Adventures with Bluetooth

I've been enjoying my new Bluetooth capable car stereo. Successfully paired with my BlackBerry, my telephone calls now come over the car speakers. Great hands free operation.

But, as with all new technologies, there are a few little unexpected challenges. Like the fact that now everyone with me in the car gets to hear my phone calls. No privacy there. And, a little complicated to disable when driving. Haven't figured out an easy way yet.

I also discovered another interesting feature. The other day I was working in my office when my Blackberry vibrated. Grabbing it, I saw I was getting a call from my wife on her iPhone. I pushed the green button to answer, then the phone went dead, but it said 'connected.' I couldn't talk. What's going on here?

Then I saw it, the blinking blue LED. The phone had connected by Bluetooth to my car in the parking lot. But wait, I was in my office. Why would the car do that? Somethings wrong here.

Running out the front door of my office building, Blackberry in hand, I met my wife coming in. "Somethings wrong with my iPhone!" she said. "I started the car and was calling to tell you I was ready to go and then my voice was coming out of the car speakers." Calling from the car on her iPhone, my BlackBerry had done just what it was supposed to do and sent the call to the car speakers. So, whenever the car is running nearby, I've got a problem.

This morning I was at the dealer getting an oil change. In the waiting room I was using the Blackberry to catch up on my email. Then, 'Connecting to Bluetooth Multimedia Device' popped up over my email and the blue light started flashing again. Was I connecting with a wireless network at the dealer? Then it hit me, the service technician had started the car in the shop and my BlackBerry was connecting with the car again! I found the menu and shut it off. Having my calls answered by a mechanic and being heard around the shop floor was not a happy thought.

The Bluetooth feature also allows my car stereo to play music files stored in the BlackBerry. It does a pretty good job. I can control music from the dashboard while the phone stays in my belt holster. Well, sort of.

The other day I thought I'd pull up some Christmas music from Pandora while driving around. The music came up, but there was something funny in the background. A voice of some sort, what was it? Turning up the volume, I realized it was an audio Bible-lesson that was also in the BlackBerry. Both were playing at the same time. Why it had decided to play the Bible-lesson, I don't know. I hit pause on the dashboard and the lesson stopped, and the music kept going. At least until the first Christmas song ended - then back to the Bible-lesson. The process had to be repeated after every tune. That was a fun drive. Not exactly hands free operation here.

I wonder what's next. Will the car start up and drive away the next time I check my email in the office?

Tech-Zone Internet Radio Show

Join me on my new Internet only radio show, the Tech-Zone. Thursday nights at 8pm Central on Principia Internet Radio. The next show will be Oct 15th on Digital Photography.

You can hear downloadable mp3 versions of recent shows here: http://www.prin.edu/public/index.pl/radio_downloadable_college. Scroll down to Tech-Zone Show.

The Viral Nature of New Media

It used to be that when you had a message to distribute to a mass audience, you took the following steps:

1. Clarify the message.
2. Identify the intended audience demographic.
3. Choose the best mass medium (radio, TV, book, magazine, recording, film, newspaper) to convey your particular message to the intended audience.
4. Send the message down the chosen medium.
5. Measure the results.

They key here is that the message was initially created with a large anonymous audience in mind.

Interpersonal messages are generally one person communicating with another. Mass messages are a person or group of people communicating a message to a large anonymous audience.

Due to the 'viral' or self disseminating nature of new media, a sender can no longer assume that an interpersonal message intended for a specific individual or audience will not reach a wider unintended audience. Or, that even a targeted mass message will not reach a larger unintended demographic.

Here's an example. Let's say you send a text message to another person. That person likes your message and decides to forward it to someone else. That person puts it on their Facebook wall. Someone puts it in an email distribution list. Someone tweets the idea on Twitter. Another person incorporates it into a blog posting. Another likes the idea and creates a short video about it on YouTube. Someone else likes the video and embeds it in their website. And so on, and so on.

What happened is that an interpersonal message, unintentionally, inadvertently and unbeknownst to the sender-became viral - crossing over from medium to medium, very quickly becoming a mass message.

This fact presents both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is that ideas reaching unintended audiences can become misunderstood and damaging. The opportunity is that good ideas can be disseminated quickly and widely, creating extended influence. Viral marketing is becoming a common technique of creating message with the intention of viral dissemination.

We must assume that all new media messages are mass messages.

Comments welcome.

Media: How Far We Have Come

Now and then something happens that reminds me how far we've come with media technology in such a short period of time. One of those moments came yesterday when I held a little Sanyo video camera.

Costing less than $300, it shoots digital video onto a flash memory card, with no moving parts. Using a USB cable, you can drag your completed video into your computer, edit it with Windows Movie Maker or iMovie, depending on your computer platform, and send your completed product up to YouTube for the whole world to see. By the way, we've also been experimenting with one of these Flip cameras ($199), and some of our people like them even better. Good grief!

When I was in High School the local NBC affiliate donated a video tape recorder to our Instructional Television System. The recorder (an RCA TR-1) was about 6 feet wide by 6 feet high. When the movers brought it in to the studio, it was so heavy it broke through the control room floor. With tube electronics it took an hour to tune it up to make a recording and only stayed aligned for another hour. And, of course, it was only black and white, which is why NBC was glad to get rid of it.

Baldwin Baker, a retired Hollywood cameraman I met, used to shoot video by hand holding a black and white studio television camera weighing about 100 pounds. No one else was doing such a thing. We thought he was nuts.

In the mid 70's a new show called Evening Magazine caught my attention in Boston. As I watched the show, a videographer - with camera running, got into a glider, took off and flew around. I couldn't believe it.

Shortly thereafter, I was a freelance videographer in Boston using the same equipment: an Ikegami HL-77 camera ($50,000) and a Sony 'portable' 3/4 inch video cassette tape recorder, separate from the camera ($25,000). The package required two people, a camera operator wearing a huge battery belt, and a tape operator who also carried a shotgun microphone. Total equipment cost, around $75,000. After holding the camera on my shoulder during a three day shoot in New York City, it took me over a week to get the feeling back in my right hand.

To edit, we had to use dual tape machines and a controller. With all the peripheral editing equipment, the editing package was over $100,000. And, this was not the type of equipment a person could just start using. It required hours of training to gain professional skills.

Total equipment cost to produce 'low end' video: $175,000.

Now, for some the 70's may seem like ancient history, but for me it seems like yesterday. Sure, a $300 camera does not look as good as the $50,000 camera we used before. But, you know what, it looks pretty darn good. And, with no tape, such a small size, and YouTube for distribution - who cares?

Video Display Breakthrough - Disruptive Technology

Corning is reporting an astounding breakthrough in video display technology. Talk about disruptive technology, this is one for sure.


Creating clear sharp video images largely depends on having pure red, green, and blue light sources. The challenge is having a light source that is bright enough with low energy consumption, and one that can be turned completely on and off at very high speed.


Until recently, lasers have been capable of red and blue light, but creating green has been a problem. In May of this year Corning announced it had found a way to solve production problems in creating synthetic green lasers. As reported in Forbes, Corning's components for green lasers could hit the market this fall.


Corning says: "With the rapid growth of ubiquitous high-speed wireless networks, we are entering a world where our mobile handsets will give us constant and interactive access to the worldwide network of information and multi-media content. However, small displays on mobile devices will limit the viewing experience. That’s where green lasers come in.

The Solution: Redefining the viewing experience with embedded micro-projectors enabled by Corning’s breakthrough green laser technology.

By applying its laser, optics, and modeling expertise, Corning developed a high-quality, compact, and efficient green light source for embedded micro-projectors that will play a critical role in the mobile display devices of tomorrow where consumers can play, view, and share with ease."


The biggest challenge in image technology is having the image bright enough, and believe it or not, black enough. Deep rich hues come from the ability to have the screen go completely black when the image is black. High speed lasers can do just that. When on, they are super bright. When off, they are completely off. We can expect a dynamic range of colors that is almost unheard of before, and in a very small energy efficient device.


So, what does this mean?


It merges two significant disruptive technologies: wireless and display. Not only will be able to connect ubiquitously, we will be able to project images onto any surface from a very small device - even a smart phone.


Display technology is usually the largest consumer of battery power in portable devices. Lasers are very efficient and will likely result in greatly extended battery life of portable devices in smart phones and laptops. As reported in Forbes, a smart phone could project a brilliant 6 foot diameter image from 6 feet away, and be able to play a 90 minute movie on a single cell phone battery charge.


Imagine a small projector in your keyboard, and no display monitor - use the surface of your desk or wall for display. Imagine a laptop with no display - simply a flip up white screen with a super bright image projected from the keyboard. Image projecting images and documents on a conference table, and moving them from person to person.


This short Microsoft video shows some of what may be possible utilizing new projection technologies.


More:

Corning on Green Lasers


Forbes: Getting a Green Light: Put a projector in your pocket.


ZDNet: Will Green Mean Go for Mobile Projectors?


Microsoft's 2019 Future Vision Montage: technologies that could be enabled by green laser projection.

New Media Overload - Return to Big Media?

The Internet is a wonderful tool for distributing new media content, and a wireless Internet allows us to have communication at our fingertips 24/7, wherever we are.


The benefits to content providers:

• The elimination of barriers between producers and their audiences. No longer does a person with ideas need to funnel them through a major media outlet to get them published. Everyone is on the same playing field - but that may change - read on.



• Due to the viral nature of new media, an idea can reach millions and become popular, literally overnight - or less.



• It can all be done very inexpensively. Not only is the delivery method almost free, content production is just a matter of software - much of it free.
  

The challenges:

• How do you get people to find you? 'Content provider' used to mean 'large media outlet.' Now it can mean a kid with a tweet. For 'old media' outlets: dilution of audience, confusion.
  


• How do you channel your message, if it becomes viral? Once composed - even for one person - a message can end up anywhere.



• How do audiences deal with the overload of information? There's so much of it - it arrives constantly - and in so many different ways. Email, text messages, Instant Messages, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, You Tube (now second in search to Google), RSS feeds, blogs, websites - etc.

Friend Feed is one attempt to compile it all, by pulling it all into one place. But, it doesn't reduce the volume. In fact, compiling sites may encourage us to crank it up even more.

New Media Overload is too much for anyone to deal with, no matter how much of a multi-tasker.

We can turn if off, run into the woods and listen to the birds. I tried it - the birds tweet more that we do.

So, what then? When we get overloaded, we scale back and simplify. We decide what's really important, center on it, and ignore the rest:

1. We choose close friends.


2. We choose what we resonate with.


3. We choose an interactive source that lets us do our own filtering.


4. We choose a trusted source can tell us what we need to know, what we should know.

A move back to larger media may be the answer. Maybe being on the same playing field is becoming the problem itself and we need some form of Big Media again to reduce the noise level.

The next Internet media opportunity may be with providers that offer perspective, meaning and context.

Comments welcome.

More:

Social media, attention, distraction and overload...

Social Media Overload Allows Web Apps to Shine

Too Many Choices, Too Much Content

Media Overload

US Wireless Rollout Update

Ubiquitous expansion of New Media is tied to the rollout of new mobile technologies. In the United States, the two technologies which remain at the forefront are WiMAX and LTE. Both promise city wide high speed wireless capabilities and are more popularly referred to as 4G, or 4th generation wireless.

WiMAX is the standard adopted by Sprint/Clearwire and is being marketed under the brand Xohm. It has been rolling out, albeit slower than expected, since late 2008. Sprint has operating WiMAX networks in Baltimore, Maryland and Portland, Oregon. Plans are for 2009 rollouts in Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Ft. Worth, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, and Seattle. 2010 plans include Boston, Houston, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

LTE (Long Term Evolution) is being adopted as the 4G technology of choice by Verizon and AT&T - and is running about 2 years behind Sprint - with launches beginning in 2010. No specific markets have been projected yet. Hopes were that we might begin to see LTE this year, chip issues appear to be causing the delay.

More on Sprint's WiMax rollout
More on Verizon LTE rollout
More on Verizon chip delays
More on AT&T LTE rollout