May 15, 2008

Union Station, West Hall

Low-res version of a giant panorama photo I took at DC's Union Station. View the high-res version.

unionstation-west.jpg

Posted by acarvin at 8:23 PM |

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May 13, 2008

Almost Arrested for Taking Photos at Union Station

As some of you may know, I've been testing out a Gigapan panorama photo system over the last week, after I received a loaner of their robotic camera mount from Carnegie Mellon's robotics lab. I brought it in to NPR to demonstrate it to colleagues and go on a photo safari to photograph the architecture at Union Station. Apparently, as far as Union Station's security operations are concerned, that's a criminal offense, since we nearly got arrested.

Here's a low-res version of the photo. Click the image to see the extreme high-res, half-a-gigapixel Gigapan version. (Don't worry, it loads dynamically, so don't worry about the size of the pic.)

The Panorama That Almost Got Me Arrested

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Posted by acarvin at 5:59 PM |

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May 8, 2008

Dizzy vs the Gigapan


Dizzy vs the Gigapan, originally uploaded by andycarvin.

I just got my hands on a Gigapan, a robotic camera mount developed by Carnegie Mellon University's robotics lab that allows you to take gigapixel-resolution pictures. And what does Dizzy try to do? Take over the photo shoot. Typical. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 8:18 PM |

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May 1, 2008

Public Broadcasting and Twitter? Engagement and Authenticity!

Yesterday, I saw a note from the WBUR Twitter account pointing to a blog post about their recent experiments with Twitter. For those of you who don't know WBUR, it's an NPR member station in Boston that's been doing a lot of tinkering in the social media space as of late, so I follow their work pretty closely.

In his blog post, WBUR's Ken George talks about some of their social media projects, and how they're now heading into unknown waters with Twitter:

Now our media giant lumbers head first into the world of Twitter.

After dusting off the mostly dormant WBUR Twitter account, and fortified with copious amounts of coffee, I managed to accrue a modest following (hey its quality, not quantity right?). But in all honesty, I remain uncertain - to the point of apprehension - about what I should "Tweet" about. Do you want WBUR news updates? Irreverent musings? Programming information? Personal trivia? Shout-outs to my peeps? A running chronology of my day?

An excellent example of Twitter's utility is public radio station KPBS using it to receive updates on wildfires then consuming swaths of southern California, information they then could relay over the airwaves. My own personal "ah-ha!" moment came yesterday afternoon when someone Tweeted me about a misspelling on the site. It just then dawned on me that WBUR too now has a potential army of researchers and fact-checkers at its disposal. The cranial cavity expanded six inches yesterday... cue "Also Sprach Zarathustra."

So maybe the right question is: In what ways can we help each other?

Lemme spin that question another way, if I may: What would I expect of WBUR - and any other public broadcaster, for that matter - as far as Twitter is concerned?

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Posted by acarvin at 2:40 PM |

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April 26, 2008

Riding the Wheaton Express

One of our favorite things to do when the weather is nice is to take Kayleigh to Wheaton Regional Park, just north of Washington DC, where they have a charming toy train that rides through the park. I thought it would be fun to stream a live tour of the train ride; here's the archive of the video I shot.

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Posted by acarvin at 2:59 PM |

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April 25, 2008

NPR Jazz Jam: All Blues

During lunch at NPR today, a group of people from around the company brought in their instruments and participated in a jazz jam session. I had my Nokia n95 phone with me, and shot this video of them performing Miles Davis' All Blues.
Formats available: mp4, iPod, mobile

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Posted by acarvin at 9:14 PM |

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April 24, 2008

The Opposite of Caution


NOITUAC, originally uploaded by andycarvin.

Posted by acarvin at 9:16 AM |

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Katrina Trailer on Tour, Dupont Circle

Photo of a truck driving a trailer around Dupont Circle, protesting Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts.

Posted by acarvin at 9:12 AM |

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April 22, 2008

The Cutest Panda Video Ever

I am so envious my NPR colleague David Gilkey got to shoot this footage of adolescent pandas at a research facility in China. As you'll see in the video, he had extraordinary, up-close access to the pandas. They are so cute it's almost painful.

It's also worth noting that the video was posted on the brand-new NPR YouTube channel. I'm hoping you'll see a lot more videos from us there in the coming months, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, there's also a high-resolution version of the video on NPR's Chengdu Diary, a travel blog published by the team at All Things Considered as they prepare to do a live broadcast series from Chengdu, China. -andy

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Posted by acarvin at 1:54 PM |

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April 19, 2008

Utterz Demo at PodcampDC



This is a mobcast I recorded using my mobile phone at PodcampDC. You'll hear me explaining Utterz, the tool I used to create the mobcast.   Replies.  mp3

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Posted by acarvin at 2:40 PM |

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