[NB: I'll hopefully come back to this post later and flesh it out some more, but that depends on time.]

This is a walkthrough of the new version of Google Earth (version 5), which now includes several impressive new options including the ability to navigate across a historical timeline and view the changes that have occured in the region, simplified touring with audio and voice recording, and my personal favourite – and the topic of this screen cast – the ability to go underwater to view the ocean floor and surface data from marine experts.

Google has put together a nice overview of the aquatic aspects of version 5, available here: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=6ATw1f_qcEg

For example page 2 of the results for a YouTube search for “Elmo” yields a clip called “Exploding Elmo Death” and another called “Tickle Me Elmo on fire”.

I should emphasise though, that by raising the notion of appropriate versus inappropriate content for children I am in no way trying to advocate censorship or mandatory filtering – ultimately I feel this is an area best left to families and parents to decide for themselves.  What I am trying to bring to the table for discussion is how best to involve young people in online video viewing – and indeed online interaction in general – in ways that nurture and empower, while not exposing them to inappropriate or even dangerous material.

One site in particularly that seems to deal with this concept quite effectively is TOTLOL.  From the website:

“Totlol is a video website designed specifically for children. It is community moderated. It is constantly growing. It is powered by YouTube.”

The premise of Totlol is not one of arbitrary filtering by an enigmatic set of administrators.  It is community driven, parent filter and highly participatory in nature.  Videos showcased on the site are located and submitted by parents, and vetted through a peer review system.

The peer review system is such that every video submitted to site site must stand up to three questions:

1. Is this video appropriate for children?
2. How would you rate this video?
3. What age group will enjoy it most?

According to the site: “Only videos that pass the grade are then available for the viewing kids.”

What about Digital Literacy?

In saying all this though another topic comes to mind – that of the oft discussion, sometimes chided notion of digital literacy.  There are those who suggest that we should not go out of our way to shield young people from the realities of the online landscape – with the sometimes questionable people and material it can contain.  The argument goes it is safer and more effective in the long term to wander the landscape of the open web along-side young people, and thus play the role of interpreter and mentor – rather than shield them until they are left to explore without aid of informed adults with whom to reflect on their experiences.

By this argument, policies that block access to YouTube and other web sites in the name of child protection may in fact be detrimental in the long run, because young people may not run into questionable material until they do so alone.

On the other hand, perhaps there is an age before which the seeds of future online expertise, awareness, or even the capacity to make logical informed decisions just doesn’t exist yet. At this stage I’m really not sure, though I’m inclined to believe with growth and interaction comes experience and an increased capacity to navigate the wild web effectively and safely.

Thoughts on this matter are welcome and encouraged. If nothing else it points to a subject characterised by shades of grey that require ample exploration and thought.

This post outlines an idea for Seesmic in the classroom that I’ve had floating around in my head for months but have never taken the time to put down on paper.

Seesmic is a discussion tool that functions in much the same way as standard text-based forums, with the key difference being the content and user contributions are all video based – it is a video discussion tool.

The tool provides each user with a profile that tracks their activities on the site, who they’ve added as a contact, and who’s added them.  Seesmic supports both public and private threads, and more recently has introduced RSS feeds that distribute FLV files of user contributions.

Seesmic threads can be embedded just about anywhere via video player, which also supports a variety of other functions – including account creation, response capabilities and new thread creation, the option to add people as Seesmic contacts, and a way to grab the embed code snippet to share the content elsewhere.  This enables people to not only participate in the discussion or view the content, but also to reflect on what has been said in blog posts or wiki articles and thus recontextualise or reframe the topic.

Unique Affordances of Video

Having interacted online via many different modes – including text, audio and video discussion – video is by far the most holistically representative.  Not only is what people say captured and distributed, but also how they say it, and importantly their non-verbal communication and physical mannerisms.  You can do a lot in audio or text-based discussion, but you can’t bow to a Japanese colleague.

The significance of the affordances of video to online discussion became clear to me during a webconference I facilitated several years ago between language students at UNSW and a university in Japan.  The activity was an interview scenario in which three local students in Sydney interviewed three Japanese students in the Japanese language.  The link-up worked beautifully and you could see a very engaged, interactive dynamic develop between the participants in which traditional cultural mannerisms were adhered to – such as bowing – and a sense of physical interaction began to develop.  The students even began to joke with one another.

The Advantages of Asynchronicity

In the case of Seesmic you wouldn’t have the same degree of interactivity because the tool is asynchronous rather than synchronous, which means you don’t receive immediate feedback from the people you’re speaking too.  However in asynchronicity lay advantages as well, namely you are not limited by time zones, or number of participants.

In a live webconference everyone must be available at the same time – regardless of how early or late it is.  Additionally, there are sustantial limitations in the number of people who can effectively participate in a live web conference.  When you exceed a certain number of people, the session starts to get too chaotic and each individual doesn’t get sufficient time to participate.  The system requirements to run synchronous video discussions are also much greater, as the computer and network connection has both incoming and outgoing video to contend with.

In asynchronous video discussion by contrast you can respond when you like, and many people can participate – from any part of the world.  This opens the door to potential cross-institutional, cross-cultural, international collaboration and classroom activities in the way the Japanese webconference did, while freeing up instructors and students to participate at their convenience.

Imagine facilitating language development activities between first year French students in Sydney (or elsewhere) and native-speakers students in Paris, and letting them discuss what it’s like to live in France.  It drastically removes the barriers to explore and learn and replaces them with a vast network of international participants in real-world scenarios.

What I’m attempting to do currently is locate sources of similarity in the computers or connections of the people who are experiencing the problem in the hopes of locating a root cause of the issue.

With this in mind I’d appreciate it if you’d leave a comment indicating your computer specification (CPU speed, amount of RAM, type of web camera), internet connection speed, and whether you are using a wired or wireless connection.

In my case I’ve experienced the issue on several different computers -

• A MacBook (2 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM, iSight webcamera, wireless internet connection 1.5 MBPS);
• A version of Windows XP SP3 running on a MacBook via Bootcamp (2 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM, iSight webcamera, wireless internet connection 1.5 MBPS);
• A desktop machine with Windows XP SP3 Media Edition (2.8 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM, Logitech QuickCam Fusion, wireless internet connection 1.5 MBPS); and
• A high-end machine with Windows XP SP3 (4 GB RAM, 2.8 GHz CPU, Logitech QuickCam Fusion and a superfast uni internet connection.)

Basically there aren’t many similarities in my system except for the fact they all used YouTube’s QuickCapture tool. It’s appearing as though there may be bugs in the tool, but I’d like to assess the experiences of others before coming to that conclusion.

I can also pass the information along to YouTube support to hopefully help them resolve the issue. So please help!

For reference here is the YouTube QuickCapture video that instigated the whole conversation: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=kl6FPYAKgDk

Update: Having looked at the YT community forum, it’s pretty clear that the issue is wider than just what’s happening with me and those who have left comments: http://help.youtube.com/group/youtube-help/search?q=quickcapture

Over the last several years I’ve delved deeper and deeper in to the nature of online interaction; how we engage with one another; how we develop, nurture and sustain relationships, and the implications this has on our realities as people and as human beings. I’ve explored as many different tools as I can get my hands on and immersed myself in as many modes, mediums and environments as I can possibly experience – all the while doing as much as I can to try and connect with others.

It’s been both a fascinating experience and a personally gratifying one. But just tonight though I was brought to wonder what is it that makes these relationships develop in the ways they do. As the now famous saying goes: “the medium is the message.” What does that mean exactly.

To be honest at this point in time I’m not exactly sure, but I do know that media – particularly in the way Michael Wesch describes it – plays a direct and highly influential role on the nature of relationships that we as people are able to engage in.

For example, in this post I will be presenting exactly the same content through three different means – text, audio and video. The message within the content therefore remains unchanged, however the impact of the message, and how it is perceived by others, is undoubtedly different.

It’s the nature of the differences that I’m the most curious about right now. Not simply from the standpoint of knowing which medium is the most effective to achieve a desired outcome, but the motives that influence these outcomes to take place in the first place.

I’m quite interested in hearing the perspective of others on this matter, as it carries significant implications for many levels of online interaction – from social interaction, to learning, to commerce. Perhaps understanding why we react differently to different mediums could foster a keener sense of awareness of ourselves that we might harness to empower ourselves, and our relationships with others. That remains to be seen.

My 10 minutes is up.

Audio:

http://techticker.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/media-as-message.mp3

Video:

CamStudio has served me well for the last several months (and dozens of videos), however the AVI files that are native to the application can be massive. For example a 10 minute recording at 85% quality yields a roughly 350 megabyte file. So when it comes time to upload these for sharing and distribution it can be literally hours before the videos are available and the process can be finished.

So I’ve begun to explore new ways of working in the hopes of coming up with a model that will be more conducive to rapid deployment of screencasts.

The following video clips outline my experiences with the current iteration. This is very much a work in progress – and as such the clips serve as much to document my own progress as they do to share my experiences with others. However the results seem promising, so I wanted to pass along my findings so far.

The Model

The model includes the following:

• Jing for recording of screencasts: http://www.jingproject.com/
• A self-hosted WordPress blog for hosting and delivery of files
• The SWFObj WordPress plugin for embedding of SWF format

According to the website, “Jing is free software that adds visuals to your coversations”. The program is available for both Mac and PC platforms (I recommend recordmydesktop for Linux) and is a really quick and easy way to capture and present your demonstrations or training in a dynamic way.

For free JING licenses the only available file format for recordings is SWF, or Adobe Shockwave. From what I experienced tonight this offers really nice quality for low-moving content (like images and text) while keeping the file size quite small. A 5 minute clip for is around 12 megabytes for example.

SWF not supported by YouTube, Blip.TV

The problem that’s introduced in use of SWF file formats, though, is where to store and deliver the screencasts. Despite YouTube’s support site indicating SWF files were supported, when I tried to actually upload one it failed during processing. At Blip.TV I didn’t even get that far; they wouldn’t even let me start the upload. So the prospect of using SWF immediately eliminates most of the big players in online video.

As a result I decided to look into hosting and delivering the files from my blog’s server. This required the introduction of a new plugin that could cope with SWF files – of which there seem to be several to choose from.

At the moment I’m gone with one called SWFObj WordPress plugin by OrangeSPLOTCH, though it’s likely I may experiment with others to determine the most effective solution.

New media players required for SWF Files

The other hurdle I’m facing in the use of SWF files is how best to share them. I am a firm believer in open source, open education, and making content and resources freely available for reuse and reinvention. As such I plan on including download links to the files alongside the embedded instances.

The problem once again, though, is in a relative lack of support for SWF files by most current media players. So in order to play these files people will need to download and install a new program.

Fortunately a quick search in Google for “open source swf player” reveals there seem to be many to choose from. I’ve yet to investigate this area fully, but for the moment the ones worth looking at are:

SWF & FLV Player for Mac: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/swfflvplayer.html
Gnash for Linux and PC: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/

More investigation required
This brings us to the present, and the areas that still need investigating. It’s early days in this experiment and therefore too soon to come to any firm conclusions on whether this is a worthwhile change to make. In particular the perspectives of readers and viewers regarding the screencasts will be important to determine. Also in terms of reach and impact it may prove that circumventing YouTube and Blip.TV is unwise, and that I can make the greatest difference – and be of the most use – by exploring as many distribution channels as possible.

All these are questions I’m exploring and considering. If you have thoughts or perspectives on this matter I’m all ears! In the meantime the following clips will hopefully add a visual element to this discussion.

The clips are best viewed fullscreen. To do this, either click on the monitor in the lower-right hand corner of the video player or click on the download link.

Part One: Jing Overview, Installing SWFObj WP plugin, uploading SWF files

[swfobj src="http://techticker.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/jing_wp_pt1.swf" align="none"]

Right-Click and Save-as to Download: http://techticker.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/jing_wp_pt1.swf

Part Two: Embedding SWF files, SWFObj Settings, SWF Players

[swfobj src="http://techticker.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/jing-wp-pt2.swf" align="none"]
Right-Click and Save-as to Download: http://techticker.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/jing-wp-pt2.swf

One of my favourite open source programs is an audio editing package known as Audacity. The program is available for Windows, Mac and Linux computers and is a fantastic example of the quality and ease of use that the open source community is capable of developing and supporting in an ongoing fashion.

The program supports a great deal of really cool stuff, and is particularly valuable to those looking for a quick and easy way to produce audio recordings.

With this in mind I wanted to take a couple of minutes to take you through the following:

• Installing and setting up the software,
• Basic editing, recording and processing tips,
• Exporting recordings and MP3 export configuration
• Places to go for more information

The clip is best viewed full screen, by clicking on the monitor icon in the lower right hand corner of the video player. You can also access the recording directly here: http://blip.tv/file/1645986. The Blip.tv page also contains a link to download either an FLV version of the recording, or the original AVI file (roughly 375 MB).

With that said a few corrections are necessary:

• @1:14 I say you download the software by right-clicking and then selecting save-as. This is not correct. You have to click the link to follow it to another page, where the download begins automatically. Right-clicking will only save a tiny HTML file and not the installation file you’re actually after.
• @6:10 I say that clipping occurs when the wave form goes beyond 1.0. I don’t believe this is technically correct. The main thing to bear in mind is that pushing the volume too high (via the amplify effect) will result in audio distortion, which is something to be avoided as much as possible. If you’re interested in reading more on audio clipping you might refer to the Wikipedia article.

The support documentation on the Audacity site is really impressive as well, so be sure to check out their documentation and wiki .

So instead of talking about how Picasa now includes a groovy new feature for recording of pieces to camera, which can then be quickly uploaded to either YouTube, Picasaweb, or both, I’ll have to outline the nature of the bugs I’m experiencing.

My first recording, which was 20 seconds long, worked like a treat. The recording process was dead simple. I was able to login to YouTube from within Picasa, provide metadata on the title, description and tags, and then sit back and watch the upload complete successfully at which point YouTube took over, processed the files and made them available shortly thereafter.

Picasa-YouTube video uploader

The problem emerged when I began to use longer pieces to camera. I’ve been on the same machine with the same connection the whole time. The only difference has been the duration of the clips. In the 3 attempts I made that went over 90 seconds apiece, all experienced sync issues that grew progressively worse over the course of the recording. See “Overview of Picasa Video Capture” below for an example.

Having just gone back and recorded a 49 second clip, I’ve found the shorter one was successful. Therefore my initial impression is the problem is somehow related to duration.

Unlike my previous experiences with audio-video sync issues (as outlined here), Picasa records the clips as Windows Media files, not QuickTime. So I’m not sure how much I can rely on the results of those tests – though the audio codec may certainly still be the culprit.

I’ll continue to troubleshoot this issue and will post my findings here. In the meantime if you have any experiences in this area please leave a comment to enlighten me.

Take One: Picasa 3 Webcamera Capture Test
Description: My first test recording.

Take Two: Overview of Picasa Video Capture
Description: I’ve just discovered that Picasa 3 has introduced a video capture option that enables you to record video messages or take still shots and upload them to the web. This clip covers the basics of the tool and discusses some of the technical hurdles I’ve experienced over the last 12 hours.

Take Three: Picasa Video Capture Troubleshooting
Description: Continuing to have trouble using Picasa 3′s new video capture tool. This is another test to see if duration of the clip has any affect. The only success I’ve had so far was the very first recording, which came in at 19 seconds. All subsequent attempts have failed – recordings have exceeded 90 seconds each.

YouTube indicates there was an error during the upload. Same clip uploads successfully in Picasa but then displays sync issues after processing.

Thanks to Sarah Stewart, I’ve just discovered a really cool way of creating engaging video clips from static images. From the about page:

“Animoto is a web application that, with the click of a button, produces videos using images and music that a user selects. Using their patent-pending Artificial Intelligence developed to think like an actual editor & director, the resulting video has the emotional impact of a movie trailer and the visual energy of a music video.”

This is my first attempt and I suspect there will be many more in the future. Animoto let’s you pull images from online sites including Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, Photobucket and SmugMug or upload them from your computer. You can then upload music or make a selection from their online library. When you’re happy with the order of your images Animoto will render and process everything for you into a video clip.

Once processed you have the option to embed them in a blog or website (as I’ve done here), send it to your friends, even upload it to YouTube (which I’ve done here). You can also unlock additional options via pay-per-video pricing, or an annual fee for unlimited videos and downloads.

[This clip best viewed full screen. Just click the monitor icon towards the right-hand side of the menu in the video player]

This clip covers a video discussion tool known as Tokbox. I’ve been meaning to post a walk through for this service for some time but the fates have conspired to keep me at bay until now. Happily I managed to complete it earlier today.

From their About Page:

“Tokbox is a free service that lets you talk with your friends over live video. Here’s how it works: you sign up and we give you a link. When you want to talk with anyone, just give them the link – they click and you chat.”

As you may know, I’m a big advocate of online video as a means of communication – and synchronous communication in particular – and Tokbox implements this really nicely. It supports several different communication types including:

• Synchronous multi-user video chat
• Community asynchronous video discussion
• Embeddable multi-user web conference space
• Concurrent streaming of YouTube clips or Slideshare presentations

I go into each of the above features in more detail in the walk through, so I’ll just leave it at that for now.

If you’re interested in seeing and/or interacting with an embedded instance of Tokbox I have one set-up on this blog on the Video Chat page. I’m quite interested in using this tool more frequently, so if you’d like to take the tool for a spin please let me know. See the About Page on this blog for my contact details.