shelbinator.com

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.

Since everyone’s whining about gas prices on the MSM, I figured showing fit and attractive young cyclists out enjoying the fresh air would be a better way to report on the “crisis” than just a bunch of predictable stock footage at the gas station. You want biofuels? We gotcher biofuels: PBR in a can, man!

Personally, I think it’s about time we started paying what gas is worth — or more accurately, what gas costs us in the long run. We’ve got a pollution problem, an energy problem, a war-in-sucky-deserts-for-crap-reasons problem, and a national obesity problem. How hard is it to put two and two together to make get-on-a-bike-ya-softy?

Click for video.

For the record, filming while biking is not a simple task. Thanks to Rachael of SoPo Bike Collective for giving me a sound bite, so it looks like I actually did my job.

Digg the video.

At this point I think it’s safe to say, if not for the N95 I’d have no reason to live.

Now Nokia’s giving us geeks another thing to distract us from our day jobs, and Spike Lee is part of the problem. Partnering with Jumpcut — the online audio-visual mashup tool that Mitt Romney used in an ad-making contest for his campaign — Nokia is soliciting user-generated content around a theme, from which Spike Lee will weave a movie after viewers vote on their favorites. (I assume they want us to create this media on our Nokia handsets.)

Music means different things to different people. A soothing escape during rush-hour traffic. The remedy for a broken heart. A fire under some dancing feet. With Spike’s Lee’s help, we’re co-creating a film about music and the shared human experience.

Here are the details in case you missed them:

Theme is Humanity and how music plays a role.

Three Acts for you to explore through music, text, photos or video.

Act 1 is Birth.

Birth, huh? Way to narrow it down.

Last week, two new players announced their intention to enter the mainstream-ized political citizen journalism arena a la Choose or Lose. First up, Rock the Vote:

Rock the Vote in partnership with WireTap magazine is searching for aspiring or established reporters for Rock the Trail. Sponsored by AT&T, Rock the Trail will capture today’s politics through the eyes and in the words of young voters. Rock the Trail reporters will deliver insightful and compelling blogs, articles and videos from the communities they live in, reporting on young people’s top issues such as jobs, the economy and college affordability. Content will be posted on http://www.rockthevote.com, http://www.wiretapmag.org , http://www.BET.com, and will also be available for viewing on AT&T mobile phones.
…
Rock the Trail reporters will be paid a monthly stipend and supplied with a laptop, cell phone and video camera to rock the 2008 campaign trail. Reporters will interview candidates, elected officials, campaigners, young voters and Rock the Vote artists discussing everything from the Presidential race to mayoral elections and anything in between.

That one will be interesting to field questions on at bloggergeek cocktail parties, because in my limited experience thus far I’ve found that a lot of people tended to conflate Choose or Lose with Rock the Vote. Whatever the collaboration in the past, I guess we’ll be “competitors” now. We’ll see whose guns are bigger: while their blog is “only” powered by Blogger, it at least has an RSS feed, so you’d presumably be able to subscribe to the videos produced with iTunes or the like. Our Flux-powered Think site still lacks this most basic and vital functionality, three and a half months after Professor Jay Rosen went slack-jawed at such an oversight. They’re only hiring five reporters who will only be paid a $500 monthly stipend, but (I may be over-speculating here) the suggestion that they’re getting cellphones makes me wonder if they’ll have a stronger focus on lower quality but more mobile content produced on, say, a Nokia N series phone. And if mobility and speed are of the essence, we’ll have to see what their editorial cycle and turnaround time looks like, once their selectees go through training and find out about the procedural roadblocks to funded journalism.

I also wonder how much actual music will appear in Rock the Vote news packages. Have you started to notice repeats in ours?

Next up, a much shorter-term collaborative effort between Voto Latino, Sí TV and CNN at CrashtheParties08.com. From a press release:

“Crash the Parties” kicks off with a nationwide search for two young Latinos to cover the Democratic and Republican National Conventions as reporters for Sí TV.
…
Contestants upload their videos at www.crashtheparties08.com, discussing why they should represent young
Latinos at the conventions. The videos will also be viewable on V CAST from Verizon Wireless. Public voting begins on May 7, and a panel of judges, including actress and Voto Latino co-founder Rosario Dawson, former U.S. Representative from Texas Henry Bonilla, the Latino Democratic Institution’s Ramona Martinez, CNN’s Rick Sanchez, YouTube’s Steve Grove, Craigslist’s Craig Newmark, and MySpace’s Lee Brennan, will evaluate the top five candidates from each of the party submissions to select the winners. Rosario Dawson and actor Nicholas Gonzalez have recorded public service
announcements to help promote the project.

Sanchez will also mentor the young reporters, providing media tips and expert advice on interviewing the party nominees and others. They will report from the Conventions, live and online, offering their perspectives on the candidates, election, and issues.

The Choose are Lose plans for Convention coverage are still TBD.

Even in the early days of Huffington Post’s “Off the Bus” citizen journalism project, from before I joined up to contribute the occasional video, Mayhill Fowler was one of the standard bearers. Her writing was prolific and her access to campaign events pretty high as well. Since we were, after all, “citizen” journalists — i.e., theoretically had other day jobs to tend to — I sometimes wondered how Mayhill managed to cover so much of California to cover so many political events for zero pay. I guess that’s one of the perqs of being a self-employed writer.

Since shortly after Iowa, I pretty much haven’t heard peep from Off the Bus. Our weekly conference calls died and the focus of the project seemed to shift to these large, distributed projects where dozens of people pore through piles of data to compile a picture. That wasn’t my style, and I had the new MTV gig to worry about (and, uh, that dissertation thing); plus, after Super Tuesday, Georgia went back to being a political wasteland, so it’s not like I have anything good to contribute. I briefly discussed the possibility of the occasional MTV-OTB cross-post, but that withered on the vine.

So it wasn’t until the recent brouhaha over Mayhill’s “bitter” piece that I took a good look at OTB to find out that she has been Off-the-bussing all over the place: from Iowa to Nevada, to Texas, to Pennsylvania now, and of course back to her gigantic home state where she recorded Obama’s latest alleged “gaffe.” Considering her thorough campaign coverage and her sudden fifteen minutes of fame, two questions arise:

• Where the heck can I get the kind of flexible schedule and disposable income to cover the campaign nationwide for a blog that doesn’t pay?
• And if you have that kind of disposable income to travel all over creation searching for the indispensable sound byte, could you not for the love of God throw a couple bills of it toward a decent digital audio recorder?

It’s probably worth speculating whether or not this recent Obama story would have the legs it does had there not been actual audio of his comments about gun-loving Bible-thumping voters. Other media analysts have already talked a-plenty about how the controversial comments of Rev. Wright had been around in print since the campaign began, but the scandal didn’t take off till there was video to splash on the tube. This weekend, the news shows are doing the same thing with Mayhill’s recording, even though they still have to throw the transcript up on the screen because the audio is, as Wolf Blitzer just said on Late Edition, “barely audible.” (Then why are you playing it, Wolf? Oh, right, because just showing the text alone wouldn’t make for a catchy story!) It’d be generous as hell to compare this Off the Bus recording with your typical subway driver announcing the next stop. It sounds more like a message left on Spongebob Squarepants’ underwater answering machine.

C’mon, if you’re going to be a national star in citizen journalism, get your audio in 44.1kHz, seriously. Might I suggest the fairly compact and incredibly flexible Samson Zoom H2?

A couple of commenters at HuffPost have brought up the sticky ethical question of whether Mayhill’s act of citizen journalism broke some standards of professional journalistic behavior — something I’m sure will only fuel the local old media naysayers that MostlyMedia likes to track. She went into a private fundraiser where presumably press, cameras, and other recording devices were not allowed. When I was covering Bill Richardson in Atlanta, I was allowed to record his every move and word until he got to a small fundraiser at the end of the day and I was politely informed by staff that this event was not for press. I was welcome to stay, but I could not bust out any cameras or report on the detailed goings on. I’m pretty sure I mentioned this to an editor back at OTB and was told that such protocol was de rigueur at small fundraisers like that.

So, either Mayhill was told something we don’t know, or she assumes such standards of journalism don’t apply to citizen journalists. I haven’t seen anything clarifying what was allowed or not at the fundraiser she attended, so we’ll have to see how that pans out. But it’ll certainly make future old-versus-new media conversations more interesting, I suspect.

UPDATE

Had I done my homework, I could’ve checked OTB editor Marc Cooper’s post on the subject and seen his explanation of the “on the record”ness of this fundraiser:

It was indeed a fundraiser to which the press was not invited. Or if you wish, it was closed to press. Therefore it wasnt on or off the record. Off the record is when journos consenusally agree to witness or hear something on the condition they not report it.

Mayhill, who has given money to Barack, was invited to come to the event by one of the communication staff. They new her in her capacity as a writer for OffTheBus and knew it was quite likely she would write something out of this event.

Indeed, she recorded the event as she sat next to campaign staff.

Let it also be noted that there were approx 100 videocams whirring away inside the room as Barack spoke.

I give this detail for full clarification. Most if not all press was kept out of the room but Mayhill was invited in. She was under no obligation not to report. Obama was indeed more loose lipped than usual. He should be more careful in his choice of words when he is staring into so many video cams, no matter who is holding them.

Well okay then. But I still think, what with all the attention Mayhill’s brought them, OTB oughta buy Mayhill a Zoom H2.

As suspected, there was nothing particularly earth-shattering presented by last night’s panel on new media and ethics in journalism and business. What highlights there were — mostly coming from the Georgia State University professor of journalism (with a special focus on law and communications), Greg Lisby — seemed to be two steps forward only to take one step back a paragraph or two later when yet another unbelievably clueless assertion about the web was made by someone who’s had enough time to get to know better. Lisby came prepared with facts and figures and historical insight, and he had lots of us at the kids’ table looking at each other with raised eyebrows, nodding, and Twittering in unison that we liked what he just said.

No, there was no knife fight between a blogger and a PBA radio newser or anything remotely as exciting. I think the highlight of tension for the evening, in my mind, was around the 2:30 mark of the video below. A fellow asked a question that left the AJC Interactivity Manager nearly apoplectic, along the lines of, “Okay, so maybe most blogs are crap, but at least I know they’re crap, and as your content, which is supposed to be so refined and exclusive, starts sliding toward the crap end of the spectrum, why shouldn’t I just go read the people who specialize in crap from the get-go?” It obviously wasn’t that blunt, but it might as well have been for its effect, because as far as I could tell the AJC rep’s answer was, “But — b’gack — you — hey — we have blogs! And it’s not — we — that’s like, your opinion, man. And uh — I — somebody help me out here.”

Okay, so I don’t have the same detailed summary and analysis of the event as everyone else, but I provided the live video, damnit (though the acoustics of the large room leave plenty to be desired). Steve was much kinder to the AJC than I have been and has some other summary points from the panel, if you’re interested. GriftDrift is downright optimistic about how much better the conversation went last night compared to nine months ago. Sara is closer to my level of general “meh”-ness; same old story, still just admiring the problem.

On the inevitable “how do we standardize bloggers” issue, scroll to the 1:20 mark on this video for a Q&A about whether such a set of standards might possibly arise organically (but still very systematically and with structure) from the blogosphere itself — or rather, from some arbitrary subset of “ten or so” bloggers. Right, let’s start caucusing for the ten standard-bearers now.

Leonard Witt brought up his concern about media consolidation and offered up the blogosphere as at least a partial antidote to that winnowing of voices. But the panel came right back at us (the one moment where we disagreed with the good professor) with a study that said we’re less welcoming to opposing commentary than mainstream media sites. Given the crap that litters the comment sections of the AJC, I’m not yet worried about this point. Shortly after that is when the older gentleman got up and warned us that there were “forces afoot” at this “nascent stage of the blogosphere” who would want to take over the web and “use it for profit.” As Sara already said, Welcome to the twenty-first century!

As mentioned elsewhere, tonight a bunch of us blogger-terrorists are going to descend upon the Atlanta Press Club again to hear about “Ethics and New Media: How the Blogosphere is Affecting Journalism and Business.”

Please join Georgia State University’s Center for Ethics and Corporate Responsibility and the Atlanta Press Club as we discuss how bloggers are redefining journalism and presenting new challenges for businesses and other institutions. The discussion will be led by representatives of business, journalism and the electronic media. Assurant is the sponsor of this program.

Are we presenting new challenges for businesses? You mean, like, talking amongst ourselves in a very public way about how you should quit screwing us over, a la Comcast Must Die or bloggers telling Target what sucks?

Well, that’s not my primary interest anyway (though if Bob Garfield is at all successful in making Comcast less obnoxious, God bless him). Let’s see what the Press Club has to say this month about journalistic practices on the blogosphere. I missed the original panel on this subject, but they were nice enough to me and Griftdrift during our panel last month. Things might not be so quiet this time around, though, as I know Spacey has a tyrannosaurus-sized bone to pick with one particular member of the local media who has yet to embrace any sources within the digerati.

Point being, if you want to see a journo-media girl fight, stay tuned to Twitter for news of a live feed from the N95.

We can hope, anyway. Otherwise it’s just gonna be a boring hour or so of watching some guy with a Technorati rank of 9 million (wonder what it was before this panel brought him his third link?) fight for attention on the panel.

I made sure not to shave for 3 days and dress for lab work today so I look extra unethical.

This may sound like more sour grapes, but hey, it’s my blog — and I consider new media my party so I’ll cry if I want to.

At SoCon’s, Press Club Panels and Journo3G’s we new media rabble-rousers urge the journalism giants to evolve and adapt and make use of the wealth of information available in social networks online. So why are some of us so quick to criticize them for missteps and bad internet fashion? Because we’re dicks, that’s why!

Corporate giant CBS takes another step online today with the official launch of MobLogic, an online daily videocast about, um, news-ish. I say news-ish because as the hostess herself — Lindsay Campbell formerly of Wallstrip, where a good lookin’ babe and edgy edits brings sex appeal to business news — says, “I’m not a journalist. I’m coming at this like you: I read the news, I read blogs, and I wanna talk about the things that are going on around me in the world.”

Oh, good, you’re coming at this like me. Just what the internet needs: more of us. (Although truth be told, she does it much better, but c’mon, when you’ve got a real actress and a major corporate media studio backing you up, it’s hardly a fair contest.)

Why must I be so sarcastic? Because there’s something terribly artificial about such a “just like you” online “news” videocast whose host is “not a journalist” when it’s coming from a massive mainstream media outlet like CBS and a professional actress. Lindsay even uses the image of the Death Star to illustrate her affiliation.

I know, I know, I smell the irony in such criticism coming from someone who’s working on a corporate-giant-hipster-invasion news project that has a distinctly inorganic flavor to it as well, but c’mon, that’s always been MTV’s milieu.

Maybe I’m speaking out of turn here, but I think when we netizens urge the MSM to be more receptive and adaptive to online information networks, we’re not suggesting they completely reinvent themselves and bring us super-hip blog recaps on video podcasts with young babes (and whatever you’d call Itay). We want to see the same kind of solid [giving them the benefit of the doubt in some cases] news reporting, but to see it take advantage of new sources of information and methods of sorting and analyzing it that technology has made available. Learn from us, don’t try to be us, jeez.

In any event, this venture may be successful as hell. It’s already got the key ingredient as suggested by two of Lindsay’s man-on-the-street interviews (many of which, oddly enough, took place in front of other media giants’ buildings):

“Um, hot girls?” “Um, I don’t know…hot girls.”

Hot girl: check. Content: let’s wait and see. But the first part is a good start.

When lampooned, I lampoon. Click for video:

I’m not sure when I first found out that this MTV election coverage thing was going to be called Street Team ‘08. Maybe it was in the early emails before the job was finalized, or maybe it was one of the surprises at orientation in New York. Who knows. (ETA: Turns out I’m an idiot; the political reporters have been called “Street Team” for a couple of cycles now. I thought it was a special name for us CJ’s.)

It’s not the name I would have voluntarily self-applied. When I think of “street teams,” I think of news stories I heard on Marketplace in the 90’s about this new guerrilla marketing trend; I think of those silly, obnoxious college girls who get paid to drive around in pimped out cars in tight outfits handing out free samples of Red Bull and crap.

But whatever the rationale, someone in the Viacom food chain of command made the call, and the company invested a decent amount of time and capital in this grand experiment.

Elsewhere in the corporate structure, somebody thought that idea sucked, and that opinion has become manifest in the Viacom empire on last night’s episode of The Daily Show. It’s about the last 90 seconds of this segment.