Author Archives: David McClelland
Siri Inspires Technology’s Aural Evolution
Apple Siri
It’s still only a matter of weeks since iPhone 4S day but already I find myself wishing that Siri, Apple’s all-hearing personal assistant, might be magicked somehow into the majority of my other household devices and appliances as well. While Apple’s genial Genie is likely to stay locked-up inside its lamp for the time being, we’re beginning to see evidence that when rubbed the right way it has enough power to cast its voice recognition spells upon my alarm clock, television and even my motor car.
“Hello alarm clock. Wake me up at 8 o’clock tomorrow morning, please. What? A touchscreen interface? How quaint.”
“Can you record Eastenders on BBC1 for me tonight?”, “Can you record and series link Family Guy on E4 later?”, “Don’t let my kids watch anything featuring scenes of nudity. Or Jeremy Clarkson”.
“Hello new alarm clock, set my alarm for 7am please. But first, tell me a story. Go on…”
RTS finds its MoJo at the BBC as part of Update TV
Image courtesy Black Country Museums
The Royal Television Society‘s inaugural Update TV event took place on Saturday at the BBC White City in London, and of particular interest for me was what Simon Morice and David Willox had hidden in their bags for their ‘OB in your Briefcase’ session.
The day’s ambitious aim was to bring RTS members up to speed with the very latest developments in broadcast television technology and trends, and was particularly angled towards television professionals who have taken a break from the business, perhaps to bring up a family, who are now keen to jump back onboard but are mindful of how television has changed significantly even over a handful of years.
Some of the events were very practical – for example, hands-on training with the BBC’s newly approved HD camera, the Canon XF305; others were interactive – Mark Aldridge, Executive Producer at Princess Productions, workshopping new interaction and engagement ideas for an imaginary (at least, that’s what we were led to believe!) 2012 revival of The Generation Game during a session on using social media in television.
Now, as some of you reading may know, I’ve been developing a mobile journalist (or ‘MoJo’ as the discipline is known) workflow over the last few months that I’ve been using to capture some great results when reporting from events. The principle around which this branch of mobile journalism is based is that a smartphone today integrates all of the technology required to research, script, shoot, edit (even brand, dub and grade), file and distribute a story. With the addition of a few pieces of hardware (e.g., microphone, tripod) and some downloaded apps, an iPhone in the right hands becomes a viable and vital news reporting tool capable of recording quality footage and getting it online in an incredibly quick time.
OWLE Bubo Camera Mount For iPhone
I was first introduced to the OWLE Bubo iPhone HD Video rig by journalist colleague Leila Makki when we both covered an event at Bletchley Park earlier this year. Manufactured from a single chunk of anodised aluminium the Bubo lends the iPhone much needed handles and heft to help stabilise handheld shots as well as a wide-angled lens, four tripod mount points, a cold-shoe adapter and a simple external microphone. After helping to film Leila’s report that afternoon on the Bubo, I was hooked: the package that I subsequently picked up also included a Rotolight RL48-A LED ring light which handily includes its own ND, diffusion and colour correction filters. To this rig I tend to add a 3.5mm jack to XLR adapter and a professional Beyerdynamic M58 reporter’s microphone for far better quality sound, and either a tripod or monopod depending upon the job.
So I felt incredibly reassured in the ‘OB in your Briefcase’ session when Simon Morice, whose career began at the BBC in the 1970s, demonstrated an almost identical Bubo-based kit list to mine and extolled the virtues of the technology, workflow and benefits with similar rapture. He has also taken the rig on the road to produce reports and in the session played a story filed from IBC earlier this year featuring Kate Russell from BBC’s Click. His software workflow does differ somewhat from what I currently use but I’ve downloaded the Vericorder editing app to give it a try.
While chatting with Simon afterwards he was quick to point out that whilst these new technology and workflow innovations themselves are terrific enablers, the overall success of a report still stands on its content. I couldn’t agree more: the real skill of the journalist is in telling a story, through whichever medium, and Simon touched on what were some equally exciting and innovative story-telling principles and philosophies that I hope I get a chance to explore further.
Other personal highlights of the day included sessions featuring Suzie Marsh (currently series editor for Live with Gabby on Channel 5); Amy Walker, a factual producer who now runs Media Parents to promote flexible working in television; and the vastly experienced Shu Richmond who recently set up TV blog, ‘So You Want to Work in Television‘.
The Royal Television Society are planning on running further similar events next year – if you’re interested in finding out more do take a look at the RTS website.
Find out more about mobile journalism at Glen Mulcahy’s Video Journalism Blog, frequently updated with great MoJo stories and technology.
Simon Morice runs ICM Business Video where there are some good examples of the MoJo kit in action.
Canon EOS-1D X Hands On
Canon EOS-1D X
Since working on a pilot photography show for TV last year I’ve been properly bitten by the DSLR bug – boy, is it infectious.
My camera is a low-end Canon EOS 550D, although occasionally I get let loose with a 7D or a full-frame professional Canon EOS 5D Mk II. Nevertheless, the 550D is a great camera that is entirely capable of taking terrific shots in the right hands (not necessarily mine) and what’s more, it sports Canon’s excellent HD movie-making capabilities.
Personally, I couldn’t be happier with my 550D and feel more restricted by my clumsy camera work and a limited collection of lenses than by the camera body itself.
However, a pro-photographer has a different set of requirements. When there’s a livelihood resting on the ability to get top quality shots first time, every time, the more control a camera body can give you the better. Reliability, flexibility and speed are essential when covering news and sporting events that tend not to take place in ideal conditions and will very unwillingly repeat themselves just because your camera’s auto-focus or exposure engine couldn’t keep up.
With that in mind I headed over to the Canon Pro Solutions 2011 event in London during October for a hands-on preview of Canon’s latest pro-camera, the EOS-1D X.
Take a look at what I had to say about it in my piece over at Computer Weekly.
Reimagining Interactive TV – with an LG Light Pen?
LG brings the light pen into the 21st century, but is it really a light-year leap from its first appearance in 1967?
Recently I wrote a piece for the Wired UK GeekDad column about interactive television and my daughter’s failed attempts at touchscreen tactility with Igglepiggle and Upsy Daisy from BBC’s In The Night Garden.
Click to read article at wired.co.uk
The post coincides with IFA 2011 in Berlin where LG announced the PenTouch TV (PZ850T) which, as the name might suggest, lets you draw on the screen using a special USB pen.
Of course, this is nothing new: owners of the BBC Micro will remember the ‘Light Pen‘ from nearly 30 years ago, and the BBC’s Tomorrow’s World first reported on the light pen in this fascinating report from 1967.
The software bundled with the LG set does look pretty handy though, and whilst the pen to screen response does look a little laggy and certainly not to industrial standards, LG has done a pretty good job of integrating it with PC, printer and so on.
Here’s a handy hands-on video from IFA 2011 of the LG PenTouch TV by T3.com‘s Rhi Morgan:
My hunch is that whilst this tech won’t be a huge consumer hit, it may get some good traction in educational environments.
What do you think will be the next breakthrough in interactive television? Further online connectivity? Touchscreens? Embedded apps? Let us know in the comments below.
Codebreakers’ Gallery Opens Its Doors
For all of the historic technological innovations that the team at Bletchley Park’s National Museum of Computing History has assembled, it’s humbling to witness that it’s the human tales of the pioneers, the geniuses and the unswervingly dedicated that remain at the centre of the story. Perhaps never was this more in evidence than at the grand unveiling of the Tunny Gallery on Thursday, a tribute not only to bleeding-edge technology but also to the ingenuity and bloody-minded belligerence of those who worked tirelessly to intercept and decrypt messages sent between German High Commanders during World War 2.
The Tunny Machine, Bletchley Park
The Tunny machine, recreated over a 10-year period using skip-salvaged British Telecom telephone exchange hardware, is the final cog in the message deciphering process taking input from the monumental Colossus computer (also reconstructed and humming in the room next door) and outputting invaluable clear-text German messages. Despite the technology, machinery and manpower a message captured by the 1,000ft-high aerials deployed to intercept the German transmissions still took an average of four days to be deciphered.
It’s ironic that the key to reading the German messages wouldn’t have been discovered at all were it not for a careless error by a German operator who retransmitted the same message twice without changing the encryption wheels on the German ciphering machine (the Lorenz SZ42, an original of which also has pride of place in the Tunny Gallery) and literally handed over the keys for unlocking the German code to the Allied forces.
Astonishingly, the ATS women operating the machines had very little idea of the significance of their efforts. None could read German, only recognising the occasional mention of Hitler or other well-known German commanders. Even the locals in Bletchley were unaware of the activities taking place within, believing the Nazi-defying code-breaking hub to be little more than a Littlewoods football pools processing centre, unaware that the messages being decrypted there were providing invaluable intelligence to counter German campaigns.
The new Tunny Gallery, with the Tunny machine itself as the centrepiece, has been impressively decked-out to recreate the look and feel of the codebreaking quarters in Bletchley Park and Dollis Hill in the early 1940s. Unveiling the gallery to the press, the museum’s trustee and director Andy Clarke introduced a vivid re-enactment of the end-to-end process featuring costumed actors and volunteers using the lovingly recreated machines. However, they were soon trumped by the real-deal: a handful of the original staff who worked on and with the machines almost 70 years ago, two of whom gave gripping accounts of their experiences.
Bletchley Park Veterans at the Opening of the Tunny Gallery
Helen Currie, by her own admission something of an ‘unruly girl’, was one of the ATS ladies working shifts around the clock punching 60 characters per minute onto perforated tape ready to be translated by the machines. She told of the “continual reminder of the importance of secrecy” at the time and how she remained quite ignorant of the significance of her and her colleagues’ efforts until books and films praising their work began to be published 30 or more years later.
Inevitably, completing restoration projects such as these becomes something of a race against time: while fragments of design notes and circuit diagrams can be salvaged, the project’s most valuable assets – its original staff and their priceless memories – sadly fade. All the more poignant then that several of the remaining operators and engineers could be present for the grand opening: as Andy Clarke remarked, the new gallery is “a fitting tribute to their achievements.”
For more information and visiting times The National Museum of Computing History see www.tnmoc.org
How a BBC Micro shaped the course of a GeekDad’s life
BBC Micro Computer - Flick/barnoid
Here is a little story that I wrote recently for Wired UK about a how a smart present I received from my mum and dad for my 6th birthday shaped the rest my life.
Perhaps there’s lesson in here somewhere for present purchasing parents: no pressure…
Exclusive: Microsoft / Nokia ‘Mokia 7650′ Windows Phone 7. Well, perhaps not…
Exclusive top-secret footage of Nokia’s newest Windows Mobile 7 toting handset the ‘Mokia 7650′. Honest guv.
At this point I should add that this video is decidedly and deliberately a hoax to coincide with Nokia’s announcement earlier today that it will be collaborating with Microsoft to bring the Windows Phone 7 operating system to its handsets, elbowing aside both Symbian and MeeGo.
Nokia’s hardware platform has traditionally proven itself more reliable and sturdy than most (as the video above featuring the 9-year-old Nokia 7650 that we’ve featured before here at techspot.tv testifies) and the integration of Microsoft’s much-lauded new mobile operating system could prove a real winner for both parties.
Personally, I can’t wait to see what the partnership brings. Like many, I find that I have a fondness for Nokia that transcends its poor showings of the last half-a-dozen years, at least partially due to handsets like its 7650, 7110 and 7280 which were every bit as exciting and groundbreaking back in 2002 as the HTC and Apple handsets are today. The inclusion of Microsoft’s slick and visually appealing software platform onto Nokia’s hardy handsets may help the Finns to re-engage with some of their recently defected customers.
As for the ‘Exclusive Footage’ above, the Windows Phone 7 images were simply sent by MMS from an iPhone and then displayed in full screen mode on the 7650 to create a ‘Mokia’ mash-up video.
Video Review of the Parrot AR.Drone
In November 2010 the team at the NFTS asked if I would review Parrot’s ground-breaking new boys’ toy, the AR.Drone, for their live at 5 magazine show, The Loft. Never one to shirk a tech challenge, I accepted.
Armed with nothing more than my trusty iPad, here’s how I got on.
Plug-in and Power-up: 1985 Compaq Deskpro 8086
25 years after it first hit the shelves, and 10 years since it was last switched on, we plug-in and power-up this vintage Compaq Deskpro 8086 IBM Compatible PC complete with original green screen monitor, 20MB Winchester Hard Disk Drive, 300 baud modem and even a real-time clock card.
In the video we find some interesting educational software installed – green screen strip poker anyone…?
This system has since been donated to the kind chaps at the Centre for Computing History where it will enjoy many more years of tender loving care – you can see its entry in their database here, along with further photographs and detailed system specifications.
