since there’s been good feedback from viewers. The academy will ignore it but they’ve always done that to me. Seriously, years ago there were few options to doing complicated technical things like this. Today there are many options at various costs. You have to find what works to you. Your milage will vary. A better resourced project would have involved more people and had redundancies. We got lucky.

The show is a mixture of recorded material and live conversations. The live conversations were done with Zoom.

Media components

• Zoom 1, 2, & 3up screens for live conversations

• 23 Lower Thirds

• 24 Video play outs

• 4 Crawls

• PIP social networking report over Zoom screen share

• Output to Zoom and YouTube Live at 720p

2 Computer Setup

Computer 1 runs Zoom in dual screen mode and is in the Zoom Webinar as a participant (different zoom account than Computer 2). The HDMI output from Computer 1 is plugged into a Magewell HDMI > USB device. The USB output is plugged into a USB port on Computer 2 which brings the 2nd screen into Computer 2 as a camera input.

Computer 2 runs Zoom (with a Zoom account that acts as meeting host for the Zoom Webinar), mimoLive with 2 documents, Speedify, and Loopback.

Software Setup

mimoLive main production document

mimoLive document used to feed into Zoom virtual camera and YouTube LIve

Loopback software set up to combine mimoLive and Zoom audio for YouTube Live feed

Internet Access

My office has Comcast cable internet access. As is usual for this kind of service, the download is fine - usually 100-200 Mbps down but only 10-12 Mbps up. In rehearsal this resulted in a poor feed to YouTube Live. Desperately searching for bandwidth I heard about a service called Speedify that combines services. This was one of the many words of wisdom from the kind folks in Alex Lindsay’s Office Hours.

I asked people in my building if I could borrow a cup of WiFi from them. Some were gracious and allowed me to use their bandwidth. Alas, theirs was much slower than mine. I discovered that an iPad with LTE held at the front of my building would get up to 44 Mbps. I ended up leaving an iPad on a front deck with an amplified USB cable and using it as a hotspot over USB to Computer 2 which ran Speedify. I could have run the show on the iPad but decided to combine it with my cable service so I’d have a fallback if Verizon suddenly decided I’d used too many bits.

Technical Staff of 2

The Technical Director worked in advance with all the talent to be certain they knew how to connect and look good. In the hour before the show this person brought everyone in and then set them to attendee before the start of show. During the show TD texted talent and switched them to panelists.

The Technical Producer created 4 of the videos using Boinx Fotomagico & Final Cut Pro. Fixed the audio levels on numerous videos with Final Cut Pro.

(More to come. Let me know what questions you have or would like to hear about. mslade at adlibmedia dot com)

Thanks to Scott Ethersmith, Oliver Breidenbach, John Ittelson, John Gartley, Alex Lindsay, and the Office Hours bunch.

Only the Paranoid Survive

In her article entitled “Be Paranoid About Privacy,“ Kara Swisher speaks clearly about privacy. In it she sites “One Nation, Tracked” which is vital to understanding how apps track us. This is a part of The Privacy Project at the New York Times.

As with all things tech and otherwise, Kara covers this topic well. Among other things, she mentions putting tape over her camera. An item she’s missing (and most writers in this space miss) is the microphone is still available. There are many articles found on Google concerning how to block your microphone but they generally suggest software solutions that can be bypassed by malicious software.

There’s no simple “put tape over it” for mics. In Edward Snowden’s interview with VICE on HBO back in June, 2016 he shows some steps to secure a phone. (Search for ’State of Surveillance' with Edward Snowden and Shane Smith.) The entire video (26:55) is an interesting watch. The phone surgery starts about 14:40. He opens the phone and shows how to disconnect the mics making them totally inoperable. He plugs in earbuds when he wants to make a call.

I wish there were simpler solutions for computers and phones.

Why mobile and tablets are so important.

The overall trend is for people to consume the internet on phones and tablets. If you want to reach them, you must make your content play well on those platforms.

Cool Idea from Sal Khan about Linking Credentials to Jobs

Wonderful idea.

The New York Times Cloud - When it Rains, it Pours.

The Gray Lady has taken a long time to figure out it's place in the world of electronic journalism. She has decided to morph into a virtual Times that gets distributed through many channels. On an iPhone alone I have at least 6 ways to get her news. None of them is quite right for me.

The New York Times is now the New York Times Cloud that comes down in many forms.

The Times is stuck on the concept of publishing everything at once. The idea of printing a daily newspaper is very much still with them. Their assumption seems to be the reader will check in maybe once or twice a day. The problem is events happen all the time and even the Times does not freeze the published edition. Stories are generated or updated frequently. 

As a reader, the Times ignores the two things I value: 1. What I want to know and 2. When I want to know it. 

Because I have a subscription to the New York Times I have a choice of ways to view it.

I don't want to have to go to their NYT Now app which seems to list stories by a concept of importance rather than time. So if I check in 3 or 4 times a day, the sequence is roughly the same and where new articles are added is a mystery. The same is true for the NYTimes website, their Newsstand offering, and how things are sequenced in Flipboard. This concept of organization makes sense for a physical paper which is printed only once a day and cannot mysteriously rearrange itself. It does not work in the digital world.

I want news to come to me where I want it at the time it is first reported. I would like it in my Twitter feed. The @nytimes feed comes close but has too much. @nytimes does deliver articles mostly as they happen and can be useful for breaking news. As a feed, it is stuffed with duplication of insignificant articles, articles I don't care about (how do I subtract sports? or home? or photography? or travel?...), and retweets of whatever strikes their fancy. @nytimes is a superset of what I want. The Times has several Twitter feeds. I wish they had one that was front page, as it happens news without repeats.

Part of the challenge is that I'm apparently an unusual Twitter follower. Apparently, I'm what is known as a completionist. I subscribe to about 170 feeds. Most of them only post when they have something to say. I read them all, in order using Tweetbot. Apparently most people dip in and out of their Twitter feed so repetition may not bother them. Many people on Twitter retweet items assuming repetition is fine. Feeds that do that get dropped by me.

I value the editorial judgment of the New York Times to tell me what is important. Breaking news about who won a tennis tournament is not on the list of things I want to know about.  They also retweet many articles - usually the ones I'm least interested in. This is especially true of feature articles I never want to read. 

It would be wonderful if there was a New York Times Twitter feed that just had new news. I'd follow that.

Meanwhile, I've dropped @nytimes from my feeds.

I, Tamagotchi

Orignial Tamagotchi

Apple Watch Activity App

Tamagotchi is the electronic pet kids keep alive by responding to data about the creature.
Now we are starting to get data to help keep us alive. I hope this goes better than Tamagotchi - many of those died.

Checking Out Charities

In the MacBreak Weekly podcast of 11/25/14, Leo Laporte mentions a great website for evaluating how charities use their money. Charity Navigator provides a lot of information that can help you decide if a charity you're thinking of contributing to uses donations effectively.

Shocking

About 30 years ago I was in a meeting with a customer (I don't remember who) reviewing options for branching in interactive video. The customer asked if we could shock the user if he or she got the answer wrong. We were taken aback by the idea. Well, now you can with the Pavlock.

Of course, Colbert is already on it here.

The Power of Presentation

This 19 minute Planet Money audio podcast tells the story of a bet between a biologist and an economist about the future of humanity. The sad lesson seems to be that charisma and media reach often trumps quality of argument. The Stanford biologist was smooth and charismatic while the economist was a bit awkward. Guess who won public opinion?

Apple Distinguished Educator Global Institute

I've spent a wonderful week in San Diego with educators from around the world. We went on adventures in nature and this is my favorite photo from the week.

View fullsize

This photo has a great story about how woodpeckers get food.

The Multi-Device Web

Ben Foxall gave a very clever presentation in London in June about using multiple devices. Although it was given at a Meteor event it was mostly not about Meteor. I would not have seen this except for a tweet from Paul Dowman.

Common Craft Explains Programming

The nice folks at Common Craft just released this short explanation of programming.

At 2 minutes 41 seconds it is one of the shorter explanations .

Steering Wheel UI

Formula 1 car steering wheels have more buttons and knobs than most. Cool Wired article here.

Powered by Allianz: Get Street Smart Football and motor sport -- Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton master both. But what does their job have to do with precise ball skills? The answer is given in the sixth episode of Grand Prix Insights!

Adobe Voice

Adobe has created a new presentation app for the iPad that creates 'videos' that can be viewed on an iPad or on the web. David Pogue explains here.

Creation is local to the iPad app. The app downloads needed media (icons and images) from the web. Playback on Chrome is in Flash. It also plays on a iPad in a browser so it does not always use Flash. It appears to be creating videos for display in non-Flash HTML5 browsers.

Making the Invisible Visible

An underlying theme of some of my work these days is making things that are unseen  more visible and obvious. Invisible things (like how well someone else hears you on a video conference) is helped when they are made more visible - maybe have a mic to pass around. This goes along with keeping things simple and therefore understandable.

This Penn & Teller video contrasts the seen and the unseen. Magic is meant to entertain but systems are meant to be understood and controlled easily. The first version of the trick is entertaining while the second takes away the mystery and is less entertaining except to marvel at how Teller moves. 

If you are designing a system (video conference or web UI) you want it to be clearly and easily understood by those who run it and look like magic to those who observe it.

Grace Hopper on Letterman

Lovely interview. She programmed the Mark 1 at Harvard.

Shocking Google Glass experience.

A Google Glass user gets electrocuted while making a video of a thunder storm through Glass while the charging cable is plugged in... (Caution: As one might expect there is profanity.)

Don't try this at home...

Sometimes it Takes Patience

After 69 years, the Tar Drop experiment at Trinity College Dublin's School of Physics finally had observed results on July 11, 2013. This 10 to 12 year event has been recorded and is available on YouTube:

Search Google for "tar drop" for more articles about this momentous event.

TED Talks Education

TED Talks Education, hosted by John Legend, premiered May 7, 2013 at 10/9 c on PBS. The website link with the entire 55:30 is here.

Public television and TED, the non-profit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, share a deep commitment to addressing the high school dropout crisis. The TED Talks Education one-hour program brings together a diverse group of teachers and education advocates delivering short, high-impact talks on the theme of teaching and learning. These original TED Talks are given by thought leaders including Geoffrey Canada, Bill Gates, Rita F. Pierson, Dr. Angela Lee Duckworth and Sir Ken Robinson. TED Talks Education is part of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s American Graduate initiative.