Audio Technica AT2020 Microphone

Feb 17, 2010 by Dan Taylor    2 Comments    Posted under: Technology, Video

The folks at Audio Technica have done an outstanding job at packing a much more expensive sounding microphone into a minuscule $79.99 price tag. A Condenser Cardioid microphone, the AT2020 is perfect for recording voiceovers for your video productions and/or podcasts. An excellent entry level studio quality microphone, I’ve demonstrated in the video below a few of the finer points of the AT2020, including the usage of a pop filter, and not.

I also put the AT2020 to the test over the weekend, and closely mic’d by bass amp, and am proud to report no overdrive at all. Even at a fairly loud (by apartment standards) volume level, the AT2020 didn’t flinch.

While Audio Technica certainly had the bottom line in mind when the AT2020 hit the market, it’s a shame that the normally included accessories, a pop filter and spider mount, are not included. This additional cost will put you in the same price range as some low priced ‘middle range’ similar studio microphones. Overall, for the cost, tone, and overall design, I give the Audio Technica an A-.

Specifications:

• Element: Fixed-charge back plate, permanently polarized condenser
• Polar Pattern: Cardioid
• Frequency Response: 20-20,000 Hz
• Open Circuit Sensitivity: –37 dB (14.1 mV) re 1V at 1 Pa
• Impedance: 100 ohms
• Maximum Input Sound Level: 144 dB SPL, 1 kHz at 1% T.H.D.
• Noise: 20 dB SPL
• Dynamic Range (typical): 124 dB, 1 kHz at Max SPL
• Signal-To-Noise Ratio: 74 dB, 1 kHz at 1 Pa
• Phantom Power Requirements: 48V DC, 2 mA typical
• Weight: 12.1 ounces
• Dimensions: 6.38 inches long, 2.05-inch maximum body diameter
• Output Connector: Integral 3-pin XLRM-type
• Accessories Includes: Stand mount for 5/8″-27 threaded stands; 5/8″-27 to 3/8″-16 threaded adapter; soft protective pouch
• Audio-Technica Case Style: R7

I’m also looking at AKG’s slightly more expensive Perception 220 model, which features a bass roll off as well as a -20db feature that would be beneficial for tightening sound in on the source, as well as maximizing gain (without creating distortion).

Google admits Buzz privacy fail

Feb 17, 2010 by Dan Taylor    4 Comments    Posted under: News, Social Media, Technology

Google officially admitted yesterday that it’s testing procedure surrounding their new offering Buzz was less than sufficient. Since it’s February 9th appearance, Google has had to do some serious retooling of the product, amid privacy concerns that sprang up almost immediately. Google says that they’re working “extremely hard” to fix the problem. “We’re very early in this space. This was one of our first big attempts,” Todd Jackson, Buzz product manager, told BBC News.

But how could one of the world’s largest online service providers overlook such a detail? It comes down to a simple lack of widespread testing. Buzz was only tested internally at Google, something the company normally does NOT do. Most often, when Google wants to bring a new product to market, they’ll tap into their unofficial “Google Trusted Tester” program, a network of family and friends of Google employees who have proven track records and are trusted with a high degree of confidentiality. These “Trusted Testers” are in exchange, given early access to a soon to be launched Google product. Unfortunately, Buzz did not receive the same treatment. “We’ve been testing Buzz internally at Google for a while. Of course, getting feedback from 20,000 Googlers isn’t quite the same as letting Gmail users play with Buzz in the wild,” comments Jackson.

To battle the negative buzz now surrounding Buzz, Google has set up a “war room” at their Mountain View, CA. headquarters that is strictly devoted to sorting out the Buzz issues.

“If it becomes clear that people don’t think we’ve done enough, we’ll make more changes,” said Jackson.

He acknowledged that many of the networks “tens of millions” of users were “rightfully upset” and that the firm was “very, very sorry”.

“We know we need to improve things.”

The Changes

Only three days after launch, Google team members called a meeting to make the quick fixes. With obvious holes open in the “who do they communicate with the most?” format, Google pulled the plug on the “friend” matching process, and is now only suggesting friends that the Buzz user may be interested in following back (how they determine this, like all things Google, remains a mystery). They’ve also announced that they’re implementing a feature that should make it easier for Buzz users to shut the service off entirely. Jackson says that “transparency and control” are “top priorities” and that users will “continue to see improvements”. And while it seems “transparency” is top priority on paper at Google, that isn’t always the case in the physical world.

Additional changes that Buzz users can look forward to include a better preferences menu that should allow users more control over what’s arriving in their inbox, as well as a more prominent “Mute” button that would switch the service off altogether. Further illustrating the flub at Google, Jackson adds that the idea has been discussed to make Buzz a service independent from Gmail.

“We think that integration with Gmail was absolutely the right way to go – we wanted to make Buzz easily accessible to people,” Jackson said.

“We also want to give people who don’t use Gmail the ability to use Buzz, so we’re exploring the idea of offering a separate destination site.”

Google reps expect the changes to Buzz to go live sometime this week.

It looks like Google has heard what the audience has said, and is making the appropriate changes. However, with the recent ‘what is this? I don’t get it.’ crash-n-burn surrounding Wave, coupled with the Buzz ‘wanna know who I talk to most?’ blowup, Google’s going to have to pull some magic out of the proverbial hat to get me excited about a new product launch.

Social Networking usage: South Africa

Feb 8, 2010 by Dan Taylor    4 Comments    Posted under: Social Media

When it comes to social media usage stats, African countries usually fly below the radar. However, Africa’s southern most nation, South Africa currently ranks number 29th on Facebook’s global user list, and demonstrates a number of similarities with much larger using countries.

The recent South African Friendship 2.0 survey found that the average South African Facebook user is in their 30’s, employed full time, and describe themselves as sociable and outgoing. The survey sampled South Africans aged 16 years or older.

With a massive 82 percent, Facebook is the dominant social networking platform in South Africa. Again, South Africa ranks number 29 on Facebook’s global usage statistics (by country), and has an estimated 2.6 million users per month that generate over 1.1 billion page views. Over half of Facebooking South Africans access the site via their mobile devices, 1.58 million. To put this in perspective, of those surveyed, only 18 percent responded that they have a MySpace profile.

From here, popularity numbers make a steep decline. While not specifically a social networking site, YouTube take the number 2 spot for South Africans, garnering a 32 percent response rate, South African mobile IM service MXit taking 29 percent, with Twitter landing a close 28 percent.

South African broadband services provider, and sponsor of the survey MWeb Connect’s general manager Carolyn Holgate comments, “Social networks have become the garden fence of the 21st century and are used for the same purposes as community meeting places. We’re at the end of the early adoption phase, which was dominated by young people, and social networking is now a mainstream activity enjoyed and used by all age groups, particularly those in their 30s.”

Additional findings from the Friendship 2.0 survey:

• 74% go online specifically to visit social networking sites
• 74% access Facebook at least once a day
• 25% of participants have met more friends online than they have in real life
• 24% have gone on a face-to-face date with someone they met online
• 36% have used a pseudonym on-line
• 36% have used the Internet to find out what a past partner is doing
• 21% have experienced a breach of their privacy on the Internet
• 16% use social platforms to promote their business
• 37% believe they spend too much time online

The Friendship 2.0 survey, sponsored by South Africa’s MWeb Connect can be found here.  Download the Friendship 2.0 survey results here (pdf).

[note: data sourced from MWeb Connect and Times Live.  MWeb places South Africa in position number 29, however, Nick Burcher's Facebook stats place South Africa in the number 23 slot.]

Social Media Statistics

Feb 2, 2010 by Dan Taylor    9 Comments    Posted under: Social Media

Opinions abound on Social Media. How it works, where it works best, how individuals and businesses can use it best, etc. Each of these opinions have their own intrinsic value, but sometimes, nothing beats cold hard numbers. As Joe Friday said, “All we want are the facts, ma’am,”- let’s take a look at some Social Media statistics.

• Facebook receives and shares more than 3.5 billion pieces of content (links, news stories, blog posts) on a weekly basis.
• Facebook pages have generated more than 5.3 billion fans.
• Approximately 700,000 local businesses have active Facebook fan pages.
• Approximately 70 percent of Facebook users arrive from outside the United States.
• Over 250 Facebook applications have over 1 million combined users each month.
• Since December 2008, more than 80,000 websites have integrated Facebook Connect. More than 60 million Facebook users actively use this service across any number of these 80,000+ sites that offer the feature.
• 55-65 year old females make up the fastest growing segment on Facebook
• Facebook paid $0 to have their entire site translated into Spanish via a crowdsourced Wiki. The site was translated in less than 4 weeks.

• LinkedIn has approximately 11 million active users in Europe.
• The largest growing geographic region for LinkedIn is India, with over 3 million total users.

• At the close of 2009, the average tweets per day was over 27.3 million, making the average tweets per hour 1.14 million.
• If the current tweet per time ratio were to remain constant, this would generate over 10 billion tweets per year.
• 80 percent of Twitter usage is on mobile devices.

• 70 percent of bloggers engage in corporate brand discussions.
• 54 percent of bloggers post content or tweet daily.
• 38 percent of bloggers regularly post brand or product reviews.

• Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 web activity.
• 12.5 percent of all couples married in the US last year met via social media.
• comScore data points to Russia as having the most engaged social media audience with participants spending 6.6 hours view 1,307 pages per month. The leading social networking site in Russia is NOT Facebook, but vKontakte.ru.
• YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine.

One-quarter of all search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands point to user-generated content.

Obviously, these are some serious numbers for serious business. Corporations spend millions of dollars in advertising annually, but yet, 25 percent of all search results on these corporations yield user generated content. Social Media is everywhere, making Brand image and the associated conversations surrounding this image vital to today’s business.   What does this say about the way YOU are advertising and managing YOUR online image?

If you’d like to learn more about how and what a Social Media Campaign can do for your company, please get in touch!

Baby Boomers flock to Social Networking in 2009

Feb 1, 2010 by Dan Taylor    3 Comments    Posted under: Social Media

There’s no arguing that 2009 was a banner year for online social networking platforms. Obviously, the big players in the field, Facebook and Twitter, saw a healthy increase in user activity. A new report from eMarketer might just point to the reason why: Baby Boomers went from online consumers of digital media to social busy-bees.

The report analyzes 4 unique market segments, Millenials (14-26), Gen X (27-43), Baby Boomers (44-63) and Mature (63-75). Not surprisingly, both Millenials and Gen X ‘ers (myself included) have maintained consistently high levels of social media profiles over the past three years. Conversely, Baby Boomers and Matures saw a massive growth rate in 2009.

Looking at the numbers, 31 percent of Baby Boomers and 14 percent of Matures actively attended to (i.e. status updates, photo uploads, etc.) their profiles in 2008, while one year later, these numbers have seen a significant jump: 46 percent and 36 percent, respectively, in 2009.

With data drawn from both comScore and Anderson Analytics, Facebook came out on top as the primary social network used by Baby Boomers. MySpace took second place, but appears to be more popular with younger users (ed: still?). Third and fourth place went to Twitter and LinkedIn.

“Creating and renewing personal connections online is the biggest draw for these boomers,” said Lisa E. Phillips, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Boomers and Social Media. “Boomers expect that technology will help them live longer and better lives and keep them connected to family, friends, co-workers and, eventually, healthcare providers.”

What is, and should be, of interest to marketers is how this growth has scaled, and what or how do we target this influx of a completely different demographic? Targeted advertising immediately comes to mind, but my guess is that there are a number of opportunities waiting to be mined with this new information. Social/Casual gaming has been a major driver of social network use in the ‘younger’ set – is there a way to replicate this same success for an ‘older’ demographic? A recent study by Q Interactive points to the fact that female gamers make up a sizable portion of all social games played, AND that they’re brand engaged, loyal consumers. My guess is that over the course of 2010 we’ll see a new breed of applications, games, tools, etc. appearing on social networks that will try to appeal to this new-comer demographic.