Yule Heibel’s Post Studio © 2003-2009

Move over, podcasting, it’s swarmcasting’s turn?

On my surfing voyages through the world of e-learning, I came across The Friday Report’s pointer to a blog called Socrates Technological University, whose entry Amazing New Software Turns Any Computer into A TV Station points to a new tool called Alluvium. Their website explains,

Alluvium is a technology for doing low-cost streaming media broadcasts. However, it uses a very different approach from existing streaming servers such as icecast, Real Server, and the Quicktime Streaming Server. In fact, all you need server-side is a standard web server. You don’t even need any modules or CGI scripts.

The first thing you need to run an Alluvium station is a playlist. This is a simple file in the Alluvium playlist format, which is based on the RSS 1.0 news format. All of the RSS tags used are standard tags from existing schemas and which retain their intended semantics. Radio station playlists and RSS newsfeeds are really quite similar. They both specify a sequence of content of possible interest to the audience. One interesting side project to do would be creating audio and video weblogs and news stations which are created by aggregating multimedia feeds about particular topics. For the moment, however, we’re working on simple music and voice broadcast. You can generate an Alluvium playlist file easily from a normal music play playlist file using the playlist generation tool. [More...]

Ok, I’m a technopeasant, so this is still all hieroglyphics to me, but the suggestion seems to be that it’s easy enough…

For more information, see the Chronicle of Higher Education’s article, ‘Swarmcasting’ Software Developed at U. of Texas-Austin Lets Anyone Run an Internet TV Station:

Internet television is not a completely new concept, says Mr. Lopez, who has run stations of his own online in the past. But swarmcasting software could democratize the technology, he says, just as “podcasting” software has done for online audio distribution. “This is a much more efficient way of running a station for someone with just a cable modem,” he says. “We’re trying to make it so anyone can use this software.”

Mr. Lopez and Mr. Wiley are serious about spreading the gospel of Internet television. They plan, for example, to post their program online as open-source software. And they are preparing a pair of how-to guides to accompany the program. One will discuss the technological requirements for an online TV channel, and the other will offer tips on using a station to build a community of filmmakers and artists. [More...]

Better Bad News is at it again

Oh those naughty (clever) people at Better Bad News…

Have you checked out their latest video, Al Franken’s 2008 Senate Bid Considered A Joke To Traditional Minnesota Progressives? Sad, poignant, but still funny. Here’s some dialogue, as per my transcription:

David the Moderator [lecturing]: “Now Betty, … if the parties were not able to jigger the vote ([sotto voce:]…and both parties do it), third parties would eventually rise to win seats, … and a green party could emerge, …and that could split the left…”

Betty the Panelist: “So let’s put the Democratic Party’s feet to the fire, at least. That’s how third parties work. But if they can’t even threaten to split the left, there’s no way to advance progressive politics in this country. [nostalgic:] …I remember oppositon parties. I do. It was great. [determined:] And we need it again.”

Mantra the second panelist: “It’s the Patriot Act, stupid.”

Kinda sums it up, don’t it? From Clinton’s “it’s the economy, stupid” to Bush et alia’s “it’s the patriot act, stupid”?

Birds and breakfast

Sitting at breakfast just now, bickering over this and that, we hear an explosion of rowdy raucous crow voices, see the flurries of black wings, and notice the cry of a large seagull as it skims close to our house, between large elms, power lines, fences and hedges, the noise of a car or two competing with the birds. Crows are in pursuit. The gull flies off, the crows congregate. They’re very loud.

Was there a “plunk” or a “plop”? Did I hear something sharper, behind the birds’ voices? Where did the body come from? There, a couple of metres from our house, in the neglected southwest corner of the yard, facing the arterial road, close to the old, soot-encrusted yew hedge, suddenly, a body.

By now the crows are going crazy. Punching their way through the overhanging tree branches that keep the cleansing rains from ever washing the dirt of cars off the hedge, they’re fighting over the body of a juvenile gull, supine on dormant grass and fallen leaves.

Can I finish my toast, drink my coffee? Where’s the switch to shut this off? But after a while, it’s clear this won’t go away. I make my way outside, armed with two plastic grocery bags and two rubber gloves, a left and a right. The bird is surprisingly young, and small — I’m not even sure it is a gull, it’s so exquisitely beautiful. Definitely a seabird, webbed feet, a gullish beak in the making, but such variegation in the feathers! It’s so small, compared to a mature seagull. Its body is still warm, the blood trickles from its neck, and when I push the outspread wings close to its chest, it seems the softest thing I’ve ever touched. Every feather feels like down; there’s nothing yet seasoned or exposed about this bird. I expect it to breathe, but it doesn’t. My body is directly over it as I compose its shape into a semblance of elegant compactness, my back is exposed to the trees, the crows are getting louder. I expect them to swarm me, but they do nothing, just talk.

After the body is in the bags, I give it to my husband to dispose of. As I wash the blood off my rubber gloved hands, I call to the crows, “Don’t ever do that again!” But I doubt they listened. Within minutes, they were gone.