talkingdigital

Podcast: Play in new window

The Yeti by Blue Microphone is big, heavy and should be a staple for any one who needs a portable recording studio. Listen to the podcast and peruse the gallery for more information.

We recorded the podcast on the Yeti using Garage Band with no effects filters. What you hear is what you get. We edited the podcast in Audacity.

One correction to the podcast. We incorrectly said that the Yeti was over a foot tall. In reality it is exactly a foot tall. It also weighs over 3 lbs with the base. (mic 1.2 lbs, base 2.2 lbs).

If you are looking for a backup portable studio or you need a good beginner microphone for your podcast studio, we don’t think you can do any better than the Yeti for $150 or less. In fact, you can get it for well under $150 by following the Amazon link at the top of the article.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

We saw the Pineapple Rumble K headphones at two booths during our trip to CES 2010. Both times the sound of the crowd was too noisy to really give the headphones a good review.

When Pineapple sent us a pair to review, we were excited. The Rumble K headphones use “bone conduction” technology to create sound using air and vibration. The claim is that this technology creates deep bass and no harm to your ears.

In all honesty, we were less excited to see how they sounded in our ears than against our teeth. Since the sound is generated via vibration, the sound can not only be heard by putting them in your ears, but you can also hear the sound via “bone conduction” when you place the backs of the headphones against your teeth. Yes, it’s weird, but impressive to kids of all ages.

Once the coolness of holding them against our teeth was over, we

Sadly, the $80 Pineapples sounded worse in our ears than a $5 set of Koss headphones we purchased at Wal-Mart. At low levels the Rumble Ks were alright, but at higher volumes (anything over 50 percent) distortion was so bad we couldn’t understand the lyrics of Chris Isaak.

The headphones were better for podcasts, but there was still obvious distortion.

These headphones would be great for someone with sensitive years who lives or works in a very quiet environment, but if the sound needs to play over even moderate ambient noise, these headphones simply won’t work.

We thought that maybe we just received a defective pair so we read several reviews around the web and it appears that this is typical of the Rumble Ks.

For $20 they would be cool simply for the “bone conduction” aspect, but at $80 we were unimpressed. It’s too bad, because we really wanted to like them.

Online journalism is less about getting the complete story and more about getting the developing story quickly and efficiently. Accurate facts matter as much as ever and there is no better way to document the facts accurately than reporting in real time.

Here’s a list of great gadgets that can take field reporting to the next level. With these tools, anyone can be an on-the-scene reporter.

SMARTPHONE

photo credit: ilamont.com

Whether it’s an iPhone, Android, Blackberry or WebOS device, smartphones allow you to report via Twitter, add to a blog, text contacts, shoot photos and video and even record interviews. Many of these devices also support GPS and live streaming capability (see Qik.com).

Smartphones are also an excellent source for news monitoring as well. The ability to watch Twitter and RSS feeds as well as search Google News and other sources allows you to check on what details have already been reported.

Before buying a smartphone, do your homework. There is not only a big difference between individual phones, but plan prices also can vary hundreds of dollars over the term of the contract. You will want a plan with unlimited data, unlimited text and picture mail. The phone itself should at least have a 3MP camera, GPS, a nice browser, QWERTY keyboard and support 3G (also called EVDO). Software is also available for many phones allowing the phone to be used as modem for a laptop. This is usually not approved by the service provider and may incur unexpected expenses if the provider finds out.

NETBOOK
photo credit: nDevilTV

Netbooks are small laptops designed especially for portable online work. Although some may cost in excess of $500, most run in the $300 price range. Some netbooks even offer solid state drives which have no moving parts. SSD equipped drives generally have lower storage capacity but better durability.

Before purchasing a netbook, it is important to realize that these devices are not designed to run World of Warcraft or even to heavy image editing. Netbooks are best for jobs that can be done online such as Google Docs, email, Pandora, general web surfing and online video.

The more you learn to use cloud applications, the happier you will be with your netbook.

photo credit: nDevilTV

3G HOTSPOT OR MODEM

If you roam a lot and do most of your work outside of your house, you may want to ditch your wired broadband access (cable or DSL) and subscribe to a wireless service from a cell service provider (Sprint, AT&T, Verizon)

3G service is slower than cable, but faster than all but the most expensive DSL service.

Devices such as the MiFi 2200 allow you to connect multiple devices to the 3G network at any given time. The best part of 3G service is the portability. Essentially, you can get fast Internet access from anywhere that offers cell service. Of course, there are exceptions to this, but those exceptions are rare.

POCKET CAMCORDER

photo credit: ilamont.com

Pocket camcorders are extremely simple camcorders that are designed to shoot video quickly and easily. Typically these cameras can be turned on and begin recording within a couple seconds. Most do not offer optical zoom lenses.

Don’t expect to do anything fancy with these cameras. They are intended to get the shot and have it ready for editing very quickly. Most videos shot with a pocket camcorder are less than a minute. Think of them as Polaroid (instant cameras) for video.

Most pocket camcorders have built-in USB adapters so that you can easily transfer your video to any computer to load it to YouTube or other online source. I use the Kodak Zi8 because it shoots 1080p video and allows for the use of an external mic.

PORTABLE USB MICROPHONE
photo credit: thms.nl

Although podcasting isn’t as popular as it once was, it is still a very powerful medium for the citizen journalist and commentator.

Many podcasters build elaborate recording studios with multiple microphones, mixing boards and effects generators, but the equipment does not the podcast make. Many podcasters will tell you that the ability to create good podcast quickly is more important than the overall quality of the podcast.

Podcast listeners are very forgiving as most are listening for the information rather than a HiFi experience. Creating a nice sounding podcast can be very easy an inexpensive with the proper microphone. Many companies such as Blue Microphone, Samson and MXL are producing some very professional USB microphones. Expect a review at talkingDigital.org soon on the new Blue Microphone Yeti, it is an excellent USB microphone with a variety of recording options for almost any situation.

If you are an iPhone or iPod Touch user, you may want to take a look at the new Blue Microphone Mikey – a very cool little microphone that plugs directly into your device and over rides the internal microphone.

PORTABLE AUDIO RECORDER

There are probably dozens of portable audio recorders on the market, but certain devices are made for higher end audio recording. One of the more popular devices is the Tascam DR-07. The Tascam is designed for a single user but there are some devices such as the Zoom H-4N with inputs for additional mics and other input devices and instruments.

CES 2010 has come to an end. We had a lot of fun and discovered a few diamonds in the rough.

3DTV was as good as can be expected, but still requires glasses. Some versions of 3D irritated our eyes while others required heavy active polarization glasses. Only the Sensio 3DTV technology impressed us by using simple glasses and had no visible flicker or offset images. Of course, we spent the least amount of time with it and it was the first 3DTV we tried so it is possible that it wasn’t really that much better. We left CES hoping that any video released in 3D format will also come with a 2D version. 3D is odd. It can improve an action film, but nobody needs to see Devil Wears Prada in 3D.

Sensio’s website

There were two digital cameras that highly impressed us. The Casio EX-FH100 high-speed camera with 10x zoom and the Kodak Play Sport HD waterproof pocket camcorder.

We were also impressed with the new Blue Microphone Mikey and Yeti products. The Mikey is the latest generation of Blue’s popular iPhone/iPod Touch microphone. It recorded beautiful sound and worked simply by plugging it in. The Yeti was Blue’s new USB microphone. The Yeti was very large and heavy, but it offered the ability to switch between condensers and adjust gain via two simple knobs. It also sounded great and was very heavy. It would make an excellent beginner or spare mid for podcasting.

Yeti by Blue Microphones

Blue Mikey iPod Touch/iPHone microphone

We will be going through our bags of press releases for quite a while. Keep an eye on talkingDigital for a lot more CES information over the coming weeks.

photo credit: wili_hybrid

We head off to Las Vegas a week from today – attending our first press event later that same day. We look forward to all of the great new tech.

Here are a few things that we hope we don’t see at CES:

Digital Picture frames – They were great five years ago, they were getting old two years ago. If they show up this year, we are going to ask very pointed questions to the exhibitor as to why they wasted the money for booth space.

Bluetooth headsets – Unless it’s the size of a grain of sand, it’s not worth showing us. We don’t care about what kind of noise reduction it has or how stylish it is. We will only talk to you about it if you give us a free one.

Netbooks – We love netbooks but they are all 50 different brands of the same device. 10.1″ screen, the latest Intel Atom (or whatever the netbook processor will be), 1-2GB RAM, 160-320GB hard drive, 4-8hrs battery… If you surprise us with one that has a projector built in, that might be cool, but probably not.

Any iPhone app – Save it for CeBIT or Macworld (if there is still such a thing), we love the iPhone, but don’t want to listen to a 15 minute pitch for a product we need to speed at least a week with before we decide how we feel about it.

Cell phones that will never be released in the US – The Koreans always dazzle us with their booths full of fancy phones, but all they do is waste our precious time that we need to spend looking for gadgets and gear that our listeners and readers have no hope of ever getting their hands on.

The world’s largest flat panel TV – Even if it’s 500 inches, there is no way of communicating how massive a massive TV is via photos. We are no longer impressed by bigger, faster or prettier.

A new $300 ebook reader – Before we can get excited about ebook readers they will have to fall well below $100 and  view PDFs, doc and every other ebook format natively. We might consider paying $150 if it offers Kindle-like EVDO downloads for free.

Essentially, we want to see something new. It is time for something that will revolutionize the way we all live. This will take something affordable that fulfills a need that everyone has.