One of the best things about the future is robots. This isn’t the future that we live in, but the future we were promised as kids. This is the future with flying cars and jet packs. While at CES 2010, I had a small encounter with one of these relics from the future. A pet robot dinosaur named Pleo.

Ugobe, the company that made the original Pleo, went out of business and dashed my hopes and dreams of ever owning my own pet robot dinosaur. Luckily, Innvo Labs brought the Pleo back and made some awesome improvements.

I had the pleasure of speaking to Derek Dotson at CES 2010 about the Pleo’s second coming and the improvements made to the unit for the second release. Check out the interview in the YouTube embed and see more of my CES coverage and see all the videos the team produced at CES at TechPodcasts at blip.tv

The first post is titled The Virgin Notebook Beckons. Answer the Call. It’s a post about the allure of a blank notebook and the obstacles that you may self-impose before starting a new project. Upstart Blogger has been a great resource for bloggers (I was using Upstart Blogger WordPress themes for a long time), and I’m looking forward to having a conversation with the Upstart Blogger audience and I hope that you’ll join me over there.

Referenced: The Virgin Notebook Beckons. Answer the Call.

I recent bought some new glasses from Park Slope Eye, a local shop that’s very big into using Yelp. They have the coveted “People Love Us On Yelp” sticker in the window and have begun to offer a $25 gift certificate to one of Park Slope’s awesome local businesses if you are in the store and check in using Yelp’s latest feature. Sounds awesome, right?

My issue is that I am a regular FourSquare and PegShot user, and don’t have the Yelp app installed on my iPhone, nor do I have the MyTown app, BrightKite or Gowalla. In order to take advantage of this offer from Park Slope Eye, I have to install the Yelp app on my phone before my glasses are ready and remember to check in on Yelp after checking in on FourSquare and taking a photo and sending it to PegShot. Then there are micro location networks popping up like Shakedown (disclaimer: I contributed sound design to the app). Suddenly, letting people know where I am has turned into a chore.

If it’s a problem for the person checking in, it must be a larger pain for the businesses who want to encourage people to checkin at their location. Which to choose? Yelp offers a tie in to their amazing back catalog of reviews, but FourSquare seems to be the trend that’s breaking out of the geek circles. Each network has their own community and strengths.

Back before Twitter established itself as the leader of the market for social networking microblogs, Ping.fm helped the user frustration by creating a one-to-many system (broadcasting) for sending information to the networks. I think it might be time for someone to take the opportunity to enable users to check in to one location on multiple networks. As a user, I know that I’d use it and I know many other people who would too.

Click the images to see a higher resolution version.

UPDATE! Many commenters and people on Twitter have positively identified the money. In 1912, the Russian Federation honored Peter the Great with a 500 Rubel mark, which was the highest that the Russian Federation had issued up until that point. Kimberly’s comment is to an image on Wikipedia that is the same money.

The media player of CES this year was Nuu Media’s Nuu Player, not the Boxee Box. Hidden in one of the back corners of the South Hall of the Consumer Electronics Show was the people at Nuu Media with their player that will retail for a bit more than the other media player boxes, but it’ll also do more than the other media player boxes.

The Nuu Player from Nuu Media does Boxee, so let’s shelve the comparisons right there. It does Boxee and has a 160 GB internal hard drive, which lets us place aside the Apple TV comparisons. On top of that, it streams media from most places that allow it, like CNN, Pandora, YouTube, Facebook video, last.fm, Netflix, MLB.TV, Comedy Central and Flickr. The press release states it plays “all available codecs in any form – video, music, or photo – from any source and in any format”, which seems to set the bar a little high, but we’ll see upon its release. Oh, and did I mention that it plays Hulu out of the box?

The box itself is a simple shiny black box about the size of an Apple TV. The right side of the box sports a USB port, audio in and out and an SD card slot and the connections in back include a network jack, DVI, HDMI, two more USB and another that looks like Firewire 400. On the inside, it’s running Intel’s Atom processor, which isn’t as powerful as the Apple TV, but more powerful than the Boxee Box.

the player also has a WebKit based browser and Nuu Media was showing off custom Facebook and Twitter interfaces for a ten foot interface. Combined with a USB webcam and Bluetooth microphone (I assume a USB cam/microphone combo would work), it also does Skype. With Skype supporting 720p, it makes sense that Skype is moving to the home theater. I would also assume that a USB or Bluetooth keyboard would also work.

The Nuu Player will sell for “around 300″ according to the folks in the booth at CES. That makes it the most expensive of all the media players on the market, but it also appears to have the most features on the market. On top of everything else listed, video search through Clicker.com and TV widgets are also included in the box.

In terms of the best media player box at CES 2010, I’d put my money on the Nuu Player from Nuu Media. It’s more than Boxee and it’s more than an Apple TV. We’ll see for certain when it’s available for sale, but based on their CES 2010 showing, the Nuu Player will sit at the top of the media player pile. Here’s a demo of the player in action:

With USB 3.0 being adopted by a few computer makers, bandwidth between a computer and an external hard drive has increased dramatically.
The increase in USB speeds and constant advance in laptop processor technology are closing the gap between what’s possible on a desktop computer and what’s possible on a laptop computer. On my primary laptop (a Macbook Pro), the shortcoming is the hard drive. Realistically, I can’t edit video or edit multi-track audio on my machine because the hard drive isn’t fast enough to meet the read and write speed requirements necessary for good performance.

So what’s new? RAID drives meant for mobile computers. On the CES show floor, RAIDon was showing off some 2.5″ RAID drives (pictured) that had a smaller footprint than two dollar bills and wasn’t more than three inches tall. Seagate has a PC Express USB 3.0 kit, the BlackArmor PS110 USB 3.0 which helps solve the problem of USB 3.0 and backwards compatibility.

We’ll see more of these miniaturized RAID 2.5″ drives coming out from other companies with faster USB connections or adapter cards like the Seagate. The hard drive configurations support spinning or solid state drives, which unlock the potential for these drives to get faster and get smaller at the same time.

The real story was something that wasn’t available in the digital press kits that the company was handing out. It was three cameras sitting unassumingly in a glass display, pictured to the right. Polaroid is bringing back it’s iconic Instant Camera. It’s not the new digital version, it’s the honest to goodness old-school version of the Instant Camera and the original chemicals and film. It’s a shame that they closed their plants in Massachusetts and fired the 150 who worked at them. the guys in the booth said we can expect the film to be returning in the summer time and the cameras to return in October of 2010.

Check out the shots of the “non-working prototypes” that were out for display. It was clear these were old Polaroid cameras that were re-painted, but I comment Polaroid for bringing out their Instant Cameras Click the photos to see the hi-res images. Enjoy!

Check out more coverage from CES 2010 at Tech Podcast Network CES 2010 Coverage and Geek News Central’s CES 2010 coverage.

Find more CES 2010 coverage at Tech Podcasts and Geek News Central and follow the Twitter hashtag #TPNCES

Images released with a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. All uses must link back to this original post.

1. Taylor Swift’s “Live” Performance • After Taylor Swift’s performance at the 2009 MTV VMAs, I did a little thinking on what would have been necessary for it to have been pulled off honestly. The second option I gave was a straight lip-sync’d and pre-taped performance. Someone in comments piped up to say that she was in the subway when they taped the first half of the performance.
2. The Worst Type of Exploitation Spam • When I posted my resume to Craigslist, I got a good amount of spam back, but I took issue with one specific email from spark1energy.net and dissected it. The comments exploded with people who received similar emails, including some people defending the company. It continues to be a source of traffic on a daily basis.
3. itpc:// A Podcaster’s Best Friend • This post let podcasters know how to set up one click subscriptions to their podcasts without first sending subscribers to a page within iTunes. It also works to use while waiting for Apple to approve your podcast.
4. DMC LX3 Video Test • I got a Panasonic DMC-LX3 camera as a gift for my 27th birthday, and it’s since become my favorite camera I’ve ever used. This was published in 2008, but was still tops because of the simple title to the post’s high search ranking for “DMX LX3 video” and “DMC LX3 video test”.
5. Slow hosting from GoDaddy • I have had issues surrounding the blog all year, mostly relating to GoDaddy. In this case, it was an issue with the code from Lijit, a search plugin. For the past year, I’ve been obsessed with speeding up the site as much as possible, and I’ve managed to reduce page loading times down to a quarter of what they were a year ago.

Photo: What’s going on? via Flickr by me

I’ll be in Las Vegas from January 6th – January 12th, if you’re planning on being at CES, please leave a comment or contact me and we’ll meet up when we can.

To follow the coverage, here are the important links to keep track of what’s going on:

Rob Blatt on Twitter – Where I always am. Once I get to Vegas, expect most everything to be CES related.
CES Videos at Blip.tv, CES Videos RSS feed & CES Videos in iTunes – Polished video interviews from CES
CES Back Channel at Blip.tv, CES Back Channel RSS & CES Back Channel in iTunes – this is content we will be posting as we record it. It’s a rough look at what being at CES is like. Some behind the scenes, some interviews with smaller companies and some random stuff I’m sure.
NBC Universal at CES Schedule – Check to see who will be on the NBCU Stage
Tech Podcasts Network on UStream – Where you can see the live shows
Rob Blatt on FourSquare – If you’ll be in Vegas, you can see where I am as I check in on fourSquare

Here’s an announcement from Todd Cochrane, RawVoice CEO in video form:

This is something I’m extremely proud to be a part of, and if you’d like to follow along from wherever you are, I invite you to do so using the links I’ve provided.

Thank you to everyone who I’ve collaborated with, the experiences we shared helped me get to this point.

Many people use the New Year to start or stop certain habits. I’m not different in my previous resolutions. I’ve said I will stop drinking sodas (failed), only eat pizza once a week at maximum (failed), stop drinking caffeine (failed) and countless other resolutions without actual solutions. I went into this year with no plan to resolve to do anything in 2010, but an iPhone app changed that.

I have a bunch of reasons to not start running. I’m fat, have fallen arches, I lived on a hill, I’m too busy, I don’t have the right shoes and, of course, I don’t know how to run. These are the barriers that I’ve placed ahead of myself, excluding the fallen arches, my body handed me that one. A recent extensive search for new sneakers put me in the odd position of having two shoes that were meant for jogging.

All of a sudden I have the right shoes, I no longer live on a hill and I’m not too busy, but I still didn’t know how to run. The only barrier left is not knowing how to run. This is where Couch to 5K comes in. It’s an iPhone app that trains you over the course of nine weeks to be able to run five kilometers. All that’s left is my weight, but that’s why I’m learning to run in the first place, right?

I ran my first thirty minute program this morning, with little friction. I stretched a bit using the app’s chart, laced up my Puma Speed M sneakers, headed south on 4th Ave in Brooklyn and started the first programmed run (noted as 1.1) while listening to Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown. When changing between running/jogging and walking, you hear a sound effect and a voice over the music indicating it’s time to walk or run. I was concerned I was going to have to pay attention to how long I had been running, but the app announces when you are halfway in your run. A very nice touch that indicates the engineer (Felt Tip Inc.) did some real world testing before committing the app for Apple’s approval.

As part of my resolution to finish the program on the Couch to 5k iPhone app, I’ll be logging my progress at the end of each week, creating a ten part review of the app and how I’m doing.

According to an ExecuNet survey, 86% of executive recruiters say they have conducted background research on candidates using the web. I know that when someone searches me, they’ll find my blog, my company’s site, Flickr, Twitter, an audiobook I produced and some other Rob Blatt-centric sites. The bottom line is, it’s me.

A while ago, I wrote a post dissecting an email from spark1energy. Many other people searched a portion of the email or spark1energy.net and left comments on my post, saying they received the same email that I did. There were even some people who posted private information about other commenters in retaliation for agreeing with me. It reminded me what Ashley Morgan went through with his Immediate Edge [original post removed] postings. The funny thing is that Ashley also wrote something similar to this post after getting onto the front page for searches for Immediate Edge [original post removed].

What Ashley Morgan and my experience should be telling you is that you need to have control over searches for your name. If you don’t take control, someone else will, and you might not like what they have to say.

Referenced: Growing Number Of Job Searches Disrupted By Digital Dirt

Rob, I’m trying to figure out how to eliminate mic phasing for podcasting. Using 2 AT2020 USB mics in a “normal” room. Any tips?

For the purposes of this conversation, I’m going to widen the scope of the question and include sound leakage between the mics. When sound intended for one microphone is able to be heard in a second microphone, you’re getting sound leakage. When the delay is short enough that it doesn’t sound like a delay, but instead alters how the original source sounds, you’re hearing phasing. When you reduce the amount of leakage, you’re also reducing the amount of phasing. These problems can be solved in a number of non-technical ways. Because I don’t have photos of Alex’s setup, I’ll address as many as I can think of. I’m going to address the issue without advising you to separate the microphones, as that can ruin the feel of a recording very quickly.

You can use the pickup pattern of the microphones you are using to help cancel out sound. The AT2020 has a cardioid pattern, which picks up sound in the direction the mic is aimed, as well as sound from the right and the left. The pattern naturally ignores sound from 180 degrees where the microphone is aimed. If the microphones are placed facing each other, a good portion of direct sound from the other person will be cancelled out. The image to the right is of a cardioid pickup pattern. The thick black line represents how sensitive the microphone is in 360 degrees, with a dearth of sensitivity facing in the opposite direction of the microphone.

Facing the microphones away from each other solves the problem of direct sound, but Alex mentions that he is recording in a “normal” room, which probably means a room that has some natural reverb. A second method for eliminating leaking and phasing in audio recordings is to speak closer into the microphone. Speaking closer will not only give you the sexy-sounding proximity effect, but it will allow you to lower the gain on your microphone pre-amp. When there is more direct sound going towards the microphone, it will pick up more of your voice. With the gain on the pre-amp lowered, you’re lowering the amount of noise from the room.

A real world example of a closer source is the sound of a phone handset vs the sound of a speakerphone. When someone is speaking directly into the microphone of their handset, the ratio of the person talking to the background noise and room reverberation is high. When you’re on a speakerphone, the person speaking is further away and the phone has to compensate by being more sensitive to sounds in the room, which is why you’ll hear lots of reverb, toe tapping and typing on the keyboard from that guy who isn’t paying attention.

Using these two techniques, you can dramatically improve the audio quality of your show without spending a dime on sound dampeners, isolators or new microphones. Nor will you have to dramatically change how your show is recorded.

If you have a question for me, you can fill out the contact form on the site or send me an @robblatt on Twitter.

Referenced: Twitter question from @thealexluft

Four and a half years ago Leo Laporte started the This Week in Tech network. TWiT started as one podcast and quickly grew to a full network of audio and video shows with varied topics and an extremely wide audience. For those familiar with Leo’s career, this comes as no surprise. He’s a media pioneer and is only now receiving a portion of the praise he deserves for promoting technology programming on TV, radio and the internet. An interesting conversation has been happening surrounding Leo’s network. Throughout the history of TWiT, the community was encouraged to make a donation to the network. Early on, this was the only way Leo was willing to make money off of his shows. That didn’t last long, as I assume advertisers were beating down his door to connect with his wide reaching audience. While no numbers are public, I assume advertising quickly dwarfed his donations, but the donations were still there.

An interesting conversation has been happening in the past few weeks about what Leo should do with the money the TWiT makes by donations. When faced with this issue, Leo decided to do something amazing with the donations. Announced on December 3rd, Leo will no longer be paying himself with the money the company makes through sponsorships, advertising, etc. Leo’s salary will be paid through the donations made to TWiT and not the company’s operating budget. This is similar to a CEO of a company being paid a $1 annual salary, but making money if the stock in that company increases. He makes sure to point out that he won’t starve, as he has other jobs that will feed and put a roof over his family, but he’s created an incentive for himself that didn’t previously exist.

Leo now has cares about two separate income streams: one for the company, one for himself. This is a monthly reminder to Leo about how much his shows are worth to his listeners. Leo has always been accommodating to his community by creating shows that they want to hear, giving them the content they want during the shows and by expanding the boundaries of what a podcasting network could be. Now it’s up to the community to give back. IF this model sounds familiar (accepting money, but also putting a focus on donations) you must be a listener of public radio. This method is how NPR stays in business. While NPR does a pledge drive a few times a year, Leo will do a mini-pledge drive once a show for each of his expanding roster of sixteen regular podcasts.

This won’t work if his listeners don’t care if he continues podcasting. If he was good, but not amazing, this wouldn’t work.

Referenced: What’s TWiT Worth to You

We’re not Gawker, so be friendly and authoritative, but on the other hand, don’t be afraid to take sides.

Forget the jab at Gawker, let’s focus on the second part of that sentence. Having a tone that is both friendly and authoritative is a clear path towards building trust with your community. The letter goes on to suggest attaching a human element to the post. This is something that I admire about Chris Brogan’s writing. Check out his post How Could New Ideas Change Education. He makes his point by telling the story about his thought process. Building trust inside your community is one of the most important connection you can make. If you need more convincing, check out the book Chris Brogan wrote with Julien Smith: Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust

Create a virtuous cycle between you (AOL) and a smaller site from which you may be capturing a story. Linklove is real. Use it.

I love the idea that Aol, this giant company, is trying to promote the idea of linking to smaller sites that can use the traffic. The entire document looks at the web from an editorially realistic point of view, which is something that I haven’t experienced in any newsroom I’ve stepped into before. One of the final notes states that you should have a 140 character message and a Facebook message ready for when the story was going to be published. The web department would have done flips for this when I was at the New York Sun. We couldn’t get our editorial staff to tag stories, let alone create extra content for something besides the publication.

I think that the document is a must read for most non-personal bloggers. If you write about your life, SEO strategies might not be up your alley, but if you’re writing niche content, it is something you should read at least once.

Referenced: AOL’s Editorial Process — Revealed! (AOL, TWX)

Google’s open Andoird smart phone application store might backfire on them in a way they never expected. This week, MiKandi released an application for Android phones that is its own app store for adult content. Here are the headlines: Porn App Store Lands on Android Phones, Porn app targets your Android, Porn on G1…. Finally!… you get the idea. When Google built the Android platform, they made their app store open for all to develop form and this is exactly opposite of Apple’s often criticized iTunes App Store approval process.

In a world of iPhone & AT&T vs Android & Verizon commercials, Apple & AT&T were just handed an opportunity to market their approval process as a good thing for parents who are interested in purchasing a cell phone for their children. My mother would never have allowed me to own a cell phone where there was an application to potentially download pornography with. To that degree, Apple has a leg up on the app store market. The trick is to figure out how to say “THERE’S A PORNO APP FOR ANDROID PHONES” without specifically saying “THERE’S A PORNO APP FOR ANDROID PHONES”. Apple wouldn’t want to advertise someone else’s platform or the MiKandi porn app store.

While people will continuously complain about Apple’s approval process, the available alternative isn’t something that parents should be comfortable with. Check out this post in the Android Support forum where parents and pornography addicts discuss the need for some kind of parental control for the phone’s app store, specifically to prevent people from being able to download apps liek the MiKandi app store – Parental Controls?

According to C&R Research, 22 percent of young kids between the ages of 6-9, 60 percent of tweens age 10-14 and 84 percent of teens 15-18 own a cell phone. With those numbers, there is a strong need for “clean” smart phones. While Apple’s process isn’t perfect, it creates a cleaner phone. Apple has an opportunity to advertise that no apps on its phone are “adult” and that other phones have some adult content that shouldn’t be seen by children.

Here’s the video for the MiKandi app store on the Android platform: