NMI New Home

The NMI is back on campus in a new home in the Journalism building. And it rocks!

For seven years, the New Media Institute was housed in the Bank of America Building in downtown Athens. When the NMI was created in 2000, there simply was no place for the NMI on campus. So we made necessity a virtue. Being in downtown allowed us to do things we couldn’t do on campus (like the WAGZone) and it made it easier for non-University people to learn about us. That was cool. But, in truth, running an academic unit off-campus was never easy for us or the students. We weren’t near any other academic buildings where students were taking classes. Students had to arrive 5 to 10 minutes late to NMIX courses in the BoA – that is a big chunk out of a 50-minute class. Plus there wasn’t any student parking nearby. That meant lots of those nasty little yellow envelops on student windshields when they had to park at the meters.

And, selfishly, all the staff of the NMI has been a little lonely. Being downtown put us closer to good coffee and other beverages, but farther from our academic colleagues and friends. For everyone at the NMI truly connecting, consulting, and collaborating with UGA from a distance was difficult.

But now we are back home in the Journalism building and it is great to be right in the heart of campus. The NMI suite on the fourth floor houses our classroom, development laboratory, and all our offices. The dean of the Grady College, Cully Clark, allocated this awesome space and a host of people from the Grady Business Office down to UGA Physical Plant made the move possible. Thanks to all of them.

We are still swimming in a sea of boxes now – it will be weeks before we are totally operational. But in the first few weeks of the Fall semester, we are looking forward to hosting an open house. So watch for it.

Our email addresses will be the same (nmi@uga.edu). But my phone number is now 706.542.2857.

iPhone vs. N95: Pocket Clutter

I wore my Nokia 6620 slap out. I texted (is that a word?) so much that the letters were rubbed off and I had scratched up the screen. OK, the jump in the lake with it in my pocket didn’t help it much – even though it still made calls. So I needed a new phone. And being the trend-setter that I am, it had to something functional AND, well … special. What phone should I get?

I haven’t been on Mars, so I knew about the iPhone (http://www.apple.com/iphone/) debut. Like everyone else, I am infatuated. But in May, I also saw the Nokia N95 (http://tinyurl.com/25x9os) – I fell in love with it. It was down to these two so I spent a little time with each. Since they both cost just about the same (yeah, $700 is a lot for a phone, but what are you going to do?) I needed to consider other factors. I am carrying one of these in my pocket right now. But I’m not going to tell you which one. Instead, I am going to tell you the questions and issues that I struggled with in making my decision. It is pretty in-depth so I am only going to address one issue at a time and I am only going to cover one issue a week – that’s to keep it short and to keep you coming back. This week I am going to talk about device convergence.

And for all of you have truly have developed an almost religious zeal for either devices, I’ll ask you to hear out my points first. And if you are reading on the blog, you can leave your own comment. After you hear everything I have to say, let’s see if you can guess which one I picked.



Pocket Clutter – Or
“Is that technology in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?”
I hate carrying crap in my pockets. I have made a solemn promise that I will never wear a cellphone holster on my belt – for me that is the pocket protector on steroids and only one step away from those silly Bluetooth Borg earpieces. Here is what I carry in my pockets now: keys, wallet, pocketknife, cellphone, iPod, and a camera. Thus equipped, I am ready to meet any challenge. But I jangle like Jacob Marley dragging his chains. I want to cut down. Can some of these be merged? Keys, wallet, and pocketknife aside, can I merge music, pictures, and phone into fewer than three devices?

Music + Phone
The iPhone has an 8GB iPod. I currently carry a 60GB iPod that I love. On it I have every bit of my music, podcasts, and even a couple of (legally procured) movies. This iPod has truly changed my life because I don’t have to plan anymore. When I am in the car and want the lastest tech news, iTunes had made sure the most recent NPR podcast was downloaded onto my iPod the last time I cradled it. No more deciding which CDs to take to the lake – the iPod I carry with me has any of my songs I want to hear. And I was stuck in the Cleveland airport during a storm with no book to read, so I watched the Ken Burns documentary “Empire of the Air” – I had totally forgotten I had put that my iPod. The iPod has made it possible to carry all of your audio and most of your important video with you everywhere. No more media planning for me – with the iPod my media is with me always. Now, I am nowhere near using up all the space on my 60GM iPod, but my stuff takes up a lot more than an 8GB iPhone can hold. Right now in my iTunes Library I have about 7GB of music, 15GB of movies, about 1GB of TV (love “Desperate Housewives”), 1 GB of audiobooks, and just under 4GBs of podcasts for a total of 28GB. The biggest iPhone would only be able to hold less than a third of all my stuff. My iPhone fanatic friends tell me not to worry about it – I can set up profiles on iTunes that will determine which music to download to the iPhone and which not to move. Wait a minute, that feels a lot like deciding which CDs to put in the car. Didn’t I just say I hate managing media? So to accommodate everything, I would still need to keep both the iPhone and my indispensable iPod.
Now I am not even going to try to suggest that the N95 can combine music and phone. It isn’t an iPod. ‘Nuf said.

Pictures + Phone

Both the iPhone and the N95 have cameras, but let’s talk megapixels here. OK, don’t worry I won’t get too technical (because I barely understand it myself). Just
remember, the more megapixels the better the pictures. The iPhone has a 2 megapixel camera. Pretty good, right. I mean most camera phones are one megapixel or less. Although there is a pretty good debate running online right now about the quality of iPhone pictures, these pictures will work fairly well for showing on your phone and maybe posting to a web page – if you don’t try to enlarge them in any way. And the images wouldn’t be high enough resolution to be printed. I have gotten spoiled. I need better images. I started carrying around a digital camera about a year ago. I ran into a lot of uses for it – all in good taste, I promise. I take pictures for newsletters, presentations, and to make prints. It is quick and easy. My Canon PowerShot A540 is a 6 megapixel camera – it is small and takes great pictures. I am always amazed at how good they look when I load them to the Kodak Gallery. And since they are high resolution I can zoom in and crop the images without losing any real quality. The N95 has a 5 megapixel camera. The pictures are truly gorgeous – definitely of high enough quality to manipulate and print. Plus, the N95 has autofocus, flash, and a timer just like my Canon . And one final point, the N95 can record video – and it looks pretty good as well. The iPhone doesn’t do video. Bottom line, with the N95, I don’t need to carry the Canon with me.

So in terms of reducing clutter in Scott’s pocket, the N95 comes out on top. Next week, I will evaluate iPhone and N95 connectivity.

The AIDS PPSA – a Mobile Media Experiment in Philly (11/7/07)

Can little media make a big difference? That is what a lot of people in industry and academe are asking. Ring tones, games, YouTube – they entertain us. But can mobile media make us better?
On November 7th in Philadelphia, we are going to find out. We are going to challenge mobile production teams to use mobile technology to document the lives of people living with AIDS. Their video is going to be transmitted back to a remote producer somewhere else to assemble into a new type of persuasive mobile media message – a Personal Public Service Announcement. And the whole thing will happen in just one day!
This is built on the Positive Power Mobile Media Workshop (http://www.nmi.uga.edu/mmworkshop/) we hosted in Athens in December of 2005 – but this one is going to even bigger and more fun.
The whole point of our AIDS Personal Public Service Announcement project is to encourage people to be tested for HIV. Today over 250,000 Americans have HIV infection and don’t know it. They aren’t taking advantage of the treatments that can extend their lives almost indefinitely. Plus, the unknowing infected are more likely to infect others.
We are signing up people to help out. We need volunteers, ideas, and, ok, funding. You can learn more at (http://www.nmi.uga.edu/AIDS_PPSA/). And if you are interested in participating, contact me (Scott Shamp, sshamp@uga.edu) or Karla Berry (kberry@sc.edu).

My95 – Killer Capstone!

Spring semester we handed the NMI Capstone students a tough assignment. Come up with a way to use mobile media to encourage visitors to get off of I-95 and explore the coast of Georgia. We partnered the students up with the creative folks in the Georgia Tourism Foundation (http://www.georgia.org/foundation.htm) at the Georgia Department of Economic Development and set them to work. They came up with a podcast series covering the unique aspects of the I-95 region. With segments on birding, camping, golfing, literature, and Civil War history, I think they have done a great job. Take a look – http://www.nmi.uga.edu/my95/. And special thanks to the great folks at GDEcD – Nerissa Serrano and Gilda Watters.

NMI at UGA – our Second Life island

Alright, in past missives I have effused about virtual worlds in general and Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com/) in particular, so I won’t take you through that again. Suffice it to say, I think there is a lot of potential there. Next semester, I am going to be teaching a class about Second Life – and in Second Life, too. The class is going to meet from 3:35 to 4:25 on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. To give us a place to teach, we have created our own island in Second Life. It is called “NMI at UGA.” Right now there are only a couple of buildings on it and we are still terraforming (man, that sounds hard doesn’t it?), so it isn’t quite ready for the public. But we will be opening it up to everyone in just a couple of weeks. Watch for my announcements.
One of the cool things we are going to be doing is programming events on our island. Musical performances, lectures, drama – whatever. With Second Life, users all over the world can experience these events in real time – and even interact with us. So if you have some ideas for something that you would like to see happen in Second Life, let me know. Maybe you can be a star on our island!
And to get us geared up for next semester, I have invited a Second Life reporter to write a weekly piece on cool things he has noticed in the virtual world. Below is Shamp Writer’s first dispatch.

Virtual Wimbeldon = Shamp Writer, roving SL reporter

Big blue is buying into Second Life (SL) big time. They see it as a great way to promote their product and brand – and sell more computers too. They have tackled some pretty ambitious projects in SL but this week I saw one of the coolest. Wimbledon is in full swing (get it) and IBM has built a special pavilion about the huge tennis tournament on its island. Here is a link to a YouTube video about the project – a little grainy but you can get the idea <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wu3j4-2W3w>. There is real time weather, video screens, and live audio commentary. But maybe the neatest thing I saw was the ball trajectory – you can choose a seat at the court and see the ball tracks live as the game is played. Wild! This is an example of how smart content creators are building hybrid events in real and Second Life. If you have Second Life installed (and if you don’t, why don’t you!) you can click on this SLUrl (Second Life URL) to teleport there <http://slurl.com/secondlife/IBM%207/117/227/23>. Check it out this week while they are playing matches. And thanks to IBM’s Tony Johnson for bringing this to my attention.

WAGZone Resting and Retooling

In 2003 the New Media Institute created one of the world’s first municipal wireless initiatives – the Wireless Athens Georgia Zone (WAGZone). Anywhere in downtown Athens you can gain free access to the internet through the WAGZone. Well, you can do that anytime other than the next two weeks. Summer is always a down time for Athens. With the students gone, it is easier to take care of a lot of public work stuff. Athens-Clarke County is painting all of its light’s poles. That means we had to take the WAGZone down to paint and we can’t put it back up until everything is done and dry. So if you can’t get the WAGZone for the next couple of weeks, be patient. I will let you know as soon as it is ready again. And the poles will look amazing!

UGA’s Animaniacs article

The Department of Theatre & Film Studies http://www.drama.uga.edu/ at UGA is doing some incredible stuff with 3D and animation. A couple of weeks ago, the Athens Banner Herald did a great story on how Mike Hussey’s students worked with the History Channel. Check it out -- http://tinyurl.com/26mo7d. And I can’t wait to get these guys working with us in Second Life!