MobileViews Blog

Jon Westfall and I were joined by frequent guest panelist Sven Johannsen for this podcast. They discuss:

• How to turn on Scribble (handwriting recognition) in OneNote for iPadOS — for those without superhuman vision
• Anker 535 Power Bank (PowerCore 20K) recall The Verge: Anker recalls 535 Power Bank amid fire concerns
• BGR: Apple won’t let you install iOS developer betas anymore unless you pay $99
• ShiftCam
  SnapGrip
• T-Mobile 5G home internet and OOMA home phone
• Starbucks changing reward program. More stars needed for rewards

Available via Google Music Podcasts and Apple iTunes.

MobileViews Podcast from Audible.com

Guest panelist Don Sorcinelli joins Jon Westfall and me for this podcast. We discussed:

• Microsoft and Google’s end-user AI announcements and wonder if Apple is going to AI “smartify” its long neglected Siri assistant

  The Verge Microsoft to demo its new ChatGPT-like AI in Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook soon

  Quartz Bard’s first public mistake cost Google $100 billion

• Jon’s good experience replacing his Apple AirTag CR2032 coin battery
• Revisiting our EDC (Every Day Carry) items (with a gadget focus)
• Don’s note-taking experience with Rocketbook
• Don’s experiences with the Microsoft Windows and Windows 365 (formerly Office) Insider Programs

Note: I post-processed the audio recording for this podcast using Adobe Podcast beta

Available via Google Music Podcasts and Apple iTunes.

MobileViews Podcast from Audible.com

In this Hawaii Techies Edition of the MobileViews Podcast, I’m joined by guest co-host Kiman Wong. We discuss our memories and involvement in various Internet connectivity efforts starting in the 1980s analog modem days through current day broadband services. Kiman and I had parallel paths over the past 30 years. We both started at GTE Telephone Operations but then diverged. I was involved in some aspects of the 1990s DSL rollout and then in the 2010s, as part of the State of Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs CATV/Broadband Division. Kiman spent the next several decades at Time Warner Oceanic Cable (now part of Charter Spectrum) including a period as the General Manager for its Roadrunner Cable Modem service.

We also touch on a few related topics.

Kiman noted that Amazon Prime Photos has unlimited still photo storage but a finite video limit. This Amazon Photos FAQ confirms that this limit is 5GB.
Amazon Photos has a 5GB video upload limit

I noted that the retired AT&T tran-pacific submarine cable (HAW-4) was transferred to the University of Hawaii which created the undersea Aloha Cabled Observatory.
U of Hawaii Cabled Observatory

What is there ?

There are five modules that are connected together on the seafloor. The Junction Box is connected to the HAW-4 cable and to the Observatory module. Together, they supply 1200 watts of power and 100 Megabits per second of Ethernet communications to sensor systems on these two modules, and to the other three modules. The other modules are the Camera tripod, the AMM bottom node, and the TAAM mooring. Sensors provide live video of the ocean bottom around the ACO, sound from local and distant sources, currents, pressure, temperature, and salinity.

You can find a collection of audio and video clips from the undersea observatory here:
ACO Audio/Video Library

Available via Google Music Podcasts and Apple iTunes.

MobileViews Podcast from Audible.com

In MobileViews mini-podcast 33, I threw MobileViews Podcast 440 into Adobe Podcast beta to learn more about the currently free service’s noise reduction and speech enhancement. The result was underwhelming. However, I conceded this may be because (a) the audio was already processed by Microsoft Team’s noise reduction feature and (b) an already reasonable quality audio is not the best test case for the service.

So, I walked outside and recorded a minute of myself speaking with a good breeze blowing, many birds chirping, and an aircraft flying in the distance. After a brief preamble by me, you can hear the audio recorded outdoors without any post-processing followed by the same minute of audio processed by Adobe Podcast beta. The difference is striking. You can see in the screenshot here a few seconds of both tracks before and after Adobe Podcast processing. In the screenshot example, you can see where a bird chirp is nearly completely removed by Adobe Podcast.

My current thinking, though, is that if I start recording podcasts outdoors, I want to keep most of the ambient sound except for the wind over the microphone. A mic wind sheild should handle that without needing additional post-processing. More tests to come…

Available via Google Music Podcasts and Apple iTunes.

MobileViews Podcast from Audible.com

MobileViews Podcast 444

In this podcast, Jon Westfall and I discuss:

• MobileViews mini-podcast 33: Testing Adobe Podcast beta – noise reduction & speech enhancement A/B comparison
• Is this Microsoft’s ChatGPT-powered Bing?
• MacWhisper is a macOS app that uses OpenAI to transcribe audio files into text
  Whisper Transcription
• Valentines day is coming up, maybe a good time to talk “Spouse Tech”?

Available via Google Music Podcasts and Apple iTunes.

MobileViews Podcast from Audible.com

In this mini-podcast (4 minutes 45 seconds long), I give my initial impressions of Adobe Podcast beta which claims to reduce noise and enhance speech for podcasts.

I fed it a podcast recorded a few weeks ago (MobileViews Podcast 440). For this podcast, I used a low cost ($30) VIM VIP condenser mic. My podcast co-host, Jon Westfall, used a mic built into a headphone. So, we did not use any high end recording mics.

For this mini-podcast intro, I’m using an affordable $99 Blue Yeti condenser mic.

While Adobe Podcast appears to volume level multiple speakers, the noise reductions and speech enhancements seems to be doing clipping volume levels and then filtering out high frequencies. The result, to my ears, is a muddier sound than the original.

However, this may be because my podcast co-host Jon Westfall and I recorded this podcast using Microsoft Teams which performs real-time noise reduction. So, Adobe Podcast’s attempt to filter noise resulted in the muddier sound.

The lesson here is perform a test using any tool before

You can hear a short snippet of the original podcast recording and then the same snippet after it was processed by Adobe Podcast beta

Available via Google Music Podcasts and Apple iTunes.

MobileViews Podcast from Audible.com