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update | some videos might not open in the popup properly – looking at the plugin bug.
So i’m in prep mode for a three day social media mission away for nokia/1000heads – this charity raising mission will involve a few plane flights to different places for the twestival events and should make for a great few days of media production. I need to document the process and i’ll be using the new wonderful nokia n86 smartphone in the process. I have amazing love for this cameraphone as the new optics from carl zeiss make it probably one of the best camera phones yet – and no more of that shearing you used to get on the camera. It takes wonderful photos and the video is fast so will be a good testbed – read below for software and systems i’ll be using to broadcast while i’m out and about in europe.
I’m packing up my gear and in the process i have been recording some videos for the ammoboxproject so you can see bits of kit that are used as a personal media maker while i’m out and about. I’ll also try and explain some of the web services i use, what backups i have in place and talk about one of the major areas that gets often overlooked – power and the ability to get all your devices on a localized wifi cloud.
preparing the backpack.
i actually have a really tiny backpack that can just about fit an acer aspire one laptop with everything else i take. This is the first time i have bought a computer to fit in the bag rather than the other way around. Anything bigger than the 8.9″ screen and i would have to get a bigger bag. This backpack is the kata dps 3n1-20 and it’s a super cool swing backpack. It has quick entry for camera with rip sides and the zip top is ace. my laptop slides just about into the middle section covering my other tech. I have taken a few photos below and made a list of the content that i’ll be taking.
I have also linked directly to the videos of each piece of tech/gadget so you can get a bit more information about them. I could have gone with a bigger dps series backpack and i think for my future camera ( a panasonic p2 xdcam ) i’ll have to get a larger one but not this gives me really true mobility and means i can carry this pretty much everywhere. I’ll not be taking the macbook pro (which i normally use for editing higher quality clips) because i can record pretty much live/stream video (of a lower rez but acceptable) from my nokia n86 smartphone and the apple iphone 3g – if i had the 3gs i could also use that for a video backup.
main photo camera – my nikon d40 [video overview clip]
as a keen amateur i love my nikon d40 (entry level dslr, very light) with the nikon af nikkor 50mm 1:1:8d with the hahael HN-D60 dual battery and remote control base unit also using a kingston micro sd adapter with a 4gb micro sd card – can use between smartphone and camera and is an adapter for putting card into adapter and then into the reader – can take 1.1k of photos on the 4gb of card. i have recently been looking at the canon eos 7d and panasonic GH1 thou for some 720p HD videoblogging love in the future.
the cradlepoint phs300 wireless hotspot router [video overview clip]
as far as personal powered wireless hotspots go i find the phs300 to be a wonderful unit. battery powered for about 2-3 hours and using the tekkeon 3450i i can get probably a day and a half out of it. it works fantastic and i can use a 3 dongle in the uk
the rode videomic and modded cable for nokia external microphone recordings [video overview clip]
a trusted piece of kit this. the rode videomic was my first microphone i bought when i started videoblogging over 3 years ago now and after the first year it started to collect dust on the sideboard – then someone put up a video of how to make a audio cable and so the modded external microphone for a nokia was born. it works really darn well! 
the litepanel lp micro led lighting unit [video overview clip]
i guess it was going to happen sooner or later. 5300k kelvin daylight led lights in a low heat unit that lasts for about 3/4 hours on a set of batteries non-stop – a great unit to have for either photos or video.
backup solar power charger [video overview clip]
the powermonkey is a useful little device to give you power when your totally out and all your other power sources have failed you. with a little foldout solar panel and a power storage device this handle device can come in useful to power up your iphone or devices by usb connector.
iphone power station
a backup for the backup for the backup. seriously, you can never have enough backup sources of power when covering anything in the field. on a trip your mobile phone when travelling from country to country and town to town can be switching from different providers and if you left the wifi ON you can be trying to connect with open wifi networks. best if your not using your phone to keep the wifi switched off, the brightness down and manually set the network. if your using one sim for unlimited data it is worth either using it with one device that can also produce a local wifi network so all devices can use it. remember to have a backup sim or data card because things do go wrong with carriers. I also find that joikuspot on a nokia (prefer a big battery model like an e71) to be a useful way to share your data sim as a wifi network but the tekkeon powered cradlepoint is often faster and you can simply put it in a bag and forget about it.
iphone to xlr adapter from yourcustomcable.com [video overview clip]
a recent addition and sponsor to the ammoboxproject these cables allow certain powered xlr mics to work with the iphone for recording. often the sound level is a little bit less that usual but the sound quality is much better in a group situation where you can expect a lot of music or conversation. great to zero in on a person and get direct shotgun sound from – we are using the rode ntg-2 broadcast quality microphone.
Sennheiser CX 380 Sport II – High Performance Noise Isolating Ear-canal Phones – [video overview clip]
nothing over special here but they are meant for ’sport’ which translates to me to ‘taking a bit more stick’ that usual headphones. they are bright yellow so easy to find/remember if you leave on the side or a table. they sound pretty good as well being sennheiser. I personally wish that all headphones used that great untangle wire covering that i have seen on things like monster cable. surely by now we should have a better cabling system to stop them getting all caught up.
logitech nano wireless mouse – usb adapter in any device [video overview clip]
small wireless mouse that has no requirement for drivers to run, you simply plug in the usb plug and it works. nice little bracket system that once the mouse is clicked on it powers the mouse down saving the battery. a nice touch. also a button underneath to turn on and off – the usb transmitter is the ‘nano’ size meaning it hardly sticks out at all. very useful to have a good mouse on the acer aspire one because the design of the buttons location is stupid – they are at the side instead of underneath. a must purchase.
tekkeon 3450i mypower all plus – 58Wh lithium polymer battery [video overview clip]
having some kind of mobile power is an absolute must when your producing media – you really do not want to have to be hunting around for power sockets and worrying about how your going to keep your kit charged. the tekkeon unit is one of the best i have seen mainly because it has the polymer lithium battery. this unit has basically been tested in very extreme weather variants from the arctic to the absolutely sweltering heat of the desert – as the battery is wrapped in polymer (i presume) it neither get’s hot/cold and therefore retains a charge unlike others. I used it at sxsw 2009 all day in a backpack with no ventilation and it worked flawlessly. for £120 roughly this battery backup will keep ipods, iphones, laptops and usb devices fuelled up. I even managed to get about a day and half out of the above unit powering my phs300 mobile hotspot for a good day and a half. I now have adapters for the iphone and usb devices as well. it’s a good main backup power unit. If i was to buy one now i think i would look at the 3750 with additional addon battery which can clip underneath. that thing must run for like a week! – i really hope that tekkeon reply to my constant emails for ammo-box project support!
belkin audio splitter – for sharing audio from a device
just a single to double splitter cable to allow other people to listen in on some audio playback to see what they think or for sharing music whilst on some method of transport.
business cards – in protective case
the amount of times i have got to place and someone asks me for a website, contact details and we both do not have a pen and the bar is packed and you have no way of getting your ‘deets over. always remember your business card/contact cards and make sure you put them in some kind of case that is protective because they will get wet, bent and messed up.
bottle opener, tekkeon converter plugs, adr bluetooth 2.0 nano device, airplane headset converter
those little bits and bobs you have knocking about the bottom of your bags. put them in a better container or see through plastic bag so you can find them quickly. the adr bluetooth nano adapter is useful if you want to listen to music wireless from a windows/osx system over bluetooth v2.0 – this gives you freedom from wires and is useful on a shoot if your monitoring playback.
nokia mini usb power connector charging cable
spare rechargeables
huawei mobile connect usb device backup (on three – need to delock) [video overview clip]
i always have a backup when it comes to a mobile connection (always depends on the simcards however) – this only works on a laptop thou so if the battery has gone on the laptop then i’m no better off but it wise to carry an additional way of getting online
the blue mikey for the itouch (but it will work with FiRE on the iphone3g) [video overview clip]
when i first bought the blue mikey i was worried that it did not work with the iphone3g natively. i only have a first generation ipod touch and it i could not get it working with that. on an iphone 3g you get a loud whistling noise unless you use an application that supports the microphone. FiRE is one such application that supports it – high quality audio recordings that you can send to ftp or hosted over on soundcloud which is a fantastic quality audio storage system with a wonderful api.
standard flip ultra (non HD – easy to edit if required) [video overview clip]
first generation flip camera that records in 640×480 at 30fps in standard definition – it is pretty good for web clips but there are many other new cameras out there these days but it works well enough and 60 minutes has often been enough for doing little video clips.
tomtom GO with european maps (you never know) [video overview clip]
always useful to have a dedicated gps system in your backpack if you can afford the little bit of extra weight (trust me it all adds up) because often times when i need directions using the mobile phone is either slow or eats the battery. i find a dedicated unit better to get a signal anyway. Maybe the iphone 3gs will allow me to leave the tomtom at home in the future? 
tekkeon mp1800 combined usb charger and led whitelight [video overview clip]
i bought the mp1800 because i wanted something dedicated for the iphone to recharge and i never had the right connectors at the time for the tekkeon 3450i to charge it from a usb port (the 3750 has the right connector) easily. i was mega surprised when it arrived. it is super small and can charge my iphone 3/4 times – it also has a white led torch intergrated which i’m sure lasts for a long time if your using it just for that.
powermonkey explorer with solar panel [video overview clip]
yes, it can make you look a total nerd as your sucking up sunrays in the airport or on the train but at least you will have backup power to charge up the ipod/iphone – can you see a theme here? – i’m totally over the top when it comes to having backup power. trust me you get through it quickly in a day.
centrance micport pro usb to xlr [video overview clip]
the centrance micport pro has so far become my number one digital device for connecting xlr microphones to my computers – the high quality components and well thought out controls make it a boon for getting fantastic quality sound into the computer. the headphone socket and phantom 48V power make it much better than other units on the market. highly recommended. good for round table recordings.
roto usb-hub (ideal for laptops with very little usb ports) – also all has all card formats covered [video overview clip]
a cheap usb with combination card reader i bought from ebay that came from china. probably will not last more than a few events but a pretty useful cube with plenty of options on. not very well built. i do like the way the ports rotate out thou.
3 x spoffles for the iphone [video overview clip]
a simple idea for reducing the popping and banging from the iphone internal microphone by putting over a microphone cover that would normally be used on a shure sm58 or similar – you can pick them up for £2.99 for five of ebay. cheap and cheerful but do the job.
apple usb charger with 6-1 connector for most things (nintendo, ipod/iphone/usb) [video overview clip]
a great little adapter that i picked up from some random website online for around a fiver (£5) – this 6 in 1 usb charging cable pretty much covers a huge selection of mobile devices including nintendo, usb and nokia.
4 usb port cigarette lighter socket (seriously having backup cabling is paramount) [video overview clip]
how many times have you wanted to charge more than one usb device in the car. now you can, £5 gets you a 4-1 unit and you can even charge the original cigarette lighter unit in the middle. worthwhile for the ride from from the airport to the hotel.
pc keylogger ps2 inline connector [video overview clip]
not even sure why i put this in here, i’ll not be taking it with me – i found it at the bottom of my bag, i thought i had lost it years ago, i must have put it all together with the rest of the cables.
the web 2.0 tools and sites i’ll be using and how.
Most of the application that i’ll be using to record/document content are automatically linked back to my twitter account(s) – i used a great site called http://su.pr to send out in bulk to all of my twitter accounts at once if i’m writing a longform blogpost or if i want to mention this to a lot of my twitter accounts at once. The benefits of this is that su.pr (from stumbleupon) has click tracking and also delayed posting so i can post updates as and when. I also have a custom homebrew system for doing delayed posting of tweets for when i’m flying etc we can still maintain the conversation thus having something to reply/talk to people about when we land.
This has often been useful as a reminder to people when we have travelled as the ‘ontheground’ project reminding people to tune in later to a custom page that had all our content in one place. Below i have listened in no particular order applications that i will be using and how while travelling from each destination around europe for the twestival eurorush.
bambuser – great european webcam streaming site for web/mobile based in stockholm that sits on a gigabit network. i often use this as a replacement for qik.com which i will also use from time to time (different networks/different people subscribed – also my qik.com is fed into 12seconds.tv too) – the sound on bambuser needs a little work but on the whole bambuser is a pretty stable offering running on the open source backend of red5 flash server. i’ll be using this and my rode videomic as an external microphone on the nokia n86 – this should give good one on one interview style quality sound compared to noisy all of room usual sound. bambuser is useful because people watching from the website can send chat messages to you as well. I also have a backup copy of bambuser on the iphone but i find the streaming to be better on a nokia unit than the iphone for some reason – unless i’m on solid wifi i will be using the nokia.
tweetie
i’ll be using tweetie to keep my twitter up to date.
audioboo
recording interviews and audio snippits as we go along on the trip will come down to audioboo (as long as we have a wifi/data signal) – if not then i’ll be switching to using FiRE so i can store as many clips on the iphone as required and upload them later. Always remember to clear some space of your iphone if your going to be doing lots of interviews as they can take up a lot of room really quickly. The FiRE clips are uploaded to soundcloud which is a very high quality mp3 recording and i’ll be using the blue mikey with FiRE which gives even better quality than the internal iphone3g microphone – even thou that is very good sounding as well.
tumlr
i use tumblr daily on my iphone to post photos and quick blog posts and links – i find it amazingly quick. i’m hoping that posting video from the phone will be easy too when i do eventually get the iphone 3gs.
tumblr gear
i use tumblr gear for about 20 minutes every lunch to catch up on friends content through the day – it is a great program written by a guy in japan and the interface allows super fast browing. ideally you want to be on wifi thou because even thou browsing is fast downloading images to blast through can take some time. you can ‘like’ and ‘reblog’ from this app as well. a good diversion over lunch.
12seconds
if you want to get a faux video message out the original 12seconds application is great for this. you can take three pictures (or use ones you have already takent) and record 12 seconds of audio to go with your message. i tend to use audioboo more than 12seconds. but i do intend to use the new 12cast from 12seconds when i have purchased an iphone 3gs.
flickit
my favorite picture taken program for geo tagging photos. also doing batch photos from events can be done very easily with this app and you can set the tags ahead of time saving you the hassle of updating them for each and allowing you to send them in batch. you can even batch set the geo location so you do not have to wait each time to aquire the location.
autoskitch
not really used this yet but really excited to give it a good old run in helsinki and other twestivals for group shots – really need a good tripod mount (the zacuto would have been perfect (hint hint!) so that i can do measured aligned photos properly. will give it a good run through and repost some of the images to his post once i have.
shakeitphoto
one of my favorite polaroid style photo applications. you take the photo and then shake the phone to develop the picture. you can also use any picture from your camera library and it also has a speedy setting to produce the picture quicker. i love this app it makes the colours pop on the pictures and gives you that retro 70’s look. a boring photo can come alive with this app. i use this alot for posting to the tumblr account.
brightkite
record your location and if you have brightkite connected up to dopplr and fireeagle they get updated as well. let local bloggers know your in the area, those savvy to watch or searching for local twitter people will find your tweets – more services are using geo for live updates from an area.
nightcamera
i use this later on in the evening when i have had a few drinks – this fixes some of those rubbish blurry shots by making sure the camera is still before taking the snap. also you can set it to be 400 x 300 so you can take optimized quick photos if your on the road and have very little upstream bandwidth but need to get a photo update out there.
birdhouse
while i’m travelling on the plane/train/coach i always like to know ahead of time the schedule so i always put my drafts of twitter posts in birdhouse if i have no way of getting a tweet out until i have a local data tariff simcard.
skype
when i do have a data sim and hspda/3g signal somewhere in europe and a good signal i tend to use skype for making calls abroad.
sparrow
i post fireeagle updates with sparrow along each leg of the trip as these updates are stored normally on our map.
postman
a new program that i have been playing with recently that allows you to make a postcard style graphic with some nice features on it. As i’ll be visiting three or four destinations it should make for some pretty awesome postcards.
byline
the best way to consume feeds and news on the go. you download them before you go! – using wifi you can download rss feeds really quickly and the posts to your phone and then read at your leisure. i use this a lot when travelling if i get a bit bored or zoned out and need my fix of content.
ego
me ego, really? – i love the ego program for keeping a watch on how many subscribers we have gained or lost depending on post cycle or search results, good to see how it effects the traffic when you write a blog post that is relevant or gets hit a lot – can track a lot of stats but my fav is the feedburner part.
FiRE
a fantastic little field recorder application on the iphone. whenever i think i’ll be doing a lot of interviews one after another the best application to do this right now is FiRE – the problem with other audio recording applications is that you have to send up the recording you have done and if you have no data connection or it is slow you can miss a really good interview. with fire you can batch interviews and save them locally on the phone to be uploaded later to ftp or soundcloud. Also i can use the blue mikey to get that extra bit of audio quality benefit. the vu meters on FiRE are also accurate and not just a graphical sound level indicator.
’stachetastic
had to throw this one in there. seeing as we are going to finland (and parts of europe in general) you cannot leave home without the stachetastic application – expect to see rupert and myself transformed overnight into the locals. tiz good. yah.
quadcamera
also application i really like on the iphone is quadcamera, you can take a series of pictures in a group or formats from a grid of four to a strip of photos across in 8 blocks. you can set the colours to be b&w, sepia, hi-contrast and more. a cool little creative photo taking application.
iblogger
not sure how much direct blogging will be needed on the iphone, i have the acer so i should be able to do it all on that. it might be that i record myself on FiRE and type it up later. I wish FiRE had an output so i could send my voice recording to a conversion service that would in turn email me the results for me to check through and any word it thought was weird put a method of changing and updating that text. that would be a very useful service. iblogger allows me to blog directly to the ammoboxproject blog and also my personal blog over on me.dm
producing and uploading media content
- remember the remote user.
one golden rule i find with producing media for live output is remember the remote user. they do not want to see over the top shaky clips, imagine yourself having to watch this. be concerned about wind, light and noise – if it looks crappy to you it probably looks ten times worse after the 3g, wifi and compression on the sound. do everything in your power to make sure that you have the best conditions you can get in the best condition your in.
If you drunk and loud remember that your slurring drunk impressions will probably sound 100 times worse when you watch it back. update people on the time, location what has been going on and what your about to do – videoblogging and sharing media for me is about engaging the people who are no there but would have liked to be. if they send messages to you via twitter and ask you to interview someone they know because they would make a good guest you should do your best to get them on. your often re-connecting friends and everyone likes to check in on how people are doing. quick snappy updates can often be better than 3-5 minute epics. keep it flowing quick.
do bandwidth checks, if it’s a crucial interview make sure you capture it local to your device using a reliable application that does not require a data connection – if your doing lots of interviews make sure you have the pipeline of capturing these interviews instead of having to wait on uploading/dataconnect/power – always have a backup system, nobody likes to wait while you mess with your technology – people are busy. especially at parties.
the aggregation of the content
a lot of the time we just assume that people are savvy enough from twitter updates and posting on social sites to remember to come and drop in on your site or links in your stream but the truth is we are busy people. the sheer amount of updates, media and content that is posted by the minute to the internet is a scary amount. trying to sift through the tons of content can be a painstaking process.
luckily we have some great tools to view, aggregate and consume our content out there on the internet using standalone settop box style opensource software (like boxee) and custom 1-page grid like pages of your social video content like the system i have been building rezpondr (http://48hrs.rezpondr.com – basic before api built) – we hope to have a page setup for next week based along the lines of the 48hrs page with a whole new layout and design afterwards to display the media that we captured.
higher quality recorded content after the event.
if we get chance on this trip i’ll try and record some HD content inbetween locations – fixed clips, nothing too flashy. i half wish i had a zoom h4n – that is the next big thing on the gadget list i want to get to make the video recordings have a lot more punch. Also want to update the canon hv20 HD tape camcorder to something a bit more professional. lots of choices in this department right now with the panasonic gh1, canon eos 7d and the ultimate crossover the canon 5d mk2 – all of these cameras do video and photos so they would be a direct replacement for my camera/video device. I would still use the hv20 as a main camera at home running over the hdmi port. Normally what i do with recorded hd content is capture the playback over hdmi direct to the computer over hdmi that way i do not lose anything when doing the import as it a total clean uncompressed feed. As much as tape is annoying i still find great results from tape playback – i’m still not totally sold on avchd.
conclusion
hopefully this post has given you a basic insight as to what it can be like for a social media small content producer whilst travelling around producing media on a budget. the ammo-box project aims to enable those events/venues/people who have a nature flair for audio/video and production with sponsored equipment. Once we have gotten all the sponsors slot filled we will be looking to develop the tracking mapping system for geo targeted media. we already have a few possible ways of doing this including hopefully linking up with epictracker (we love their work)
If you have any questions please feel free to leave them in the comments section below this post. Oh and yes, i always get stopped at customs in america when i travel. I have had my laptop scanned about three times in recent years. I guess it looks weird to be travelling with a broadcast system on your back.
ps. believe it or not all this kit fits in my kata bag!
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