shelbinator.com

My phone will not be broadcasting to my usual Flixwagon account today; for ease of production I’ll be publishing to a parallel server for MTV, and clips will show up in the player below (UPDATED/FIXED):
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A few weeks ago I mentioned this shindig over at the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation with CBS political correspondent Jeff Greenfield. Since Jeff had said that the current state and trajectory of media tested his faith in American polity, I threw together this little look back at the MTV Choose or Lose Street Team ‘08 experiment:

Lucky for me, something got screwed up in the A/V system between Monday’s sound check and Tuesday’s event, my video had no sound, and I looked like a friggin’ idiot in front of the whole audience. Yeehaw!

The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation — you know, the guy who owns our Atlanta Falcons — is having one of its Speaker Series events this evening at 5:30.

Jeff Greenfield, CBS News Senior Political Correspondent

Known for his quick wit and savvy insight into politics, history, media and current events, Jeff Greenfield is one of America’s most respected commentators and journalists.
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“I am an optimist by nature,” he says. “I still have a Jeffersonian faith in our capacity to reach for the best in us when we have to. But the more I look at the present, and the future, of the media, the more that faith is tested.”

The affair is booked solid, but lucky lucky you, I will be live-streaming the event over at ustream.tv/shelbinator starting around 5:20 p.m. (program begins at 5:30 p.m.). I will also be monitoring the chat room (or DM me on Twitter) so if you have any questions during the Q&A portion, take your best shot and, time permitting, I’ll raise my hand on your behalf.

I’m presenting a video overview of our Street Team shenanigans between the talk and the Q&A, so we’ll see whether I test, or restore, Jeff’s faith in the future of media. Place your bets!

I should’ve done this for my colleagues covering Denver, but I didn’t. Get over it, I was busy, and frankly most of the interesting stuff for the DNC was on C-SPAN. So far this Republican convention is a real snoozer, and it’s the protests and such outside that make it exciting. There are five or six Choose or Lose Street Team ‘08 types running amok in Minneapolis with Nokia N95s doing the live-streaming thing like we did on Super Tuesday — now joined by the impressive ranks of TheUptake.org (using Qik, not Flixwagon) and even good old C-SPAN themselves, going the mojo route.

Unfortunately there’s no handy “group” feature for the Flixwagon coverage like the Qikkers have, so to see if any of the five streamers have new content, you have to visit all five of their pages individually (direct links to the videos have been disabled by Flixwagon for MTV’s purposes so auto-tweeting won’t work {they figured it out, even though the vids are on a separate subdomain}), and on a Flux-built site that takes way too long. So, for my own purposes and maybe even yours, I’m embedding all five (well, four, till Erica America gets her N95) Flixee widgets on a single page over here.

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).

Apparently CNN’s internet reporter found my cellphone coverage of the hearty crowd reactions from the overflowing Manuel’s Tavern interesting enough to put on her big shiny screen. Bhaskar Roy, co-founder of Qik — whose software I used to stream video from Manuel’s (because frankly I wasn’t all that caught up in the speech) — sent me a couple snapshots of someone’s TV after he, and a number of local tweeple, were all a-twitter about the segment. I was totally oblivious (no one in Manuel’s noticed and said “Hey, that’s us! And that’s that guy!”).

That’s fellow YDAtlien Justi in the corner of the second pic.

They must’ve had slim pickin’s in the blogosphere at 11:42 p.m. (judging by the sudden simultaneous influx to the blog of people googling “shelbinator”), because the video ain’t all that interesting. But for posterity, here it is:

There’s a view from the back bar here, too.

Well, that was awesome. After what was a pretty crafty campaign to suck up a bunch of phone numbers for their SMS campaigns by promising to tell their supporters the inside scoop on the VP nom-noms, the Obama campaign rode the fail-whale all the way to Textland by playing the tease out a little too long. Even though many an internet observer figured Friday afternoon would be a good time to send out the most coveted SMS since Willy Wonka’s golden tickets, somewhere somehow someone on in the campaign figured they could milk it just a little bit longer.

You know, not like anybody would notice the Secret Service heading to Delaware to escort my boy Joey B to a chartered jet that had been sent from Chicago.

And then, as if to beat only the rooster, they started cranking out the texty goodness around 3am, rousting folks from their sleep like it wasn’t already old news. Well, that’s what you get for not thinking to text “STOP” to 62262 before you go to sleep after celebrating John King’s breaking story.

It’s 3 a.m. and your phone is beeping…

(Quicktime)

I’ve been meaning to write over on Blog for Democracy about a certain Republican Congressman who is really showing us up on the new media front, using Twitter and Qik — personally, not just via a younger, hipper staffer — to communicate with his constituents (okay, let’s get real about TX-7; with the national cadre of poligeeks) in ridiculously real time.

And then Rep. John Culberson had to go and screw it up by being hysterically partisan, in 140 characters or less at a time.

Yesterday Rep. Culberson began some Chicken Little tweeting about the sky falling, claiming “I just learned the Dems are trying to censor Congressmen’s ability to use Twitter Qik YouTube Utterz etc - outrageous and I will fight them.” The problem is, he was basing this on a memo he saw from — and a conversation he may have had with — Rep. Mike Capuano (D-MA) about some proposed updates to the antiquated rules governing “official” House communications. These updates Capuano was proposing were intended to expand the ability of Representatives to use external social networking sites (specifically video hosts like YouTube) and not to restrict the use of Twitter et al any more than they were already being restricted by rules written by people whom my mom could out-internet blindfolded with a gimpy mouse.

As “evidence” of this Dem conspiracy to choke off free speech, all Rep. Culberson could produce was this memo (excerpted below) of 6/24/08 from Rep. Capuano to the Committee on House Administration. Capuano’s intent was basically to say, 1. The current House system for hosting and playing official videos on house.gov websites sucks, hardcore. 2. Current House rules of official communication prohibit Representatives from using sites like YouTube for better hosting of such videos. (Capuano apparently told Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-IN, in conversation that scores of Representatives do it anyway with a wink and a nod, and it’s just time to update the rules to reflect that.) 3. The House really ought to let Representatives use external hosting sites for videos, because these communications are a good thing. And 4. In order to keep up with the “decorum” of the House, they ought to find a way to do so that doesn’t get too tangled up in commerce or political campaigning due to free market forces (i.e., if you watch a Representative’s “official” YouTube video, it might be unbecoming if the three “related” videos that pop up in the YouTube player after it’s over were a racist anti-Obama ad, a pitch for Viagra, or candid footage of Britney Spears’ crotch). Not unreasonable suggestions, I think.

Apparently the guv’mint was already talking to YouTube about finding a way to do this, and YouTube was willing to create a “clean space” for official civic communication, according to this WaPo article. But Rep. Culberson grabbed Rep. Capuano’s language about how the updated rules should handle the hosting of video content — including a “this is official House bizniss” type notice at the front and the non-commercial entanglement concerns — and ran with it, screaming bloody murder, as if House Democrats woke up one recent morning and decided to enact a “rules change” to crack down on his Twittering and any other innovative use of new media.

But again, the problem with Congressional use of new media is that the rules already don’t allow for the use of commercial third party sites that might commingle the official with the unseemly. Rep. Capuano’s attempt to expand the ability of our Representatives to use the YouTube might be, at worst, a rather narrow-minded and poorly-worded proposed change to the rules that would create no extra wiggle room for people like Rep. Culberson to do things like Twitter (which are already against the rules as they stand anyway). But hey, I guess it’s not as easy to say, in 140 characters or less, that “ZOMG! House Dems are going to update the rules to expand Congressional use of social media in a very limited and non-forward-looking fashion, but still an update that House Repubs never got around to considering in 2006!” than it is to claim the House Democrats are taking away your Twitter because they hate free speech. (Sure enough, the right-wing screed blog Hot Air ran with the headline for Rep. Culberson’s plight, “Why do Congressional Democrats fear free speech?”) But even that kind of “non-forward-looking” allegation wouldn’t have been fair to Rep. Capuano, given this particular chunk of his letter:

While the above recommendations will help CHA as it seeks to provide House Members with the ability to post official video materials on the Web in an efficient and economical way, further changes to CHA regulations and practice may be necessary to account for the continual emergence of new technologies. I encourage CHA to view these recommendations as the first step in a process towards modernizing the regulations that govern communications of Members.

This post at TechDirt nails the analysis on the head, as far as I’m concerned. The right-wing bloggers parroted Rep. Culberson’s rather hysterical partisan interpretation. Even the social media powerhouse blog, under the steady hand of Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins (whom I’m biased against anyway after he blew off our Street Team ‘08 Super Tuesday stunt), put the disclaimer “This isn’t a knee-jerk post” at the top of a knee-jerk post that used its headline to perpetuate Rep. Culberson’s partisan myth. And to think I was intrigued when my Twitterrific feed asked me, “Why are the only people spun up about House Net rules on the right? I’ve seen nothing from lefty friends? Where’s the transparency crowd?” But I quickly realized that the answer was, “We aren’t sucking down your spin because the story has no merit.”

It’s even funnier when you put Democratic and Republican memos right next to each other for comparison, as TechnoSailor does. First he presents Capuano’s “letter sent to the Democratic House majority leadership to silence [social media like Twitter and Qik.” He, too, parrots the Culberson mythology at first, calling Capuano’s memo “ridiculous.” He later posts “the GOP response to the [Capuano] letter,” from Reps. Ehler, McCarthy, and Price, which in itself contains language that totally highlights Rep. Culberson’s Twitterspasm for the partisan smokescreen it is.

Committee rules that apply to these [web-based] services and technologies, however, significantly pre-date their invention. In some cases, Members have begun using these services and technologies despite being in violation of existing rules.

Despite being in violation of existing rules. So sayeth the Republicans themselves. And yet Rep. Culberson has stirred up this tempest in a teapot (via Twitter! against the existing rules!) suggesting that somehow the Democrats are suddenly out to censor him with new rules.

The Republican letter goes on to suggest updated language that highlights another inconsistency on Rep. Culberson’s part.

Toward that end, we request that the Committee consider adopting the following updated policy language.

With regard to the Internet
Members may use technologies, websites and services (paid or unpaid) to communicate with their constituents via text, video, or audio so long as the content posted by the Member complies with House rules and Franking content regulations.

(Emphasis mine.)

And yet, one of the particular things that had Rep. Culberson all up in arms was his interpretation of Rep. Capuano’s language here, which is hardly different:

Official content posted on an external domain must be clearly identified as produced by a House office for official purposes, and meet existing content rules and regulations;

As for what “clearly identified” entails, there is nothing in the letter to suggest that Rep. Capuano and the CHA wouldn’t be satisfied with some language on the main Twitter profile page of any Representative using Twitter. It’s a stretch to suggest, as Rep. Culberson does, that they would be forced to include a “disclaimer” in each single tweet that would exceed the 140 character limit by default, because in the memo Rep. Capuano is talking about video content only. But Rep. Culberson also zeroed in on the “existing content rules and regulations” phrase in a response he tweeted to all of us who questioned his allegations:

@shelbinator Look at page two - note each Twitter etc must meet “existing content rules and regulations” that means prior approval/rewrite 05:41 PM July 08, 2008 from web in reply to shelbinator

Huh. If it’s the House Democrats who are “trying to censor Congressmen’s ability to use Twitter” because of the “existing content rules and regulations” suggested in Rep. Capuano’s letter, then what the heck are the House Republicans doing so much better by recommending that “the content posted by the Member complies with House rules and Franking content regulations?”

Oh. Right. Absolutely nothing. Rep. Culberson is just acting like another extreme partisan trying to fan the flames of a fake fire so he can pretend to be the guy fighting the good fight. On his House.gov website — which apparently is unencumbered by any Franking Commission rules that might prohibit lies and bullshit malarkey^* — he alleges,

Democrats are looking at restricting Member content on websites outside the house.gov domain. Websites such as Youtube and other social networks would have to comply with government regulations before Members of Congress could post content on them.

He claims this despite the fact that (1) Democrats are looking at removing restrictions, as I detailed with self-admitted neophyte Capuano’s own language above (indicating that more evolution of standards will be necessary), and (2) the Republican letter to the CHA recommends the exact same compliance with regulations that Capuano’s does.

Yeah. I think bullshit is being too forgiving, even of a Congressman from Texas.

And that’s so, so very disappointing from somebody who really displayed a lot of initiative and openness by embracing these emerging technologies to open Congress up to the world. Too bad he thought it was just another medium he could use to pull the standard Republican playbook move: make up a lie, then repeat it as loudly and as frequently as possible until people dumb enough to fall for it start repeating it for you.

* Hat tip to my boy Joey B.

UPDATES:
1. Rep. Capuano brought the smackdown too.
2. ZOMG someone in Speaker Pelosi’s office apparently read this blog and got her to link to it (fourth paragraph) in a response to Leader Boehner! Leader Boehner!
3. I think we’re all going to put down our partisan guns and get behind the Sunlight Foundation’s Let Our Congress Tweet push. I’ll defend Democrats against exaggerated partisan claims, but I’m not going to let them have the dumb if they can’t brain the internet.

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.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Stacy Shelton previewed the Critical Mass bike ride last week.

Starting about 6:30 p.m., more than 300 bicyclists plan to take over several lanes of traffic, shoving King Car aside.

They call it Critical Mass. It’s a rolling message board that says “Bicycles have a right to the road too!”

During last month’s ride, a few bicyclists “corked” the intersections at every traffic light, blocking cars for the mass of bikers as they pedaled through a couple of light changes.
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The event is both political statement and rollicking street festival, with some civil disobedience thrown in. … There’s no organized leadership.
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Critical Mass started in San Francisco in 1992 and is now replicated in hundreds of cities worldwide.
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To help defuse hostility and spread the joy of their preferred mode of transportation, riders during last month’s ride shouted “Happy Friday!” and “Thank you!” to waiting motorists.
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Rachael Spiewak, 27, a regular Critical Mass’er and executive director of SoPo Bicycle Co-op, a nonprofit bike shop in East Atlanta, said the rides are an important tool for empowering bicyclists and making drivers more aware of them.

Sounds a lot like the general storyline of my video report from April’s Critical Mass that went out over the Associated Press Online Video Network. Why, she even singled out the same local bike enthusiast, Rachael Spiewak, that shows up in many of the thumbnails of my video (seen left) on various syndicated sites. Whaddayaknow.

I don’t know why that coincidence came to mind this morning as I read Jeff Jarvis’s latest thoughts on cross-pollenation in journalism:

This leads to a new Golden Rule of Links in journalism — link unto others’ good stuff as you would have them link unto your good stuff. This emerges from blogging etiquette but is exactly contrary to the old, competitive ways of news organizations: wasting now-precious resources matching competitors’ stories so you could say you’d done it yourself. That must change.

You know, just as an aside.