Blast from the Past
Over the past week Seattleites have enjoyed a rarity, real spring weather, complete with sunshine and temperatures over 70 degrees. Without the layer of clouds and rain that usually hover over the Seattle skyline, our office has had an unobstructed view of the Space Needle. Inspired, one of the team members at ProMotion Arts went on a mission and found a very fitting video. A search on YouTube led us to a 1962 TV commercial promoting the Seattle World’s Fair. With the city celebrating the 50th anniversary of this event, we wanted to share this blast from the past. Enjoy!
Google Announces Upgrade
Google is making a change. Google Docs will now be Google Drive. Yesterday, in the inbox of many Google App users was a brief introduction to the newest addition to the Google Apps suite. It will be available initially on an opt-in basis. A date announced in the coming weeks. After this opt-in period, Google Drive will become the default program.
This video posted by Google walks through some of the changes that users will experience. What do you think of the newest addition to Google Apps? Let us know in the comment section below.
Realtime Court Reporting
Taking Realtime Awareness and Innovation Nationwide (TRAIN), is the newest program launched by the NCRA. The goal of the program is to help increase the number of court reporter who are able to provide realtime. This nationwide program will not only offer support to reporters, but increase the awareness of realtime court reporting among clients. Through education and demonstrations, clients are becoming more aware of this technology’s many uses and the value of that this service provides.
Premier Realtime is led by one the country’s top-ten realtime reporters, and we are constantly seeking ways to utilize technology to benefit our clients. Please visit our website for additional details or feel free to contact us directly to learn more about realtime court reporting and the latest technological advances available to the legal and court reporting professions.
For more information about TRAIN visit NCRA’s website for additional details.
Naples Reporting Transcript Filled with Errors
Stenographic Court Reporters listen. They listen carefully. They listen to every word. They listen so that the transcript they produce will be an honest record of what was said. They care about getting the record right and their focus is on the words.
It only makes sense then that Digital Audio Techs, who produce a digital audio recording, are focusing their attention on the recording. They want to make sure its as good a recording as they can make. They aren’t focusing on the words. In fact, the words are meaningless to them. They care about things like audio levels and distortion. It’s the recording–not the record–that has their attention.
This became abundantly clear to me; after a conversation I had with Tony Wright of Naples Reporting showed up on his blog post. Mr. Wright is a Digital Audio Tech. He doesn’t focus on the words. As I read the post I was shocked at the number of errors there were in his transcript of our conversation.
Mr. Wright was angry because I made fun of digital recording in an Ignite session I did at NCRA TechCon. In fact, he said,
“I feel like my entire profession was called out in a public forum. You don’t make a joke like that and post it on YouTube and public blogs if you don’t intend to take the heat for it. Like Steve said, I post sensationalist articles because it helps drive traffic.”
Mr. Wright is not a reporter, he doesn’t care about getting the words right. He doesn’t care about the truth. He cares about driving traffic. The thing about Mr. Wright is, I don’t think he even cares much about digital audio recording. He doesn’t use the state-of-the-art digital recording systems used by other digital audio techs. His system doesn’t integrate the operator’s notes with the audio recordings. It doesn’t let you search the audio file to a particular spot in the record. And it doesn’t continue recording if he’s asked to play the audio when a read back is requested.
But then, read backs aren’t important to Mr. Wright. After all, they’re just words.
According to Mr. Wright, “All I have to defend myself against that is my word, which is as good as gold.” But not FTR Gold. And we already know how Mr. Wright treats words.
I’d ask Mr. Wright to set the record straight but I don’t think he’s listening. After all, that’s not his skill, he’s not a reporter. And Mr. Wright, just in case you are paying attention, I’m reserving signature and I’m gonna need a lot of correction pages.
Truth is generally the best vindication against slander
Abraham Lincoln
National Medal of Honor Day
Medal of Honor day was this last Sunday, March 25, 2012. In honor of COL (ret.) Bruce Crandall, father of our founder, we are reposting the video.
Visit the official Army.mil website.
Rotary Club of Seattle and ProMotion Arts
A founding principle of ProMotion Holdings is to give back to the community by supporting non profit organizations through pro bono projects. We believe that by working together for the common good we can make a difference and change the world.
This month we produced a pro bono video for the Rotary Club of Seattle through our ProMotion Arts division. Since it’s founding in 1909 the Rotary Club of Seattle has been dedicated to making a difference in the community. With over 650 members, they are currently the largest Rotary Club internationally. Members include some of the region’s most prominent business, professional, and civic leaders. (Rotary Club of Seattle Website)
The video (above) was created as a way to educate viewers about Rotary Club of Seattle and provide a glimpse at the different community organizations they have been involved with.
About Rotary
Rotary is a global humanitarian organization with more than 1.2 million members in 34,000 Rotary clubs in over 200 countries and geographical areas. Rotary members are men and women who are business, professional and community leaders with a shared commitment to make the world a better place through humanitarian service. Rotary’s top priority is the global eradication of polio.
For photos, video or more information please visit: www.rotary.org/mediacenter
About ProMotion Holdings, LLC
ProMotion Holdings, LLC is a Northwest company that offers a full range of new media and technology solutions to corporate, non-profit and legal industry clients. It operates three business segments with a single goal of exceeding client expectations, every time. Whether it’s full-spectrum new media through ProMotion Arts, reporting and legal video through Premier Realtime, or trials offered by ProMotion Law. Additional information can be found at www.promotionholdings.com
iPad Apps for Attorneys
Today, Apple has made the iPad 3 available in it’s retail locations. With lines wrapped around the block, Apple fan’s just can’t wait to get their hands on the new device.
At ProMotion Holdings we combine technology with talent to provide unique creative solutions. This includes technology solutions for our legal industry clients, most recently integrating tablet technology. iPads and other tablets are increasingly being recognized as one of the most versatile and valuable tools in the legal professional’s kit.
Two apps that we believe are ‘must haves’ are listed below, and check back soon as we continue to post ‘iPad Apps for Attorneys.”
Dropbox- Sharing files is simple and can be done with only a few clicks
• Shared folders allow several people to collaborate on a set of files.
Career Day
We recently received an usual phone call, an elementary school student wanting to interview our Managing Producer for his school career day project. We were delighted to help. Pictured is Aaron Andersen talking about video production.
What a fun afternoon meeting!
More Caption Options
This week YouTube announced that they are again increasing their ability to automatically caption videos. The goal is to continue to reach more viewers with hearing disabilities and language differences.
Since YouTube add started to support captions in 2006 over 1.6 million captioned videos have been uploaded to YouTube. This is greatly improving viewer experience and broadening the audiences that is able to utilize YouTube’s services of sharing media.
Some of their new services include:
- Automatic captions and transcript synchronization in Japanese, Korean, and English.
- Video owners can add captions and subtitles in 155 supported languages and dialects.
- Captioned videos can now be searched for by adding cc” to any search.
- Common caption formats used by broadcasters, such as .SCC, .CAP, EBU-STL, and others are now supported.
At ProMotion Holdings, our vision is that accessibility is a fundamental right. We are pleased that YouTube is continuously working to increase accessibility for the benefit of their user’sexperience. For more information on ProMotion Holdings accessibility solutions visit Accessibility.
Happy Friday!
Our Managing Producer, Aaron is helping us kick off our Friday morning Pajama Day with French Toast. From all of us at ProMotion, Happy Friday!
