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Back on Super Tuesday, our intrepid Alaska Street Team ‘08 reporter Dani Carlson was one of the 22 Flixwagon-enabled mobile reporters. Well trekking around on the tundra, she got some sit-down time with our latest vice presidential nominee, Gov. Sarah Palin:

The MTV News reprise highlights one of the more fun moments of the interview:

In this interview, Palin calls controversial Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul “cool.” “He’s a good guy,” she added. “He’s so independent. He’s independent of the party machine. I’m like, ‘Right on, so am I.’ ”

That occurs around the 3:00 mark of the video clip. She also praised Romney (apparently for wanting to drill in ANWR) and had nothing to say about McCain (who back then was against it).

I came up to North Carolina to visit the ‘rents for Father’s Day and, theoretically, get a good chunk of dissertation writing done. I wasn’t quite ready for my writing sabbatical, but on the day I was about to start my last experiments ever, my POS machine blew a piston seal and dumped oil all over the lab. It’s down for repair for, oh, you know, a couple of months, and I figured I’d better get out of town for some TLC before I went completely postal.

The problem with Mom’s TLC is the food, which comes at me from all directions at all times. And on weekend visits, that includes the nuclear assault of Sunday brunch at the clubhouse. Nothing like having all the time in the world to lollygag at your table with periodic trips to four buffet tables.

So I guess it’s a good thing I brought my bike up with me. And what better excuse than miles of quiet country roads and golf course cart paths to give the bike and the GPS-enabled application Sports Tracker a good workout.

And what better excuse than wanting to barf up a lung than to stop right there. Enough is enough!

Sports Tracker and the GPS in my phone did alright, although with the handset in the closed position (and tucked away in a sweat- and rain-proof plastic bag in my pocket), the resolution wasn’t as good as it can be when you’ve got it out in your hand. Variations of up to 50 meters from the true track in places raise some questions about its accuracy for total workout distance, but in less contorted routes, it should be pretty good.

And of course, the other bonus of GPS-enabled handsets: had I actually barfed up a lung and died out on the ride, since I had Fring updating my position in real time, my mother would have known where to look for me when I didn’t come home. You know, so she could bring more food.

Live mobile video is breaking out all over. Last week, Qik announced a new version of its video software for a couple of Windows Mobile devices, the Samsung Blackjack and the Motorola Q. This can really expand the pool of potential live streamers — and of course make us Nokia types feel a little less special.

But even more deflating for us anti-iPhone curmudgeons is today’s announcement by Flixwagon that they’ve developed a version of their mobile broadcasting software for iPhone. Great, now the iPhone fanboys will proclaim victory all over again, because some external vendor has been kind enough to fill in where Steve Jobs seems so egregiously lacking. I heard it before when those willing to hack their iPhone pointed to the “solution” of a really tragic, no-audio, sub-10 frames-per-second monstrosity of an app you could download and record limited duration clips with if you were willing to risk bricking your $400 investment and voiding your warranty. The Flixwagon app for iPhone also requires one to jailbreak the cloistered device — this is not something that’s going to be available in the iPhone App Store:

While we don’t condone or recommend unlocking iPhones, as avid iPhone users ourselves we wanted to experiment with ways to enable flixwagon on the iPhone, until the official SDK supports video. We’re going to continue working with the iPhone SDK in the future so we can offer this functionality to all users once video becomes a standard part of the iPhone.

And I guess since you have to beat the phone’s firmware into submission to squeeze some video out of it, the Flixwagon app, like its video capture predecessor, also has a framerate like molasses, somewhere in the 5 fps ballpark, as you can see below:

I know this is a market the makers of Flixwagon really want to tap into, but I wish they’d spend a little less time making software for a device that’s so dead-set against accepting it and a little more time on the next version of their Symbian software. I heard in the end of April, and then again in mid-May, that a new client would be coming “in a couple weeks,” the most notable improvement in which would be the end of the 15-second “hiccup.” Flixwagon uses a kind of local buffering approach to ensure the integrity of the video stream in the face of periodic bandwidth constraints, apparently caching the data in 15-second chunks; as a result, unfortunately, about a half-second of video is not captured every 15 seconds as the buffer turns over, and this can really screw up the intelligibility of whatever your interviewee might be saying. That is the primary, if not the only reason I started using Qik over Flixwagon, and I’ll be thrilled when the glitch is fixed, if we ever see this rumored upgrade to the client.

I can’t tell if the iPhone version of the app has the same hiccup problem yet, because it’s hard to tell with such a low frame rate if you’re actually missing something.

UPDATE: I obviously didn’t do my homework, because Qik also announced on Thursday that it’s releasing a client for iPhone as well. (But hey, Flixwagon wins the marketing points; that I missed this from Qik speaks to a rather muted release.) Can’t tell what the video quality is like because I can’t find the actual video from the iPhone, just this video of the iPhone. Hello, Qik, link plz! The iPhone isn’t listed yet on their Signup page, and I presume as with any other such app you have to lobotomize your device first. But hey, there you go.

The Intel International Science and Engineering Fair is underway in our fair city of Atlanta. Today and tomorrow the kids are being judged — judged I tell you! Scrutinized, interrogated, and judged, and lucky for them (and not for us), this part of the fair is not open to the public. So much for my Project Runway spoofery.

But I did drop in Sunday and Monday to check out the setup and meet some of the contestants, of whom there are thousands, it seems. I think the PR agency told me something in the neighborhood of 1,500 exhibits, many of which are partner or team efforts. They’re from all over the flippin’ globe; yesterday I watched some Minnesotans exchange pins with some Saudis.

It’s open to the public on Thursday, the 15th, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. in building B of the Georgia World Congress Center and it’s free, so you really have no excuse. Well, maybe you do, but if you aren’t doing anything, I highly recommend you satisfy your inner nerd and check it out. (The students will be on hand to explain their stuff from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.) Here’s a preview:

Other versions: High quality (VGA); QVGA streaming Quicktime; mobile QCIF

Stay tuned for the next episode: meet some of the contestants in the final hours of setup.

This is just one of those things I need to put out there for the Google-bots to find and index for posterity. Despite there being one YouTube video out there that comes really close to getting this right, and despite the immense collection of geekery within the N95 user base, there still arises the constant question from users: how can I hook up an external mic like the Reuters MoJo tookit has? When even a cellphone guru like the author of MobileJones — whose Twittered quest for a decent mic alternative got me to record my first bluetooth trial (see end of this post) — could not reach a satisfactory solution based on what Google had laying around for us, I decided it was time for a weekend trip to Radio Shack. Because this is what my life has become.

The adapter is not something you can buy directly; the resident scientist from Reuters told us at the Journalism3G conference that they had to cobble up their own makeshift connection. But if journalists can do it, hell, anyone can do it! [Correction: According to @mojosd it was Nokia Labs who cobbled it up for Reuters.]

Like I said, there’s already one serious video about this out there, but Bloggerguy leaves out a couple details and gets one critical (but easily correctable, for the persistent) point wrong. Still, we knew it had to be possible, as vlogger Steve Garfield showed that the N95 video recording was definitely taking the audio from the headset mic, but that only gets you so far. N95 user Bitflung also demonstrated the bluetooth connection as a viable alternative, though the quality of bluetooth audio is pretty low.

So, once and for all, here’s your recipe, as I did it:

• The 1/8″ jack A/V cable that came with your N95
• Female-to-female phono plug connector
  
• 1/8″ phone plug to phono jack adapter (note that the “S” on either side of the jack indicates it’s looking for a stereo input)
  
• A self-powered — this is vital — external mic that terminates in a 1/8″ stereo plug. If your mic doesn’t have its own AA, AAA, or button-cell battery, the N95 isn’t going to hear it. **

The last item is the important part, because trying to connect a mono mic with a mono plug (note that some mono shotgun mics still have stereo plugs) won’t work. It has to look like this:

If you’ve got a lavalier or shotgun mic that terminates in a mono plug like this (note the single black band instead of two),

then you’re going to need an additional adapter to convert your mono jack into a stereo jack like this one, or you can replace the 1/8″ stereo jack to phono male plug adapter with this one which goes directly from 1/8″ mono female to phono male. Better yet, you could grab this dual 1/8″ mono female jack to 1/8″ male stereo plug and connect two mono lav mics to your getup. Go nuts.

You should end up with a layout like this:

Note that you use the yellow plug on the A/V cable, not the red one that Bloggerguy said in his video. If your phone asks you what you just plugged into it, select “Headset;” if that’s not an option, you screwed something up. In headset mode, the red & white cables represent the stereo output sound that normally goes to your earbuds, and the phone uses the yellow channel, normally for video output, as the microphone input.

I put it all together and demo several different microphones (stereo cardioid, mono shotgun, and lavalier) in this stunning Pulitzer-worthy video, which I’ll embed using Viddler so you can add your own comments:

Here’s the Quicktime file for podcast purposes.

For those of you inclined to interview serial entrepreneurs at loud VC cocktail receptions, you’ll want to skip to the comment I added at the 6:15 mark, where I demo the noise-cutting advantage of all this claptrap.

And if you’re in a real pinch to cut through the noise but you haven’t brought all this A/V gear, I’ve got another video for you that shows that obnoxious bluetooth headset is good for something after all.

**Update: MojoSD raised a point in her post that I hadn’t thought to test: a dynamic mic, like my cheapo AudioTechnica ATR20, ought to work as well even without battery power because it doesn’t require any power from the port (which the N95 doesn’t provide). I just tested that theory, and there’s a catch: if you plug a dynamic mic into the cable, and then plug the cable into the N95, you get “Accessory not supported.” I don’t know why. But, if you plug the cable into the phone first without the microphone attached, you will get the choice to select “Headset” and then you can plug the dynamic mic into the cord/adapters and record successfully from then on. However, the audio has a bit of a buzz to it, so I’d still highly recommend going with a powered mic of some kind.

Last week, all I had to offer was camels on campus. This week, I got to talk to the former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders while she was on campus amidst a veritable storm of prophylactics. Apparently the GT Young Dems teamed up with Trojan’s national Evolve campaign (complete with “Roll Out” flagged mics, get it?) to promote, you know, liberal sexual health and whatnot.

It’s nice to meet someone like the Surgeon General, but I can’t say I’m a fan of the current marketing. From the bizarre misalignment of evolution in the pig-to-man schema, to the magical ability of buying a condom in a bar to make women jump your bones, to the inevitably bad pork-themed puns…it’s just weird. Bring back Trojan Man and lose the oinkers.

Anyway, I asked Ms. Elders if we were on a bit of a venereal downturn over the last, you know, few years, health policy-wise. She said yes, that after some good gains in the 90’s, we are once again headed in the wrong direction — though she blamed our lack of conscious fear of disease rather than anything going on in Washington, D.C. So politic of her. Scroll in to about the 0:55 mark:

In addition to a political celebrity, they had condom races (I dunno, there’s nothing very sexy about trying to best the record of 27 seconds), an inflatable theater shaped kinda like a reservoir tip, and much, much more.

There was some vaguely motion sickness-inducing film about space herpes on the attack featured at Reservoir Tip Theater; you can take a tour in this Qik video, after you watch two very serious faculty-looking types wearing pig-noses pull condoms off bananas.

Definitely cooler than the camels, if you ask me.

Pop quiz: calculate the relative increase in probability of sexual intercourse occurring at Georgia Tech tonight after all these free prophylactics put ideas in their technological heads.

Answer: #DIV/0!

For those of you who might be wondering, no, the honeymoon is not over between the N95 and me. Far from it. It’s more like we just discovered the Kama Sutra.

Yesterday, after a good week of talking crack with some turbine engineers, I wasn’t entirely sure how to get myself back out of Myrtle Beach and on the way home. So I fired up the Google Maps application I downloaded to my phone the day before, asked for a route home, and watched as the little blinking dot that was me joined the route and moved along the blue line home. GPS and Google also helped me find some dinner on Wednesday night.

But once Myrtle Beach started fading behind me, so did the radio station I was listening to. Good thing I had downloaded a couple other applications direct from Nokia: Podcasting and Internet Radio.

Podcasts on your phone? No big deal. We already have pocket-sized devices for listening to such things, and merging the two functions of media and communications is a good step forward but nothing revolutionary.

Mobile broadband, on the other hand, is like year-round Mallomars. When every last NPR station in earshot finished its news programming, and the only music available was the backwoods country and Christian fare, I plugged the phone into the stereo and started surfing. I don’t know how many scores or hundreds of stations I had available to me, but I settled in with some oldies and jazz somewhere between Augusta and Atlanta.

Granted, the oldies station was a good choice at the time because its low-fi music only required 32 or 48 kbps of bandwidth, and I was only covered by AT&T’s EDGE network out in the sticks. EDGE download bandwidth is typically in the barely tolerable 128kbps neighborhood — a number that is likely much higher than it was a year ago, before launch of the iPhone and some reported “network tuning.” But in the 3G network coverage of the city, I can easily enjoy FM- to CD-quality stereo music on the fat 1Mbps-class series of tubes. In the car, in my pocket, music from all over the world.

Sure, you can get an XM or Sirius satellite radio device that detaches from your car or is primarily portable and plugs in to the stereo just like my phone does. But why would I want to be limited to a selection of big radio stations selected by one company, when the low entry barrier of the internet brings at least an order of magnitude more?

And can XM tell you where to find dinner? (Okay, so there are some GPS-devices out there that have XM capability, but boy are they ugly.) Does XM make phone calls?

At this point, the bridge between niche-market devices like the N95 and total dominance of the non-FM radio market is merely a question of network capacity, I think. As the 3G network continues to grow — and Verizon starts opening up its EVDO network to more devices with greater user flexibility — XM radio devices are starting to look like analog television sets to me. Why buy one now?

Of course, lord only knows how long it’ll take to have a US 3G network worth singing about on internet radio. Just to let you know how much my phone misses its native Europe: when I scroll through my Contacts to select someone to call, my right soft-key offers me a very alien option: Video Call.

I don’t even know what to do with that, but somewhere out there some guy named Bjørn Hänssen does.

Okay, so it’s really laziness. Or to give myself a little more credit, fatigue. It ain’t easy trying to generate original content on three fronts all the time. Let’s just consider it a little new media experiment, because I do so love playing with new widgets.

Obviously reader-writer collaboration is part of the whole Next-Big-Thing in media, what with viewers becoming participants in live-streamed interviews by suggesting questions via Twitter, Flixwagon, or Qik. And while blogs have always been able to rely on comments, Georgia Tech student Paul Stamatiou kicked it up a notch with the recently launched Skribit, which I heard about at SoCon08 last weekend.

Witness the new sidebar resident, the Skribit widget. Pretty self-explanatory, really; where it says, “Click here to suggest a topic,” you uh, do that. Other people can vote on topic they like. I pretend to heed the trend of votes and puzzle up a blog on said topic. Capisce? Feel free to suggest MTV video pieces, as well. I’m really tired.

We’ll see if this lasts longer than previous sidebar widgets of futility like Veeker and Cellblock.

Just some video niblets to flesh out last week’s OMGNokia woody.

I never officially told the non-blog-reading YouTube subscribers about my new gig, so forgive the intro; but here is a little look at the N95 I get to borrow for the next couple days:

I’ve been messing around with the Flixwagon video streaming application to see what it’s capable of, and I can definitely live with it. There used to be another Symbian handset-based live streaming application floating around out there that I heard of from time to time, but a quick scan of the Googles isn’t refreshing my memory. So for now, it seems my two main choices for video streaming from the N95 are Flixwagon and the more talked about Qik. Neither is perfect, but I think Qik has a slight edge in features for now. Qik will apparently automatically Twitter your friends when you start a live broadcast, and it will also cross-publish the live video to Mogulus, a multi-videographer publishing platform from which you can assemble a whole team of reporters into one video stream.

Both Qik and Flixwagon have a chat window available through which your viewers can send you questions and comments while you are broadcasting. Too bad for MTV News fans, though, the Flixwagon commenting feature is not enabled for our Super Tuesday coverage, but that’ll be a key feature for the future full launch of Flixwagon once they’re out of alpha phase. And both Qik and Flixwagon have audio defects, in addition to being generally thin and tinny due to bandwidth constraints (the standard Ustream settings were the same way, unless you cranked up the sampling to 44 kHz); which additional defect is more annoying is up to the individual’s taste, I guess. All the videos of the WEF I watched on Qik have a crackle in the sound, like the input gain was set too high. Flixwagon, on the other hand, has a slight but frustrating time lag in the audio somewhere between a half and a whole second. As far as post-broadcast editing of footage for use on the network, the time-lag is far less of a nuisance to MTV, and anyone else interested in re-mixing recorded video, than the audible crackle would be: you can fix the delay in the editing, but the crackle is there to stay. Flixwagon has the edge over Qik there.

The N95 itself is capable of sweet video, though, so if quality is a premium over immediacy, it’d be well worth recording a video locally and uploading it over a 3G network to Blip.tv, which sadly isn’t part of the pre-installed upload connections on the phone (Flickr and Vox for starters…seriously, Vox?). The audio is pretty rich for a handset, and the video — well, just have a look for yourself.

Stay tuned tomorrow.