MIT D-Lab demo: "cycle ventures"

This was fun. A bunch of the students in my program went to MIT's building E-62 on Thursday night, lured by the promise of free food and beer, and what else did we find? Cool MIT club and classroom demos as well! The following interview that I conducted at the event is from MIT's "D-Lab", which is described as "Development through Dialogue, Design, and Dissemination":



The D-Lab demo is specifically from the "Cycle Ventures" project, which, according to the project website:

... Explores bicycle technology to provide human power for an increasing array of other purposes including water pumping, grain grinding and transport of loads in underserved communities with the aim to offer economic opportunity. The course provides a historical prespective on innovation in bicycle technology, reviews its engineering mechanisms and draws on the ubiquity of bikes to present them as innovative tools to foster socio-economic development.

(Footage shot an edited on an iPod touch using ReelDirector)

Other MIT encounters:

• An encounter with Tim Berners-Lee and the Semantic Web
• MIT Media Lab: Robots, and the best Lego set ever
• A robot opera?
• The missing constituency in climate change negotiations
• In case you're wondering what at MIT Sloan accounting exam looks like ...

Disruption: Broadcast news vs. the humble iPod touch

The Newslab blog recently posted about the differences between "professional" video shot with TV crews and video created with mobile devices. Judging by the tone of the article, CNN and others are experimenting with such tools, but are doing so in a very cautious manner. It prompted me to leave a comment, in which I said:

I recently started using a 4th generation iPod touch (I bought the 32GB model on Amazon for $280), which has a decent video camera built in, to shoot simple clips/interviews. [This] blog post demonstrates what I was able to produce:



Note that the only editing I did on the interview consisted of trimming the ends off the clip, an ability which is included in the iPod's camera application. From within the app, I uploaded it to YouTube, and then switched to my laptop to embed the YouTube clip on my blog post. A few days ago, I bought a $4 app in Apple's mobile app store called "ReelDirector" that lets me mix clips, add titles, switch transitions, and even add music.

With the cheap price and high level of functionality on these devices, there's no excuse for trying out mobile video. Is it pro quality? Of course not. But it's certainly enough to do newsgathering and interviews on the fly. And, the gear fits in your pocket and can be operated by the journalist -- no need for expensive cameras, extra crew, and extra overhead to get the story out.

It's apparent that there is still a lot of resistance in the broadcast news industry to using cheap mobile devices, laptop cameras, as well as any production process that's not "pro." In the mid-1990s, I worked in a TV newsroom, and know the prevailing attitude among many broadcast journalists (and crews) is a near obsession over making sure only the best-looking people and best-looking footage appear on screen. At the time, our reporter/cameraman teams would spend three or four hours every morning shooting tape and setting up interviews, and the remainder of the day editing down the footage and doing voice-overs. The result? One or two 2-minute clips per team per day.

Long after I had transitioned to online, the Flip video camera came out, and was a hit. Until the Flip, consumer video cameras from Sony and JVC tended to have complicated user interfaces designed by Japanese engineers. The Flip did away with 90% of the UI clutter, and had just five buttons, a flash drive to store 60 minutes of video, and a flip-out USB plug to transfer video files to PCs. It was also very cheap -- just $125 dollars. I enthusiastically began using one for reviews and interviews, and evangelized it to everyone in the Computerworld newsroom. This was in 2007. However, the weak point with the Flip was the lack of good editing software, which forced us to turn to professional video staff for more complex editing tasks. Never mind the information or images captured by the Flip -- there was more than a little skepticism from the pro video people about the jerky, poorly lit footage, tinny audio, and the fact that there were compatibility issues with the expensive AVID editing suites they used.

Now, the Flip looks positively ancient compared to the iPod touch with its simple editing tools and wireless uploading. The iPhone and the iTouch have the potential to turn many online text-based journalists -- and even people who have never worked in a newsroom or been trained as journalists -- into effective online video journalists.

The professional broadcast community may not get it right now, but they will get the message soon enough when lots of quality work is performed by jackknife journalists and amateur producers, and audiences make it clear that expensive modes of production are not a prerequisite for their attention.

A robot opera?

Learning about a robot opera was the highlight of a second trip to the MIT Media Lab (see the other robot videos and interviews I shot on the first trip in the link at the bottom of the page). During my visit, I talked to some of the students and staff who are working on the production of "Death and the Powers," including my old friend and bandmate Bob Hsiung (pictured). In my interview with Bob, you'll get a glimpse of the storyline, as well as a close-up look technologies that powered the show, such as OLPCs running Linux and a joystick:



Here is a brief, professionally produced snippet from the opera itself:



You may also be interested in my earlier MIT Media Lab tour, which featured a stop at the Personal Robotics Group and a demo of Scratch using a plug-in lego set.

Sell textbooks on Amazon: How it works

I've gotten a few questions from classmates who want to know how to sell textbooks on Amazon.com. For years, I've been using a pretty helpful feature which lets customers sell used books and CDs (and sometimes new items, such as unwanted gifts) on Amazon. I found this feature especially useful for unloading expensive MBA texts in finance, accounting, and economics. Here's how to do it.

First, find the profile page for the book you want to sell (such as this one, for a Biology textbook) and you will see a link that says "Sell yours here" (see inset photo). Click it. At that point you'll be walked through the process of listing the book and its condition and price (see the information below about the best price to use), and then giving Amazon.com your credit card number, billing address, phone number and checking account information.

There's another way to get started, which is useful if you have more than one book to list:

1. Set up the Amazon seller account or go to this page
2. List the books you want to sell, by searching on the ISBN number or title
3. Choose the condition. It's subjective, but try to put yourself in the shoes of the buyer. Would he or she really consider it to be "very good" if it's filled with dogears, highlighted sections, and marginalia?
4. Set the price and shipping options you'll provide (see note below)
5. If someone else sees your used listing and wants to buy it, you will be notified of the sale by email.
6. Once you are notified, log in to your Amazon seller account and print out the packing slip.
7. Mail it using USPS or some other service within two days of being notified of the sale (see note about shipping, below)
8. Notify Amazon that you have shipped it. You must do this in order to be paid!
9. Payment will be deposited in your checking account, usually within two or three weeks.

A few additional issues to keep in mind before you make a listing:

Used textbooks sell well near the beginning of the semester. Not as many people will be buying in the middle of the semester. In This means in October or March, low demand will depress prices and increase the time until the sale is completed. For instance, I sold my used copy of Financial Accounting for $140 in early September, within one day of listing it. I see the same book is now for sale in the middle of the semester for $109 used, and $138 new.

Even though you may want to sell your used textbook at a price that's 20% what you paid for it, you will sell your textbook far more quickly if it's the cheapest or 2nd cheapest, which puts it at the top of the list of the list of Amazon's secondhand sellers (see arrows on the left side of the screenshot, below). This is important -- many buyers either want the cheapest price or don't bother scrolling down to see the other items, even if it's just a few cents more. In the screenshot, there are 164 offers but only the cheapest 4 are visible, and even those four are only one cent apart. Moreover, there's a strong chance that a few of the other 160 sellers (many of them bookshops or pros who do this for a living) will attempt to get to the top of the queue by listing the cheapest price by the end of the day.

At the basic ground rate, Amazon only reimburses you $3 for anything you ship, regardless of how heavy it is -- doesn't matter if it's a CD or five-pound math textbook. Even if you ship USPS Media Mail (usually the cheapest option), it won't be enough to cover the cost of shipping a standard hardcover textbook. This means you have to eat the shipping cost. For sending textbooks, I usually
opted for 1st class parcel or priority mail. The flat-rate box that costs $10.70 can hold books up to 5 pounds in weight. I also opted for "delivery confirmation", which costs $0.70 extra. This is a small price to pay, in case someone claims you didn't send a $80 order.

"Seller ratings" are important. The lower it is, the less likely it will be selected. High 90s is good, but anything below 95% is rare and will be treated more carefully (see the arrows on the right side of the screenshot, above). While new sellers don't have any rating, don't let that stop you from starting to sell books -- there may be some other buyers who are willing to take a chance, or who will pick someone who ships from a nearby city.

Lastly, Amazon.com is not your only option for selling used texts. There are a bunch of startup companies that offer similar marketplaces, and every college bookstore I've ever visited buys back used titles if they are going to be in the syllabus of a future class. My university bookstore has a two-week window every semester in which to sell back used books for at least 50% of the price, but if you missed the buy-back period or want more, Amazon may be your best option.

Disclosure: Besides selling books and CDs on Amazon, I also use Amazon's affiliate program.

MIT Media Lab: Robots, and the best Lego set ever

One thing I've wanted to do since arriving at MIT at the beginning of the summer is to see the MIT Media Lab. I mean, I'm a media guy interested in geeky technologies, so it should be one of the first stops, right?

Well, I never got around to going into the Media Lab building, until today. I heard from two non-Sloan friends of mine -- a current PhD candidate studying new ways to do gaming AIs, and a staff member who helped make the world's first robot opera -- that there was a Media Lab open house, in which most of the current projects (and a few past ones, too) would be on display with researchers on hand to explain them.

Firehose time. I spent a few hours visiting the offices and labs, drinking in projects that ranged from anthropomorphic robots (such as Lexi, inset) to a kids-oriented programming language to "tangible media.

Unfortunately, there was no way to see it all. But I was able to shoot a few highlights and conduct some interviews using my iPod touch. There are three videos:

MIT Media Lab Open House Video #1: Scratch + Legos = Cool (interview with researcher Sayamindu Dasgupta from 00:00 to 08:00, for the final two minutes I spend a few minutes looking at other Media Lab projects)



MIT Media Lab Open House Video #2: Social robots! (interview with Personal Robots Group researchers, including Kenton Williams, discussing Nexi and human-social interaction) (note: audio is slightly off-sync)



MIT Media Lab Open House Video #3: An army of robots? (I was unable to find the identity of the PhD student on the Media Lab/Personal Robotics Group website, but I am wondering if that's because of the military sponsor?)



Other MIT classroom encounters:

• An encounter with Tim Berners-Lee and the Semantic Web
• The missing constituency in climate change negotiations
• In case you're wondering what at MIT Sloan accounting exam looks like ...

Baseline Scenario: Why China is unwilling to revalue the yuan

An essay of mine was published earlier this month on the Baseline Scenario economics blog. It talks about China's yuan policy, and some of the reasons why Beijing will push back against external efforts to let the renminbi appreciate against other world currencies.

The essay has generated a lot of discussion, both online and off. It will be interesting to see the end result of the current back-room negotiations over exchange rates, but I am highly skeptical of talk that China will let its currency float. We heard the same hopeful talk about China freeing the yuan from the dollar peg back in 2005 and Beijing's "commitment to allow the yuan to be set by the interaction of demand and supply forces." But the peg remained and China only let the Yuan appreciate slowly (about 17% in five years). For reasons that I explained in the essay, I think the best that the U.S. and other countries can hope for is a very gradual appreciation of the yuan that does not threaten China's export-driven growth or social stability.