Amir Farshad Ebrahimi’s photostream on Flickr

Gaza Holocaust - group on Flickr

Gaza News on Twitter

Israeli Consulat on Twitter

Videoes on YouTube about the attack

A quik way to follow all the action on Twitter is to go to the Tweet Grid and enter “Gaza” in the search field. You will have a live coverage of all the tweets with the word Gaza in them.

Feel free to add links in the comment field about mobile reporting from Gaza.

It had to happen. Mogulus finally launched a PRO option. They will still keep their free service, but in two weeks they will force ads on free channels. For PRO users, some of the news will be HD Quality (1.7 mbps), 16:9,  White Label and tools for analytics. For one PRO channel with 25 GB storage and bandwidth, Mogulus will charge 350 dollars. I guess their pricing on bandwidth will be the key factor for success or not.

For a lot of producers, this should be an attractive offer. Being able to design their own player, using their own ad-systems and mixing different types of streams in an easy production environment sounds like an attractive package. I guess that Quality Of Service (QOS) suddenly will be one of the most important service issues for Mogulus. In a free service, you will have to expect a lower quality. When you buy a service, you can demand quality. Leave a comment if you buy the PRO service and tell us what you think.

(Photo: Nokia)

Today Nokia launched their iPhone competitor on the Nokia World 08 in Spain. The Nokia N97 features a big tilting touch screen, sliding QWERTY keyboard and a 32 GB onboard memory.

Nokia calls the N97 the world most advanced mobile computer. It’s clearly aimed at people producing for and viewing content on social platforms.
The N97 comes with a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics. Like N96 it comes with two LEDs, not the flash known from N82. The screen can show content in 16:9, but it seems like it only record in 640*480.
Nokia brags about the video recording quality, calling it DVD quality. I don’t believe it until I see it. The Nokia N96 was supposed to be better than N95 and N82, but in my opinion it’s really bad. It will be exciting to see if they have upped the video recording quality on N97. If they can’t produce better video quality, several years after the launched the N95, it will be really disappointing. From N95/N82 to N96, they among other things changed the recording codec, producing bigger files, but not better video quality.

The on-board memory is increased to 32 GB. You can even expand it with a 16 GB microSD card. The phone runs Symbian 60 5th edition. You will se a lot of iPhone like features with flipping and flopping in the menus.

According to Robert Scoble, the N97 is a much better phone than iPhone . Scoble has tested the phone and thinks this is the perfect phone for Facebook.

Besides a 5 megapixel camera, the phone of course have WIFI, HSDPA and GPS. The battery is a lot bigger than on N82 and N96.

As usual, you will have to wait a bit for the N97. It’s supposed to hit the market in the first half of 2009. That probably means in June next year.

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.

Check out the video at Vincents blog

Check out the behind the scenes video

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.

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