Manifest Tech Blog

(with Tim Geoghan)

(Almost) free phone calls! Who can resist? VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) allows users of software like Skype to make free phone calls over the Internet to other Skype users, and, for a fee, also make calls to landline and mobile phones. But PC-to-PC voice connections do not replace having a fixed phone number to make and receive any calls. And using these kinds of services requires installing and running software and calling from a computer using a headset.

Instead, magicJack provides the benefits of VOIP cost reductions in the form of a small USB device that connects a regular telephone to a computer, and from there to phone service over the Internet.

Each magicJack device is basically a portable phone service, with a regular ten-digit telephone number. Sign up for the $39.95 annual subscription, and you can receive calls at that number from anyone in the world, you can call any other magicJack user for free, and you can call for free to numbers in the U.S., Canada, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. You also can buy International minutes to make calls to other countries.

Since the service is associated with the magicJack device, it works from anywhere in the world that you've connected your computer to the Internet. (Or just take along the magicJack device, and plug it into another computer wherever you are -- you're also taking the phone number with you.)

One end of the magicJack has a USB connection, to plug into a computer. But there's no software to install -- it runs directly from the device (Windows, and Intel Mac beta). And there's no special equipment -- the other end of the magicJack has a standard phone jack (RJ-11), so just plug in a standard telephone and pick it up to hear the dial tone and start making calls.

The magicJack service also includes Directory Assistance, Caller ID, Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, Voicemail, and enhanced 911, all at no extra charge. If your computer or magicJack is not active, incoming calls will be routed to voicemail. You also can use Follow Me to redirect incoming calls to up to three other phone lines.

The magicJack device with one year subscription is $39.95, and the service is $19.95 for additional years. Also check the magicJack site for free 30-day trial offers.

Overall: The magicJack is an interesting option for VoIP phone service, with the potential to save a bunch of money. It's a matter of personal preference whether you want to ditch your land line for this kind of service. The magicJack is best for people who are tech savvy, or who call internationally to Canada, the U.S. Virgin Islands, or Puerto Rico.

    Find the magicJack on Amazon.com

More on using the magicJack ...

Even in this digital age, Rand McNally has found a fun way to reinvent old-fashioned physical maps with its Rand McNally FABmap line of fabric maps -- water-proof, tear-proof, wrinkle-proof microfiber maps that pack easily (you don't have to struggle to fold them). fabMAP designs are available for 24 popular destinations for $5.95. As a bonus, they also can be used as a cleaning cloth for glasses, mobile device screens, or camera lenses or a protective cover for electronic devices.

Plus there's the special limited-edition President Barack Obama Commemorative Inaugural fabMAP.

This napkin-sized fabric map features a detailed map of the Mall area and Inaugural parade route from the Capitol to the White House, plus notable D.C. monuments and museums, as well as hotels and points of interest.

The reverse side has a full-color portrait of President-elect Obama against the backdrop of the Capitol building, where he will be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. The map is just under 8" x 12", and features a larger type size so text is easier to read.

The Inaugural fabMAP is available while supplies last for $9.99. It's also designed to be framed as a collectable, and includes a certificate of authenticity.

    Find the Obama Inaugural fabMAP on Amazon.com

My latest article for the U.S.1 Newspaper in Princeton highlights the expansion of "new media" and digital media at Princeton University.

The new Frank Gehry-designed Lewis Library building on the Princeton campus includes expanded facilities for a New Media Lab to serve students working on multimedia products, plus a new Broadcast Center and studio to consolidate shooting and sharing university classes and events, on campus and beyond.

David Hopkins, Broadcast Center director, and Paula Hulick, New Media Center manager (Image:
U.S. 1 Newspaper)

The New Media Center features a 1024 square foot Multimedia Lab, plus a private video editing room. The lab has some 32 high-end computers, mainly Apple Macintosh but also some Dell PCs, all with large-screen monitors. Roughly half of the lab is set up for video production, with video and audio tape decks and other recording equipment. The other half is set up for graphic design work, with document scanners and drawing tablets.

The computers include a full compliment of digital media software, for video and audio editing (i.e., Apple Final Cut Studio and Adobe Creative Suite), graphic design and page layout (i.e., Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign, plus Autodesk AutoCAD), and Web development (i.e., Adobe Flash and Dreamweaver, Microsoft Expression Web).

And this is supported by only two full-time staff members, plus more than 20 student staffers. The lab is open during the week from 1 to 7 pm, and until 5 pm on the weekends. Students come for class work and group projects, and the staff also helps professors prepare materials and provides specialized training.

And the demand keeps growing: The old New Media Center has over 2200 visitors last year, and the new facility is twice the size and is a half mile closer to the center of the campus, and so expect some 6000 visits over the next year.

The new Broadcast Center facility has a 1600 square foot facility, including the 625 square foot video studio and a 30 square foot audio recording booth. The studio is set up primarily to host remote interviews of Princeton professors -- with the economy and the election, the demand had grown to six such requests a day, from the Good Morning America to The Daily Show in the evening.

The Broadcast Center staff also shoots lectures and events all over the campus. Live and recorded events then are delivered over the Princeton campus television network, and through Web streaming media both within the Princeton domain and to the outside world. However, recordings of classes are delayed for ten days, to encourage students to go to class.

See full article: New Media at Princeton University

It's the story stupid! Creating compelling films or TV or even webisodes comes down to the story, but also how it is told -- how you use the tools of your craft to draw in your audience with a strong emotional connection to your characters and their story.

In earlier eras you might have learned and honed your craft as an assistant on a production or as an apprentice film editor. But those opportunities are limited with today's smaller and dispersed production teams.

Film schools provide another way to teach the craft, if you can find a way to communicate years of hands-on experience in a classroom. Norman Hollyn has done this in developing his concept of the "lean forward moment," from his experience as a film editor and music editor, and working with Hollywood greats including Alan J. Pakula, Sidney Lumet, and Francis Ford Coppola.

Hollyn is currently head of the film editing track at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, and has published his ideas in a new book, The Lean Forward Moment: Create Compelling Stories for Film, TV, and the Web.

The entire book is structured around this central concept -- first clarifying the key elements and characters of a story, then using that understanding to identify the "lean forward" moments of change in the story, to help focus your filmmaking tools and technique to better create those moments on the screen.

Hollyn uses a variety of examples thought the book, from The Godfather to Terminator 2, Citizen Kane to Finding Nemo to The Matrix, Lost to The Real World (on TV), as well as from less well-known and independent films.

He starts by refining the "logline," a story summary that helps shape the storytelling by clarifying the emotional path of the characters. He then expands this with a carefully-written scene analysis of a "lean forward" scene, such as the chase in the LA drainage canal in T2, and Michael's restaurant killing scene in The Godfather.

Much of the rest of the book then describes how this careful understanding of the story and its characters guide the filmmakers in their decisions on how to stage and shoot the scenes. Each chapter than walks through these scenes from the perspective of the stages in filmmaking: writing, production design, directing, cinematography, editing, visual effects, music, and sound.

We visit these scenes again and again, studying how each of these elements contributes to highlighting for the audience what it truly important in the scene. From subtle details of lighting and music, to careful consideration of camera placement and motion to focus on the reactions of the key character, the filmmakers grab the emotions of the audience and get us to lean forword into the story.

After discussing some genres and special cases that may be exceptions to his rule (horror films, music videos), Hollyn concludes with the "dirty little secret" -- now that you've spent all this time learning to use these concepts to analyze a script and craft a scene, you should know that in practice, professionals actually don't use the "lean forward movement" -- at least consciously or overtly. But, Hollyn argues, this is how filmmakers do think, so when he explicitly uses these concepts in discussions, they understand what he means.

Hollyn's bottom line is that thinking and analyzing a story in this way can solve a lot of the difficulties in making all the little decisions about how to make a movie (or other production) -- It all comes down to really understanding and communicating what is important, from the big story to the individual scenes.

Order The Lean Forward Moment from Amazon.com

Details ...

Peter Shankman is a marketing pundit, CEO of the marketing and PR strategy firm The Geek Factory, and has a long history of inventive marketing stunts, especially leveraging viral marketing (see previous post).

Shankman will be speaking in Princeton this Thursday evening, February 19, on "Social Networking: For Good and For Profit."

He has a strong message on the value of social networking, for business and for individuals. He will discuss social networking, viral marketing, and all the “fun ways” to use our social networking technologies – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Most importantly, he will discuss why sometimes it is a better bet not to use any of them.

Shankman also will talk about “non-traditional ways of thinking” – including examples of unconventional PR and social networking examples, such as Will It Blend and his own Help A Reporter Out website.

The meeting is sponsored by the Princeton chapters of the ACM / IEEE Computer Society, and is open to the public -- the meeting is free, including refreshments.

The meeting is held at 8 PM, at the Sarnoff Corp, Route 1 at 571, in Princeton (see Directions at the bottom of the page).

Download the printable Meeting announcement (PDF)

Shankman's book, Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work -- And Why Your Company Needs Them, preaches similar lessons of being creative and taking risks, starting by shaking yourself out of complacency and ruts.

Peter Shankman came down to central Jersey last night to speak to the Princeton chapters of the ACM / IEEE Computer Society -- and we blew his mind!

Peter is a social media pundit, always on the go, swapping between phone and PDA, and laptop. He teaches business execs -- and NASA -- how to adapt to social media, and debates PR issues on the O’Reilly Factor (most recently on Kellogg’s firing of swimmer Michael Phelps -- see on YouTube). He kindly came down from Manhattan to visit us on only the promise of a free dinner. And here he is taking advantage of the train ride back to the city to record his daily What’s Hot on HARO video, live from N.J. Transit.

Peter came to talk about social media (see previous post). -- He's the exemplar of how to use Twitter (he's skydiver), not just updating his adventures and travels, and spouting pundit-isms, but also using it for immediate distribution of urgent queries from reporters on his HARO (Help a Reporter Out) service. He has some 30,000 followers on Twitter, and over 50,000 sources receiving the full HARO posts three times daily.

From mingling before the meeting, Peter already understood that we were not his typical audience, as he faced 80-some mostly techies -- a core of computer / software types (ACM) and engineers (IEEE), plus some other groups (we actually mix worlds here) like video production pros and marketing / PR folks, and even some students.

But it was Peter's first question that really reset his expectations. He was discussing the development of "citizen journalism" with the proliferation of camera phones (as demonstrated by the first picture of the U.S. Air plane landing in the Hudson River in New York City). So Peter asked how many people in the audience did NOT have a camera in their phone -- and almost half the audience held up their (camera-less) hands. Yikes -- The group is techies, but also Luddites, with not much interest in messing with crummy camera-phone photographs.

But the ultimate moment came when Peter was demonstrating how to use social networks to keep in touch with contacts, for example by using the birthday information from Facebook to send out best wishes. So he asked what information Facebook displayed in the top right corner of your home page, and got an instant, and quite literal answer -- "the sign out button." Okay, yes, but ...

Peter is big on Facebook. He is insistent that you can't separate your professional and personal lives (although you do need to manage them carefully online). Around half of our audience was on LinkedIn, and maybe a quarter on Facebook, and the group seemed to agree with the perception that "LinkedIn is for business" -- but when Peter asked how many people who had actually gotten business though LinkedIn, only two hands went up. Point taken --it's not about "hiring resumes" anymore.

This was Peter's message -- managing your online persona by finding an audience and being relevant, keeping your audience's attention by being brief, and then using your social network not to send out resumes, but by keeping "top of mind presence" -- just keeping in touch, maintaining connections without always expecting something in return. It's not about making money from Twitter, it's about building a reputation and credibility in your niche, developing your brand, which then can grow into clients and business.

Interesting, Peter ended with a techie vision -- predicting that all these different social media networks will consolidate into one network, but will also develop the intelligence to distinguish between close and casual contacts, so you can stay more closely connected to the people more important to you. The network should understand who's more important to you, who you're communicating the most with, and help keep you connected and updated with them as appropriate. It would be nice to have social networks that understand overlapping types of connections to your contacts, so no more having to reject friend requests, or keeping requestors in purgatory.

Of course, this tediously long post to tell these stories breaks all of Peter's rules for focusing on brevity in this 140-character Twitter world. His summary of the event on Twitter:

Just gave a talk on social networking to members of ACM and IEEE in Princeton. Imagine talking to male cast of "Big Bang Theory." :-)

See the meeting preview, Social Networking: Perils and Promise, in the U.S. 1 Newspaper, February 18, 2009

UPDATE: Dennis Mancl took extensive notes on Peter's talk, posted on the chapter website.

Peter's book, Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work -- And Why Your Company Needs Them, preaches related lessons of being creative and taking risks, starting by shaking yourself out of complacency and ruts.

The Deltess PakSeat Backpack is a clever design from a local company that solves the problem of finding a good place to rest when you're out traveling. -- It provides both a clean and dry place to sit, and support for you aching back.

The entire back panel of the PakSeat folds down into a seat -- with adjustable straps to set the right angle. The internal panel has a frame on each side to help support your back, as does the outside seat panel to provide further support (and ventilation) when hiking

The backpack itself has a large capacity (18 x 15 x 7 in., 1900 cu..in., and 3 pounds), with a small outer zippered stash and a pair of pouches for bottles on the front, another front pouch with multiple pockets for small items, and even a small pocket on the shoulder strap. There's also an inner universal elastic sleeve against the back that holds either a laptop or a hydration reservoir -- with a small exit slot for either a water line or iPod headphones.

The PakSeat Backpack is available for $69 in back & gray or blue & gray. There's also a PakSeat Messenger Bag coming, also with adjustable seat.

Find the PakSeat Backpack on Amazon.com

Our Princeton N.J. Chapters of the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society has sponsored a lot of interesting and fun meetings over the past 28 years, but last week's event was the first time our meeting turned into a group sing-along.

The reason, and the evening's speaker, was John P. Dougherty (aka “J.D.”), assistant professor of computer science at Haverford College, who lead a fun romp though his adventures in "computational singing," using fun songs that he has written to illustrate fundamental concepts in computation.

Beyond his technical studies in dependable parallel scientific computing and data intensive scalable computing, Dougherty has passionate interests in computer science education, including introductory courses for undergraduates and outreach to K-12 students.

His idea of outreach for computer science is finding connections between information technology and society that can make computing more accessible to a broad audience, to help people appreciate "computational thinking."

Dougherty' Computational Singing site has lyrics and some recordings of his songs, including the whirlwind The Tour of The World of Computing (to the tune of The End of the World by R.E.M.), and illustrations of C.S. concepts including loop invariants, infinite loops, and, of course, spam.

Also see his two videos accepted for the ACM SIGCSE 2009 Video Exhibition (Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education):

- Input and Output (to the tune of My Sweet Lord and He's So Fine, play on YouTube)

- Recursion Song (play on YouTube -- if you dare)

ACM SIGGRAPH 2009 is coming to New Orleans this summer, from August 3 to 8. This is the 36th annual International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques.

If you're into graphics and animation, this is the worldwide gathering to attend:
- for the Technical Program and new breakthroughs you'll be seeing in movies and video games in a few years,
- for the Animation Festival featuring high-end commercial work, state-of-the-art research demonstrations, and enchanting student projects,
- for the Art Galleries, Emerging Technologies and other showcases and interactive experiences,
- for the Exhibition with new developments in graphics hardware and software, and
- for all the other opportunities to meet and explore.

The SIGGRAPH 2009 Advance Program booklet is now available, especially with details on the technical sessions (59 pages, 2.28 MB PDF)

Also enjoy the Computer Animation Festival 2009 Preview Video (2:30)

Marc-Antoine Goulard creates wonderfully evocative paintings. At first glance, they are pleasing compositions of color, and totally non-representational.

But as you keep looking, the layers of colors and horizontal flow often suggests landscapes, especially scenes with the blues and green of water.

Yet the scenes remain tantalizing out of reach, "almost recognizable," and still open to individual interpretation.

At a reception at his one-man exhibit this month at the Ruth Morpeth Gallery in Hopewell, New Jersey, Goulard described his working process as starting with the palette of colors -- and an idea of a particular landscape. Yet he does not like to discuss his particular vision of his paintings, preferring (and encouraging) each viewer to find their own image -- or not.

The paintings are so evocative because of the way they are created. Goulard paints on wood panels, a plywood built of layers of birch so they will remain stable over time. He starts by applying a background of white as the base of his canvas, and then begins building up layers of color. -- Lots and lots of layers, building up subtle combinations of translucent shades. He works with painting knives instead of brushes, like a spatula, which works for him as an extension of his hand.

Goulard was actually trained as a concert musician at the Paris Conservatoire, and then took up the saxophone and studied jazz composition at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. But it was in painting that Goulard found a stronger creative voice.

Goulard actually works on five or more paintings at a time, because of the drying time required in the process. His jazz background shows in his work, with light, color, inspiration, and splashes of spontaneity. He still begins with music playing as part of the inspiration as he starts to work on his painting, but it drops away along with other outside distractions as he focuses into his creations.

Image: "Out There," 2007, Paris, 30 x 26 in. (75 x 70 cm )

Marc-Antoine Goulard
New York City and Paris
www.marcantoinegoulard.com

Ruth Morpeth Gallery
43 West Broad Street
Hopewell, NJ 08525
609-333-9393
www.morpethcontemporary.com