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Liquid Image's HD Video Underwater Camera Mask, originally uploaded by stevegarfield.
I'm heading out to CES tomorrow morning as a guest of Panasonic.



At least I hope to be heading out, the Boston Twitter Storm Report says "Snow develops across the region this evening to a wintry mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain after midnight."

Perfect, freezing rain.





Panasonic had planned to send out five bloggers, but one just had to have emergency gall bladded surgery. Get well soon Cliff.

Greg Verdino explains everything about the trip on his blog. Basically, Panasonic is covering my flight and hotel, and taking us out to dinner, letting us use their products, and showing us what they are up to.

There's no requirement for us to blog about Panasonic, just to make one post a day and one after CES. So if you see the tag LIHD on my post, that's for Panasonic and means Living in HD.

Upcoming Events I'll Be At
Panasonic Presents... A CES Tweet-Up in High Definition - Thursday January 8, 2009 from 6:30pm - 8:00pm
2009 "It Won't Stay in Vegas" Blogger Party -Friday January 9, 2009 from 5:00pm - 8:00pm

On Thursday, sometime between 12 and 2 I'll be at the Intel booth with Sarah Austin doing a video streaming broadcast over WiMax.

Follow Me
Check out SteveGarfield.com for updates. The main page will show my most recent Qik and blip.tv videos, my Friendfeed stream and flickr photos.

You can also follow me on twitter.

What I'm Looking Forward To

I want to wear that Liquid Image HD contraption and shoot some video. Isn't it the perfect looking device for a videoblogger.

Vendors I'm looking forward to meeting up with include Mogulus, Qik, TiVo, Nokia, and Kodak.

I'm very interested in seeing how the Panasonic HDC-SD100 HD camcorder works.

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Boston Media Makers by Jay Groccia, originally uploaded by stevegarfield.
Sunday's Boston Media Makers meeting at Doyle's in Jamacia Plain was great. We had lots of new people. Maybe 60 - 70%. Wow.

Click here to see a 360 degree stitched image of this month's Boston Media Makers meeting at Doyle's that Jay Groccia put together

Here's a video on Qik showing how Jay makes the panoramic video from a still camera.

There are New Hampshire and NYC Media Makers meetings this Sunday. Our next Boston Media Makers meeting is Sunday February 1st.

Image © 2008 Granite Communications, Inc. Photographed by Gerald Jay Groccia www.OnSiteStudios.com.

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

I'm not sure how this news got out.

via [ laughing squid ]

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Boston Media Makers, originally uploaded by stevegarfield.

Boston Media Makers meetings are the first Sunday of every month at 10 AM at Doyle's Cafe in Jamaica Plain, MA

Join us this morning!

http://www.speedtest.net/


http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

The difference in these two speed tests is pretty high - 11,170 kbps.

Can you run the tests and share your results?

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30 Favorite Flickr Photos from 2008, originally uploaded by stevegarfield.

Thirty of my favorite flickr photos from 2008.

www.flickr.com/photos/stevegarfield/sets/72157611995189804/

tiny micro adventure - 3rd floor by hokkey, on Flickr CC BY

Chris Brogan asks you to Set Three Words as Goals for 2009: If you want to try the process, it works something like this: think of how you want to be successful in 2009. Then, try to think in even broader terms. Extrapolate on the broader terms, and find one word to hang the idea on.

Meaning, don’t think as much “I want to lose 50 pounds and get back into my high school pants.” Try thinking “Fitness means I’ll be able to cover more ground.” From there, you can say “ground” might be your word. And then, when you look at that as a word, you see how it can open you up to even more meanings. “Ground” can remind you to get fit so you can cover more ground. It can mean to be “grounded,” like someone who feels calm and at rest.

Look for three words that will help you frame your challenges and opportunities for 2009. Don’t think about where you are this exact moment. If you’re without a job, setting a goal in 09 to get a job might not be very useful. Once you’ve got the job, then what? Instead, you could think about setting the goal of “Alignment,” where you ask yourself, “does this fit with everything else I intend for myself in this year?”

Try setting your three words far out on the horizon, but such that they can lead you to your goals every day. Meaning, can you use the same word to get you started, but have it still be relevant when you’re almost at the big goal?Here are my three words:

1. Change.

2. Story.

3. Funny.

Great start to 2009.

I'll expand on each in it's own post.

What are yours?

louisgray.com: 10 Predictions for 2009 In the World of Tech:1) The Real-Time Web Will Become Critical for News and Information Discovery

Delayed news will no longer be acceptable for early adopters, who will gravitate to the quickest sources of news, wherever they may be. As tools like Twitter Search and FriendFeed real-time offer people to rapidly broadcast their updates, reactions and news with true immediacy, a segment of the population will adopt these real-time sources and favor them ahead of delayed or filtered engines, including RSS, and of course, edited mass media. At the same time, while many of us early adopters may be fairly noisy about this development, we will remain in the significant minority, even as the mainstream becomes more aware of these options.Louis Gray's Real-Time Friend Feed Stream

Steve Garfield's Real-Time Friend Feed Stream

Robert Scoble's Real-Time Friend Feed Stream

Happy New Year!

It was a great year for citizen reporting being featured in legacy media.

Well, relatively great, considering how hard it is to even work with the media. I made it my goal to try to get some of my citizen reports featured.

I did this in conjunction with the New Media Tools for Journalism class I taught at BU. I wanted to show the students that they should be producing meida NOW and working to get it out there. I tried video, photos, audio, and blog posts.

I had some exciting moments of success getting my reports featured in media outlets in 2008. I was also featured too. ;-)

I'm not sure why we look to be validated in this way. It's a love/hate relationship. In the end, lots of readers and viewers are still there, it's the interactivity that's lacking. You'll understand if you are ever featured, you don't really hear much about if afterwards.

The best feedback I got this year was on a Christmas card that had a note, "You were great on Chronicle!"

I've got to get those friends on Facebook. :-)

Here are my 5 favorite Examples of my citizen reporting and/or me being featured in legacy Media:

5. Boston Globe - Utterli and Flickr Reporting from Roche Bros.

Ric Kahn from the Globe wrote a great piece featuring how I use new media tools like Utteli and Flickr to report news of interest to a hyperlocal community.



The Boston Globe Covers My Audio Reports From Roche Bros.

4. Boston.com - Video Blogs Featured on the Front Page

Boston.com featured many of my video reports on their front page this year. Each time a report is featured, I get thousands of additional views. The Globe does it right on the front page, they put up a thumbnail image and link back to my video blog. That way people can watch the video on my site and leave comemnts if they choose.

I'd suggest that whoever is selecting the videos for the front page introduce themselves and start up a conversation with the viedo creator. I'd like to get notified when my videos a featured on the front page. Usually my sister-in-law calls after seeing it. There's an opportunity here for the Globe to reach out.





3. BBC - Have Your Say - The Election

The BBC did a great job of soliciting videos about the US election. They monitored a few different video sites, like Qik and Seesmic, and with the permission of the creators, highlighted US resident's thoughts on the campaign. Carol and I had a lot of fun making videos for them. They are improving by including identification of the producers.



Videos from the US: the debate

2. WCVB - Chronicle - Media Makers

Jason Potts produced a great segment on local media makers. He followed me as I shot video of Boston City Councillor John Tobin, seen here, and video of the band Freezepop, who I recorded for Next New Networks. I really love seeing the resulting video in HD on the big screen. Nice job.



Steve Garfield Featured on WCVB Boston's Chronicle

Media Makers as seen on Chronicle

1. CNN - Hurricane Kyle

I was in the right place at the right time when Hurricane Kyle hit the Maine Coast. I recorded a report with my MacBook Pro and Quicktime and sent it in to CNN's iReport. That report was picked up and shown on CNN. That's the biggest exposure I got all year. CNN could improve in the coming year by notifying producers when their content airs on CNN, and by providing an embeddable link to video of tehir content being aired. That would generate more links in to CNN.



Looking back on 2008 you can see the possibilities. I'm excited to see what takes place in 2009 and look forward to working with legacy media outlets to figure out how best to include citizen reports in their reporting.

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Governor Patrick's Email, originally uploaded by stevegarfield.

I just unsubscribed to Governor Patrick's email list.

This is what the emails look like from him in my Apple Mail app.

ALL HEADER and NO INFORMATION.

OK, I get it you are the Governor, you have a seal, and an address, and a header with titles, and a release date, but for me to read all your emails I need to scroll each of them down to see any content.

No one else emails me like this.

It's not a letter.

It's an email.

Tell me what you want to tell me in line ONE.

Not 5 1/2" down the page.

Thank you.

BTW, you need to provide an UNSUBSCRIBE option at the bottom ot your emails.

"After a serious case of mistaken identity, John, Sarah and Derek work to protect a member of the Resistance."

Great episode!

If you haven't been watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, this is a good one to watch.

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stevegarfield.rezpondr.com, originally uploaded by stevegarfield.

Testing out stevegarfield.rezpondr.com as an aggregator for all my media.

This weekend my cousin gave me some feedback. He said he couldn't keep track of all the things I'm doing.

Understandable.

Prior to the growth in video sharing sites, you knew that all my videos would be one place, on my video blog. Now that there are more choices for video hosting, my media could be in any number of places.

I'm using the different sites for different types of content.

The video blog has more edited pieces, qik has live streams, vimeo has some HD footage, YouTube could have any number of types of content. I'm also testing out Facebook for HD hosting and using Seesmic for having video conversations. Testing 12 Seconds too.

But all that media doesn't end up on the video blog anymore.

There needs to be a place where my mom can go to easily see what media I'm creating.

So I took a look at my main site http://stevegarfield.com/ and had Carol give some suggestions.

Although I have menus for Video and Photo, she said she wanted to see the videos and photos right away when she visited the page. So I added a bip.tv video player and a flickr photo bar. I'm still working on the blip.tv player to enable it to play one video after another.

Update: The blip.tv player plays my videos, one ofter another.

That takes care of my main content. Qik is there too.

But it doesn't address the larger problem of my media being scttered all over the web.

I decided to try out my friend's aggregator at stevegarfield.rezpondr.com.

I don't have admin access yet, but think this is a great way to see all my media on one page.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

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Pretty Things Jack D'or, originally uploaded by stevegarfield.
Lots going on in this beer. Enjoying it at VeeVee JP.

Pretty Things

The Beers: Jack D'Or, Saison Americain

Q and A with Dann Paquette, Brewer/President of the Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project Inc.

I just got a review copy of Julio Ojeda-Zapata's Twitter Means Business: How Microblogging Can Help in the mail.

Julio has me preview a part of it and write up a blurb for it. Here's what I wrote:"In 'Twitter Means Business,' Julio Ojeda-Zapata profiles two of my Twitter friends, Comcast and JetBlue. Yes, these companies are now my friends because we talk, on Twitter. Thinking about using Twitter to connect with your customers and prospects? Ojeda-Zapata provides case studies to guide you. Really, really great stuff."
Steve Garfield (@stevegarfield), pioneering video blogger and Boston Media Makers founder

I was just skimming through it and found a very cool twitter account to follow during CES, @VegasConcierge.

MGM Mirage posts suggestions on things to do while you are in Vegas, and it's not exclusive to MGM properties.

I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the book.

Video by Dust Films.

This video is going on my Best of 2008 list.

This ia great segment showcasing Shira and everything she does.

Learn more at ShiraLazar.com!

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Merry Christmas!, originally uploaded by Brooklyn Hilary.

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20081210, originally uploaded by Chris Piascik.

Watch the video interview on CNN.

“In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview. This was in the midst of Lennon’s ‘bed-in’ phase, during which John and Yoko were staying in hotel beds in an effort to promote peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it.”[ via SVN ] [ via Derek Sivers ]

John Lennon: "It's convenient to have the rooms and the machinery."

Listen.

On the web:

EXCLUSIVE: Producer Jerry Levitan and Director Josh Raskin Tell Us How They Met the Walrus.One last question for you. How do you think John Lennon's message about peace from forty years ago then reflects and resonates on the world around us today?

Jerry Levitan: First of all, he was talking to a fourteen year old kid. So he is talking in very honest and simple terms. He wasn't talking lofty. He was just giving me some wise words and guidance for my life. He was also talking at a time of great turbulence. We were at the height of the Vietnam war. And starvation in Africa. Then there were all of these things going on in the Middle East. It was so similar to all of these things that are still going on today. When he talked, he wouldn't talk about Vietnam. He just talked about the duty and the respect, and the responsibility of every individual to change the world. If we are unhappy with war, and what our governments are doing about it, we can change things in a very peaceful way. That was his basic message to me. When you hear him talk in our film and in my interview, it is as if he is talking about the world today. It was just so striking. One of the first calls I got after I got the nomination was from a member of the Academy. We'd never met before, or spoken before. This guy was in his late fifties or early sixties. And he called to tell me that when he saw the film, it was as if our old friend was talking to us today. The guy had tears in his voice. He was basically crying on the phone. For people around the world that are so unhappy with what is going on, to hear our old friend John Lennon talk so hopefully and positively about how the world could be is breathtaking. It certainly resonates today.Nominated for Best animated short film Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2007.

Didn't win.