Tag: Audio

Hearing Less: Dealing With Bad Audio Recordings in the Classroom [en]

Taking example on Meryl who has started sharing similar stories on Facebook, here’s a little testimonial of my “somewhat deaf” life.

With my hearing aids, I’m fine for conversations with people (masks make it harder but not impossible unless people are very soft speakers), even in somewhat difficult settings.

But one disastrous context is non-professional recordings played through loudspeakers in echoey classrooms. I honestly can’t understand half of what is being said.

As this is often played through the teacher/trainer’s computer, I’ve come up with a workaround. I’ve bought a mini-jack split cable and an extension cord, so that I can listen to the audio through my headphones while the audio also goes to the classroom loudspeakers.

Note 12.01.2022: sometimes computers have VGA and audio on different sides. Worth having an extra VGA or mini-jack extension for these baffling situations.

This of course requires explaining the situation to the trainer (so far, everybody has been lovely about it), pointing out that I depend on the volume setting on the computer (keep it at maximum), and so they need to use the controls for the room loudspeakers to make it less loud for the class if needed.

Soundcheck recommended! I once forgot, and hadn’t realised the sound was going out through the HDMI cable, and not the mini-jack port!

One annoying situation that arises nonetheless is when trainers interrupt the recording to make a comment. I remove my hearing aids to put my earbuds in, so when the recording is stopped, I fiddle to get my hearing aids back in, and by the time I’m done, sometimes the comment the teacher was making is over! Worse: speaking over the audio of the recording… I miss everything.

But globally it’s a very good solution for me.

I use another workaround in my German class. We have an application which allows us to listen to the audio tracks at home. So when one is played in class, the teacher tells me which number it is and I play it on my phone with the earbuds. My comprehension score for German has gone way up this way! ?

So there you are, a glimpse into my “less-hearing” life!

Initially published on 15.10.2021 on Facebook

The Future of Fake News [en]

[fr] Ce n'est pas souvent que la technologie me fait peur. Ça doit être que j'ai plus de 35 ans, maintenant. On peut maintenant, à partir de 20 à 40 minutes d'échantllons vocaux, faire dire ce qu'on veut à quelqu'un en tapant le texte en question. On peut également "animer" un visage dans une vidéo avec ses propres expressions. Ce n'est pas encore parfait, certes, mais on y sera très vite. Les "fake news" ont encore de beaux jours devant eux...

I’ve listened to the first half of Radiolab’s “Breaking News” episode and I’m terrified. Or maybe I’m just over 35. In a nutshell, the time where you can easily produce convincingly real “fake audio” and “fake video” (and mash the two together) is just around the corner.

This is the future of fake news. If people can be fooled by fact-less text, fake quotes stuck next to photos, photoshopped pictures and memes, even though we know all these things exist… What is going to happen when pretty much anybody can make anybody else (including 45 or other political figures) say anything?

At one point in the distant future we might get over it. We may learn not to trust anything recorded anymore, because it might be fake. We might fall back on face-to-face presence, being there in meatspace, seeing and hearing unmediated.

I have no concern that forensic scientists will be able to tell doctored media from undoctored media. But that will not help the court of public opinion much.

I’m worried that we, as a society, a culture, will not be able to learn fast enough to stay ahead of how technology is changing our access to information, and that this will be the end of the world as we know it.

Hopefully, it’s just that I’m over 35.

 

 

Stowe Boyd on Experiential Marketing [en]

[fr] Quelques citations (audio et texte) de Stowe Boyd sur ce qu'il appelle "experiential marketing" (marketing expérientiel en français). J'ai eu quelques discussions récentes avec des clients pour des mandats de cette nature, et je prépare une page d'explications à ce sujet pour ma section Focus (pas encore en français, désolée). Si vous êtes curieux, manifestez-vous dans les commentaires, ça me donnera probablement l'occasion de parler de tout ça en français!

I’m preparing a page on experiential marketing for my Focus series, as I’ve been in discussion about this kind of work with a couple of clients lately. It’s a term/concept coined by Stowe Boyd (not to be confused with the related but different independently named experiential marketing you can read about on wikipedia), so I dug around in his archives to see if he had blogged anything significant about it.

I found a few quotes in blog posts, but most interesting was this audio interview he gave Daniela Hinrichs in April 2006. Start listening just before the middle of the interview (the first half is about other stuff). Oh, and keep on listening after they’re done on the topic of experiential marketing — Stowe tells the story of why he wears a cap. 😉

It’s interesting to see how the idea evolved from the moment of this interview, just after he came up with the idea, and subsequent incarnations which he blogged about between then and now. Here are a few quotes I picked up:

Experiential marketing — as an increasing social consciousness pervades the online marketing world, advertisers will realize that ads are becoming less effective, even when streaming and animated. One answer is what I am calling experiential marketing: individuals or groups will be solicited and directly compensated to try out products and blog or otherwise chronicle their use. With highly trusted advocates acting on behalf of the community these campaigns will become a mainstay of product marketing 2.0.

Stowe Boyd, 15.06.2006

So, I will be posting on this “experiential marketing” project over the next few months, as I attempt to follow the advice of OpenBC’s staff and most knowledgeable users about how to achieve these aims, and I will examine everything involved: from the creation of a detailed profile, to developing a personal network, and the ins and outs of trying to use the system to accomplish real business goals. Because my goal is to spend more time in Europe, I am calling this the “More Europe” project.

As I said, I will be candid and critical. If I think some aspect of OpenBC’s user experience is dumb, I will say so. If I start drowning in social spam, I will write about it. If I get no traction on my plan, I will chronicle that.

Stowe Boyd, 20.07.2006

As I announced a few weeks ago, I am doing a new experiential marketing program for the folks at Blogtalkradio.com, one that entails me running a talk radio show. The first show was Thursday, and I had a great time interviewing Ted Rheingold of Dogster about Online Community (see /Talkshow Tomorrow: Ted Rheingold of Dogster on Online Community).

I started using the term experiential marketing a few years ago, in a project I was doing for GoToPC, and then again last year in the “More Europe” project for OpenBC (now Xing). The premise is that true understanding of a product or service can’t be gained from a half-hour demo: it requires hours, and perhaps weeks of use.

In this project I will be running a web-based talk show relying on the Blogtalkradio.com technology platform. Along with doing the show, I will be writing up my experiences with the software, recommendations for its improvement, and guidance for others trying the software.

Stowe Boyd, 14.04.2007

More details on all this when I put the Focus page online!

Multilingual Interviews [en]

[fr] Deux interviews que j'ai donnés récemment au sujet de la conférence que je donne à Copenhague sur le multilinguisme sur internet la semaine prochaine.

I was interviewed twice during the last week about the multilingual stuff I’m going to be talking about this week at reboot9:

Enjoy, and hope to see you at reboot!

The Podcast With No Name (Steph+Suw), Episode 2 [en]

[fr] Nouvel épisode du podcast conversationnel que je fais avec mon amie Suw Charman.

Long, long overdue, here is Steph and Suw‘s Podcast With No Name, episode 2, February 15th, 2007. Some rough shownotes, with some links. Hope you enjoy it, and let us know what you think. We’re down to 35 minutes! Show notes might suffer updates…

  • conferences: LIFT’07 and Freedom of Expression
  • not everybody has the internet (God, I need to stop laughing so loud when we’re recording)
  • mobile phones in other cultures (e.g. Nigeria)
  • “technology overload” at LIFT’07 turned into “internet addiction” (interesting Stefana Broadbent
  • note-taking on a computer: expected in some contexts, but feels really out-of-place in others (cultural issue)
  • do we end up publishing our handwritten notes? trade-offs: handwritten and rewriting vs. direct blogging (Steph’s crappy workshop notes)
  • scanning vs. photographing written material, document management and shredding
  • GTD status update (inbox zero…)
  • FOWA coming up and other fun London stuff
  • Wedding 2.0 will be blogged on CnV, but will there be a webcast?
  • technology as a way to stretch our Dunbar number, wedding 2.0 with IRC backchannel and crackberries galore
  • the Wedding Industrial Complex, trying to find an affordable venue in Dorset
  • IRC or SL would be cheaper, but is SL a registered venue?
  • physical words for “virtual” places
  • gap between us heavy users, and people who get a few e-mails a day, book holidays online and that’s it
  • exploring how new tools could help us — most people aren’t curious about new stuff
  • winning over new users: finding holes in people’s processes
  • Facebook is really cool, very usable, and for keeping in touch with people you know (has smart walls and smart feeds)
  • who’s on Facebook? on the non-desire to join new social networks…
  • LinkedIn for business
  • Facebook as a mashup to keep up with what your friends are upto — but isn’t that what blogs are for?
  • outlet overload, tools need to talk to each other (holes in buckets), profile multiplication, Facebook share bookmarklet to “push” stuff
  • clumsy wrap-up and episode three when we manage!

Did you miss episode 1?

Note: PodPress seems to have collapsed, so here is a direct link to the 14Mb mp3 file just in case.

Steph+Suw Podcast: First! [en]

[fr] Suw et moi avons enfin enregistré le fameux podcast-conversation dont nous parlons depuis notre première rencontre, en mai 2004. C'est en anglais et c'est assez long, mais on s'en est pas trop mal sorties pour une première!

Each time Suw and I meet, we talk about recording a podcast together. We met for the first time in June 2004, and if I believe the Podcasting and Beercasting Thoughts I wrote a little less than a year later, that was indeed when we first started talking about using audio to record conversations.

I’m definitely sure that we talked about it at BlogTalk 2. I don’t think Skype was in the air then, but we talked about hooking up our phones to some audio recording device, and left it at that. At that time, people were getting excited about “audioblogging” (did we already talk about “podcasting” back then? It seems a long, long time ago) and we agreed that were audio really became interesting was in rendering conversations. (See the Podcasting and Beercasting Thoughts post for more about that.)

Anyway, now we have Skype, and Call Recorder (which reminds me, I need to write up a post about the ethics of recording audio conversations), and we finally got round to doing it. It’s a bit long-ish (40 minutes — not surprising if you know us!) and has been slightly edited in that respect, but honestly, it’s not too bad for a start.

Here is roughly what we talked about.

  • San Francisco, web geek paradise
  • City sizes (see this London-SF superimposition map)
  • Segways
  • The cat/geek Venn diagram (Twitter error message)
  • I really want a Wii
  • IRC screen names
  • The difficulties of pronouncing S-u-w
  • When geeks name children: A unique identifier or anonymity?
  • Stalkers and geoinformation
  • Perceptions of security
  • Giving out your phone number and address, and personal boundaries
  • Airport security (background…)
  • Risk and expectations of risk
  • Death, religion, and the medical industry
  • Naming our podcast… something about blondes, apparently
  • Clueless marketeering from the Fabric nightclub in London
  • The repercussions of having a blog that people think is influential (even if
    you don’t think it is)

Let us know what you liked and didn’t like! View Suw’s post about this podcast.

Miglia Dialog+ Cordless Skype Phone [en]

[fr] Test et critique du téléphone Skype sans fil (pas wifi!) Dialog+ de Miglia. Franchement sympa et abordable, en plus!

If you want the review without the whole chatty story, scroll down.

As is now public knowledge, my visit to San Francisco coincided with MacWorld. (“Oh, you’re going to SF for MacWorld?” — “Mac-what? MacWorld? What’s that? Oooh…”) This was nice, because it gave me the occasion to join the geekfest, discover lynda.com, watch the Leopard and iPhone demos, buy a pink “Mac Chick” cap, and last and lot least, hang around my IRC friend Victor’s booth, which quite unexpectedly led to me walking off with a Dialog+ cordless Skype/iChat handset.

That booth was very obviously the most busy one in the row, and for a reason: Miglia (drop the “g” when saying it, Italian-style) is a hardware company which make a bunch of pretty cool toys for Mac (and Windows!) users.

They have digital TV stuff, which I’m unfortunately a bit deaf to these days, as wireless digital TV doesn’t really work in Lausanne, and the way Swiss TV does “bicanal” (the thing that allows you to choose between dreadful dubbed versions and original versions) seems to be somewhat non-standard. At least it didn’t work with EyeTV, which I tried and brought back to the store a few months back.

Much more exciting for me: cordless VOIP handsets, and in particular the Dialog+. It’s a Skype/iChat cordless handset. I’m using Skype more and more, and next best to a WiFi Skype phone (the geeky toy I said I wanted for Christmas here) is a cordless one. Unfortunately, most (if not all) of the cordless handsets I’ve looked at (see the Skype Shop for example) have big nasty clunky non-laptop-friendly base stations. Not this one. Have a look at how laptop-friendly this is:

Miglia DialogPlus and dongle

And the price was nice too: $80 MacWorld price, $100 normal price.

Well, I was tempted. Very tempted. So tempted that I decided to buy it, after dragging Victor upstairs in the lobby where we could find wifi to try it out (I’m a bit picky about audio quality). On the way, we bumped into one of their PR (?) people, and a few seconds later I was eagerly saying “I’ll blog it, I’ll blog it!” at the prospect of being given the handset. Here for the disclaimer, then — but I would have bought it anyway 🙂

For the trouble, here’s a nicely hReview-formatted review of the phone, after 24 hours or so of ownership and a couple of outgoing Skype calls. People who didn’t care for the backdrop story should start here.

Miglia Dialog+ (DialogPlus) Skype/iChat Handset

product

Laptop-friendly Skype/iChat phone, light, nice sound quality and affordable price. Small USB dongle and recharges through USB too.

The first thing that stood out when I was shown this 100$ phone (80$ at MacWorld) is that instead of having an untransportable base-station, it has a USB key-like dongle which is easy to carry around with the handset. The handset itself is light, has good autonomy, and is recharged (3AAA batteries) with a pretty much standard USB cable, as shown in the picture. It’s something I can imagine carrying around all the time in my computer bag. Charging the DialogPlus

You can scroll through your Skype and iChat contacts on the phone easily, and even scroll through the Skype contact list which is displayed on your computer from the phone (it’s a bit eerie, as if the phone were a remote mouse or something). At first I wondered what the purpose of this feature was, but actually, even though the LCD display on the phone is very nice, it’s still even nicer to go through your contacts on your computer screen.

Besides the up/down, green-red, and normal number keys you’d expect on a phone, the Dialog+ has only three “special” keys: one to display call history (you can use it to toggle between received, outgoing, and missed calls), one to display your contact list (use it to toggle between all contacts and online contacts), and a third button (clear/backspace) which allows you to take control of the Skype contact list on your computer. It’s pretty easy to figure out what each button does and memorize it.

I personally don’t use iChat much, particularly for voice (I use Adium for instant messaging, and unfortunately it doesn’t do voice over IM), but I placed a couple of Skype calls to check the sound quality. My hearing is slightly impaired and I sometimes find that volume settings on phones don’t allow me to listen at a comfortable level. Not the case here, I could hear the person I was speaking with very clearly. However, people on the other end do hear an echo if the volume is set too high, and have complained a bit about the audio quality they receive. This can be due to the quality of the Skype connection, but I’ll try lending my phone to somebody and have them call me to hear for myself.

Setting up the phone was rather simple: close Skype, install the driver from the CD, pair the phone with the dongle by pressing the little square button on top of it. At first my phone said there was “No contact list”, so I tried reinstalling the driver and re-opening/closing Skype, and it worked. Not quite sure what went wrong, but it fixed itself quite nicely. The instructions booklet is just the right thickness and contains clear explanations. I would, however, call this a “cordless” phone rather than “wire-free” — when I read that on the back of the phone, I went “wi-fi phone?!”, which of course, is incorrect.

So, to sum it up: very happy about the toy and its design. I’ll certainly be using it. I just unwittingly gave it its first crash test by kicking it off the sofa as I was writing this post, and it survived. According to the booklet, it has good autonomy. I still need to dig into the audio quality a little, and see how it works when I start walking about my flat with it (upto 25 meters range).

I was disappointed at first that I couldn’t send text messages from it, but actually, that’s not too bad: if I have the Dialog+, I have my computer nearby — and anyway, Skype text messages aren’t always very reliable (for example, depending on the carrier, they don’t give your own phone number as the “reply” number, and messages get lost).

Great job, Miglia — oh, and I nearly forgot: Miglia’s interest being hardware sales, the phone comes with free software upgrades. For life. Neat!

My rating: 4.0 stars
****

Demain: Grand 8 sur la RSR1 [fr]

[en] I'll be on the radio tomorrow morning between 8am and 8.30am, CET.

Demain, de 8h à 8h30, je serai invitée à faire un tour de Grand 8 sur la RSR1. On y parlera, d’après ce qu’on m’a annoncé, de “comment devenir un leader d’opinion dans la blogosphère”.

Tout un programme. Vous pouvez écouter la radio sur le net en allant sur leur site, et même en principe écouter l’émission après-coup. Edit: rajouté le lien vers l’émission.

PS: la semaine dernière c’est Raph et Lau qui s’y sont collés.

Edit: voici un lien direct pour les écouter.

PPS: Grr, j’arrive toujours pas à écouter leurs émissions online. J’arrivais, avant, promis. Là, on me présente une gentille page d’aide alors que j’ai déjà RealPlayer et que si je lui donne à manger le bon *.ram ça fonctionne. Reste à trouver le *.ram en question pour une émission donnée…

Flickr, ça se prononce comment? [fr]

[en] French-speakers have trouble pronouncing "Flickr". They tend to sound as if they had something stuck in their throat. This is my attempt to educate them. 🙂

La réponse à cette question cruciale pour tous les francophones dans le podcast de ce soir, en un peu moins de 3 minutes (enfin, les 30 premières secondes suffisent si vous êtes vraiment pressés).

To flick(e)r

Un indice: Flickr, c’est un jeu de mots sur “flicker”.

Laissez un commentaire audio! [en]

C’est grâce à Odeo (se prononce comme “audio”, si jamais). Vous pouvez enregistrer ici-même un message vocal pour moi. Je ne sais pas encore si d’autres personnes pourront l’écouter, tentons l’expérience!

Send Me A Message

20 minutes plus tard: Du coup, je viens d’ajouter ce petit badge au-dessus du formulaire de commentaires disponible pour chaque billet. Seul hic: c’est vraiment une boîte vocale, c’est-à-dire que le contexte d’enregistrement (par exemple, sur quel billet le badge était posé) ne me parvient pas. Si vous utilisez ceci pour laisser des commentaires oraux, n’oubliez donc pas de spécifier quel billet vous commentez!