As Chief Analyst, Wikistrat, to talk about the recent deal/decision to put 2,500 US troops in Australia.
I have no landline, and NPR no fan of skype for whatever reason. We talk drive to WFYI downtown, but I don't have a car (son and wife own those rights on our two vehicles), so I couldn't manage studio effort (and frankly would have turned them down at this point).
Enter an iPhone app. NPR, discovering I have an iPhone, says download "Report IT Enterprise Edition." I need to be on wifi (got that at home office) and in airplane mode. You log onto these NPR servers and voila - the desired connection.
Bravo NPR!
Now if we can finish the taping before my son opens the garage door beneath me . . .
POSTSCRIPT: It happened, but culprit was wife with kids. Neat thing about taping with NPR, it's no problem. Just stop taping for a bit, and then I abandon office for my master bath (the sanctuary where I do most interviews).
The interview was okay-to-good with Guy Raz, who's always very nice. I always feel like I underperform while I'm doing it, but then later, when I hear it, I feel much better. You just never get past that initial instinct at self-criticism.
But then the truly interesting techno part: once done taping, I must disconnect via the app from NPR servers. Then I am asked to name the file my iPhone just made locally, recording only my half of the interview. The app does that so you avoid having yourself taped over the wire, so to speak, and instead you get this much higher quality capture that is then uploaded to their servers as a file for their editing.
Clever as hell, huh?
Score again for Steve Jobs and Apple. I get studio quality sound on NPR and I don't have to drive all the way into downtown Indy to do it.
As a result, I head out now to throw some football with son Jerry, who, after years of never understanding football, despite my taking him every year to Lambeau, is suddenly a total leatherhead thanks to Madden 2011. Now we watch games and he bitches about blown coverages, infrequent blitzs and why the Pack doesn't kick onsides more often!
We're going to the Bucs-Pack game on Sunday and then the Pack-Lions game in Detroit on Turkey Day.