June 23, 2008

Arianna Huffington, Matt Stoller and a Quick Qikstream

NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday conducted an interview with Arianna Huffington and Matt Stoller at the Personal Democracy Forum conference earlier today, and I tagged along to shoot a live mobile stream of it. Here's the archive of the interview:

Tags: | | | | |

Posted by acarvin at 2:02 PM

Listen to this article Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article

April 19, 2008

Utterz Demo at PodcampDC



This is a mobcast I recorded using my mobile phone at PodcampDC. You'll hear me explaining Utterz, the tool I used to create the mobcast.   Replies.  mp3

Tags: | | |

Posted by acarvin at 2:40 PM

Listen to this article Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article

April 16, 2008

Waiting for the Popemobile

With the Pope in DC this week, I thought I'd run down to the White House to see the Pope travel down Pennsylvania Ave in his famous Popemobile. I streamed some video on my mobile phone; here are some of the highlights.

Crowds of people - supporters and protesters alike - gathering along Pennylvania Ave. (This video is long; about 20 minutes.)

Video of the Popemobile passing by in a flash:

Anti-Pope/anti-gay protesters in front of the White House:


Posted by acarvin at 12:34 PM

Listen to this article Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article

April 4, 2008

Mobile Phones, Human Rights and Anonymity

I've been playing around with my new Nokia N95 for the last couple of weeks and quite amazed with its ability to stream live video from the phone to the Internet. Like last weekend when I streamed from the Smithsonian Kite Festival; for around 30 minutes I gave a tour of the festivities and took questions from users as they watched the stream over the Internet.

I've also spent some time talking it up with colleagues at NPR, brainstorming the possibilities of what would happen if reporters used these phones - or if their sources did. The example that keeps coming to mind regarding the latter scenario is the rioting in Tibet. While some video has leaked out, it's been limited and often delayed. Imagine if the protestors were able to webcast their protests - and the ensuing crackdowns - live over their phones using China's GSM network? The video would stream live and get crossposted via tools like YouTube, Seesmic and Twitter, spreading the content around so it can't be snuffed.

But that raises an obvious question - how long could protestors or dissidents get away with such activities before getting caught? If you were running software on your phone to send live video over a 3G network, like I've been doing on my N95, you'd think it wouldn't take too much effort on the part of the mobile provider and/or government to figure out which phone was sending the signal and its precise location.

So that got me wondering: is there a mobile equivalent of Tor?

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, TOR is a software project that helps Internet users remain anonymous. Running the TOR software on your computer causes your online communications to bounce through a random series of relay servers around the world. That way, there's no easy way for authorities to track you or observe who's visiting banned websites. For example, let's say you're in Beijing and you publish a blog the authorities don't like. If you just used your PC as usual and logged into your publishing platform directly, they could follow your activities and track you down. With Tor, you hop-scotch around: your PC might connect to a server in Oslo, then Buenos Aires, then Miami, then Tokyo, then Greece before it finally connects to your blogging platform. Each time you did this, it would be a different series of servers. That way, it's really difficult for authorities to trace your steps.

As dissidents and protestors embrace mobile devices for conducting civil disobedience or recording human rights violations, it would make sense for Tor and projects like it to adapt to their needs. That way, if that hypothetical protestor in Lhasa tried to stream live video over Qik, post a photo to Flickr or record a mobcast via over Utterz, they'd lessen the chance of getting caught so easily.

Does anyone know if there's a mobile equivalent of Tor, relaying voice connections or data from one network to another, anonymizing the user of the phone? If not, is it technically feasible? How might one go about creating one?

Tags: | | | | | | |

Posted by acarvin at 3:37 PM

Listen to this article Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article

March 28, 2008

DC Cherry Blossoms Walking Tour

Today during my lunch break I streamed some live video over my N95 mobile phone from the Tidal Basin in Washington DC, home to the annual blossom of DC's famous cherry blossom trees. The first video didn't work so well - I had the video at such a high resolution the network crashed - but the second take worked like a charm. The video is about 16 minutes long, and features lots of cherry blossoms, some helicopters, and my disembodied voice talking about the history of cherry trees in DC. My wife Susanne and daughter Kayleigh even make a brief cameo - they were touring the cherry blossoms with my mother-in-law and I bumped into them near the FDR memorial. Enjoy! -andy

Tags: | | | | | | | | |

Posted by acarvin at 3:17 PM

Listen to this article Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article

December 21, 2007

Highlights from the NPR Utterz-Twitter Experiment

This week, NPR's Morning Edition will air a series on the 10th anniversary of the word "weblog" and the impact of blogging over the last decade. I've been helping the producers in a variety of ways, like writing a timeline tracing blogging's origins, tracking down interesting bloggers for them to interview and writing a story on my own experience with blogging over the years. (I'll post links to them once they go online.)

I also sat down with a producer from Morning Edition to do a demo of the mobile audio blogging service Utterz and the microblogging tool Twitter. We were curious to see what kinds of responses we'd get from Utterz Twitter users to this question: "What are you doing for New Year's Eve, and what do you wish you were doing?" We got 70 replies, and I thought I'd share some of the highlights.

For Utterz, I recorded the question as a voicemail over my mobile phone, which then got cross-posted onto my Utterz page, my blog and my Twitter account.

We got 42 replies to the question this way, including this one from video blogger Jonny Goldstein, who talks about attending a Chinese banquet with his in-laws:

Wendy Drexler, a teacher in Florida, described a trip she's taking to Maine:

Fricka, who designs apparel for gamers, recalls how she spent one New Year's eve helping a mother and baby after their car caught on fire:

It should come as no surprise that Hawaiian blogger InfinityPro is happy to be home in Hawaii:

In contrast, technology evangelist Len Edgerly would prefer to toast the new year with Barack Obama:

One Utterz user who goes by the name "rcow" doesn't know what he's doing because his wife plans all of their social engagements:

Jennifer Sardam, who writes the literary blog Observed in Books, plans to work on her reading goals for 2008, even though she'd rather be celebrating another new year in Germany:

Over at Twitter, meanwhile, I received 28 replies. Some of my favorites:

kthread: happy to be ringing in the new year partying with close friends at my house, attempting to make this: http://tinyurl.com/39rcsu

leh4: What I wish I were doing: scuba diving somewhere WARM. what i'm actually doing: moving into my new apt

karynromeis: I'm going to a party at my church. I wish I was going to a party with my friends back in Cape Town!

vgloucester: Probably sleeping - probably sleeping...lol.

ruby: I'll be at the beach with my friends and our families for the 11th New Year's in a row! It's ritual of laziness+food+drink+love.

ryanne: we don't have plans yet, but probably something low key!

ClareLane: Going to Sedona for R&R with nature and spirit and college roomie and our hubbies. Am very happy doing just that Thanks!

jonnygoldstein (supplementing his Utterz post): i'm will be in NYC. Going to Chinese midnight banquet with my wife and in laws. Wish I was going to be inebriated at some blow out.

digitalmaverick: I'll be, as every true Scot, wearing my kilt and singing Auld Lang Syne at a party, then at the bells I'll 1st Foot my neighbours

kanter: raising money for cambodian orphans http://tinyurl.com/yryffz

jensimmons: I'm sleeping on much of New Years, recovering from hauling all my stuff to Jersey. I'm thinking about heading to a yoga retreat.

Darshell: Hope to be going out with the hubby- dinner, dancing, etc but will probably be home with the kids. Who wants to babysit new year's?

Karoli: staying home watching the ball drop on the high-def TV. wish I were going to Corona del Mar and chilling

tigerbeat: not sure yet. Probably be up late enough to listen to the 3 am feed of Morning Edition on KQED. Wish i were somewhere warm & sunny

JoeGermuska: spending it in with friends, which is just the way I like it

BrassT: Watching movies and playing boardgames with the kids and hubby :-) How late will the kids sleep if I let them stay up til 12?

But my favorite reply came in the form of two responses from blogger/artist Susan Reynolds:

NEW YEARs eve home in VA recovering from breast cancer surgery but encouraged by all of you. Twitter pea avatars = VISIBLE Support

NEW YEARs eve - what I wish I was doing? I can't imagine feling more loved, so no celebration could be better

For those of you who don't follow Twitter, about two weeks ago Susan announced via Twitter that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and would have surgery on December 21. Susan even created a blog called Boobs on Ice to document her sudden transformation into a cancer patient, including how she soothed the pain of her biopsies by using bags of frozen peas as a compress.

Almost immediately, the Twitter community responded. Dozens of people started changing their profile picture to show them with a bag of frozen peas, to show their solidarity with Susan. That gesture then morphed into a photo sharing group on Flickr, which now has almost 300 pictures of Twitter users with their bags of peas.

Meanwhile, it didn't take long for Utterz to get into the mix. NBC cameraman Jim Long, better known to the Twitter community as NewMediaJim, recorded an impromptu interview with Susan using Utterz, just after she finished her pre-op visit:

By the time Susan's surgery took place on the 21st, Twitter users had organized a fundraising campaign called the Frozen Pea Fund, asking people to donate to the American Cancer Society in Susan's name. Nearly 120 people donated more than $3500 in the first 24 hours. If that doesn't demonstrate the power of Twitter and Utterz as tools for building community, I'm not sure what would. -andy

Tags: | | | | | |

Posted by acarvin at 4:49 PM

Listen to this article Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article

December 18, 2007

Demoing Utterz for NPR's Morning Edition; Your Help Needed!


Right now I'm recording a demo of Utterz with a producer from Morning Edition. We just posted question to Twitter - "What are you doing for New Years and what do you wish you were doing?" - and we're asking it on Utterz as well to see what kind of replies we get in the next 24 hours. You can also reply using other tools like Seesmic, blip.tv, etc - whatever you want. Just be sure to let me know either by replying to me on Twitter or posting a comment below if you're not a Twitter user. And please keep your responses clean as we may use them on air. Thanks!

Mobile post sent by acarvin using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

Tags: | | | | | |

Posted by acarvin at 2:49 PM

Listen to this article Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article

December 14, 2007

Another Utterz Demo for an NPR Colleague



Mobile post sent by acarvin using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

Posted by acarvin at 10:34 AM

Listen to this article Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article

October 6, 2006

Blogger, Odeo Get Out of the Mobcasting Business

Yesterday I received an email from Audioblogger.com, the mobile phone podcasting service for Blogger/Blogspot blogs. Looks like they're getting rid of the free service at the end of the month:

As of November 1, 2006, Audioblogger will no longer accept phone calls. MP3s made with the service will continue to be hosted and served but you will no longer be able to use Audioblogger to post new audio.

Audioblogger is an independent product, run by Odeo, Inc., a small
startup company in San Francisco, CA. We are not affiliated with
Google or Blogger except that we operate and provide the
Audioblogger service.

Given our limited resources, we have to make tough decisions
about what projects to focus on. And we've come to the difficult
decision that Audioblogger demands too many resources, time, and
money for us to continue its operation.

However, there are several other services that offer similar
functionality. Odeo is not affiliated with any of these services,
we only suggest them only in hopes that one or the other will be
a good alternative for you.

Gabcast.com is a free service for recording by phone
Hipcast.com has a seven day free trial and lots of features
Gcast.com is another free service for phone recording

All of the phone posting services listed above are compatible
with Odeo in that they produce podcast feeds, which can be
imported to Odeo. Any audio file at Odeo can be posted on a blog
by copying and pasting some embed code.

With Audioblogger giving up the ghost, this will be the second free mobcasting tool shuttering its doors within the last year. Some of you may remember my previous posts about Audlink.com, which also provided a free mobcasting service. They shut down without any warning earlier this year. While there's no reason to suspect that tools like Gabcast or Hipcast will vanish any time soon, the trend doesn't bode well, and reinforces my long-held argument that we need to have an open source mobcasting tool that can be installed easily on a local phone number, without concerns that the company hosting it will disappear unexpectedly. Meanwhile, services like Melodeo.com are making it possible for people to hear podcasts over their mobile phone, you need to subscribe to an Internet data plan for it to work. The beauty of tools like Audlink and Audioblogger is that they worked with regular phones - no Internet access required. And for communities with limited Internet access and poor mobile Internet infrastructure, mobcasting could prove to be an excellent way to allow the public to participate in podcasting - both listening and recording - without worrying about their lack of Internet access. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 4:23 PM

Listen to this article Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article

August 7, 2006

What's the Ideal Toolset for Citizen Journalism?

At Dan Gillmor's citizen media unconference here at Harvard, Hong Kong University professor Andrew Lih led a discussion about the ideal toolset for fostering, editing and distributing citizen journalism. I recorded a podcast of the session; it's just under an hour and 45 megabytes. Sorry about the static during the first 10 seconds - I promise it gets better.... -andy

Tags: | | | | |

Posted by acarvin at 1:42 PM

Listen to this article Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article

August 31, 2005

Update on Katrina Aftermath

It's been about 30 hours since I launched the Katrina Aftermath blog, and the response has been phenomenal. We've had almost 50 blog posts so far, including telephone podcasts, email and video. Meanwhile, Yahoo! and several major newspapers are linking to the site, so I'm getting as high as 2000 page views an hour. Not a bad start.

I've also added several new resources to the site. In the right nav bar, you can find a link to a photo feed of missing persons, as well as Craigslist's feed of lost and found people. Below that are Flickr photos generated from a Katrina photo pool, as well as several relevent tags.

Anyway, I'll probably be posting more on that site than here for the next couple of days. And I encourage you to join me - anyone can post text, audio or photos to the site. All the instructions are in the right column on the homepage. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 5:55 PM

Listen to this article Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article

August 30, 2005

Hurricane Katrina Mobcast: Share Your Thoughts Now!

I've just launched an open blog and mobcast for people interested in following the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:

http://katrina05.blogspot.com/

The blog is set up so that anyone can post a blog entry, podcast or photo to the site. I'm particularly hoping that residents of the Gulf Coast will be willing to call in and let people know how things are going for them. Similarly, anyone who would like to share ways to help out, or wishes to share their thoughts on the hurricane, may post as well.

Here's how to participate.

Post a blog entry:

Send an email to katrina2005.comments @ blogger.com. The title of your email will be the title of the blog entry, and the email body will be the blog entry body. If you don't want your contact information, you should remove your signature file. Attachments will not be posted.

Record a podcast:

Post a photo:

The website is collecting photos from Flickr.com that are tagged with the word . Simply log on to Flickr (or create an account), upload photos, and use this tag. Photos appear in the right column of the blog's homepage.


I've also set up a "tag-o-rama" inside the right column of the blog. It displays links to relevant key words like hurricane, katrina and new orleans, linking to tagged content from Technorati (blogs), Flickr (photos) and del.icio.us (websites).

Please feel free to share this information with anyone who might be interested in participating. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 1:13 PM

Listen to this article Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article

August 12, 2005

Launch of the Mobcasting Developers Forum

Because of the positive feedback I've received around the creation of a low-cost, open source strategy for recording and receiving podcasts over mobile phones, I've set up a new email list and Web community for people interested in making this happen. There are already free tools like audioblogger and audlink that will let you post podcasts from your phone, but both require a long-distance phone call to the US, and neither let you listen to podcasts from your phone. I want to develop a tool that can be installed anywhere in the world, so all of this can be done on a local phone call.

To learn more about mobcasting, please visit this blog entry I wrote last January, entitled When Mobile Podcasting Leads to Mobcasting to see where this all got started.

The email list will be focused solely on this project; people who join the list should be interested in mobile phone podcasting and be willing to help us make this project happen.

To join the list, please send an email to mobcasting-subscribe [[at]] yahoogroups . com, with the spaces and brackets removed. Or, you can visit the Mobcasting list homepage.

Meanwhile, I've also created a DDN community that we can use as a workspace. The workspace has bulletin boards, document sharing and blog posting. Group members are welcome to post web resources, blog entries or files to this public page. We can also add news, events and feature stories to the site if they become useful at some point.

Looking forward to making this happen! -andy

Posted by acarvin at 9:45 AM

Listen to this article Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article

August 11, 2005

Asterisk as a Mobcasting Tool?

Over the last few days I've been trying to learn more about various types of open source telephony software to see if any of them could be built upon as a mobcasting interface -- voicemail software that could allow someone to call a local telephone number and create, as well as listen to, podcasts. I've written a lot about my experiments with audlink.com and audioblogger.com as mobile podcasting tools, but they both require you to call a long telephone number in the US. Ideally, we really need to have a tool that could be installed at low cost on a local server, anywhere in the world, and allow people to make a telephone call to post or retrieve podcasts from it.

That's why I'm really curious about an open source software package called Asterisk.

Asterisk is a fully functional open source PBX system with VoIP capabilities. It supports voicemail, call directories, conference calls and many other features, and allows users to build new scripts to connect it with the Internet. It was primarily developed on GNU/Linux for x/86, but apparently runs on GNU/Linux for PPC along with OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and Mac OSX.

To be honest, I know almost nothing about PBX systems, so I'm hoping some of you might be able to help me evaluate it, and perhaps test it out. Participants in one of the Asterisk user forums seem to think it would be easy to set up a script to connect it with a blog, but from a technical point of view, this is way over my head. I'm hoping some of them might volunteer to help me, but we'll have to see how that goes.

So, for those of you who are interested in mobile phone podcasting, I'd love to get your thoughts on this, particularly if you know a lot about PBX systems, VoIP, etc.

Posted by acarvin at 2:46 PM | Comments (1)

Listen to this article Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article

February 15, 2005

Going Ga-Ga at The Gates

Susanne and I just returned from a weekend in New York City, where I thoroughly immersed myself in The Gates, Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Central Park art installation. As some of you know, I set up a community blog called The Gates @ Central Park, which allows anyone to post their own text, photos or mobile phone podcasts to the website. I posted several dozen entries to the site over the weekend, so please visit the site explore them in greater detail. In the meantime, here are some audio, video and photographic highlights from the weekend.

Videos:

Audio:

Pictures:




building

A gate flutters with Central Park West in the background.





unfurling a gate

Unfurling each gate took most of the morning.





onlookers

You can see them in every direction.





lake view

A view of some of The Gates from across the lake.





skyline

The New York skyline in the background.





rows of gates

Row after row of gates.

Posted by acarvin at 3:24 PM

Listen to this article Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article

February 6, 2005

My Remarks from the Berkman Blogging Conference

File this under "Better Late Than Never".... Here's a podcast of my remarks at the Berkman blogging conference. Since I was doing the talking I didn't get around to taping it myself, so I had to wait for the official audio archive from the conference so I could extract my remarks. Former CNN Beijing bureau chief Rebecca MacKinnon introduces me; then I talk briefly about mobcasting as well as Creative Commons. The entire recording runs about 10 minutes, give or take.... -ac

Posted by acarvin at 9:32 PM

Listen to this article Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article

Podcasting, Mobcasting and Beercasting, Oh My!

Last Thursday, a group of around 20 of us gathered at the Berkman Center to have an informal chat about podcasting in its various incarnations, including mobcasting and "beercasting." Lisa Williams facilitated the discussion, including showing off a rockin' little video about podcasting for beginners. Prior to the meeting, Lisa organized a del.icio.us reading list on articles and websites about podcasting.

Greg Narain of Beercasting.com joined us and talked about his amazing website, in which he engages people in conversations at bars, taping their discussions and publishing them as podcasts. The cool thing about it is that his software adds tons of metadata to each beercast, so you can sort through the content to find your favorite topics and speakers. Oh, and the marketing opportunies with bars and beer companies are endless. I then talked for a little bit about mobcasting and my new community blog for the upcoming Christo installation in Central Park. I recorded the session on my iPod; you can find it if you click the MP3 link on the Berkman Bloggers website.

After the meeting, we ventured through the slushy streets of Cambridge until we arrived at Cambridge Common, where Greg recorded a couple of beercasts. I participated in one beercast in which we talked about our favorite sounds from around the world; the conversation eventually metamorphosed into nostalgic travel stories from Turkey. Hopefully the beercast will be online soon; I'll post a link as soon as it's available... -ac

Posted by acarvin at 9:27 PM

Listen to this article Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article

January 17, 2005

How to Create Your Own Mobcast with Blogger

This weekend, I wrote an essay about the concept of mobcasting -- using mobile phones and blogging tools as a way for large groups of people to create audio podcasts on the same website. Ethan Zuckerman and I exchanged some ideas about it on the Global Voices blog, and I spent part of the afternoon tinkering with a variety of tools to see if I could come up with a relatively easy way to do this.

The result: a new experimental blog called mobcasting.blogspot.com. It's a free Blogger website that I've set up with an RSS feed that supports enclosure tags -- the key to publishing podcasts on the Internet. Now, I have the ability to give anyone posting privileges on the site, which in turn would allow them to use Blogger's free Audioblogger.com tool. Audioblogger lets Blogger users call a phone number and post an audio blog to their blog. But since I've set up the blog with a podcast-friendly RSS feed, I've turned Audioblogger into a simple telephone-based podcasting tool. Now I just need some volunteers to contribute to the site. If anyone would like to experiment with it, contact me and I'll give you access to the site so you can post your own telephone podcasts to it.

I could see this method being used by groups of people attending an event, whether it's a conference, a protest or any other public gathering. Any situation in which you'd want to give a number of people the ability to podcast on the same website would apply.

How would you do it? It's easy.

Step One: Go to Blogger.com and set up a free blog. Just follow the instructions; it basically involves creating a username and password for yourself, giving your blog a name and description, then choosing a template. The easiest method is to have Blogger host it for you; this would end up giving you a blog with a URL like XYZblog.blogspot.com, with the first part of the address depending on whatever your blog is called. For example, my mobcasting blog is located at http://mobcasting.blogspot.com.

Step Two: Post an intro message to your blog. Just say whatever you'd like to say; the point here is to get your blog's URL working, and it won't work if you haven't posted anything to the blog.

Step Three: Create a podcast-friendly RSS feed for your blog. Blogger will automatically generate an RSS feed for your new blog, located at an address that looks something like http://XYZblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml. Again, the first part of the URL will be determined by whatever you named your blog, Unfortunately, this feed won't work with podcast -subscription software, so you need to create a new feed for it. The good news is that it's easy to fix. Simply go to feedburner.com and type in the RSS feed generated by Blogger (that's the one that looks like http://XYZblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml). Once you've submitted it to Feedburner, you'll see a long list of options for your feed. The one that's important is the one called SmartCast, This will enable your RSS feed to support podcasts. Be sure to check it and submit it to the website. At this point, Feedburner will make you set up a free account before they'll activate your new feed.

Step Four: Add your new feed to your website. Log into your Blogger account and click the settings button for your blog, then click the template button. You can add a link to your new RSS feed in the sidebar section of the template, near the bottom.

Step Five: Set up an Audioblogger account. Go to Audioblogger.com and sign up for audio blogging access on your blog. Just log in with your Blogger user name and password, then tell it your primary phone number and a four-digit PIN code you'd want to use when making your podcasts.

Step Six: Post your first audio blog! Call 1-415-856-0205 and follow the instructions. You'll have to enter your primary phone number and PIN code.

Now you have your own phone-generated podcast: check your blog and you'll find the message you just posted with your phone. Every time you call the phone number, your blog will display your message on the homepage.

Now for the final step to turn your blog into a mobcast:

Step Seven: Invite friends and colleagues to participate in your mobcast. If they're interested in participating, you'll need their email address to give them posting privileges. Then, log into Blogger, click the Settings tab, then the Members tab. You'll then find a big orange button labeled "Add Team Members." This will bring you to a form that will let you invite three people at a time; just type in their email addresses in the appropriate fields. You can repeat this process if you want to invite more than three people. When they receive the invitation email, they'll find a link to the Blogger website that will let them create a username and password; if they're already a Blogger member they can simply log in. Either way, they will then be able to set up an Audioblogger account and post their first podcast, following the instructions as listed above in Steps Five and Six.

And that's it. If you just follow steps one through six, you'll be able to create your own podcast blog, posting podcasts through your phone. And if you want to get a group of people contributing to the same podcast -- a mobcast -- Step Seven will take care of that for you.

If you decide to create your own mobcast, please let me know. I'd love to hear stories about how you were able to use it... -andy

Techorati tags:


Posted by acarvin at 9:39 PM

Listen to this article Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article

January 16, 2005

When Mobile Podcasting Leads to Mobcasting

I've been thinking a lot about podcasting over the last few weeks, particularly in terms of the role podcasting can play as a tool for civic engagement and citizen journalism. To date, many of the podcasts you'll find online today tend to be oriented towards discussing technology, entertainment and the like. A few pioneers like Brian Russell of AudioActivism.org have started to challenge us to think about ways the medium can be used for positive social change, but otherwise, notions of civic engagement have just begun to enter podcasting discourse.

This weekend, I came up with a way to create podcasts with only a smartphone. It's fairly straightforward for those of us with a little bit of tech savviness, but I wonder if it's easy enough for the average Jane Q. Citizen with no previous blogging or podcasting experience. Hard to say - perhaps I'll have to encourage a few members of the Digital Divide Network to give it a whirl and see if it's an easy solution or not. Even if it's not the best strategy for creating MoPodcasts (mobile podcasts) on-the-fly, at least it's a start.

But it makes me wonder what the Internet will be like when literally anyone with a mobile phone can publish audio, video and text to the Internet. In the past I've written about projects like Witness.org and OneWorld TV, which empower activists and the public at large to capture socially-relevant content, from civil rights violations at protests to war coverage, with a video camera and a website to host it. But with the proliferation of video-enabled smartphones, it seems that it would be a natural progression to mobilize the millions of people who are buying these tools with an easy, no-nonsense way to capture socially-relevant footage and get it online in near-real time.

Think of the role played by people using mobile phones and SMS during the ousters of Slobodan Milosevic and Joseph Estrada respectively. Now empower them with video phones, 3G mobile telephony, and a Flickr-like tool for uploading audio and video to RSS-enabled websites.We're no longer talking about mobile blogging or podcasting now - we're talking about a social revolution. We're talking about mobcasting.

What do I mean by mobcasting? Well, it's really a portmanteau: a play on both mobile podcasting and Smart Mobs, Howard Rheingold's notion of viral-like social coordination enabled by information and communications technologies. Smart mobs got a lot of hype last year in the mainstream media, usually in the form of surrealistic group performance art initiated over the Internet. But smart mobs are much more powerful than just a group of college kids showing up in an art gallery at 12:15pm, standing on one foot and yelling "Tevye, get off the roof!" before dispersing without further comment. Like the case of SMS use during the anti-Estrada demonstrations in the Philippines, smart mobs can be any form of group social action enabled by ICTs.

A quick example: imagine a large protest at a political convention. During the protest, police overstep their authority and begin abusing protesters, sometimes brutally. A few journalists are covering the event, but not live. For the protestors and civil rights activists caught in the melee, the police abuses clearly need to be documented and publicized as quickly as possible. Rather than waiting for the handful of journalists to file a story on it, activists at the protest capture the event on their video phones -- dozens of phones from dozens of angles. Thanks to the local 3G (or community wi-fi) network, the activists immediately podcast the footage on their blogs. The footage gets aggregated on a civil rights website thanks to the RSS feeds produced by the podcasters' blogs. (Or perhaps they all podcast their footage directly to a centralized website, a la OneWorld TV but with an RSS twist.) This leads to coverage by bloggers throughout the blogosphere, which leads to coverage by the mainstream media, which leads to demands of accountability by the general public. That's mobcasting.

Smartphones are getting cheaper every day, and 3G networks are now commonplace in Europe and the Pacific Rim (sorry America, we're running behind yet again, but at least community wi-fi is still a possibility). As blogging software becomes more mobile-friendly, more people should soon have the ability to create mobile podcasts without too much effort. And thanks to mobile-to-Internet services like Flickr, I hope we'll soon see push-button-easy methods for videophone owners to capture footage and post it to podcast-enabled websites. Perhaps all the pieces are already out there and we just need to connect the dots. Either way, it won't be a huge technological leap to reach that point. The bigger challenge will be encouraging activists and socially-conscious members of the public to embrace the idea: that they too can do their part to contribute to civic journalism.

Mobcasting. Power to the people, baby. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 9:42 PM

Listen to this article Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article