8 posts tagged “podcast”

I've just launched a new podcast series I'm hosting and producing for the Alzheimer Society of Hamilton and Halton. It's called Common Loss, and is about how dementia is cared for and dealt with in different cultures. But we began the series with a recording I made last night of a public lecture by Dr. Paul Fraser, Principal Investigator, Centre for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases (CRND), University of Toronto.

Dr. Fraser's talk was titled "Alzheimer's Disease On the Road to Recovery" and was translated into Vietnamese, Arabic, Mandarin, Somali and French. The crowd of 200 at the Royal Botanical  Gardens in Burlington, Ontario was this great United Nations mix. You can see some of the audience members, these ones Somali women, on the right. Hope you enjoy the lecture, which will bring you up to speed on what we know and hope for in medical research to defeat dementia. You can check out more photos from the evening here.

As promised, here's my ugly, but functional, parabolic mic rig. My Edirol RO9 slides right in between the four wine corks. The handle is made from a cheap-ass toy gun, the reflector is a $1 plastic bowl and the supports are fishing line. I glued it all together with silicone adhesive. The Edirol's built-in mics sit right in the sweet spot of the bowl (which I can tune by adjusting the cable tension. It works! I look like a dork, but it works. Well, even without this in my hand I'm pretty dorky.

Here's a sad story about customer relations. A great microphone company, Blue, releases an innovative USB microphone called the Snowball. It's perfect for podcasters . It gets raves across the board. Based on those user-generated reviews I order one. When I get it, I discover it produces nearly useless, weak sound levels. It turns out that Blue tweaked the circuitry in later models to lower its sensitivity. I found this out six weeks ago from a helpful tech support guy who promised a firmware update would be coming inside of a week.

The problem? Two. First, still no update on the Blue website. Worse, other podcasters have also been complaining about the issue and whoever is staffing their posting moderated discussion forum takes over a week to post comments after vetting and blames podcasters for not using the mic properly. And, there is no mention of the coming firmware update on the message boards. No apology, no admissions. Nothing.

I spoke with a company rep yesterday and told him that I think it's a real pity that the company is damaging itself so badly when they had such a great rep with podcasters. Hope this gets resolved soon. What a shame all around.

What's one thing that you hope to do or accomplish before the end of this year?

Make a podcast, start to finish that from a content, production and audio quality point of view, is near perfect. Oh yes, and world peace.

I'm about half way through reading David Sedaris', Naked. The essays are little tidbits of the wacked out buffet that is life in the Sedaris household. It was recommended to me by a colleague at the Alzheimer Society of Ontario. It has me alternately appalled at the hideous Sedaris family and laughing out loud. More when I'm done.

BTW, the interview in Toronto was great. Graeme is a very bright guy and we had a long chat about the progressive left in Canada and how the rabble podcast network, and podcasting in general fits in with social change. His final essay is due mid-August. Also, the Nike iPod thing isn't available in Canada yet. Bummed.

I'm heading into Toronto today to be interviewed by a guy named Graeme Stewart. He's a graduate candidate at the London School of Economics in the Media and Communications                           Department.

He's focussing his research on emerging technology and democracy

and is interested in "how civil society is using podcasting to build an online communicative space that furthers their ability to
positively intervene in the political process and strengthen democracy."

He wants to talk to me because I'm the executive producer of the rabble podcast network. As he said in an email to me, "Given its size and strong civil society focus, the Rabble Podcasting Network is an ideal subject for my dissertation research." Cool.

I hope I'll also get a chance to stop by the Apple Store in the Eaton Centre to see if the have the Nike+iPod running shoe sensor.

Hey gang. Nice to be here. I'm the producer of the curiosity cast, a podcast about different topics that grab the interest of the team putting it together. You can hear a promo for the shows on the right. The first show was all about curiosity itself. I'm working on the second episode right now, on social digital video. Anyone with any thoughts to share, especially audio comments, please toss them my way.