I just finished a second interview in the offices of Warren Lieberfarb, the father of the DVD. He had some fascinating and provocative things to say about the culture of the big media entertainment conglomerates, and about the future of the hard-copy DVD vs. online on-demand media. Also had a terific interview with Benjamin Feingold, the president of Sony’s Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment, and with Victor LaCour, creative director of USC’s Integrated Media Systems Center, who showed me some blow-you-away possibilities about the future of entertainment over the Internet.
All in all, it’s been a great trip, though I’ll be glad to return home tonight to see Mary and Bobby. I actually drove to Santa Barbara on Wednesday night when it was the Center of the Media Universe, with helicopters hovering above Santa Barbara Airport in anticipation of Michael Jackson surrendering. Which, it goes without saying, is the Big Story of our time. I missed connecting with Doc Searls by a few hours, given that he returned from Apachecon on Thursday afternoon. Also had hoped to meet Kevin Roderick of LA Observed, but returned from Rancho Cucamonga too late to hook up. (A special tip of the hat to the officer who, for one reason or another, directed me into the heart of South-Central Los Angeles, in the exact opposite direction of my hotel in Bel-Air.) Hope to spend more time down here in the Southland on my next trip. Now, after a few minutes surfing and posting via a free wifi connection here at the wondrous Coral Tree Cafe in Brentwood, it’s on to the part of the book-writing process I loathe the most: transcribing notes. (I’d pay a small fortune for software that would reliably convert speech into text; the technology’s not yet close.)
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
Check out this transcriber for minidisc recordinging, as refered a while back by Doc Searls: http://doc.weblogs.com/2003/09/08. Software link here: http://java.cs.vt.edu/Public/View/CHCISoftware/transcriber.txt. You do have to add some java thing, but I got it working on one machine and it’s good. mary
J.D., add me to the list of those who want some kind of reliable transcription software. While the software certainly isn’t there yet, some voice transcription software isn’t bad — after a lengthy period of training the software.
In my ideal future the software people will create some kind of standardized representational system of our voice patterns, something we can exchange with others. I see it as akin to a PGP key: run the recording through the software “key” and you get a decent transcript.
The best software I know for computer-aiding transcription is Transcription Buddy (http://www.transcriptionbuddy.com/). $40 and worth every penny. It doesn’t do recognition, though.