Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 08/28/2008 - 09:59
The playwrite proclaims, “We are born astride the grave”, and each night the evening news echoes the refrain. We respond with various stages of grief and working out our own salvation with fear and trembling.
We do this individually and we do it communally. I remember when Kim’s mother died, and the grief that each of us had. I remember how we banded together and held each other up. I remember 9/11 and friends that were in the Trade Centers when they came down, and friends that through some fortunate circumstance weren’t at work when it happened. We remember 9/11 as a nation as well.
As a nation, we have acted out the anger stage of our grief by pursuing those who perpetrated the attack and then lashing out at another country as well, and we continue to mourn.
Yet it is time for A New Mourning in America. It is time to take our grief and mingle it with the struggles people growing up on the South Side of Chicago, with the grief of a father who loses his wife and one of his children in a car accident just before Christmas. It is time to recognize the grief that we have caused the families of young men and women that have died because of our senseless attack of another country.
So, we have people show up on a stage in Denver to tell their stories, to provide a catharsis and to help us move beyond our anger and fear, to help us take up the role of the returning hero to share the bounty of the hero’s struggle and journey.
We weep as we hear their stories, and we rejoice at their victories. It is a reminder that we all must keep pressing on and that we all may share in bounty of the successful heroes.
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 08/27/2008 - 10:17
Today, as I was surfing EntreCard, I came across Regina’s blog post about Michelle Obama’s speech the other night. She was effusive about the wonderful speech and others were adding their comments.
Here is what I wrote:
Yesterday, as I drove to the train station to pick up my daughters, I saw young black women on their way to work or school. My thoughts went back to Michelle Obama's speech, and I wondered, how many of these young women could be the next Michelle Obama? How can we work together to help some of these young women attain such a lofty goal?
I hope that Michelle Obama's speech will help her become our next First Lady. Yet I have higher hopes. I hope that her speech will cause more people to stop and think about how they can help all of the youth of our nation, black or white, male of female, to become closer to the sort of person that Michelle Obama is.
I went on to think about Michelle Obama as a role model for my daughters. Yet in the media cycle, Michelle Obama’s speech is already old news. The talk of the day is Hillary Clinton’s excellent speech. She, too, provides an excellent role model for young people today.
So, I hope we look beyond the immediate political aspects of the convention and beyond November. My mind goes back to when Gov. Dean was running for President. He often said, “The biggest lie people like me tell people like you, is that if you vote for me, I will solve all your problems. The truth is, you have the power.”
The problem is that we don’t know what to do with our power. How do we use that power to help make a better world? Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton help us understand that power and provide role models in how to use it.
We need Barack Obama as our next President, as a leader that can help us return to the values that have made our country strong. We also need great people around him, like his wife, and like Hillary Clinton to be role models for us as each one of us owns our own power and takes a more active role in living out our great values.
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 08/26/2008 - 18:59
Finally, I get a chance to sit quietly in front of my computer. Television convention coverage is streaming into my PC. I haven’t read a lot of the blogs, twitters, friend feed or other sites. I was close to catching up on my email, and now I’ve fallen further behind. I was up late last night and early this morning.
I spent time today speaking with various clients about their computer needs. I spent a lot of time dealing with some of the financial difficulties we are facing, and talking with Kim about how we address them, those difficult kitchen table discussions.
All of this frames the way I’m watching the convention. I was at the 2004 convention. Many of my friends are in Denver. To a certain extent I wish I was there. It is great to be immersed in a convention. On the other hand, I’m tired and broke, and glad that I’m sitting quietly in front of my computer.
When you’re struggling to get by, a lot of the convention just doesn’t seem to resonate. Who are these delegates in Denver? How does all of the political infighting related to me in a small rented house just outside of New Haven, CT.
Michelle Obama’s speech touched on this sense of the struggle for a better world. It may be that there were other things worth noting. I’ll have to see if I can find them, when I get a chance to catch my breath.
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 08/25/2008 - 12:16
A few weeks ago, I received a review copy of The Faith of Barack Obama. It is a short book, around 150 pages, and written in a light breezy style, so I figured I would get through it very quickly and get my post up reviewing the book done well before Saddleback or Denver.
However, while it is a quick read, it is also an enjoyable read, so I’ve stretched it out, savoring the experience. Today, the convention begins, so I figured I’d better get this finished.
First, I should give a little back background. The author, Stephen Mansfield lived in Texas before moving to Tennessee and wrote a book, The Faith of George W. Bush. With that, I feared that his religious and political viewpoints might be a bit more conservative than my own. If they are, it is not obvious, and certainly isn’t an impediment to enjoying the book.
Instead, Mansfield starts off by observing Sen. Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, where he stated, “We worship an awesome God in the Blue States”. He talks about the changes going on in religion and politics, liberals reclaiming their religious beliefs and chaos amongst various conservative leaning ministers.
With this as a background, Mr. Mansfield traces Sen. Obama’s religious journey, exploring what it was like to be brought up by an atheist, married to a Muslim and attending a Catholic school in Indonesia. He talks about Sen. Obama’s organizing in Chicago and the interactions with the black churches there. He explores black liberation theology. All of this providing grist for Sen. Obama as he works out his salvation with fear and trembling.
Even if you aren’t interested in what has helped form the faith of Barack Obama, the book is worth reading, simply as a well-written biography.
How will this fit with the stories that we will hear about Sen. Obama during the convention? It is hard to say. My sense is that it will supplement it nicely. I enjoyed reading the book. I think people who read this site are likely to as well. If you’ve read it, or have some other good books you would like to recommend, please let me know.
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 22:50
During the Democratic National Convention, I’m working on a project that requires me to record the five hours of convention coverage each night in a format that can easily be read by computers and transmitted across the Internet. In order to do this, today, I went out and obtained a Pinnacle PCTV HD Ultimate stick.
This is a cool device. It is like an oversized USB Memory stick, with a mini USB port on the side and a coax connection on the end. The software is stored on the stick, and there is about 2 gigabytes of memory on the stick that can be used for recording onto.
There are a few different options for setting this up. The first option was to use an antenna that comes with the device, or connecting up to a rooftop antenna. My first pass was to connect the supplied antenna, but that did not give me any usable signals.
The second option was to use my cable connection. Since I was planning on doing this in my office, I installed a cable splitter just before my cable modem and tried connecting that way. It claimed to have found something like 69 different channels, but I couldn’t get any of them to play. It may be that this is because I was in a rush and didn’t spend enough time trying to figure out how to get it to work.
The third option was to capture from a Cable or Satellite Set-top box using either composite video or S-video. I got the S-video to work, which was a relief. However, I hadn’t figured out the software well enough to figure out how to record off of the S-Video channel. I suppose I could get the Remote to do that for me, but I hadn’t set up the remote.
Hopping back to the first option, I tried taking the channel 3 output from the cable set-top box and feeding it into the PCTV stick. This worked well. However it meant that I needed to watch the same channel on the TV as I was recording on the PC. That is a viable option, but not as good as I was hoping for. I tried shifting around the connection in different places, between the set-top box and the DVD/VHS player, between the DVD/VHS player and the TV. Finally, I found that I could successfully split the cable signal coming into the set-top box and get the analog channels on the PCTV stick. This is the best since it allows me to record on one channel on the PC while watching a different channel on the TV. I also found that I could take the S-Video output from my DVD/VHS player into my memory stick. This will make it easier for me to take some old VHS tapes and digitize them and store them on YouTube, Blip.TV or other sites.
With the wiring working a bit better, I went back to see if I could get any of the digital signals to work. This would be nice, since the PCTV stick supports digital HDTV, but our regular television is an old analog SD TV, so we can’t watch digital HDTV channels.
Unfortunately, I still couldn’t find and HDTV stations. I’ll try that again a little later. I’ve been told that Cablevision does weird stuff with their HDTV signals which makes it harder for people to pull them in without a set-top box.
Now that the basic functionality was working, my next test was to record shows using the stick. There are about ten different formats that can be saved, using various resolutions of DivX, MPEG 1/2 or 4. I’ve set up a bunch of recording sessions to see what the resolution looks like for each of these as how much space they take up. Once this is done, I’ll start testing various things that can be done with the files in these different formats.
I did end up installing DivX and Quicktime on my laptop so I can view the files in different format. This is also supposed to work with the Windows Media Center, so I may try working with as a future test.
So, initial impressions are that you can turn a PC with Windows XP or Vista into a Personal Video Record fairly easily for around $100.
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 08/23/2008 - 22:47
At the risk of ruining a good story by explaining it, I want to talk a little bit about the Tiara.
The Backstory
First, let me give you the history. You will notice on the right side of my page an EntreCard. EntreCard is a community website where members drop cards on each other. Each time you drop a card on someone, or someone drops a card on you, you get an EntreCard Credits. These credits can be used to buy advertisements on other people’s websites, objects from the EntreCard shop, or can be bought and sold.
There is also a community forum, where people talk whatever they want. The blogger who writes Designs by Reese commented about being on vacation for a week and seeing the price of advertisements on her blog plummet as well as her ranking as a card dropper. In less than half an hour, her advertising rates were back up to a respectable rate, and she bragging about wearing a tiara and wondering where her scepter was.
eyespi20.com urged her to calm down. Everything is fine, and wondered where Debbie was. Debbie has a blog, Wisdom Hypnosis and often comments in the forum with helpful suggestions about remaining calm and reducing stress in one’s life. Debbie joined in by commenting about losing a tiara she had when she moved, but about how it was one of the best moves she had made.
Reese came back and commented that ‘not many people can pull off the tiara look’. I joined the fun and admitted that I probably can’t pull off the tiara look anymore. People on EntreCard mostly know me by the card that I have up, which pictures my bald head and gray beard. Debbie commented that she would pay to see me in a tiara. Eyespi said she would pony up 1000 EntreCard credits. Debbie picked the word pony and suggested I should appear with a pony. Reggy at fragileheart said she would join in.
Fiona’s riding lesson was this morning, so I told everyone I would pose with a pony while wearing a tiara. Around the house, I tried to find an Tiara. I was hoping I could find one of my daughter’s dress-up tiaras from when she was younger. Like Debbie’s tiara, I suspect that Fiona’s tiaras may have gotten lost in our move. So, I ended up wearing the tiara that my wife wore when we got married.
The picture received several nice comments in the forum as well as on my blog post.
What does this tell us
Lighten up
I'm gonna soak up the sun
I'm gonna tell everyone
To lighten up (I'm gonna tell 'em that)
Well, perhaps the most important part is to not take things too seriously. Somehow, I can imagine Debbie offering that advice as she helps people find calmness and happiness in her hypnosis practice. I think this is particularly important to a wide range of bloggers.
I've got a crummy job
It don't pay near enough
To buy the things it takes
To win me some of your love
Over on EntreCard, there are a lot of bloggers that spend all their time writing about how to make money online. I must admit, I find most of their blog entries dreadfully dull. Granted, I don’t make much money online, but that isn’t really what I’m all about.
My friend the communist
Holds meetings in his RV
I can't afford his gas
So I'm stuck here watching tv
Likewise, many of my friends in the political blogging world are on their way to Denver for the Democratic National Convention. I’ll write more about this later, but I find many of the more serious political blogs also dreadfully dull. I can’t imagine that they get many people, other than those already sharing their views to make it through their blog posts.
Build community
C'mon people now,
Smile on your brother
Ev'rybody get together
Try and love one another right now
Beyond that, successful websites are about building community. EntreCard does a good job of that. Other tools do good jobs of that. You need to tie them all together. What matters is the mesh of social media, and not simply just a blog. I think that is where a lot of bloggers as well as companies trying to get their message out online make mistakes. They focus on too small a community, trying to build bonding social capital instead of bridging social capital, or they end up being just a broadcast oriented site.
But that is a different topic that I want to explore more in coming posts.
So, check out EntreCard and related sites. Find a broadbased community where you can talk, listen and have fun, and if you do something crazy online, let me know.
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 08/22/2008 - 12:21
During the past week, many of my friends who are going to Denver spent time exploring different tools that they can use to get their message back to their family, friends, neighbors and constituents. Even though I’m not going to Denver, I have been playing with new tools as well, helping out friends and, as always, looking for new online tools.
This week, a lot of the focus has been on video, so I thought I would highlight a few of the different tools.
Mogulus claims to be the most powerful live broadcast platform on the internet. You can use their platform to mix live video with videos that you’ve imported from other sites like YouTube.
As a powerful tool, it also takes a little bit of getting used to. Yesterday, I loaded some clips in, mostly that I had shot of various events at Falcon Ridge, and set up a ‘Clips from Falcon Ridge’ storyboard, which plays automatically when I am not broadcasting live.
Today, I brought in a few clips from other sources. Jen Just has uploaded a couple videos to YouTube about her preparation for going to Denver. Her video of all the materials she has received is particularly good.
Lon Seidman put up a nice video about the equipment he’ll be bringing to Denver to capture the moment.
I recorded my own segment as a lead in to these segments which I added to Jen’s and Lon’s segments into a ‘Convention Prep’ storyboard which I also added my auto-pilot on Mogulus. I also enabled both of the Mogulus storyboards to be played as part of video on demand.
I also spent a bit of time trying to figure out the best way to do live broadcasts on Mogulus. I’m not very good at it yet, but I’m getting better. I may try some live broadcasts at some point.
Zannel is an interesting new player on the market, that seems to have an interesting marketing approach. Word is that they will help cover expenses of some of the bloggers going to Denver if they agree to post content on Zannel. Already, there are some good test messages up. For example, be sure to check out some of the videos from Steve at Uppity Wisconsin.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to import video from Zannel into Mogulus, but I have managed to add their feed into FriendFeed. Zannel also has the ability to feed other systems, but because of possible feedback loops or duplicate entries, I haven’t set that up yet.
I’m getting into Seesmic a little bit more now that I have a few friends there. Adrianne from Black Women in Europe and I have been having a nice discussion as she prepares for Denver. According to the most recent update, as of this post, she is in Washington DC, has a new laptop and is going to meet some good blogging friends there.
Adrianne spoke about problems with Ustream. I found it cumbersome and like the other video services better. I don’t know of anyone using Ustream for broadcasting from Denver. If you hear of anyone, let me know.
So, how do we tie all of this together? Well, it seems like FriendFeed might be a particularly good service to use. I’ve set up the FriendFeed DemConvention room. This is a big messy feed. If I find a social media feed from someone that is going to Denver, I add it. We are approaching sixty different feeds going into the room. You have to scan through to see which entries are interesting or not. In addition, when I recognize people who have joined the room, I make them administrators, so anyone can add feeds to the room.
A different approach has been done by Andy Carvin. He has set up the FriendFeed DNC08 room. This room only has eight feeds coming into it, however they are feeds from Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and FriendFeed that are tagged in one way or another as DNC.
So, it looks like there will be lots of interesting online content to find and view.
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 08/17/2008 - 14:28
Yesterday, Kim was out registering voters at the Milford Oyster festival. I stopped by and ran into Tessa Marquis and had an interesting talk about citizen journalism and I’d like to illustrate a few different points of this from recent events.
First, I’m no expert on journalism, so if what I’m suggesting doesn’t make sense, I apologize. However, it seems to me that there are three key aspects to any journalism endeavor. First, there is the gathering of information. Then, there is the ‘sense making’, finding a story line or narrative that is compelling, and then there is the distribution.
This gets to a key problem that live bloggers run into. Too often they are trying to gather information and make sense of what is going on all at the same time. This can draw them out of the moment, and they can miss important information.
So, when I am live blogging, or doing various forms of mobile social media, I try to simply gather information and get it distributed as quickly as possible. Then, when I get back home from an event, I can try to make sense, and write up a longer, more narratively interesting entry. What is nice about this approach is also the collaborative aspect. If people see my comments, photographs or listen to my audio posts, they can grab and do their own sense making out of it, even if the sense they make ends up much different than the sense I eventually make out of it.
My blog post yesterday is a good example of that. Local Politics is a picture that I took with my cellphone, which I added a small amount of text to and sent on to Flickr, which in turn posted it to my blog. Later, Mike Brown posted additional information about the candidates to help with the sense making process. When and if I get time, I hope to write up a more detailed post about the Oyster Festival, but the way things are piling up, that just may not happen.
So, if we break apart the information gathering part of the journalistic process from the sense making part, we may find that we want to apply the distribution to both the information gathering part of the process in addition to the sense making part.
As I have been working to get bloggers, delegates, and others going to Denver to submit their information via cellphones to sites like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and so on, I’ve also been working on the distribution channels of this raw information. The DemConvention Room on FriendFeed is set up to pull in information from many such sources so people can look at a fairly raw, unedited feed, and then decide what they want to use for their own sense making.
CSpan is getting into this game as well. They have just set up an account on Twitter and have additional plans in place for their website, which will include aggregating messages on Twitter flagged with the #DNC08 and #RNC08 hashtags.
Here in Connecticut, Lon Seidman has set up http://ctgoestodenver.info/, a site that will have various content from the Connecticut Delegation in Denver.
Over the past few days, I’ve been getting into discussions with various conservatives comparing their concern about big government with liberals about their concern about big business. My primary concern is that centralized power, whether it be with big government or big businesses is not the best way of addressing the issues we face.
Some may note that these days the dividing line between big business and big government is becoming blurrier. Others may note that this discuss applies much more broadly and may talk about peer-to-peer networks as opposed to highly centralized networks. These are interesting topics worth exploring. However, today, I want to focus on the conservative response and what I think are some of the flaws.
The conservative response focuses on the free market, and their belief that free markets are the best ways of addressing problems. Some would argue that our markets are not really free, but that government policies particularly benefit big business. They would point to the vast sums that big business spends on lobbying. This argument has a lot of merit, but still, we need to dig deeper.
The free market enthusiasts all recognize the danger of monopolies. Monopolies prevent free markets from doing their magic. Yet they often look at monopolies in terms of whether there is a single corporation controlling the market, and over look the aspects of when several companies are virtually indistinguishable from one another and this group of similar companies controls the market.
This leads us to the key issue. Free markets are good at rewarding short-term profitability, short term profitability may not be the best way to address problems. If one company is very successful, other companies will imitate these companies and the largest companies end up being very similar, and we lose any sort of diversity. Personally, I don’t find a lot of difference between Burger King, Wendy’s or McDonald’s. I don’t see a lot of difference between Verizon and AT&T. I don’t see a lot of difference between ABC, NBC, and CBS. I don’t see a lot of difference between Borders and Barnes and Noble. I don’t see a lot of difference between Budweiser and Miller. I don’t see a lot of difference between Ford, GM and Dodge.
Essentially, free markets tend to create monocultures with minor differences between the brands. So, what is wrong with monocultures? Look at nineteenth century Ireland for the answer. Everyone was growing the same type of potatoes. It was the most profitable crop, at least in the short term, just as SUVs had been the most profitable vehicle in the United States for quite a while. However, when things changed, such as the potato blight in Ireland, or the steep increase in gasoline prices, the profitable crops and products rapidly became unprofitable and massive dislocations were created.
Those interested in longer term stability would do well to look beyond a simplistic view of free markets and think about how we can promote a better diversified economy.
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 08/15/2008 - 14:08
I've been spending a lot of time talking with various bloggers going to Denver to cover the Democratic National Convention. It is expensive to get there, pay for food, housing, and whatever else. Many of the bloggers have set up 'ChipIn pages', so I've gathered several of these.
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