Gary Hawkes, the co-creator of Audioguard CDs, is our guest. Audioguard is the first installment of a series of low-cost theft deterrent products from Gary’s UK-based Steel Onion firm. The Audioguard CDs contain high-quality digital recordings of ambient sound from typical home and office surroundings. Designed to be played in random sequences, Audioguard CDs create the perception of activity and discourage opportunistic burglaries.

Direct download: CSchmooze7-Audioguard.mp3

CompuSchmooze June 2005 (2nd column) : Podcasting Gains Support from Network Radio
By Steven L. Lubetkin
Copyright © 2005 Steven L. Lubetkin. All rights reserved.
WORD COUNT: 688

Podcasting has gone legit. In May, the Sirius Satellite Radio Network (www.sirius.com) launched “Adam Curry’s PodShow,” a four-hour, weekday program featuring what a press release called “highlights and insights from the world of podcasting.” Curry, a former MTV veejay, is widely credited with coining the term “podcasting” after devising software to make it easier for users of portable digital music players such as Apple’s Ipod to download audio programs from the Internet onto the devices.

Then, last week, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation announced last week that it had commissioned Tod Maffin (www.todmaffin.com), its technology correspondent, to develop a broadcast radio program about podcasting for the CBC’s national network. The program, tentatively titled “The Feed,” (www.thefeed.ca), will feature the work of Canadian podcasters as part of the content.

“Sorry Americans, for now it’s only Canadians,” Maffin writes in The Feed’s blog. He’s taking an interesting approach to development of the program, allowing listeners/readers a unique inside look at the efforts to develop the show. The blog site for The Feed includes an audio sample of theme music being considered, and even has an Acrobat PDF document containing the proposal he submitted to CBC for the program.

Maffin has written and distributed an electronic book, From Idea to Air: The Freelancer’s Field Guide to Selling to Radio, which he’s adapted into a shorter “Podcaster’s Edition.” He sells both versions of the book on his website (http://todmaffin.com/ideatoair/).

“There are some things that you don’t need to know if you’re podcasting,” he said of the podcast version of the book. “You don’t need to know how to pitch a show, or feed it to the station.”
One of the critical weaknesses of the many thousands of podcasts being distributed over the web is the lack of attention to production values and telling a story effectively in the radio format, Maffin says.

“We’re still in that early stage of learning about the media,” Maffin explained. “There are a lot of podcasts about podcasting, but increasingly, these are people going beyond that and trying to tell stories, and in that way they’re trying to replicate a lot of radio already, so with my background as a short documentary producer, here are some tips I’ve learned along the way.”
Maffin tries to help podcasters understand how to prepare programs that are entertaining for listeners.

“One of the big negatives is they are in the mindset that ‘I’m talking to a couple of my friends,’” he said. “There are far too many podcasts that go on for an hour or an hour and a half where you as the listener feel completely excluded from the conversation, they’re laughing at jokes that don’t make sense to you. You get wider audiences when you realize that there is no ‘everybody,’ and that you are talking to one person.”

Radio executives are not terribly concerned that podcasters will threaten their livelihood. At a luncheon panel of the Jersey Shore Public Relations and Advertising Association last week, Dan Finn, vice president of Greater Media, which owns several New Jersey “terrestrial” radio stations, said podcasting was “part of the new technology.”

“We opened up a digital music store at two of our radio stations’ websites,” Finn said. “We’d rather they buy the music from us. I think the bigger question when it comes to new technology is the younger listener. Are they going to grow up on radio?”

D. Carnedy, senior vice president of sales for XM Satellite Radio (www.xmradio.com), another panelist, said “We’re engaged at this point with it. It’s really about the content and how people interact with the content.”

Maffin thinks there is a valid business model for podcasting that could make them profitable.
“I think there will be a few pay-for podcasts,” he said, but he thinks most podcasts will be part of a package of benefits offered to subscribers at various sites. He noted that Rush Limbaugh is offering podcasts of his daily programs as part of a package for people who join the “24/7” subscription club through his website (www.rushlimbaugh.com).

Be sure to listen to the CompuSchmooze podcast interview with Tod Maffin.
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CompuSchmooze June 2005: AIIM On Demand Conference Spotlights Digital Documents
By Steven L. Lubetkin
Copyright © 2005 Steven L. Lubetkin. All rights reserved.
WORD COUNT: 656

From May 17-19, more than 20,000 professionals involved in document creation, publishing, and distribution converged on the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Center City Philadelphia for the AIIM On Demand conference, one of the largest exhibits of technology devoted to printing, publishing, and document delivery.

Gutenberg would have been amazed at how far publishing has come.

The globalization of business is forcing companies to customize their materials for different markets, languages, currency conversions, and cultural demands.

“The old way [of printing] is long-run, manufacture and ship. It’s about the beauty of the [printed] piece,” said Gary Kusin, president and CEO of FedEx Kinko’s, who was one of the conference’s keynote speakers. “The new way is about effectiveness and efficiency without sacrificing quality. It’s about quick response to a rapidly changing market, and it’s about the logistics of getting the message right content to the audiences quickly, as customized and as efficiently as possible.” (You can hear Kusin’s entire keynote in our podcast associated with this column.)

FedEx Kinko’s has had dramatic success in on-demand delivery of printed materials since merging the express delivery service and the Kinko’s print shop business, Kusin said.
He told how FedEx Kinko’s had arranged to deliver a customer’s work via email to its print facilities in Australia for subsequent shipping to Malaysia. This allowed the customer to deliver customized training materials in 48 hours, compared with the previous two-week lead-time required. Organizations can use the time savings from digital demand publishing for greater customization of materials and more in-depth treatment of the topics, he said.

Demonstrating his belief that “information logistics” is the big opportunity for his firm, Kusin announced that FedEx Kinko’s will open a 28,000 square-foot commercial printing plant at the FedEx distribution hub in Memphis. Customers will transmit large commercial printing jobs directly to Memphis for what he described as “the latest drop-off time available” for FedEx overnight deliveries.

Other vendors demonstrated technologies allowing organizations to use the same content in different forms, such as training manuals, web pages, Acrobat PDF files, and other formats.

“Electronic Content Management,” or ECM, allows users to edit a document in a single web-browser interface, and have the change automatically appear wherever that content is used.
One firm, SilkRoad Technology, provides a system called Eprise OnDemand (http://www.eprise.com/products/hosted__wcm/index.htm) that lets individual users update organizational websites without understanding the HTML language that’s used to create the look and feel of the web page.

At a press conference called the “Declaration of Education” program, six manufacturers joined forces to offer a live demonstration of how technology can be used to prepare books of classic literature (such as “War of the Worlds,” “The Odyssey” and “Frankenstein”), print them, and bind them at the rate of one book every nine seconds so that 10,000 copies could be distributed to Philadelphia school district students.

You’ll probably never encounter the suppliers involved in this creative demonstration of the power of digital publishing technology, since they are mainly selling their technologies to other large companies. But I like projects that try to help disadvantaged students get a little bit of an edge, so I think they deserve some credit for being engaged in this project. They were:
Weyerhaueser (http://www.weyerhaeuser.com), which provided its special Lynx Digital Opaque paper, designed for digital printing; paper;
Océ (http://www.oce.com/en/default.htm), a Netherlands-based printing company, which provided a 1300-page-per-minute digital printing system; Lasermax Roll Systems, which contributed page cutting technology that can slice 450 feet of paper per minute
Lasermax Roll Systems (http://www.rollsystems.com), which contributed cutting equipment to slice continuous strips of book pages into single sheets at a rate of up to 450 feet per minute.
MBO America, Inc. (http://www.mboamerica.com), which added its folding equipment; and
Muller Martini Corp. (http://www.mullermartiniusa.com), whose binding equipment created finished books at the rate of about 1,000 books an hour.

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We interview Tod Maffin, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation technology reporter who has just been named to host a new program about podcasting on the CBC’s radio network.

More info on Tod at: http://todmaffin.com/speaking/bio.htm

Tod’s new podcast program is called The Feed. It has a blog/website at http://www.thefeed.ca/

Podcast also features comments from:
Dan Finn, VP and Regional General Manager of Greater Media (http://www.greater-media.com/)

D. Carnedy, Senior VP Sales, XM Satellite Radio (http://www.xmradio.com/)

Both were panelists at the Jersey Shore Public Relations and Advertising Association’s luncheon in West Long Branch, NJ on Friday, June 3. More information on JSPRAA at www.jspraa.com.

Theme Music: Zombie, podcast friendly track from Devin Anderson (http://podsafeaudio.com/jamroom/bands/3/)

Technical Notes
Olympus DS-2 stereo recorder used for location recording at JSPRAA luncheon.

Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) used for editing this time. Much easier to use for podcasting applications than n-Track Studio, our first editing program, which is better suited for music studio applications.

http://libsyn.com/media/lubetkin/CSchmooze6-Maffin.mp3

CompuSchmooze Podcast #5: AIIM OnDemand

Steve attended the AIIM OnDemand show in Philadelphia this week. It’s one of the largest shows devoted to the digital document management, printing, and publishing industry, and more than 20,000 people attended the show. This program offers a soundscape look at some of the technologies and trends being discussed at the AIIM OnDemand show.
Podcast Show Notes

0:00 to 2:58: Steve describes some of the activity on the exhibition floor. Pasadena Paper has a business card drawing for a pallet of paper. Steve decides NOT to enter the drawing. Kodak demonstrates high-volume, high-quality digital printing.
2:58 to 3:57 Steve introduces keynote address by Gary Kusin, president and CEO of FedEx Kinkos by describing the Pennsylvania Convention Center ballroom in the former Reading Terminal train station.
3:57 to 32:30: Gary Kusin‘s keynote address on “information logistics.”
32:30 to 37:22 Excerpts from the press conference “Declaration of Education,” where six manufacturers teamed up to create a digital print-on-demand environment on the show floor, creating 10,000 printed and bound books for donation to Philadelphia public school students.
37:22 to 44:13 Steve interviews AJ Hyland, president of Hyland Software, makers of OnBase, a document management environment that integrates paper-intensive environments in a digital way.
44:13 to 53:46 Steve interviews Andy Brand from SilkRoad Technology, maker of Eprise, a content management system that allows end-users to update websites and other content without the need for specialized knowledge or programming experience.
53:46 to 54:24 Steve signs off the show.

CompuSchmooze April 2005: Daf Yomi Lectures Go Portable

Around the world, thousands of traditionally observant Jews (and other Jewish adult learners) take part in a never-ending Talmud study cycle called Daf Yomi. In the Daf Yomi cycle, students analyze one single page of Talmud each day, usually with a study partner. It takes seven and a half years to complete a Daf Yomi cycle, after which students will have studied the entire Talmud. This accomplishment is typically celebrated by tens of thousands of Daf Yomi participants at a Siyyum HaShas, a large-scale party held in a convention atmosphere, frequently at Madison Square Garden or a similar venue.

The Internet has brought the Talmud to a far broader audience of Jewish students than ever before in our history, and the technological tools for the study of Talmudic wisdom just keep getting better and more clever.

The Daf Yomi Advancement Forum (http://www.dafyomi.co.il/), founded by the Orthodox Kollel Iyun Hadaf, offers a wide range of free email lectures on the Daf, including: Daf-Insights: Talmudic expositions that delve into the Daf and broaden Dafyomi perspectives; in-depth Halachic and Agaddic analyses; charts and graphics; Daf-Background: translations; brief abstracts on less familiar topics; help with hard-to-read lines; textual, historical and geographical notes; Daf-Review: a comprehensive review quiz of the Daf – includes both questions and answers; and many others.

Daf Yomi.org (http://www.dafyomi.org/) provides a good survey of links available for further Daf Yomi study, including Ohr Somayach’s Weekly Daf e-newsletter (http://www.ohr.org.il/web/yomi.htm) and an audio lecture by Rabbi Shmuel Irons of the Kollel Institute of Greater Detroit, entitled “Who wrote the Talmud?” (http://www.613.org/la/ir52697.ram, RealAudio required).

Increasingly, Daf Yomi participants are squeezing this religious study and devotion into smaller slices of their secular lives, such as their commutes to work or their lunch hours. Now, thanks to Yehuda Schmidman ([email protected]), mobile talmidim have the benefit of the ShasPod, an Apple Ipod delivered with a complete set of Daf Yomi lectures, or shiurim by Rabbi Dovid Grossman of Los Angeles already fully installed on the device (http://www.ShasPods.com).

“It came about around the timing of Siyyum HaShas,” Schmidman said of the idea for the pre-loaded device. “When you think about all the different technologies that have been out in the market place, whether it was taped shiurim, or online shiurim, some people now have video shiurim, the idea just came about of how great it could be if you could take someone’s complete set of tapes, and actually preload it on an Ipod in one shot, and allow someone the ability to essentially just work with one device, without having to figure out how to work with tapes, to work with technology, and basically just to learn the entire 12th Daf Yomi cycle.”

Schmidman made an arrangement with Rabbi Grossman to convert his taped lectures to MP3 digital files, and loads them onto Apple Ipods for customers. Other audio devices could be used, but Schmidman has no plans to offer them. He sells a 20gb Ipod with Rabbi Grossman’s lectures completely loaded for $399, a $100 discount, according to ShasPod.com. The site says the lectures occupy 13gb of the Ipod’s memory, leaving about 7gb free for music or other audio files.

“The Ipod has such tremendous excitement around it,” Schmidman said. “They are just the biggest craze, so we figured if we were going to make this an exciting and unique product, why not use the additional hook that Apple’s created, and ride on that excitement.”

Schmidman also offers other options, including loading lectures onto customers’ existing Ipods. Customers send in their Ipods, and for $99, Schmidman will load the device and return it.

You can hear more about the ShasPod by listening to the CompuSchmooze podcast program, or you can subscribe to our series of podcasts by adding CompuSchmooze to your RSS news reader using this URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/CompuSchmooze.

Subscribe to the RSS feed for the Compuschmooze podcast series.

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—
Posted by Steve Lubetkin to CompuSchmooze at 5/14/2005 12:47:00 PM

CompuSchmooze Podcast #3, 4-13-2005, Interview with Yehuda Schmidman, creator of the ShasPod, an Apple Ipod delivered fully loaded with the Daf Yomi Talmud study lectures (shiurim) recorded by Rabbi Dovid Grossman of Los Angeles. Podcast includes a short sample of Rabbi Grossman’s lecture.

Subscribe to the RSS feed for the Compuschmooze podcast series.

Copyright © 2005 Steven L. Lubetkin. All rights reserved.

Those of us who have been bitten by the genealogy bug are often discouraged from doing detailed research on our ancestors because we’re not sure how to create a research strategy that will help us figure out what documents to look for and where they might be located. GenSmarts, a software add-on program that works in collaboration with your existing genealogy software, could be a great help in moving your research forward in an organized way.

GenSmarts is the brainchild of Aaron Underwood of Long Grove, Illinois. When he was younger, Aaron assisted his father’s genealogy research by manually creating “to-do” lists organized by location and document type, for his dad to use when his business trips took him near repositories where he needed to look up family information.

Later on, Underwood realized that he could leverage his software development skills to create a program that would evaluate genealogy records and prepare the to-do list automatically.

“It goes through your [genealogy] file, and builds a profile of each person, where they existed, where they lived, over time,” said Underwood, “and compares that to a set of known records to produce a set of predictions or research suggestions,” regarding documents that should have existed for that individual.

Then GenSmarts prioritizes the records based on data that’s missing from your database. It will give higher priority, for example, to a research task related to a missing marriage date, rather than trying to find documentation for a date of death that’s already in the database, Underwood said.

GenSmarts integrates seamlessly with popular genealogy software like the Personal Ancestral File (PAF) software available free from the LDS Church; Family Tree Maker; Legacy Family Tree; RootsMagic; The Master Genealogist and several other programs.

GenSmarts opens as a dialogue box with tabs for several functions. The tab marked “My Genealogy File” displays an alphabetical list of every individual in the database you are analyzing. When you click on an individual’s name, GenSmarts displays “People Facts” about the person from the database, and it makes an educated guess called a GenSmarts Estimate (GSEST) based on other facts known about the individual.

For example, in my family tree, GenSmarts estimated a marriage for one family member as having taken place in 1891 because he had a child born in 1893 and one of his children got married in 1915. You can tag individuals as direct ancestors to give them greater priority in GenSmarts analysis. You can also generate an email message containing the “People Facts” by clicking an Email button on this tab.

The second tab, “To-Do List,” gives specific recommendations for places to search for information.You can sort the list by research priority, surname, date, or geography, and filter it to show specific subsets of records like direct ancestors, records available online, or tasks related to missing data in your collection.

You can configure GenSmarts to recognize your subscriptions to online genealogy services like Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org. If a particular record is available online, simply click a button labeled “Available Online” and GenSmarts initiates the search sequence to find that record within the online service.

The Research Locations Tab lists various research websites and document repositories. GenSmarts shows all your records that could be updated with information from that repository. This can help you make the most of your time if you are planning to visit a library or archive.
The Data Cleanup tab identifies and corrects records with missing or inaccurate place names, and the Query tab provides advanced search capabilities based on names, dates, and family relationships.

GenSmarts offers a trial version for download on its website. The trial program will analyze a limited number of records and offer some samples of its research suggestions. The program sells for $24.95, and this is a small price to pay for the program’s ability to make your genealogy research more efficient.

To hear more about GenSmarts, you can listen to our first podcast, an interview with Aaron Underwood.

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