the latest hardware and tech
for mobile media makers
in the field.

A post about my experience using the Nokia N86 8MP to videoblog and photoblog a film festival last weekend.

I’m just back from four days by the sea in Brittany, at the 20th Dinard Festival of British Film. 70+ producers, directors, actors and press were flown over by the Festival to network, sell, drink champagne and present their films to an eager French public. There were 7 cinemas showing 45 films over four days from 10am to 1am, and all the screenings I went to were packed.

The gig was a hand-me-down via Mike and Christian. McAinsh PR wanted someone to cover the festival ‘for Twitter‘ – to tweet during the festival and post video, photos and audio. That’s basically what I do – creative mobile videoblogging, at Twittervlog.tv – and I’ve been a short filmmaker for 15 years, with a keen interest in British cinema, so it was a good fit.

After my experience last month on the N86 Twestival Tour, I was a bit unsure about the N86. It appears to deliver everything I dream of – and the photo, video and audio quality *are* fantastic – but they’ve removed the video editor completely now (RAAAAAAAAA), mobile uploading was a nightmare, and the battery life was unbelievably bad.

There was a well-timed firmware upgrade last week, though, so I thought I’d give it another try – and WOMWorld Nokia (at 1000heads) kindly sorted me out with one to borrow for the weekend.
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So it was about time I got off the marks with a post.

I think Ammobox is a great project. A box of tech goodness that I’m sure will make a difference in whatever way the gear is used. Super idea Phil!

I’m at Cologne Airport and flying down to Tbilisi, Georgia. I’ll be down there for a fortnight training radio journalists.

Given that this is a training trip and not a report trip I’m travelling quite light( If you call three laptops light). Normally I’m carting around a Sony Z1 video camera and a Miller tripod.

As for gadgets, most of my gear for this trip is packed into a CaseLogic backpack. I’ve just been singled out as usual by security at the airport for special treatment but lucky all cables are in see through bags – no cable spaghetti.

Anyway must dash!

Good morning!

So with the wonders of technology I’m writing this inflight from heathrow to helsinki. the ammobox project is up and airbourne as part of the nokia n86tour for raising money for charity.

We are a team of three and we will be raising money for every mile that we travel. we have been digitally enabled by nokia/womworld and we all have the new 8 megapixel nokia n86 with the fantastic new carl zeiss lens that is brand new with this phone.

I mention the camera on the nokia because I started videoblogging with a nokia n95 – a really fantastic phone once they fixed up the firmware. The n86 really shows how far they have come. When it comes to optics nokia really show they are committed to making each version better than the last.

The update/refresh rate on this phone is fantastic. the sheering of left to right that used to make the image tilt almost appears to have gone and I can only put this down to s new reworked lens unit from carl zeiss.

having seen this lens being made at the factory in germany I can tell you first hand a lot of time and quality work goes into making it.

So, looking forward to taking pictures and video with the phone and sharing those pictures out using ovi. Of course I’ll be doing the same on my iphone – nice to be back videoblogging with a new model. I think the n86 could be my next videoblogging phone!

Hoping to reviewing the nokia n900 instore in Helsinki. Maybe that might change my mind which to go for. So, I’m gonna kick back and let the plane chew up the miles for charity.

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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For a long time i have been searching for some wireless headphones that would work with the iphone 3g that i have.   I wanted to have a pair of headphones that were wireless because when your making or producing media you find yourself multi-tasking and have a gadget in every hand and on numerous occasions i find myself wrapped in wires and headphones that i have forgotten i have been wearing.   i have damaged so many ‘phones this way by pulling cables or dropping them on their drivers.   decent headphones are not cheap to replace either,

Before the iphone 3.0 firmware update you had to use an adapter that sat underneath your iphone 3g that could transmit stereo ad2p bluetooth to a stereo bluetooth headset – the iskin cerulean f1 are a very nice sounding headset but can be uncomfortable if wearing for any length of time.   I’m sure more stereo bluetooth headsets are on the market now.   The stereo ad2p - Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) - sound is much better than standard bluetooth audio and has a lot better fault tolerance than the usual.    Since the iphone 3g firmware update (3.x and above) the phone now supports a2dp bluetooth natively so you no longer need the unit on the bottom of the phone – handy because another thing to worry about and can get knocked out by accident as it has no locking system.

I have tried these bluetooth headphones with audioboo.fm but they never worked – that is not to say that they might not work in the future.   I’m looking forward to more software and devices supporting stereo wireless bluetooth headphones.   I bought a EDR usb 2.0 dongle for my netbook – this allows at a lower level (i.e – no software often required) to broadcast stereo bluetooth audio wireless to your headset.   This is the main reason i bought the wireless headphones as it allows me to be doing live streaming and listening back to the system audio from the laptop – you could be listening in on the stream audio quality or listening to a skype conversation and still have the ability to move away from your machine.   a useful monitoring tool.

So this morning i had a few nice surprises.   Had snow leopard delivered and duly installed (run’s lovely btw) and straight after two boxes – one large and one small from cradlepoint.   This was the kickstart i needed this morning to make me get the drafts i have been working on no1 on the list to get up on the site.

Although i have a number of guest bloggers on the site a number of them have only written one post and i’m thinking how i can motivate more people to post stories about using technology in the field.   Of course i need to be posting more regular to bring people back to the site but i have also decided to do some some short clips on blip.tv and replace the frontend picture with a video player detailing some of the current kit we have going into the ammobox.

I’ll be doing a little video about the cradlepoint kit later on today – i’m currently sitting in a cybercafe thinking of radical ideas regarding powering them all up at once and having multiple channels for different services.  the mind wanders – certainly going to have a live chat session with some techy geeks about things we can do with them.    Should make for an interesting chat session.

unboxing | the phs300 cradlepoint routers arrive.

Firmware release 2.4.2 has added a number of new modems and phones that are now tested and compatible with both the CradlePoint CTR350 Mobile Travel Router and the CradlePoint PHS300 Personal WiFi Hotspot.

They include: the Huawei UMG-181 on T-Mobile and AT&T, the Novatel MiFi 2200 on Sprint and Verizon and RIM’s BlackBerry Bold 9000/AT&T.

The current PHS300 does not work with the new WiMAX and 4G modems. With upgraded hardware, the new version of the PHS300 allows for the special requirements of these new technologies.

In an effort to support customers, CradlePoint has set up a special
rebate offer for any current CradlePoint PHS300 owner.

1. purchase a new PHS300 with version 2.0 hardware
2. You will receive a rebate form with your new PHS300
3. Mail the form along with your old model PHS300 back to CradlePoint
4. Receive a check in the mail for $75

This offer is for CradlePoint customers residing in the US and Canada only. Offer is good thru September 30, 2009. Hmm, I do hope the phs300 we are getting for the new ammoboxes are the latest version!

Whoa.  it’s small (what she said)

The Tekcharge MP1800 from the get go has surprised me, you see.  i already own the tekkeon mp3450i i was almost expecting it to be the same sort of size but compared it is ultra small – just a little bit smaller than the iphone that i’ll be mainly charging with it.   It comes with a lanyard and the other surprise was the built in ultra bright led light at the top.   It is perfect for using at an event or conference and you have the backup of charging your phone a few times on the move without having to worry about looking through your bag.   I was a bit concerned that there there is no power meter on the unit but for £35 what can you really expect.

One other thing i need to find out is if the tekkeon unit is still a polymer based battery – the mp3450i is awesome in that no matter how hot it got in my backpack in austin during sxsw it lasted a few days with no problems powering the phs300 cradlepoint wifi router.   It is a little bit more pricy that some units but after i have given it a test out i think i’ll be proven that i have made the right choice.  I have some cheaper made units for ten pounds buy they come with little to no warrenty and I always think that buy cheap then buy twice.  I was that impressed at sxsw that it make the tekkeon units the first choice to check up for the USB charger for my iPhone.  I could have looked at the more powerful mp3700 but for just charging an iPhone it is overkill.

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We just got a really uplifting email from cradlepoint.

You see for a few weeks while i have had my head down pulling together all these blogposts and getting a pipeline setup for posting regular information to the ammobox project i had left a few of the sponsors on hold while i worked on the content.    Today, outta the blue i just got a great email from the new head of social media at cradlepoint that they were up for sponsoring the first 10 ammoboxes with phs300 wifi routers.  we are absolutely made up (initial tear in the eye and everything) – i feel like we just broke through that initial barrier of taking social media from just blog reports and people talking about the products to actually starting back and forth dialog to the people that ‘build the product‘ – it has to be a win win situation for both parties.

Just a few details about the units

The PHS300 Personal WiFi Hotspot is a true plug ‘n’ play solution that creates a powerful WiFi network almost anywhere. Connect all your WiFi enabled devices by simply plugging in your activated USB data modem* and turning on the PHS300. No more searching for a hotspot, you are one! – the PHS300 comes standard with a Li Ion battery providing hours of access when no power outlets are in sight. At just under 3” x 5” it’s a perfect solution for those on the go. Take the PHS300 everywhere you need Internet access.  This high-performance router platform, powered by WiPipe™ technology, supports multiple and concurrent VPN pass-through sessions, plus encryption modes including WEP, WPA and WPA2.  Now you can confidently access the Internet and share your connection with friends, family or colleagues on the road, in the office and at home.

We just want to say a big thank you to the new social media division (you know who you are!) and we look forward to receiving the units which will go into each of the first 10 ammoboxes.   Now i gotta make the call to tekkeon to hook us up with some portable juice for these badboys!

38 iphone applications that every socialmedia mobile mediamaker should own to get your message out there. I have broken them down into five groups – i thought about making this into lots of seperate posts but in the end decided on the mega post. i hope you’ll find something in here that you can use in your daily mobile social media making!

communication

skype
when i first purchased my iphone3g it never even entered my mind that skype might actually make an iphone application for their service. i mean it makes perfect sense to make one but i just never saw apple allowing it to happen what with them being very closed provider/operator breaking into this phone space with their second version of the iphone. luckily thou it did happen and it is great to get hold of people for an interview with ubercaster – being able to call people on skype via their iphones while they are at a cybercafe and pull them into a live podcast interview is fantastic and very interactive.

im+
i personally spend very little time using instant messaging these days – there is just too many things i like to be engaged in around the internet that is a little bit more lightweight, twittering or firing a response to a friendfeed/facebook link is more my bag but when i am mobile for any length of time i tend to talk to back home via gtalk – for this i use IM+ All-in-One Messenger. It’s not cheap mind but i do like the fact that the full version (you can get a lite version for free) keeps your connections going when you break out of the app to load up other applications or take a phone call.

SHOUTcast
if you are not sure what shoutcasts are let me give you a little bit of education on them. back in the day shoutcasting was the method of streaming audiostreams and music out onto the net – a lot of the radio streams you find in itunes are based on either icecast or shoutcasting protocols. we use a 64kps backup audiostream to a dedicated serverhost called tidyhosts as they have a reasonable 50 slot server for £10 a month which works perfectly for a backup to streaming video out from the ammobox if the connection at the venue is poor.   great if your running out of space for music too.

tweetdeck
if your a twitter user chances are at some point you have tried tweetdeck or heard from someone who uses it. for a long time i ran tweetdeck on my desktop mac and loved it until it started to take up too much of my time watching, sifting and watching the constant conversations go by. now like the evil timesuck ninjas they are they go and release an iphone application which is actually really nifty and creative in the approach to show these columns. the interface is snappy and clean and will enable you to keep up your desktop with the really nice sync feature of your searchs and custom columns.

tweetie
the application that changed me from using tweetdeck. period. ultra clean interface, native mac osx support and written in cocoa (not some memory bloating air application – not tweetdecks fault per say btw) – the fad with air applications for me died very quickly when it was obvious that some work needs to be done on the way that air works. i’m sure something newer is in the mix but for now tweetie on my mac desktop and the mobile are the way forward for fast communication. the multiple accounts features of both are both super fast and easy to use.

information, blogging & distribution

tumblr
tumblr is a fantastic microblogging platform that has many different themes and the ability to use a custom theme for free. the iphone application is super easy to use once you have registered a name for your site – you have to do this initially from the web. i currently use the tumblr app for updating projectswebmedia.com (oh i forgot to say tumblr allow you to point your own domain names at the sites too. it is a very fast way when you are mobile to send micro sized twitter style content to your website.  make sure you check out our uber horizontal infinite scroller!

Ego
even wanted to check your stats in a clean, fast loading interface – with support for Feedburner, Google Analytics, Google PageRank™, Mint, Squarespace and Twitter the tracking interface reminds me of the widgets of mint in that you can click them to get daily, weekly and all time. a really nice light stats client that at a glance can keep you in the loop – the ability to see feedburner feeds is a big plus for me because you can see the + and – increase on them.    This is one of those applications that i hope that when apple build in the ability to be notified on the frontscreen that egoapps builds in support for it! – realtime stats ftw.

Byline
a fantastic rss reader based on google reader but with the ability to sync items directly to the iphone so you can download and take them with you. perfect for the plane or the subway or when you have no access to a data connection but you want to catch up on your google reader feeds. again, perfect for mobile and travelling to have access to your feeds or even syncing up rss status updates from your website registrations maybe – either way a better way to consume rss feeds if you ask me, sitting on a pc burning watts to browse websites has always been a bit overkill right?

SkyNews
whenever i am out on the road or travelling by train i always like to keep up with the news and while skynews might not be the fastest in the world i find their iphone application to be fast and display videos and news stories in a nice lightweight fashion. it would be good if there was an application that had most of the major news services on it with a twitter feed of searched stuff as well that updated dynamically in a twitterfall sort of fashion. that would be very useful. also maybe geo news for your location maybe – i can imagine a lot of local media producers putting out content too!

SugarSync
after looking for a decent complete system backup tool i stumbled upon sugarsync. the first thing that really attracted me to sugarsync was the pricing – for 250gb it worked out just under $20 a month (since then however i have installed carbonite for a year at $52 for unlimited transfer and storage) – what i do like about sugarsync however is that it has an iphone application where you can get to your content you have stored on their services. i do hope carbonite do something similar – i’m still looking for that ultimate application that will allow me to stream music from my backed up itunes folder!

iRail
how many times have you been at an event and your clock watching wondering if you should stay around and have another drink or risk catching a later train? – i seem to do it all the time. what is nice about iRail thou is not only does it work in the uk but all across europe which is very handle if you have a last minute job that you have been called up to do and your literally just having to rush to grab a plane – not having to look up at foreign traffic information signs in a blind panic would definately be one of the reasons to purchase this iphone application.   a worthwhile addition for the traveller in europe.

Birdhouse
such a simple idea but often the best – how many times have you been wanting to tweet something you heard or saw or an idea that popped into your mind but you just could not tweet it because of no data connection or maybe your flying. if this is you then birdhouse is for you. an offline draft twitter app that you can store a message for later and post when you have access. i actually use it for generic messages for when i do live streaming so it is quick to push out the message.  i should add that it supports multiple twitter accounts too which makes it that little bit more awesome.

evernote
the weird thing about evernote is that i always felt there was something missing with it. i started using on windows and found the application to be to complicated just to be able to store notes. i really love the sync feature however and that was one thing that made me change back to it from the ‘things’ application after it would not sync one day. the web version of evernote is dire and i still think the mac app is the best. the iphone app is ok, needs work but make sure you have data connection to sync your latest notes – i once got caught in berlin needing the address of the stop i needed to get off and could not retrieve it!

iBlogger
after finally biting the bullet and spending $5.99 on this app i hoped it would do what i needed because all the other blogging apps seem flaky and unreliable. Not so with iblogger – for a start it supports a massive list of blogging systems so your pretty much covered there. i use it for updating my moveabletype installations and wordpress. you can even add photos from the camera for quick updates for maybe a launch party when you just have to get the message out there. a worthwhile addition for any blogger on the road.   do remember thou, $5.99 – only buy if your going to use it!

MobileMinute
how many times have you really wanted to know just how many minutes or data you have used up on your iphone3g with o2 – i’ve nearly had my iphone for 18 months now and although it has been for repair once (for the microphone) i have never really know how much data tariff i have used on it – this can be crucial when your roaming. i heard about this app and was keen to try it. i’m still trying thou because for some reason i get a message saying that it cannot access my traffic stats from the web. update soon on this!

ftponthego
as a website developer you know that the moment you think you’ll have a steady few days out of the woodwork and while your on vacation on the beach somewhere one of you clients has either uploaded something wrong or messed up a .htaccess file – you know the situation. ftp on the go is a great little iphone application to allow you to ftp into your servers to correct things from wherever you can get a data connection. a very useful app – also allows you to save files locally. has tons of features i have not even touched yet.   remember, just because your on vacation does’nt mean you cannot ftp in and fix it!

dopplr
i have been using dopplr via it’s website since it launched and i always like the idea, very similar to brightkite in some aspects but with a heavy lean towards letting you know about reviews of hotels and restaurants in the area by updates from the people you trust in your social grid. i like that. the iphone app is brand new and although basic in operation right now shows potential as to where this application is going to. it will be fantastic while travelling to test it out and i look forward to playing around with it when it matures a bit more – be interesting to see what dopplr does next actually.

currency
how many times have you been abroad, even flew between two countries with lots of different currencys and been completely lost about how much your actually spending – on a recent ‘ontheground’ in denmark i had that situation when i just could not work out how much things were. having to have krona as well as euros just about finished me off – having a currency converter on the iphone is an absolute requirement for ultimate geekery so you do not over spend on those iffy foreign beers you just bought.  can be a bit iffy to use first time but you soon get the hang of it.

RSSplayer
pretty much everything the ipod player should be on the iphone – the video part of the ipod on the iphone is awful. the interface has been made to work around video when really it is designed for music only. another problem is that you often have to sync to your machine to get videos over 10 meg even if your on wifi. with rssplayer all that goes away, in fact any size can be downloaded and it has an intergrated search function and schedule guide so it can download while your on the move. a brilliant application for catching up with media on the go that simply makes itunes look inferior.

Locly
stuck in the middle of nowhere and need food, maybe transport or even just want to touch base with the local twitter users in the area – the super lightweight (no graphics) locly is a fantastic super quick applications for pulling back a bunch of information based on your geo location – find local flickr images, twitters, wikipedia, local events, restaurants, pubs, cafes, shops and supermarkets, taxi firms, films and movies, museums, hotels, banks/atm and gas stations. the locality in your pocket – if this moved towards doing live updates as well in a twitterfall display that would rock.

London Tube
i’m not a local to london (even thou most of my friends in america think that london is england) far from it i live over two and half hours away from london in the midlands, derbyshire and although i’m getting more confident using the tube i do have trouble getting around and working out what is the best tube station to – luckily we have applications like this now to help out route prep – this app does not require a data connection to work out the routes which makes it that extra bit special that the rest.  also, high resolution images and routes compared to some others.

Pixelpipe
Pixelpipe is a media gateway that allows users to publish text and upload photos, video and audio files once through Pixelpipe and have the content distributed across over 95 social networks, photo/video sites and blogs, and other online destinations. They provide free mobile & desktop applications. For instance if you have a picture you want to distribute you can send it to pixelpipe and have it sent to a batch of other picture sites at the same time. very useful for getting attention to something very quickly around the interwebz.

audio recording

audioboo
for saying that i started out videoblogging and switched to podcasting seems a bit of a weird thing to say but for the moment that is exactly what i have done. audioboo is a fantastic iphone application that allows you to rapidly recording high quality snippits of audio and post them directly to the internet. you can also setup destinations that you wish to post an update too when you do this. i have recently been using xlr mics with the iphone and it works very well indeed.  out of all the other audio recording applications this is my current favorite because it has great embed options too (oh and recently released api!)

12seconds
one of the first video (from a series of  pictures) and audio posting applications i had seen that approached the low bandwidth quick upload route in a really creative way – quick post requirement of getting a 12 seconds video snippit on an iphone. utilizing the three pictures you have the ability to post those which in turn display in an animation on 12 seconds with an attached 12 second audio clip. a great little application for rapidly updating people without actually recording a video.  just take three shots, add them to the app and record a little bit of audio.   quick and simple.  and free!

tweetmic
following in the same vein as the audioboo application this iphone app is pretty much a backup application just in case something horrible happens with audioboo and i want to get a live audio podcast recording done and sent out to the internet. in testing i found the playback of the tweetmic clips jumpy and not as good quality as the audioboo application – also you have less embed options when i last checked and no api, that said tweetmic is 99 cents so they are bringing in a little bit of money to cover a little bit of their overheads for the development of new revisions  – not seen it updated yet thou – also the interface could do with a make over!

FiRe
touted as the ‘field recorder in your hand’ this brilliant application is ideal for those wanting to experiment with the latest and greatest gadgets for the iphone – utilizing the blue mikey, an addon block for the bottom of the iphone you can get some really amazing recordings and the application works very much like a true hardware field recorder with a proper vu meter and the ability to save your high quality recordings to soundcloud. one to check out if you want to save lots of audio recordings on the phone as well – audioboo only allows you currently to record one boo at a time before you have to upload it – this is where FiRe comes in.

voxie
a recent new addition to my iphone purely for ‘testing purposes’ – another audio recorder but with a nicer interface – not sure i really like the web interface things to send audio snippits back and forth but the addition of the webserver is at least something to getting to your audio – an app without the ability to post it to the web always worries me. i do however like the categorize features and the ability to flag media with different status. The friends element so you can send audio to friends is also quite useful – i presume that is how it works.   I would probably use voxie more if it functioned more similar to audioboo regarding uploading.

video recording

bambuser
one of the first video applications for the iphone3g that i used that did not require jailbreaking. slowly the application is gaining more features and I’m very keen to try the application again now that we have the xlr to iphone connector working – should be no reason why the application will not use the new mic input which for quick interviews as a backup will work perfectly. bambuser are based in stockholm, sweden and are a great backup to the qik application if your nokia (you have a backup right) mobile phone goes down.

twitvid
not had chance to properly use this yet as it is designed for the iphone3gs – i’m quite excited about the advent of video production on the iphone but i think it has a long way to go before it can make it up to the high standards of quick video capture of the nokias. saying that the ability to quickly record a video and post to twitter is very useful if you have a lot of followers and you want to update them quickly.   It is also pretty cool to roll into a new town or new place on the train and open up brightkite over a coffee and see who is in the locality or who passed through in recent days.

geolocation & camera

NightCamera
so we all know that the iphone3g has a pretty naff 2 megapixel camera for taking photos compared to some of the camera phones on the market – the iphone3g in lowlight is pretty dire still.  what night camera does thou is actually pretty simple but very clever – it actually checks to see if the camera is stable by using the inbuilt accelerometer to see if the shot is steady or not before taking it.   also you can take smaller size pictures which makes for faster picture taking than normal which is good for a bunch of pictures.   my favorite mode has to be the sepia.

Sparrow
a very simple geo location application to update your status to the yahoo fireeagle location service.  lots of geo apps can be updated by the fireeagle service – one of them is the brightkite service – you can update with sparrow and it will also alert your brightkite geo service also if you allow it access.   you can also set the level of privacy of your update by restricting the range of the geo update for area, region or down to street level.   always remember that walking around with a bag full of tech worth a lot of money will be quite attractive to geo thieves in the future.  be sensible with it.

iNap
not sure if your anything like me when it comes to events but i always seem to be mentally drained by the end of night from all the conversations i end up having about this social space and the interesting things that go on within it. this app has on a few occasions given me the chance to catch some sleep on the way home on the train.  super simple – set a distance range from your destination you want the alarm to go off and it will play an alarm when your near.   Do make sure however you have a gps signal – nothing worse that hoping technology will help you for it to fail badly!

flickit
one of my new top favorite apps for taking photos with and geotagging them.  mainly because it really has a good system for tagging photos that you can setup in batch mode to apply to every photo that you take in the app.   you can also attach geotag each image with geo date from the onboard gps on your iphone.   the interface is very light weight and speedy in which you can upload photos to flickr make it perfect for batch shots on a location.   setting up your tags, description and comments ahead of time can make the process of distributing picture content to flickr for an ammobox event very easy indeed – all the user has to do is shoot the photos and upload.

brightkite
the first real geo tagging application that i started using on the iphone.  a really slick and well thought out application that allows you to update your geo location, add a note or photo or all three.  what is neat about brightkite is that you have a social grid of people that follow your updates exactly like twitter and you can see people in your locality and chat between you.   brightkite could be really clever here if they started adding features similar to dopplr in recommending places nearby to your location and showing special offers for restaurants at certain times with money off codes.  do it brightkite!

camerabag
camerabag is a little bit quirky from the norm, it takes a photo just like any other app (i think you can even bring a photo in from your photo library) but you can then apply different filters/lens like it was taken on a retro camera or from a certain film quality year.   the program has about six different settings and can make a bland photo quite interesting.   filters are – magazine, helga, lolo, 1962, 1974, instant, fisheye, infrared, cinema, mono and of course the original – to switch between each of the effects you simply swipe your finger right to left to see the effect.

autostitch
i have tried a number of panoramic iphoto applications and this one seems to be the most simple and power.   the others just took too much messing around trying to get things right – this one is a bit more sensible in the approach in how to use it.  it can take really wide landscape pic.  i’m looking forward to giving this a try out with boinxtv at some point with the 360 layer.   ideally i need to find some kind of iphone bracket system for a tripod to get the best effect.  zacuto make the zgrip junior and pro units which look pretty neat.  we would LOVE to play with the pro version!

shakeitphoto
another of my top fav applications right now for graphics/photo processing on the iphone is shakeitphoto and the best of all it is only 99 cents.  a bargain! – in classic/retro polaroid camera styli when you have taken a snap you have to shake the iphone to develop the picture – a bit of a gimmick for sure but the quality of the processed images are really nice.   one thing i should mention is that they have a really awesome iphone site where you can view other peoples that have been added to the flickr group and it has a nice star rating system.  for the price of 99 cents you really cannot go wrong.  grab it!

comictouch
a personal favorite also of mine for really surprise shots that you might have got by accident or when you have two people talking to each other but need to put a caption on before you post it – this is for you.   a really slick interface and to be honest i love everything the guys at plasq do (skitch anyone?) – very cool app.

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