User Friendly
narrowcasts
A new service developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will beam amateur and professional video “narrowcasts’’ at Boston tourists this fall, based upon their precise locations and individual tastes.The service, called Locast (http://locast.mit.edu), also features a new video gathering and viewing device, worn around the neck, which vibrates to alert a traveler to clips about nearby points of interest.
Scientists at the MIT Mobile Experience Laboratory (http://mobile.mit.edu/) are tallying the results of their first tests of Locast, which they carried out this summer in Venice. That’s where vacationers have been browsing videos on their mobile phones, produced by other travelers and the Italian broadcaster RAI, as they pass specific points in the city.
A Locast user in Venice, for example, can watch a rough clip of kids kicking a soccer ball around a church courtyard or RAI archival footage of Italian actor Vittorio Gassman performing a dramatic reading in front of La Fenice theater. (You can also click the waypoints on a map at the Locast website to see these videos.)
To function within Venice’s narrow streets and canals, museums, and courtyards, Locast uses a blend of GPS, WiFi, and GSM triangulation to fix the locations of the mobile phones paired to the service.
Locast serves up travel itineraries, which you can modify ahead of your trip. It also pings your PC or handset with weather alerts and news of transportation strikes.
You can contribute your own video to the Locast network. Locast automatically cross-posts your discoveries to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. (If you are already on Facebook, you can sign up for Locast through Facebook Connect.)
The wireless Locast wearable device will not only function as a tour guide - vibrating on one side or another to indicate that it has a video about something in that direction - it becomes a digital picture frame at home, displaying the photos and videos from your journey.
In the future, if your friend is planning the same trip - say, a Jack Kerouac-inspired tour of San Francisco - that you’ve documented with your Locast device, you can hand the gadget off and you’ll have a shared experience to talk about.
“It is an emotional device that can travel in a group of friends,’’ said Locast principal investigator Federico Casalegno. “You can take the object, and give it as a gift.’’
AUDIO RELIEF
Finally, decent sound from a mini-cam
I’ve yet to hold a miniature camera that captures sound as well as it snaps video. Just look at all of those horrible YouTube videos out there, even those shot with a decent hand-held like the Flip: Their pictures might be crystal-clear, HD material, but they are often marred by muffled audio sources and mouth-breathing cameramen.When it comes to hand-held audio, nothing beats Samson’s Zoom mikes.
(See more at www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2009/01/12/tools_for_the_serious_enthusiast/).
So, I am heartened to see Samson incorporating video into the design of its H4n mike.
Samson’s new Q3 Handy Video Recorder (about $250) has the same X/Y-patterned stereo mikes as the H4n.
As you might have suspected, the Q3 is still more about audio than video, capturing 640x480 video on an SD card, at 30 frames per second (in MPEG-4 SP format).
That’s not HD, but it’s a start.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
