GeekBrief.tv Offers Tech Realted Podcast Fun

Note: This post is a reproduction of the original post on the new site for Communication & Cognition: http://www.commcognition.com/blog/geekbrief/ After more than three years on Blogger, it is time to move to a self-hosted site. I hope you'll keep reading there.

Review

Through the wonderful world of Twitter, I recently stumbled across GeekBrief.tv. I'm not a podcast guy, but something about the link caught my attention.

Once I arrived at the site, there was Geek Brief #481 (released Dec. 20, 2008). In this 4 minute, 50 second podcast, Cali Lewis (on Twitter) demonstrates a large green laser from Wicked Lasers called the Spider II GX (which costs just $1,699.99). According the Lewis (via the Guinness records folks), it's the most powerful hand held laser available.

This particular episode must be the Geek Brief version of Mythbusters, as Lewis puts the laser up to several tests:

• After a long time, the laser eventually pops a balloon (presumably by superheating the air inside);


• It ignites a wooden match;


• It fails to light a candle, producing only smoke;


• Illuminates steam over boiling water;


• and makes a leather jacket smoke without leaving a hole.

After a brief introduction by Lewis, the podcast features an up-tempo professionally produced introduction. Lewis has a fun upbeat screen presence, and the podcast was lively and fun.

Mostly the podcast was interesting and self-contained, so one can watch without a serious time commitment.

And although I cannot tell you exactly why it was fun to watch, I am not alone. Lewis is a full-time podcaster with more than 25,000 followers on Twitter. I saw one estimate that each show receives between 200,000 and 300,000 views.

The laser was enough to bring me back, and I'm glad it did.

Briefs #482 (December 23, 2008), featured above, and #483 (December 25, 2008) tell the story of GeekBrief.tv's origin.

In July 2005, [husband and co-producer] Neal [Campbell] heard Adam Curry being interviewed on NPR. Adam was talking about podcasting. I didn’t have a TV in my house growing up so I didn’t know Adam Curry from MTV and when Neal started telling me Adam said this and Adam said that, I thought he had joined a cult. Then Neal played an episode of The Dawn and Drew Show for me and I fell in love with the concept of podcasting. Dawn and Drew, a young couple who live in a farm house in rural Wisconsin were doing a show from their house and building a worldwide audience. Adam Curry was doing a show from his house and building the business of podcasting. We wanted in and when Dawn and Drew announced Drew was quitting his day job so they could do the show full time, we decided that’s what we wanted to do.

The first podcast was launched on Dec. 23, 2005, just a couple of months after I started this blog over on Blogger. Needless to say, they've done a much better job monetizing their idea than me.

As an advertising professor, this was a great new media story. These two podcasts should be required viewing for our Electronic Media majors.

The rest of the two briefs tell the story of their rather meteoric success. The first brief aired on Dec. 23, 2005, and they worked out a deal with what is now known as Mevio on May 23, 2006, to podcast full-time. That's an impressive five-month turnaround.

From their inspiration by Adam Curry to their adoption of a green screen and a teleprompter, their success story is briefly outlined.

It's a great story and the kind of thing the fuels the American Dream. Hard work led to opportunity -- the way that we hope that it always will.

Mevio's Web site claims to be the "Home of Personality-Driven Entertainment," and it's Lewis' personality that drives this show.

Her Twitter bio calls her a "shiny, happy geek girl," and the description is perfect.

She has on-camera skills without coming across as a stilted professional anchor. It's just the right mix of talent and whimsy. Lewis' look might be best described as "geek chic," and it's perfect for the podcast. Lewis has bloggers calling her "beautiful" while still looking as if she actually knows about technology.

And success has led to other Web ventures, as the main GeekBriefs.tv site also links to related sites, Dear Cali, iCali.tv, and CaliLive.tv.

Whether you're interested in technology or a new media success story, I highly recommend GeekBrief.tv!

Toys from Google Labs: Finding Sets

I stumbled across a toy under development at Google, Google Sets. If I am reading things correctly, this particular tool must not be under very active development because I believe its inception date was 2002.

At any rate, the basic idea of the tool is to enter up to five search terms, and the algorithm will attempt to make either a Small Set (15 items or fewer) or a Large Set from those items.

For example, if you enter titles of reality television shows, it returns more reality shows.

However, it appears to be a bit useful for stalking.

I entered my name and the names of two former colleagues, "samuel bradley", "yongkuk chung", and "mija shin". If you do that and click Large Set, you get a pretty nice list of my former colleagues in the Institute for Communications Research at Indiana University.

Cool ... and spooky.

Just Wait until They Try Skype

From CNN.com:

Landlines go dead as more users rely on cell phones

WASHINGTON (AP) -- For nearly three in 10 households, don't even bother trying to call them on a landline phone. They either only have a cell phone or seldom if ever take calls on their traditional phone.

The federal figures, released Wednesday, showed that reliance on cells is continuing to rise at the expense of wired telephones. In the second half of last year, 16 percent of households only had cell phones, while 13 percent also had landlines but got all or nearly all their calls on their cells.

Personally, we're using Skype at home.

Mountain Town Wi-Fi: A Sign of the Times

I am on vacation in Red River, N.M., and I cannot help being struck by the number of signs around town touting Wireless Internet.

This is not a major resort town like Vail, Colorado. It's still very much a sleepy mountain town.

Yet free wireless is everywhere. Indeed I am writing this using free wireless.

I just hope people keep hiking and do not forget the beauty of this place.

Facebook: Addictive, Fun, Maybe Profitable

I was not the first of my friends to have a CD player back in the 1980s.

I was not the first of my friends to have a cell phone. Heck, my current cell phone is from 2003 (ancient!).

Former communication scholar Everett Rogers chronicled the way we pick up new technologies in a 1962 book titled Diffusion of Innovations. Rogers stated that the pattern with which we adopt technologies roughly fits the normal distribution.

Here is an approximation of the normal distribution, or bell curve.

Rogers argued that innovations would be adopted (i.e., diffused) at a rate that is consistent with this distribution.

Thus, imagine that time runs along the X axis (the bottom), and the percentage of people adopting an innovation at any given time runs along the Y axis (the side).

So when a new innovation is launched (far left, bottom), a few people jump on board.

This always reminds me of the humorous line, "Who bought the first fax machine?"

At any rate, Rogers argued that 2.5% of people were innovators (I am going to quote the figures from Wiki since I do not have the book with me). These people were ahead of the curve, pardon the pun.

Next come the early adopters, which represent 13.5% of the population. Still not me.

These are followed by the early majority, which represent 34% of the population. At this point, half of the population has a microwave.

I'm pretty much an early majority. I started this Weblog, for example, well after lurking and watching the experiences of IU professor Rob Potter. Nonetheless, this site was up well before many people jumped on the Weblog parade.

To quickly round out Rogers' theory, next came the late majority (34%) and laggards (16%).

All of this makes for a long introduction to the point that I am a relative latecomer to Facebook, which now boasts 29 million subscribers.

My students at The Ohio State University warned me that Facebook was addictive. That is, perhaps, why I stayed away. I had no time for yet one more technological time sink.

Then a bunch of my friends from NMSU started a group on MySpace. I resisted at first. Then I relented. I started a MySpace page.

Now, I must say, that MySpace is a whore-like Tammy Fae Baker approach to social networking. In "pimping" your page, you make everything ugly and trashy like, well, Wal-Mart clothing.

Meanwhile, several faculty members at Tech were starting Facebook pages. I resisted.

Then former Ph.D. colleagues trumpeted the superiority of Facebook. I resisted.

Finally, one day, curiosity got the better of me. I signed up. And it's pretty addictive, I admit. You can quickly keep tabs with people and see how they choose to present themselves to the world.

You can also see many pictures of your students in all kinds of drunken debauchery, which is amusing by itself.

Some readers (i.e., late majority) must be reading this and saying, "Yes, but what is it?"

I'll let Advertising Age explain:

"All of this works, Mr. Van Natta said, because Facebook inhabits the intersection of the web and real life, and its connections are between real people who know each other."

When I got up to enjoy my first cup of coffee this morning, I had two traditional e-mails. But I have three messages in my Facebook inbox.

I could see that one of my friends was "happy," another has a birthday tomorrow, and one of my former students is leaving Spain. Just like that.

Ad Age's article says Facebook's power has even Google worried. You see, Google is the undisputed king of searches (and they power this Weblog). Our research also indicates that Google is a Lovemark.

But your Google results and my Google results are isolated beasts. There is no connection. Yet my nascent Facebook account has 77 friends. And I'll bet with some six or so (think Kevin Bacon) degrees of separation, I am connected to all 29 million users.

Just that quick.

We'll see whether it pays off in the long run ... for me or for Facebook.

I Never Wanted an iPod, but the iPhone ...

Photo courtesy of SFgate.com.

---

From 1995 to 2001, I was an Apple guy.

Then graduate school and statistics programs brought me back to the PC world.

After editing video for the past week ... and having my curiosity piqued by the iPhone, I am contemplating a Mac in my future.

Thanks, Wes, for planting the cognitive "seed," so to speak.