I know that it’s only sugar, water, lemons, and ice, and they cost $4, sometimes even more depending on the money swindling location and/or event that you are at. Still, there is nothing better than a lemonade like this on a hot, sunny, summer day.
Speaking on a panel at Net Tuesday4 – “Podcasting for Social Change”
I’ve been invited by the intrepid Dave Olson to join him, Rob Cottingham, and Roland Tanglao to be apart of a panel for the coming Net Tuesday4 on July 8, 2008. This is in the series of events in the NetSquared project.
Our mission is to spur responsible adoption of social web tools by social benefit organizations. There’s a whole new generation of online tools available – tools that make it easier than ever before to collaborate, share information and mobilize support. These tools include blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, podcasting, and more. Some people describe them as “Web 2.0”; we call them the social web, because their power comes from the relationships they enable. [netsquared]
The coming panel will be about “Podcasting for Social Change“. Essentially, we are going to gather together on this panel to talk about these tools that exist for pretty much anyone to use in order to get their message out about a cause or organization that is trying to create change within a community.
Whether it’s on a local or global scale, our intention is to give you some insight on how you can use a medium like podcasting to help you get to where you want to be. The road map is fairly wide open, but I’ll do my best to share insights on how to get started, recording methods, editing tips, and how to get that podcast episode out to the world.
What: Net Tuesday4 – Podcasting for Social Change
When: Tuesday, July 8, 2008 5:30 PM!
Where: WorkSpace, 400, 21 Water St., Vancouver BC, V6B 1A1 [google maps]
Topic: Ways Non-profits/Social Change orgs can use podcasts to spread their message
To make it easy, we’ll cover:
1) planning
2) producing tips (with toys to demo)
3) publishing/promoting
panel:
dave olson – moderater/podcaster
john bollwitt – podcaster and audio engineer
rob cottingham – social change technologist
roland tanglao – mobile pundit and tech-evangelist
And to help you think about checking out the panel, check out this great promotional video that Dave made in anticipation. Gotta say that my tequila bottle mic stand is still one of my favorite podcasting engineering feats to this day. Simple and useful in oh so many ways.
Playing photographer at the Vancouver Dragon Boat Festival 2008
About a week and a half ago, I had the extreme pleasure of joining Rebecca on a really cool experience of covering the Rio Tinto Alcan Dragon Boat Festival for the festivities of 2008.
People come from all over to compete in this event, not to mention watch and enjoy the festivities.
The Festival was created to show off Vancouver’s growing cultural diversity and to promote racial harmony among Canadians – new and old. Vancouverites were invited to the festival to experience spectacular food, entertainment, arts and children’s programming reflecting Vancouver’s cultural diversity. At the same time, interest in paddling was taking off and more and more teams formed and registered each year.
Twenty years later the Festival still fulfills its mandate to promote cultural harmony among Canadians. It has developed into one of Vancouver’s most anticipated summer family events. [dragonboatbc]
This was just a little bit more than the run of the mill walking around, shooting pictures, and seeing the sights. Thanks to Anita, we had media passes to the event.
Probably the best thing about the media access for this event was being able to ride in the media boat and follow the racers as they went from start to finish, paddling along until their bodies couldn’t give anymore.
With my trusty camera, I decided to try something a little different and shoot some video with it of an actual heat or two.
The Dragon Boat Festival is a real passion for some of these racers. There’s a community that comes from the numerous teams, and the action is just as intense. This is something that you don’t really get a sense of until you get away from all of the tents and vendors on dry land. When you get down to the water level, it’s a whole other experience that I’m really glad I had the opportunity to see.
Fenway Park cameraman shows off his expensive toy of a day job
This is pretty wicked. Found this via Robert Scoble who found it via Jakob Lodwick, and what we have here is an incredible video that was put together by Tom Guilmette who is not only an avid video enthusiast, but his day job is being a camera man in the outfield at Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox.
This short video is a small tour of the camera he uses to do his job, and the camera he used to make this video blog of sorts isn’t anything to sneeze at as well.
Fenway HD Camera – Sony HDC-910 – Canon 75x from Tom Guilmette on Vimeo.
I would love to be able to do something like this with my day job, but in all honestly, radio is not as pretty and it sounds. No seriously, it sounds way better than what it technically takes to make radio happen.
Doves – black and white town / there goes the fear
To continue with my efforts in sharing what I’m into, I’m digging Doves a lot these days. I can’t exactly tell you why, but these next couple of tunes are worth the effort of tracking down on your Thursday and throwing into a mix for the commute to or from work on Friday. That’s just what someone like me would do if I were you, and you should do that because you’re you. And you like this music. No, trust me, you do.
You can always try to hit the iTunes Music Store and grab “The Last Broadcast”[itunes] or “Some Cities”[itunes].
So long, Trevor Linden
I’ve already made mention of this before, but today it’s official. Trevor Linden[wiki] is leaving the game of hockey.
No matter how little of time I have been an avid Canucks fan, there is no way to easily say how incredible of a person Linden is. Even though the career is over, it’s not about being sad. He never won a Stanley Cup, never blew away the masses with his talent on the ice, nor did he really set any notable records that will live forever in the history of the NHL.
When it comes down to it, he’s just another guy.
That’s easier said than what he actually means to the city of Vancouver and to the legions of Canucks fans around the world. He is who he is, and if you don’t know him already, then you don’t know an amazing person.
The day job took me very close to the events as they unfolded today. Running around to help out at the press conference to having him pop in at the home base for interview with the media #131, there is something that strikes you about the guy. Deep down, he’s still the same 18 year old kid that was drafted into the NHL twenty years ago, to this exact day.
And every time I was in the same room as him, he was nothing but smiles.
It gives you some comfort to know that people like him are out there in the big dollar business of professional sports. Even though he could walk into nearly any place in Vancouver and be treated like a king, he’d still give you the time of day and directions to the nearest Tim Horton’s. Hell, today it felt like he’d even give you a lift there in his car, he’s just that awesome.
Weekend camping at Cultus Lake for drunkcamp02
Three days in Chilliwack, B.C. at Cultus Lake with Rebecca, John, and Duane. Lots and lots of sitting around the campfire, laughing a ton, good drink, good food, and the weather was… good.
The forecast in the days leading up to the trip just got worse and worse. Everyone we knew told us that we were nuts for going camping this weekend. It ended up being awful on Thursday night, Friday was actually really nice, and Saturday was off and on in terms of being cool from winds that would whip up from time to time. Other than that, everything went off great.
I even busted open my right shin a tiny bit when a piece of wood I was chopping got away and clocked me. That’s about par for the course, no other major injuries.
I can still smell the smoke, if not taste it. That’s only the real complaint of the trip, even if the coolness kept us all pretty close to the fire. Couldn’t even fathom jumping into the lake, no matter how inviting or calling it might have been. Fleece under a rain jacket was just right. Bone chilling lake water from ice run off from the mountains in the area, not so much.
Ah yes, we indeed called this drunkcamp02, complete with lanyards. It’s more of a statement of enjoying the time away from laptops and technology and becoming one with nature. Even though there are public washrooms within easy walk and Duane’s family brought us amazing food(perogies, cabbage rolls, and KFC), donuts from Tim Horton’s, and fire wood in three separate trips on Saturday, it’s tough country out there “in the Wack”.
You can see more of my pictures from the trip on Flickr.
Ben Folds covering The Postal Service – such great heights
This is a melting pot of some of my favorite artists. Dntel linked up with Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie, and The Postal Service was born. And now, I came across this cover by Ben Folds doing “Such Great Heights” for an Australian TV program just today, posted nearly a year ago. All of it, pure brilliance.
July 11th is the day for the iPhone 3G in Canada
The day has finally been set, so we can finally stop all the complaining about how the neighbors closest to the country who originated the iPhone can finally get the same ability to use and abuse Apple’s latest got-to-have-it. We can also stop our whining and pining for an Apple Store of our own in Vancouver so we can be sure that we don’t have to go all the way to Toronto to buy it from one of the three locations there.
Alright, so I’m still complaining, but at least I can say that it’s about time.
For those not in the know, the 2008 Apple World Wide Developers Conference kicked off today with the traditional keynote address. In all actuality, this is more like a sold out rock show that all the cool kids wanna be at. Difference is that all these “cool kids” are major tech heads that get some major kicks out of seeing what Apple has hiding up their sleeve, and you know that I’m a sucker just like the rest of them.
Before any talk of the new iPhone, I thought it was interesting that the next version of the Mac OS, 10.6, is being previewed at this conference. That’s basically all we really know, other than the rumors that the next release will be less cosmetic and more of a back end strengthening of the OS. More details in time, I’m sure.
So the iPhone 3G, on the other hand, is the huge news. So what makes it better than the original iPhone? Lots, and John Biehler has a lot more details on today’s events, even taking in the coverage as it happened at the Vancouver Apple Store.
This new iPhone is wicked, but why does the “3G” tag on the end mean anything? No, it’s not a throw back to the G3, G4, or G5 processor mumbo-jumbo of Mac days past[wiki]. This is 3G in terms of mobile phone standards[wiki]. It just means faster methods of data transfer beyond simple voice send and receive of a normal phone call.
But that’s not all. At my day job, I get a Blackberry. It’s… ok, but there are so many things about it that frustrate me. However, it’s tied to an Exchange Server, so I get all company email to it as well as contacts, appointments, tasks, etc. The new version of the iPhone operating system, “2.0”, promises to work with Exchange Servers. Combine that with a 3G network in terms of speed and the ease of use of the iPhone interface, because the limited experience I have with Rebecca’s, would make me happy not only as a consumer, but as a network administrator as well.
Of course, out of the gate, there are going to be serious elements to look at before any enterprise use is widespread, but that’s the nature of the beast. Even if Apple hits it on the head, you still have to convince the skeptics at the top of the I.T. food chain. That can be challenging, to say the least.
But there’s still more. The iPhone App Store is going to open up a whole new world in terms of what you can actually do with your iPhone 3G. Applications that you can buy to monitor network traffic, get baseball updates, or the Plum Record app that caught my eye, which is software to record audio on your iPhone. Who needs adapters when the hardware is there to record the audio and someone just needs to write the app for it to work? Potentially very cool for the podcast recording needs.
There is going to be more over the coming month to see how this all pans out. First thing to figure out is how Rogers and Fido will price the data plans for these suckers in Canada. After that, it’s just a matter of how you want to position yourself in line. Elbows out on July 11th or wait till Christmas?
What tornado damage looks like from the inside, as it happens
The Des Moines Register posted this video on their site of the security cameras from inside of a bank that was destroyed during the tornado in Parkersburg, Iowa over the recent Memorial Day weekend. The video is astounding. You can see what the wind can do as the windows are blown out, and then the tornado hits the building dead on, eventually taking out the cameras.
Update: The Des Moines Register also posted this video footage from the same storm that destroyed much of Parkersburg, Iowa. It’s truly shocking.