The Family CTO Podcast

Although being well lit meant something very different back in college, nowadays it speaks to our ongoing need to actually be seen while attending video conference calls. And to our ability to create compelling, stylized, artistic photos and videos. With both of those in mind, we explore the science of lighting as we chat with a revolutionary company called Lume Cube that's been producing highly portable lighting solutions for several years. This is a great episode to hear if you want to:

• Understand the terms and common misconceptions behind lighting
• Improve your image on video conference calls
• Take your photography to the next level
• Differentiate the pros and cons of ring lights, box lights and those fancy umbrellas
• Figure out which lights best suit your particular use case(s)

In addition, we discuss a whole slew of new and cool gadgets to help you find balance, stay productive and keep your sanity as you get work done at home:

Logitech C920s webcam
(By the way, Logitech's site offers a cool configurator tool that asks you questions about you and your setup to help determine which desktop accessories fit best for you.)

Uncaged Ergonomics WorkEZ Executive

Humanscale Quickstand sit/stand converter

Accell's power accessories

HP S430c ultrawide monitor

Vissles and SideTrak portable monitors

Pixel Eyewear clear lens blue light blockers

Anker and Beyerdynamic portable conference speakers

Jabra Evolve2 65 headset

GuruNanda Tower XL 2.0 Essential Oil Diffuser

If you're still up in the middle of the night when this podcast is posting, you may want to hear about the great sleep technology it discusses! Our guest Tim Antos, Founder and CEO of Kokoon Technology, chats with us all the way from the U.K. about how necessity forced him into creating headphones that help folks fall asleep. And how his company's second product, called NightBuds, is about to wrap up a successful crowdfunding campaign. Utilizing Artificial Intelligence, rest assured that these second generation earphones go way beyond simple sleep tracking devices that don't really solve the problem keeping you up at night.

Non-affiliate links to other products mentioned in this episode:

Oura

Muse

Pulsewear

UrgoNight

ChiliPad and weighted blanket

Sleep Number 360

Zeeq

QuietOn

 

My previous articles on alarm clocks that:

brew coffee

you step on

do all sorts of other stuff (originally on Discovery News, the slideshow images and links got stripped out)

This episode wraps up the week's podcasting theme...in style! Guest Anthony Mattana of Hooke Audio shares his journey in producing his company's second product--a clever, disruptive microphone--which you can preorder on Indiegogo at a discount. And we review a mindblowingly intuitive piece of software that makes transcription and audio editing accessible to the average user. Really, anyone who listens to podcasts or is a fan of what's technically possible in the world of audio will enjoy this show.

Veteran voiceover artist, radio host, producer and prolific podcaster Jordan Rich joins us to discuss the philosophy, content and equipment that goes into creating a podcast actually worth listening to. In the gadgets segment, I review VocoPro's Streamer Live and Shure's MV88+ Video Kit, two handy kits worth looking into if you're considering doing audio and/or video creation. Although, even if you don't plan on being a rockstar podcaster or up-and-coming YouTuber, you may want to listen anyway, because this episode was recorded on three different microphones. You can clearly hear the difference between Blue Microphones' Yeti X; VocoPro's condenser mic--for which I probably should've used a screen, so all my B, T and P sounds didn't pop across the mic as offensive plosives; and Shure's impressive little MV88, which did very well in my otherwise echo-laden kitchen.

Other products and services Jordan mentioned in our conversation:
AKG professional headphones for monitoring your recordings
RODECaster Pro mixer for all your podcast production needs
GMP Music production libraries for honestly owning the rights to the music you use

A new kind of gadget site is launching! Instead of simply hyping up the latest, shiniest tech, The Family CTO takes a practical, solution-first approach towards the consumer electronics you may/should be considering for your digital household. In this initial episode, founder Scott Tharler explains more about what that means, desribes the five technology categories the show will cover and gives a sneak preview of upcoming episodes.