Westacular

Last month I was in Amsterdam for the annual IBC trade show, a large and important expo for people in the broadcast and film industries. I have been going to IBC since 2003, my company Automatic Duck would exhibit with other plug-in companies in the Plug-in Pavilion.  But 2010 was the first year where Automatic Duck did not exhibit.  There are still a lot of good reasons to be at IBC, so I still traveled to Amsterdam for a few days.

When my friend Randy Altman, the editor of Post Magazine heard that I wasn’t tied to a booth and was instead “wandering around” the show floor she asked me if I would like to blog for the magazine’s web site.

I didn’t immediately jump at the chance.  Sometimes I think I’m not a terrible writer, but I know that I’m a slow writer and I wasn’t sure I would be able to find anything interesting to write about.  But it would be a new experience no matter how it turned out, so I figured I’d give it a shot.

I ended up writing five posts for the Post Blog.

• Refreshed eyes on IBC
• A new unified power brew
• New card offloader for digital filmmakers
• New options for field recording
• Hiding in plain sight

Thank you Randy and Post Magazine for inviting me to participate in your blog, I enjoyed the experience.

For many of us young technophiles, terrestrial radio has lost its relevance. Radio stations’ ratings are down and the industry is struggling. Even while driving in the car you might listen to music or podcasts from your iPod, or stream satellite radio’s many offerings.  My crappy Jeep Wrangler doesn’t give me many modern options so I usually listen to FM radio, getting some NPR news and some local talk radio.

For example I really like the Dave Ross Show on Seattle radio station KIRO. He’s on from 9:00 until Noon, which means I wouldn’t listen since I wasn’t in my car very much for those three hours. I recently started listening to the Dave Ross Show through its web stream, and this worked well.  I would also play music from iTunes in the background, so I could turn the web stream’s volume down during commercials and still have something entertaining my ears.

But the problem with this system was the web stream sounds like crap.

RadioShark interface

Then I remembered  a nifty device I bought a few years ago: RadioShark from Griffin Technology. The RadioShark is a USB-connected radio antenna that feeds software for tuning and controlling.  The RadioShark software also allows for recording, even scheduled recording, and it even has Tivo-like functionality, allowing you to pause what you’re listening to.

Even better, it sounds great. Listening to KIRO radio on the RadioShark sounds way better than KIRO’s web stream.

I love the ability to pause the radio program and pick it up later.  I can run to the toilet, go get more coffee, go consult with coworkers, then come back and unpause the show.  I actually like getting a bit behind real time, because commercial radio loves its commercials, so I can just skip forward past them.

One thing that surprised me about the software was that Griffin took the time to make it scriptable via AppleScript. I wrote a couple of super-simple scripts and used QuickSilver to tie them to keyboard shortcuts, making RadioShark controllable from the keyboard no matter what application I’m using.

RadioShark in action

The scheduling feature is nifty, too, and I surprised myself by using it the other day.  I heard a promo for a show coming up on KUOW in the evening, during a time I would definitely not be listening live, so I scheduled RadioShark to record it in my absence.  It worked great!

If you find yourself needing to listen to AM or FM radio while you work I highly recommend Griffin Technology’s RadioShark.  I love mine.

Long URLs are a problem in our online connected world, when sent via email they wrap and break, when pasted into a Twitter post they use up too many of your available characters.  The need to shorten URLs for sharing has created quite an industry of sites offering URL shortening services: tinyurl.com bit.ly ow.ly to name a few.

If you’re not familiar with URL shortening services here’s a quick primer:  You enter into their system a long URL like http://www.walmart.com/ip/Coleman-PowerChill-40-Quart-Thermoelectric-Cooler-with-Power-Supply/4810828 and the service adds your URL to their database and creates a unique short URL that will redirect to the address you entered, like http://bit.ly/9IBCdN.

URL shorteners are super helpful, but are there downsides to their use?

Every time you use a URL shortening service you are in effect promoting that service.  While http://bit.ly/9IBCdN will direct readers to the travel cooler I had in mind, before they click all their eyes see is http://bit.ly.  I have never had a single bad association in my mind with regard to any URL shortening service, but there is certainly the possibility of someone out there not trusting a bit.ly link or having their own brand bias. The links you post do say something about you, even the short versions of them, therefore wouldn’t it be better if the short URL they saw helped promote me or my brand instead?

You’ll see examples of this in the wild, For example the NY Times uses the domain http://nyti.ms/ for its URL shortening.  Even if you don’t click the link just looking at the URL reinforces their brand in your mind.

I had been thinking about all of this so one morning I decided to see if I could improve the link shortening I do when Twitter posting to reinforce my own personal brand.  It was shockingly easy to do.

The real key to URL shortening is the length of the short URL you’re using.  People probably prefer bit.ly to tinyurl.com because bit.ly is so much shorter, but URL length cannot be your only consideration.  If the URL was a little longer but was more valuable, maybe the tradeoff would be worth it?

I realized that my domain plate.net is pretty short, shorter than tinyurl.com in fact.  But the domain wes.plate.net more completely identifies me and better reinforces my personal “Wes Plate” brand, and it is still pretty short.  I proceeded to install some URL shortening software into my wes.plate.net domain, I chose to put it into a subdirectory because I couldn’t have it conflict with WordPress, which is what you see at http://wes.plate.net.  There are at least a few options for installing your own URL shortening service, I ended up choosing YOURLS a free collection of PHP and MySQL that is super easy to use.  In addition, YOURLS can integrate into Twitter clients like TweetDeck, Tweetie and Twitter for iPhone, which makes putting your short URL into use that much easier.  In the end a short URL like http://wes.plate.net/~/G isn’t quite as short as http://bit.ly/cgbmxm but it is more valuable to me because my version reinforces my brand and not bit.ly’s.

So now every link I post on Twitter is both short and also reinforces my brand, whether the reader clicks the link or not.  A friend even noticed and complimented me on it, so to me it is already working.  If your domain name is short enough or you can obtain one that resembles your brand, it may be a worthwhile exercise for you too.

My office is located in a part of our small town where AT&T’s coverage has always been a problem. Three of us have iPhones and whenever anyone would get a call on our mobiles we’d sprint to the outside deck where we had the best chance of catching a wayward signal.

So when AT&T announced in April that they were going to start their nationwide rollout of their 3G MicroCell devices, I was ready to jump on board. If you have followed at all the news and discussion of this solution to AT&T customer woes, you’ll no doubt have read people’s anger and frustration about paying themselves to solve AT&T coverage problems.  I will not address this other than to say it was worth $150 to us to have our phones work reliably in our office.

AT&T’s horrid Flash-based MicroCell web page offers to take your email address and notify you when the devices are available in your area. I signed up with two email addresses but never received any news, indeed I read on AT&T’s customer forums that other users never received emails about MicroCells coming available either so I kept checking back from time to time. One day out of the blue the availability checker didn’t give its usual “sorry, not available” response, instead it said they were ready for purchase! Hooray!

AT&T 3G MicroCell box

I called my nearest AT&T store and they said they had the MicroCells in stock, so I went to pick one up. Purchasing a MicroCell is like purchasing a cell phone: it takes way longer than it should. And since the MicroCell is a new thing for them, it took even longer to go through the buying procedure.

There seemed to be some confusion between the two sales people and the store manager who were working on my order about the zip code and address the system was showing for where I was going to install the device, because our business’ mailing address is a PO box and not our physical address. But they said they got it worked out.

Eventually I was out of the store and I unboxed the pretty little thing at the office. Installation is easy: ethernet connection to our network, power and it must be installed near a window for GPS reception. AT&T warns that activation can take a couple of hours so after I completed the online activation steps and set everything up near a window I left to let it simmer. Eventually I received a text message from AT&T warning me that my activation had failed.

I searched the web for similar error messages and while I didn’t immediately find anyone with error 103, I did find people experiencing error 102 which apparently meant that the address provided on the activation web site didn’t match the physical location of the MicroCell. I did try calling AT&T but since it was a Saturday they were closed, real businesses don’t work weekends. Maybe errors 102 and 103 were related? I checked the address on my account for the MicroCell and sure enough, the three AT&T team members setting up my device at the store did indeed enter my PO Box, which has a different ZIP code than my physical location. I changed the address on the web to reflect where the MicroCell was installed and soon after I had an activated 3G MicroCell!

This was all well and good, my iPhone showed five bars and I could make calls from corners of the office never before possible. But I didn’t want this box sitting on my desk near the window, I wanted it hidden away in the server room. I tried moving it after it was activated but it didn’t work, when the MicroCell restarted it could not get a GPS signal so it didn’t enable itself. Time for some GPS antenna action.

Information on the web about using GPS attennae with the AT&T MicroCell is scarce, and the info I did find was rather inconclusive about what to get. People suggested that the antenna port on the MicroCell might be an MCX connector, and one post I found a guy reported getting an antenna meant for a Garmin, so I followed that reasoning in purchasing from Amazon…

• 1x Powerful External Remote Amplified GPS Antenna Receiver for Garmin Nuvi
• 2x NEW Garmin compatible GPS MCX Antenna Extension Cable (10 Feet) MCX Male to MCX Female for Garmin, Magellan or Lowrance GPS Receivers (MCXEXT10)

The nearly 30 feet total these three would span would be enough to put the GPS antenna on the roof of our building and meet the MicroCell in the server room. Fingers crossed!

Thankfully it worked great. The AT&T 3G MicroCell is happily sitting in the server room, seeing its GPS stars in the sky and providing us with much more reliable phone service.

Apparently the three phone numbers on my AT&T account were automatically added to those granted access to our MicroCell, and I only needed to add one more phone number for a contractor who works here so he could also use our 5 bars.  Adding the additional number was easy to do through AT&T’s web site.  Up to ten numbers can be added to the permission list and up to four calls can be made at a time through it.  All in all a worthwhile endeavor for us.