Mojo Evolution

There’s a lot of political activity on Qik these days. A lot of MOJO’s are following the final push in the US election. Adam Jadhav from the St.Louis Post-Dispatch is one of several journalists going mobile to cover the election as quick as possible. I’ve added his live stream on Qik in this post.  To check out his entire effort, check out his Qik archive. If you see other hard working MOJO’s, covering the election, feel free to ad their url as a comment.

Tags: Storytelling, Streaming // 1 Comment »

The last couple of days I’ve been testing the new Nokia N96. It hit the streets in Norway a week ago. So far I’m pretty disappointed when it comes to video and still image quality. Since a part of my job is to educate journalist in mobile journalism, I spend a lot of time testing new phones. I will not dig into all sorts of technical specifications about the new model from Nokia, but I have made a little comparison with Nokia N82.

I put the two phones side by side on tripods. The lightning conditions were not the best, and I had some sharp light coming from behind. These are not unusual conditions and represent working conditions for MOJOs.

You can check out the difference between the two cameras for yourself.  One thing to make a note of is that the video files from N96 are much larger than the files from N82. They actually use different codecs. The original file from N82 was 17 MB and the file from N96 was 36 MB. They both where 640×480 pixels with 30 FPS.

Video N82

Video N96

The sound recording on the N96 is also not as good as the one on the N82. When it comes to still images, I think the N82 is much better than the N96.

The biggest advantage with the N96 is the two LED lamps. You can actually use them in a completely dark room, and they will help you record a video that is usable. The N96 also comes with a 16GB storage built in. You can even choose to expand with a Micro SD. This is a very good solution if you use a sound recorder or video recorder on the side with SD card. You can then use the N96 as a modem without having to shut down programs on the memory card.

In my opinion Nokia has produced the N96 for playing music and watching videos. Not so much producing stilling images and videos, witch in my opinion is a pity. It’s been about a year since N82 hit the street, I find it very odd that Nokia isn’t able to up the quality of the video recording. It’s actually lower quality than before. I would not recommend buying the Nokia N96 if you intend using it as a mobile journalist. You get a much better result with the Nokia N82 or N95 8GB.

Tags: Cell phone, Gadgets, Hardware // 5 Comments »

Check out this clip from the conference Streaming Media West with Steve Garfield, Qik and Mogulus.

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The BBC embraces the mobile bloggers on Qik in the Presidential Debates. The world’s biggest media company invites their audience to express their opinion before, during and after the debates. On Qik they have set up their own page with “Have your say”, on BBC’s website you find articles with edited material. This way BBC connects elements of social media and editorial control on their own site.

Tags: Storytelling, Streaming // Add Comment »

Vincent Laforet have now released the video he shot with the new Canon EOS 5 MKII. The quality is stunningly good. He has also posted a behind the scenes video. Forget the samples you have seen on Vimeo and YouTube. This guy knows what he’s doing.

Check out the video at Vincents blog

Check out the behind the scenes video

Tags: Gadgets, Hardware // 2 Comments »

Photo taken from the Canon press image service. Some rights reserved..

There’s been a lot of buzz about the new Canon EOS 5D MKII the last days. This camera has still to reach the market, but a lot of guys have tested it, and what they report is all good. The biggest news is that the new 5D can record HD video in 1080p and you can connect an external microphone. The photographer Vincent Laforet have been one of the early testers, and on his blog you find some truly impressive stills from the HD video he recorded with the camera.

Canon is now riding the hype. They still don’t allow anyone to publish actual videos taken with the new wonder kid.  I still found one video claiming to be shot with the new 5D on YouTube. It’s included in the bottom of this post. There you will also find a HD clip I found on Vimeo. It’s really NOT impressing. It’s from sort of exhibit and it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re stolen. The clip will at least give some sort of impression about the sound capabilities of the on-board mic, which is really not bad at all. If you register at Vimeo, you can download the full version of the clip for analyzing.

Another thing that seems to be a biggie with this camera is that it can record exceptional stills and video under low light conditions. From my time as a still photographer is was always looking for natural light, which in combination with good lenses, would make the best pictures. I guess another advantage is that with a DSLR you can change lenses. In today’s video cameras you have to make a lot of comprises.

I’ll report back when I’ve had a chance to get some more information about this camera. Laforet thinks this camera will be a game changer. I simply can’t disagree. But I think we will see a lot of different convergent recording units the next couple of years. This camera will of course put traditional newspaper photographers in a new setting. Another question is if it’s good enough to a primary recorder for video journalist. I guess the sound and lightning capabilities is the most important. Another thing that we still haven’t seen is phone capabilities in this sort of gadgets. When that happens, I guess the media industry will be truly mojolized.

The last camera I purchased before I left the newspaper industry to try my luck in broadcast was an analog Canon EOS 5. It was completely new and was the first of Canon’s cameras to offer eye-tracking. I just loved to shoot low light concert photos with the camera and my 200mm f 2.8. I guess a lot have happened since then. At that point I couldn’t imaging that I one day might buy a digital EOS 5 to record video. Today I can.

Canon 5D Mark II 52-second sample movie clip by Akihabara News from David Chin on Vimeo.

Tags: Gadgets, Hardware // 4 Comments »

The mobile streaming market is definitely hot these days. One day Flixwagon announces that they are selling in-house solutions for media companies, the next day Bambuser is answering. Bambuser have made a deal with another Swedish company, Poloply, to include live mobile streaming in their CMS. Poloply has nearly $1 billion USD worth of software installed worldwide and supports in excess of 800 customers in more than 40 countries, according to a press release.

Bambuser has one advantage over Flixwagon. Their streaming system can produce multiple mobile phone streams in one channel. Pretty much the same way you can use Qik and Mogulus. My biggest problem with Bambuser lately have been that their servers seems overloaded, producing streams with bad quality. My own company is already using Polopoly. It will be exciting to see how much the streaming addendum will cost and how an in-house solution will effect the quality. My guess is that the swedes are back in the race again, competing with Qik and Flixwagon.

Read the press release

Tags: Software, Streaming // Add Comment »

A short time after the success with the Jonas Brothers for MTV, Flixwagon is now announcing that they are offering mobile carriers and media companies in-house solutions for streaming from mobile phones to web or television. For media companies it is important so secure the quality of service (QOS). Usually this means getting the stream servers on the inside of their own network. I know that Bambuser already are in a lot of discussion with media companies about this and I guess the same goes for competitors like Qik and Kyte.

Moving the servers in-house also means that it will be easier to brand your product. It will also increase the possibility to harness the power of the social web. I guess that this announcement will speed up and increase the competition for professional in-house solution for media companies.

The interesting part is that Flixwagon also offers a solution for integration against TV. Making them a competitor for SonyEricsson’s “Me on TV”. What Flixwagon is missing is a way to produce multiple mobile phones in one stream. Today we find these solution from Mogulus/Qik and Bambuser.

Read more about it at Flixwagons blog.

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Kyte.tv is now offering live streaming for mobile phones. At present this service is only available for beta testers, but I guess it will be a part of their public service pretty soon. I’ve applied for a beta tester status and will bring you a report when I get the chance to test it. Kyte.tv already has one of the best solutions for on demand video. It will be exciting to see if they can surpass the quality from Qik, Flixwagon and Bambuser.  It will be interesting to see if Kyte.tv will be able to offer viral solutions like Qik and Mogulus offer. In my opinion it will be crucial for mobile stream companies to offer viral video solutions other than pure embedding.

Tags: Streaming // Add Comment »

If you’re working with camcorders and are editing on a laptop, sending your stuff to a client or your newsroom could be a problem. Large mails is particularly a problem in the corporate world. My employer has a size limit on my mailbox on 150 MB. Not much in a file sharing world. The solution for me have been FTP. If you think this is to complicated, sending your stuff home with Filemail is an excellent solution. The Norwegian company Filemail is offering a free service for sending large files home. You simply fill out their mail form and upload the files. You can send files up to 2 GB without registering. If you pay for their services, you can upload up to 25 GB in one upload. The files will be available in up to 60 days.

If you choose the advanced form, you can set a password for your files and check a box to receive an e-mail when the receiver has downloaded your files. You can also choose to zip files and put encryption on your file dump. Best off all - it’s free of charge. In my opinion Filemail is working a lot better for MOJOs than Depositfile and Raidshare.

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