IOWA CITY — An Iowa City man has been arrested in Texas in connection with the April 20 shooting death of Kejuan Winters.

Reginald Little, 44, was taken into custody Friday by the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office, according to Iowa City police.

Little faces a charge of first-degree murder and is awaiting extradition back to Iowa City.

The shooting happened in an apartment at 1960 Broadway St. around 9:55 a.m. April 20. Police said gunfire could be heard during the call to police.

Officers found Winters, 21, of Iowa City, with multiple gunshot wounds. He died in the apartment.

Police said Durojaiya A. Rosa, 22, of Iowa City, and a woman were at the apartment and gave police a description of the shooter and said they heard him fighting with Winters before hearing gunshots.

Surveillance camera footage and cellphone records indicated Little was in the area before the shots were fired, police said.

Investigators also discovered Little and Rosa had been in communication about entering the apartment, and Rosa told police he and Little had planned to rob Winters.

Rosa also faces one count of first-degree murder.

The shooting death spurred three additional arrests.

Winters’ father, Tyris D. Winters, 41, of Peoria, Ill., and Tony M. Watkins, 39, of Iowa City, were arrested on attempted murder charges after confronting another person later that day in Coralville about the homicide, and, police say, shooting that person in the head and foot.

Police also arrested Jordan R. Hogan, 21, of Iowa City, for obstructing prosecution, saying he helped the suspect, Little, avoid arrest.

First-degree murder is a Class A felony punishable by an automatic life sentence.

Comments: (319) 339-3155; lee.hermiston@thegazette.com

CEDAR RAPIDS — Adam Todd, adjusting like many Iowans to a social-distanced lifestyle since the novel coronavirus hit, celebrated a milestone 21st birthday with a drive-by parade Friday evening.

Todd, best known for being ABC World News Tonight Person of the Week in 2016, stood outside the Cedar Rapids house where he lives with his parents, Dale Todd, a Cedar Rapids City Council member, and Sara Todd, watching the cars drive by wishing him a happy birthday.

“My son has a bigger following than I would ever hope to have,” Dale Todd said. “Everybody knows he loves a parade. He loves the trucks and cars and people that are a part of that.

“There’s no better example that ‘it takes a village.’ He has had a team for 21 years.”

Todd, who will be graduating from Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, has Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy.

The parade was arranged by his mother, Sara, who invited friends and teachers to drive by between 5 and 6 p.m. to wave, shout happy birthday, hold up a sign, sing a song or do a dance, all from a safe distance — “whatever they’re able to,” she said.

Sara said Adam would have finished his last semester of education had the coronavirus not cut the school year short.

“That makes it extra special,” Sara said. “He hasn’t really gotten to say goodbye to his friends and teachers.

“We have appreciated his teachers so much. They have been a part of his team and really a part of our family.”

Adam, a member of the Washington High School junior varsity track team, captured national attention in 2016 when, during a cross-country race at Noelridge Park, he became distracted and veered from the course. Evan Hansen, a runner from Iowa City High, loped after him and guided him back to the track.

They ran the last mile together, the last two to cross the finish line.

That show of compassion and sportsmanship is what led to ABC News picking both of them as Persons of the Week.

In addition to Friday’s parade, Adam celebrated his birthday by taking his service dog, Turbo, on a run and trying to spot trains. He and his mom saw two.

“It was a good day,” Sara said.

Adam’s birthday cake, made by a family friend, was decorated with a train and a golden retriever that looks like Turbo.

“We were trying to think of a creative way we can help Adam have fun and celebrate him,” Sara said. “He deserves it.”

Comments: (319) 368-8664; grace.king@thegazette.com

Some Eastern Iowans are ready to go camping.

With Gov. Kim Reynolds allowing campgrounds across the state to open Friday, some people wasted little time in heading outdoors.

“They’re already starting to fill up,” said Ryan Schlader of Linn County Conservation. “By about 7 this morning, we had a dozen at Squaw Creek Park. People were coming in bright and early to camp. We’re not surprised.”

Schlader said Linn County Conservation tried to have the campgrounds open at the county’s Squaw Creek, Morgan Creek and Pinicon Ridge parks at 5 a.m. Friday. He expected all of them would be busy.

“I think people were ready to go,” he said.

Lake Macbride State Park in Johnson County didn’t see quite as much of a rush for campsites, park manager Ron Puettmann reported Friday morning, saying he’d had six walk-ins for the park’s 42 campsites.

Camping this weekend will be done on a first-come, first-served basis. Sites won’t be available for reservations until next week, though online reservations can be made now, Puettmann said.

“I’m quite sure people were waiting anxiously to get on,” he said.

While Reynolds’ campground announcement came Wednesday, Schlader and Puettmann said they had no issues having the campgrounds ready for Friday.

Schlader said county staff have been in touch with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and other county conservation boards to discuss protocols for reopening to ensure a safe experience for campers and employers.

“We anticipated at some point the order would be lifted,” Schlader said. “We were anticipating maybe May 15. The campgrounds were in good shape and ready to go.”

For now, camping comes with some limitations:

• Campers can camp only in a self-contained unit with a functioning restroom, such as a recreational vehicle.

• Shower houses with restrooms will remain closed for the time being.

• Campsites are limited to six people unless they are from the same household.

• No visitors are allowed at the campsites.

Puettmann said staffers and a DNR officer will be on hand to make sure guidelines are followed, but he didn’t anticipate enforcement would be an issue.

“For the most part, we’re going to allow people to police themselves,” he said.

It’s hard to gauge demand, Schlader said.

The weather isn’t yet deal for camping, and some people might not be ready to camp, given the continuing coronavirus.

“There is a lot of uncertainty,” he said. “Do people feel like they need to get out and enjoy a camping experience within their own campsite, or do people still feel under the weather and think it’s not a good idea for my family to go right now? ... We just want this to be an option for people.”

Comments: (319) 339-3155; lee.hermiston@thegazette.com

DES MOINES — More than 20 days after Iowa signed a $26 million contract with a Utah company to expand testing in the state, the machines the firm supplied to run the samples still have not passed muster.

A time frame for completing the validation process for the Test Iowa lab machines is unknown, as the process can vary by machine, University of Iowa officials said Friday.

The validation process is undertaken to determine if the machines are processing tests accurately. To this point, the lab has processed the Test Iowa results using machines the State Hygienic Lab already had, officials told The Gazette.

Running side-by-side testing is part of the validation process. The lab then compares whether the machines yield the same results when the sample is run, officials said Friday. The side-by-side testing means the Test Iowa samples are being run at least twice to compare results.

The state does not break out how many of the 331,186 Iowans who by Friday have completed the coronavirus assessment at TestIowa.com have actually been tested. Test Iowa was initiated last month to ramp up testing of essential workers and Iowans showing COVID-19 symptoms. The state’s fourth drive-though location where people with appointments can be tested opened Thursday at the Kirkwood Continuing Education Training Center in Cedar Rapids.

On Friday, Iowa posted a fourth straight day of double-digit deaths from coronavirus, with the latest 12 deaths reported by the state Department of Public Health bringing the statewide toll to 243 since COVID-19 was first confirmed March 8 in Iowa.

State health officials reported another 398 Iowans tested positive for the respiratory ailment, bringing that count to 11,457 of the 70,261 residents who have been tested — a positive rate of more than 16 percent.

One in 44 Iowans has been tested for COVID-19, with 58,804 posting negative results, according to state data. A total of 4,685 people have recovered from the disease.

During a Thursday media briefing, Gov. Kim Reynolds told reporters a backlog of test results that occurred due to validation of Test Iowa equipment had been “caught up,” but some Iowans who participated in drive-through sites set up around the state indicated they still were awaiting results.

Reynolds spokesman Pat Garrett confirmed Thursday that “a very small percentage” of coronavirus test samples collected under the Test Iowa program could not be processed because they were “potentially damaged,” resulting in incomplete results.

There were 407 Iowans who were hospitalized (with 34 admitted in the past 24 hours) for coronavirus-related illnesses and symptoms with 164 being treated in intensive care units and 109 requiring ventilators to assist their breathing.

Health officials said the 12 deaths reported Friday were: three in Woodbury County, two in Linn County and one each in Black Hawk, Dallas, Dubuque, Jasper, Louisa, Muscatine and Scott counties. No other information about the COVID-19 victims was available from state data.

According to officials, 51 percent of the Iowans who have died from coronavirus have been male — the same percentage that tested positive.

Iowans over the age of 80 represent 46 percent of the COVID-19 victims, followed by 41 percent between 61 and 80.

Of those who have tested positive, state data indicates about 42 percent are age 18 to 40; 37 percent are 41 to 60; 14 percent are 61 to 80 and 5 percent are 81 or older.

Counties with the highest number of positive test results are Polk (2,150), Woodbury (1,532), Black Hawk (1,463) and Linn (813).

Earlier this week, state officials revamped the data available to the public at coronavirus.iowa.gov, with the new format no longer listing the age range of Iowans who died from coronavirus and providing information using a different timeline than before.

The governor did not hold a daily media briefing Friday due to scheduling conflicts created by Vice President Mike Pence’s trip to Iowa. Garrett said Reynolds would resume her COVID-19 briefings next week.

John McGlothlen and Zack Kucharski of The Gazette contributed to this report.

A man suspected of a workplace shooting last month at a vinyl window manufacturer in southwest Cedar Rapids turned himself into authorities Friday.

Jamal Devonte Edwards, 26, has been wanted since two men were shot at Associated Materials, 3801 Beverly Rd. SW, the morning of April 9.

Cedar Rapids police had indicated Edwards was wanted in particular for the shooting of Mark Robertson, 36.

Edwards faces charges of attempted murder, intimidation with a dangerous weapon, going armed with intent and willful injury.

The U.S. Marshals Service helped locate Edwards, distributing a photo of Edwards along the Gulf Coast. He was located in Mobile, Ala. when his father brought him to the Mobile police department so he could turn himself in, according to a Cedar Rapids police news release.

The April 9 shooting was reported at 5:03 a.m. after two employees were shot at Associated Materials. Both suffered non-life-threatening injuries, police said.

Police said at the time it appeared the shooter knew the two men.

Shawn Hardy, senior vice president of integrated products for Associated Materials, confirmed Edwards worked at the Cedar Rapids business, which gave him access to the building, but said he had been employed through a temp agency.

DES MOINES — In traveling to Iowa to call attention to the burdens COVID-19 brought to religious services and the food supply, Vice President Mike Pence unwittingly called attention to another issue: whether the White House itself is safe from the disease.

So far this week, two White House aides — President Donald Trump’s valet on Thursday, and Pence’s press secretary on Friday — have tested positive for the virus.

On Friday morning, Pence’s departure to Des Moines was delayed an hour as Air Force Two idled on a tarmac near Washington. Though Pence’s press secretary was not on the plane, White House physicians through contact tracing identified six other aides who had been near her who were aboard, and pulled them from the flight. The White House later said the six had tested negative.

Trump, who identified the Pence aide as press secretary Katie Miller, said he was “not worried” about the virus in the White House.

Nonetheless, officials said they were stepping up safety protocols and were considering a mandatory mask policy for those in close contact with Trump and Pence.

The vice president and 10 members of his staff are given rapid coronavirus tests daily, and the president is also tested regularly.

Miller, who is married to Trump adviser Stephen Miller, had been in recent contact with Pence but not with the president. Pence is leader of the White House coronavirus task force and Katie Miller has handled the group’s communications.

After landing in Des Moines, Pence spoke to a group of faith leaders about the importance of resuming religious services, saying cancellations in the name of slowing the spread of the virus have “been a burden” for congregants.

His visit coincided with the state announcing 12 more deaths from the virus, a total of 243 in less than two months.

Pence spoke with the religious leaders and Republican officials during a brief visit. He also spoke later with agricultural and food company executives.

“It’s been a source of heartache for people across the country,” Pence told about a dozen people at the Church of the Way Presbyterian church in Urbandale.

Pence told the group that continued efforts to hold services online and in other ways “made incalculable difference in our nation seeing our way through these troubled times.”

Iowa is among many states where restrictions on in-person services are starting to ease. GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds, who joined both of the state’s Republican senators at the event, has instituted new rules that allow services to resume with restrictions.

At Friday’s event, some religious leaders expressed hesitation at resuming large gatherings, while others said they would begin holding services soon,

“We are pretty much in a position of uniformly believing that it’s too early to return to personal worship. It’s inadvisable at the moment particularly with rising case counts in communities where we are across the state,” said David Kaufman, rabbi of Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Des Moines.

The Rev. Terry Amann, of Church of the Way, said his church will resume services May 17 with chairs arranged so families can sit together but avoid the temptation to shake hands or offer hugs. He said hand sanitizer will be available.

A new poll by The University of Chicago Divinity School and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows just 9 percent of Americans think in-person services should be allowed without restrictions, while 42 percent think they should be allowed with restrictions and 48 percent think they shouldn’t be allowed at all.

Pence later met with agriculture and food industry leaders. Iowa tops the nation in egg production and pork processing and is a top grower of corn and soybeans.

Meatpacking is among the state’s biggest employers, and companies have been working to restart operations after closing them because hundreds of their workers became infected.

As Pence touted the Trump administration’s announcement of the reopening of 14 meatpacking plants including two of the worst hit by coronavirus infections in Perry and Waterloo, the union representing workers called for safer work conditions.

“Iowa’s meatpacking workers are not sacrificial lambs. They have been working tirelessly during the coronavirus pandemic to ensure families here and across the country have access to the food they need,” said the United Food and Commercial Workers Union in a statement.

The Associated Press and the McClatchy Washington Bureau contributed to this report.

Iowa State University graduates who celebrated commencement Friday saw lots of caps and gowns, red-and-gold confetti and arenas packed with friends and family.

But none of those images were from this year — which now is defined by the novel coronavirus that has forced education online and put an end to large gatherings like graduation ceremonies.

Appearing in front of a red ISU screen Friday, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Dean Daniel J. Robison addressed graduates like he usually would at commencement — but this time in a recorded message acknowledging the unprecedented circumstances keeping them apart.

“This year, because of the COVID crisis, we are unfortunately not all together for this happy occasion,” he said, pushing forward in a motivational tone by quoting famed ISU alumnus George Washington Carver.

“When you can do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world,” Robison said, citing Carver.

About 12,000 graduates across Iowa’s public universities this month are doing exactly that — capping their collegiate careers with never-before-attempted online-only commencement ceremonies, with each campus and their respective colleges attempting a variety of virtual celebration methods.

ISU and the University of Iowa are attempting some form of socially-distanced livestreamed convocation with countdown clocks and virtual confetti. All three campuses including the University of Northern Iowa have posted online recorded messages, videos and slides acknowledging individual graduates.

Some slides include photos, thank-yous, quotes and student plans for after graduation.

UNI, which didn’t try any form of a live virtual ceremony, instead created a graduation website that went live Thursday. That site hosts an array of recorded video messages — including one from UNI President Mark Nook who, standing alone behind a podium on campus clad in traditional academic regalia, recognized his campus’ 1,500-some spring graduates and their unusual challenges.

“We know the loss you feel in not being able to be on campus to celebrate this time with your friends, faculty and staff,” Nook said. “To walk around campus in your robe and to take those pictures with friends and family members … The loss is felt by many of us as well.”

He reminded those listening that this spring’s UNI graduates — like those at the UI and ISU — can participate in an upcoming in-person commencement ceremony.

And although students were allowed to return caps and gowns they ordered for their canceled walks across the stage, some kept them as keepsakes. The campuses offered other tokens of remembrance as well, including “CYlebration” gift packages ISU sent to graduates in April stuffed with a souvenir tassel, diploma cover, and streamer tube — to make up for the confetti that won’t be falling on graduation caps from the Hilton Coliseum rafters.

In addition to the recorded messages from 17 UI leaders — including President Bruce Harreld — the campus solicited parent messages, which will be included in the live virtual ceremonies.

To date, about 3,100 of the more than 5,400 UI graduates have RSVP’d to participate in the ceremony, which spokeswoman Anne Bassett said is a required affirmation from the students to have their names read.

“Students do not have to sign up to watch,” she said. “So there’s no way at this time to predict how many will do so.”

Despite the historic nature of the first online-only commencement ceremonies — forever bonding distanced graduates through the shared experience — UI graduate Omar Khodor, 22, said it’s a club he would have liked to avoid.

“I’d definitely prefer not to be part of that group,” the environmental science major said, sharing disappointment over the education, experiences and celebrations he lost to the pandemic.

“A lot of students like myself, we’re upset, but we’re not really allowed to be upset given the circumstances,” Khodor said. “You have this sense that something is unfair, that something has been taken from you. But you can’t be mad about it at all.”

Life is too short to dwell on what could have been or what should have been — which sort of captures graduate Dawn Hales’ motivation to get an ISU degree.

The 63-year-old Ames grandmother calls herself the “oldest BSN Iowa State grad ever.”

“It’s the truth, because we’re only the second cohort to graduate,” Hales said. “I’ll probably be the oldest for a while.”

ISU began offering a Bachelor of Science in nursing degree in fall 2018 for registered nurses hoping to advance their careers — like Hales, who spent years in nursing before becoming director of nursing at Accura Healthcare, a skilled nursing and rehabilitation center in Ames.

In addition to wanting more education, Hales said, she felt like the “odd man out” in her red-and-gold family — with her husband, three sons and their wives all earning ISU degrees. She earned an associate degree and became a registered nurse with community college training.

“I was director of nursing at different facilities, but I did not have a four-year degree,” she said. “I always wanted to get my BSN.”

So in January 2019, she started full-time toward her three-semester pursuit of a BSN — even as she continued working. And her education took a relevant and important turn when COVID-19 arrived.

“My capstone project was infection control,” she said, noting her focus later sharpened to “infection control and crisis management” — perfect timing to fight the coronavirus, which has hit long-term care facilities particularly hard.

“We were hyper vigilant,” Hales said of her facility, which has yet to report a case of COVID-19. “I think we were probably one of the first facilities that pretty much shut down and started assessing our staff when they would come in.”

Hales said she was eager to walk in her first university graduation and was planning antics for it with her 10-year-old granddaughter.

“We were trying to think, should I dance across the stage?” Hales said. “Or would I grab a walker and act like an old lady going across the stage?

“She was trying to teach me to do this ‘dab’ move,” Hales said. “I said, ‘Honey, I cannot figure that out.’”

In the end, Hales watched the celebration online instead. She did, however, get a personalized license plate that reads, “RN2BSN.”

Coming from a family-run dairy farm in Jerome, Idaho, EllieMae Millenkamp, 22, is the first in her family to graduate college.

Although music is her passion, Millenkamp long expected to study at an agriculture school — but Colorado State was her original choice.

Then, while visiting family in Iowa during a cousin’s visit to ISU, she fell in love with the Ames campus and recalibrated her academic path.

While at ISU, the musical Millenkamp began writing more songs and performing more online, which led to in-person shows and a local band.

And then, during her junior year, a talent scout reached out to invite her to participate in an audition for NBC’s “The Voice.” That went well and Millenkamp, in the summer before her senior year, moved to Los Angeles and made it onto the show.

She achieved second-round status before being bumped, but the experience offered her lifelong friendships and connections and invigorated her musical pursuits — which have been slowed by COVID-19. Shows have been canceled in now idled bars.

Millenkamp went back to Idaho to be with her family, like thousands of her peers also did with their families, when the ISU campus shut down.

After graduation she plans on returning and working the family farm again until her musical career has the chance to regain momentum.

But she recently returned to Ames for finals. And she and some friends, also in town, plan to celebrate graduation, even if not with an official cap and gown.

“We’ll probably have a bonfire and all hang out,” she said. “We’ll celebrate in our own way.”

Most college seniors nearing graduation get to spend their academic hours focusing on their major and interests, wrapping their four or sometimes five years with passion projects and capstone experiences.

That was Omar Khodor’s plan — with lab-based DNA sequencing on tap, along with a geology trip and policy proposal he planned to present to the Iowa Legislature. But all that got canceled — and even some requirements were waived since COVID-19 made them impossible.

“There were still a lot of a lot of things to wrap up,” he said. “A lot of things I was looking forward to.”

He’s ending the year with just three classes to finish and “absolutely” would have preferred to have a fuller plate.

But Khodor’s academic career isn’t over. He’s planning to attend law school in the fall at the University of Pennsylvania, where he’ll pursue environmental law. But this spring has diminished his enthusiasm, with the question lingering of whether in-person courses will return to campus soon.

If they don’t, he’s still leaning toward enrolling — in part — because of all the work that goes into applying and getting accepted, which he’s already done.

“But online classes are definitely less fulfilling, less motivating. You feel like you learn less,” he said. “So it will kind of be a tossup. There’ll be some trade-offs involved in what I would gain versus what I would be paying for such an expensive endeavor like law school.”

As for missing a traditional college commencement, Khodor said he will, even though he plans to participate in the virtual alternative.

“Before it got canceled, I didn’t think that I was looking forward to it as much as I actually was,” he said.

Not so much for the pomp and circumstance, but for the closure, which none of the seniors got this year. When the universities announced no one would return to campus this semester, students were away on spring break.

They had already experienced their last in-person class, their last after-class drink, their last cram session, their last study group, their last lecture, their last Iowa Memorial Union lunch — and they didn’t even know it.

“So many of us, we won’t have closure, and that can kind of be a difficult thing,” he said.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com

For a list of commencement times and virtual celebrations, visit:

The University of Iowa’s commencement site at https://commencement.uiowa.edu/

Iowa State University’s commencement site at https://virtual.graduation.iastate.edu/

University of Northern Iowa’s commencement site at https://vgrad.z19.web.core.windows.net/uni/index.html

11 a.m. Iowa sees 214 more positive tests for coronavirus

The Iowa Department of Public Health on Saturday reported nine more deaths from COVID-19, for a total of 252 since March 8.

An additional 214 people tested positive for the virus, bringing the state’s total to 11,671.

A total of 71,476 Iowans have been tested for COVID-19, the department reported.

With Saturday’s new figures from the Department of Public Health, these are the top 10 counties in terms of total cases:

• Polk — 2194

• Woodbury — 1554

• Black Hawk — 1477

• Linn — 819

• Marshall — 702

• Dallas — 660

• Johnson — 549

• Muscatine — 471

• Tama — 327

• Louisa — 282.

CEDAR RAPIDS — Like other members of the United States House, the “new normal” for Rep. Dave Loebsack involves a lot of time on the phone and in video conferences.

Although the Senate returned to Washington this past week, the House may not return to the Capitol until mid-May. As representatives work from their districts, many face the same challenges as their constituents who are working from home via various phone and video meeting platforms.

“They’re clunky, difficult, frustrating at times,” the 2nd District Democrat said after a 90-minute Energy and Commerce Committee teleconference meeting, “but we can get a lot of things done that way without necessarily going into Washington. It’s not the same by any means ... but I think we can get a lot of our work done that we have to get done even though were not there.”

If there’s an upside to the telecommuting downside, it’s that the poor connections, dropped calls and sometimes spotty internet signals highlight an issue Loebsack has been working on — Congress and the country need better broadband connectivity. A member of the Communications and Technology subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over telecommunications issues, Loebsack also serves as a co-chair of the Rural Broadband Caucus.

In one meeting, Loebsack said, a fellow committee member was unable to ask questions because the Wi-Fi signal at his home outside of a southwestern city was so poor.

“So I think we’re going to make some progress” convincing congressional colleagues of the need to connect all Americans to reliable and affordable broadband internet, Loebsack said.

“In times like these, when families are at home, millions of K-12 students do not have access to the high-speed internet needed to take classes and complete their assignments online,” he said in an announcement with House Majority Whip James Clyburn and others of a House Democratic plan to connect all Americans to high-speed internet.

When the transmission of COVID-19 slows, the need for high-speed internet connectivity will remain as well as the need for Congress to provide incentives for internet service providers to close the “broadband gap” by extending service to the las mile in rural areas and eliminate what he called “internet deserts” that exist in cities.

The plan calls for an investment of $80 billion over five years for internet infrastructure and another $5 billion over five years for low-interest financing of projects.

With more reliable connectivity, Congress could consider remote voting at times like this when members don’t want to gather in Washington. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been cool to the idea, but Loebsack thinks members are “more open” to voting remotely.

“But we have to make sure that it’s completely secure, that the system can’t get hacked, and that votes are recorded properly,” he said.

Remote voting may be a may be a generational issue, “but I think this is doable.”

“I’m not making that prediction, but I would not be shocked if we move in that direction, especially the longer this (isolation) goes on,” Loebsack said.

Comments: (319) 398-8375; james.lynch@thegazette.com

For the second consecutive day the number of Iowa patients hospitalized with COVID-19 has dropped.

The Iowa Department of Public Health reported Saturday that 402 people were hospitalized with the coronavirus, down five from the previous day, and down 15 from its current peak of 417 on Thursday.

Saturday’s totals mark the first time back-to-back COVID-19 hospitalization decreases since figures had begun being tracked.

Nine deaths in Iowa were recorded Saturday, according to the Department of Public Health, bringing the total to 252. But it snapped a streak of four consecutive days in which 10 or more deaths were recorded in Iowa.

Four of the deaths were in Polk County, bringing Polk’s total to 58 — matching Linn County’s as most in the state.

Saturday was the first time since Monday that no deaths in Linn County were reported.

Two deaths were in Jasper County, one each in Johnson, Muscatine and Tama counties.

Four of those who died were 81 years of age and older, three were 61 to 80 and two were aged 41 to 60.

Saturday’s report also showed there now have been a total of 29 outbreaks recorded in long-term care facilities statewide.

Including Saturday’s latest figures from the Department of Public Health — with 214 positive cases, for a total of 11,671 — these are the top 10 Iowa counties in terms of total cases:

• Polk — 2,194

• Woodbury — 1,554

• Black Hawk — 1,477

• Linn — 819

• Marshall — 702

• Dallas — 660

• Johnson — 549

• Muscatine — 471

• Tama — 327

• Louisa — 282.

More than 71,000 Iowans — one of 43 — have been tested, and 16.3 percent of those tested have been positive cases, according to the state.

Forty-six percent of Iowa deaths have been those age 81 and older, while 87 percent are 61 and older. Fifty-one percent have been male.

Beginning this past Friday, Gov. Kim Reynolds permitted more businesses to partially reopen.

“I’m proud to say that Iowans do what they always do and they responded,” she said at her Thursday news conference, her most recent. “So since we’ve kind of really accomplished what we were trying to do, ... now we have shifted our focus from mitigation and resources to managing and containing virus activity as we begin to open Iowa back up.”

Reynolds met with President Donald Trump on Wednesday at the White House to discuss the pandemic and mitigation strategies in the state.

Vice President Mike Pence visited Iowa Friday, when he met with faith leaders and agricultural and food company executives.

Comments: (319) 368-8857; jeff.linder@thegazette.com

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I first released the Members plugin in September 2009. I had not long moved back home to Alabama from Atlanta, … Continue reading The Members plugin has a new home →

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This is from my favourite shoot/photoset of all time. It was spontaneous, serendipitous, and simply beautiful. ☂️
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The edit: After applying my preset (I used Clean for this one), I bumped up the exposure and desaturated the yellows/oranges a bit. As a finishing touch, I used a graduated filter to brighten the top a bit and a radial filter on @sllychn to brighten and sharpen the focal point. That’s it! ✨ (at Toronto, Ontario)

Merry Xmas everyone! It’s giveaway time! ????????
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Thank you to all those who participated in my preset giveaway this week! The support makes all the hard work and extra effort worth it!
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Without further ado, the randomly drawn winners of my custom Lightroom presets are @l9lee @rchellau @bokeh.jay! Congrats and check your DMs soon for details! ????
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You still have until tomorrow to grab my presets (which this shot was edited with) for 50% off! They’ll be going back to regular price after so don’t miss out! ???? (at Toronto, Ontario)

I’ve gone subway hopping for photos in every city I’ve been to except the one I live in. ???? (at Toronto, Ontario)

I took this shot about a year ago when I had a very different editing style. A ton of faded blacks and, believe it or not, a subtle green tint (unknowingly inherited from the preset I was using at the time). Re-editing it now, I’m happy with the way my style has evolved, though I can already sense that I’m on the brink of evolving it again. And I’m okay with that. ???? (at London, United Kingdom)

This might as well be a Herschel ad. ???? (at London, United Kingdom)

A lot to look forward to in 2017. How did 2016 treat you: ???? or ????? (at San Francisco, California)

Four days from now I’ll be boarding a one way flight to San Francisco to take on the next evolution of my role at @shopify. Leaving the city that I’ve called home my entire life and the people who have defined everything I am was one of the most uncomfortable decisions I’ve ever had to make. But this wouldn’t be the first time I’ve chased discomfort in my career.
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I wrote about my ongoing pursuit for discomfort this morning in hopes of inspiring others to do the things that scare and challenge them this year. You can find the link in my profile.
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Happy 2017! ????
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????: @jonasll (at San Francisco, California)

Quick survey: on average, what time is it when you check Instagram for the first time on any given day? (Be sure to include your timezone!)
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PS: Thank you for all the incredible support on yesterday’s announcement. ❤️ (at Toronto, Ontario)

Yesterday, Cameron Koczon shared a link to the dingbat font, Pictos, by the talented, Drew Wilson. Cameron predicted that dingbats will soon be everywhere. Symbol fonts, yes, I thought. Dingbats? No, thanks. Jason Santa Maria replied:

@FictiveCameron I hope not, dingbat fonts sort of spit in the face of accessibility and semantics at the moment. We need better options.

Jason rightly pointed out the accessibility and semantic problems with dingbats. By mapping icons to letters or numbers in the character map, they are represented on the page by that icon. That’s what Pictos does. For example, by typing an ‘a’ on your keyboard, and setting Pictos as the font-face for that letter, the Pictos anchor icon is displayed.

Other folks suggested SVG and JS might be better, and other more novel workarounds to hide content from assistive technology like screen readers. All interesting, but either not workable in my view, or just a bit awkward.

Falling down with CSS text-replacement

A CSS solution in an article from Pictos creator, Drew Wilson, relies on the fact that most of his icons are mapped to a character that forms part of the common name for that symbol. The article uses the delete icon as an example which is mapped to ‘d’. Using :before and :after pseudo-elements, Drew suggests you can kind-of wrangle the markup into something sort-of semantic. However, it starts to fall down fast. For example, a check mark (tick) is mapped to ‘3’. There’s nothing semantic about that. Clever replacement techniques just hide the evidence. It’s a hack. There’s nothing wrong with a hack here and there (as box model veterans well know) but the ends have to justify the means. The end of this story is not good as a VoiceOver test by Scott at Filament Group shows. In fairness to Drew Wilson, though, he goes on to say if in doubt, do it the old way, using his font to create a background image and deploy with a negative text-indent.

I agreed with Jason, and mentioned a half-formed idea:

@jasonsantamaria that’s exactly what I was thinking. Proper unicode mapping if possible, perhaps?

The conversation continued, and thanks to Jason, helped me refine the idea into this post.

Jon Hicks flagged a common problem for some Windows users where certain Unicode characters are displayed as ‘missing character’ glyphs depending on what character it is. I think most of the problems with dingbats or missing Unicode characters can be solved with web fonts and Unicode.

Rising with Unicode and web fonts

I’d love to be able to use custom icons via optimised web fonts. I want to do so accessibly and semantically, and have optimised font files. This is how it could be done:

1. Map the icons in the font to the existing Unicode code points for those symbols wherever possible.

   Unicode code points already exist for many common symbols. Fonts could be tiny, fast, stand-alone symbol fonts. Existing typefaces could also be extended to contain symbols that match the style of individual widths, variants, slopes, and weights. Imagine a set of Clarendon or Gotham symbols for a moment. Wouldn’t that be a joy to behold?

   There may be a possibility that private code points could be used if a code-point does not exist for a symbol we need. Type designers, iconographers, and foundries might agree a common set of extended symbols. Alternatively, they could be proposed for inclusion in Unicode.

2. Include the font with font-face.

   This assumes ubiquitous support (as any use of dingbats does) — we’re very nearly there. WOFF is coming to Safari and with a bit more campaigning we may even see WOFF on iPad soon.

3. In HTML, reference the Unicode code points in UTF-8 using numeric character references.

   Unicode characters have corresponding numerical references. Named entities may not be rendered by XML parsers. Sean Coates reminded me that in many Cocoa apps in OS X the character map is accessible via a simple CMD+ALT+t shortcut. Ralf Herrmann mentioned that unicode characters ‘…have “speaking” descriptions (like Leftwards Arrow) and fall back nicely to system fonts.’

Limitations

1. Accessibility: Limited Unicode / entity support in assistive devices.

   My friend and colleague, Jon Gibbins’s old tests in JAWS 7 show some of the inconsistencies. It seems some characters are read out, some ignored completely, and some read as a question mark. Not great, but perhaps Jon will post more about this in the future.

   Elizabeth Pyatt at Penn State university did some dingbat tests in screen readers. For real Unicode symbols, there are pronunciation files that increase the character repertoire of screen readers, like this file for phonetic characters. Symbols would benefit from one.

2. Web fonts: font-face not supported.

   If font-face is not supported on certain devices like mobile phones, falling back to system fonts is problematic. Unicode symbols may not be present in any system fonts. If they are, for many designers, they will almost certainly be stylistically suboptimal. It is possible to detect font-face using the Paul Irish technique. Perhaps there could be a way to swap Unicode for images if font-face is not present.

Now, next, and a caveat

I can’t recommend using dingbats like Pictos, but the icons sure are useful as images. Beautifully crafted icon sets as carefully crafted fonts could be very useful for rapidly creating image icons for different resolution devices like the iPhone 4, and iPad.

Perhaps we could try and formulate a standard set of commonly used icons using the Unicode symbols range as a starting point. I’ve struggled to find a better visual list of the existing symbols than this Unicode symbol chart from Johannes Knabe.

Icons in fonts as Unicode symbols needs further testing in assistive devices and using font-face.

Last, but not least, I feel a bit cheeky making these suggestions. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Combine it with a bit of imagination, and it can be lethal. I have a limited knowledge about how fonts are created, and about Unicode. The real work would be done by others with deeper knowledge than I. I’d be fascinated to hear from Unicode, accessibility, or font experts to see if this is possible. I hope so. It feels to me like a much more elegant and sustainable solution for scalable icons than dingbat fonts.

For more on Unicode, read this long, but excellent, article recommended by my colleague, Andrei, the architect of Unicode and internationalization support in PHP 6: The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets.

Stories are everywhere. When they don’t exist we make up the narrative — we join the dots. We make cognitive leaps and fill in the bits of a story that are implied or missing. The same goes for websites. We make quick judgements based on a glimpse. Then we delve deeper. The narrative unfolds, or we create one as we browse.

Mark Bernstein penned Beyond Usability and Design: The Narrative Web for A List Apart in 2001. He wrote, ‘the reader’s journey through our site is a narrative experience’. I agreed wholeheartedly: Websites are narrative spaces where stories can be enacted, or emerge.

Henry Jenkins, Director of Comparative Media Studies, and Professor of Literature at MIT, wrote Game Design as Narrative Architecture. He suggested we think of game designers, ‘less as storytellers than as narrative architects’. I agree, and I think web designers are narrative architects, too. (Along with all the multitude of other roles we assume.) Much of what Henry Jenkins wrote applies to modern web design. In particular, he describes two kinds of narratives in game design that are relevant to us:

Enacted narratives are those where:

[…] the story itself may be structured around the character’s movement through space and the features of the environment may retard or accelerate that plot trajectory.

Sites like Amazon, New Adventures, or your portfolio are enacted narrative spaces: Shops or service brochures that want the audience to move through the site towards a specific set of actions like buying something or initiating contact.

Emergent narratives are those where:

[…] spaces are designed to be rich with narrative potential, enabling the story-constructing activity of players.

Sites like Flickr, Twitter, or Dribbble are emergent narrative spaces: Web applications that encourage their audience use the tools at their disposal to tell their own story. The audience defines how they want to use the narrative space, often with surprising results.

We often build both kinds of narrative spaces. Right now, my friends and I at Analog are working on Mapalong, a new maps-based app that’s just launched into private beta. At its heart Mapalong is about telling our stories. It’s one big map with a set of tools to view the world, add places, share them, and see the places others share. The aim is to help people tell their stories. We want to use three ideas to help you do that: Space (recording places, and annotating them), data (importing stuff we create elsewhere), and time (plotting our journeys, and recording all the places, people, and memories along the way). We know that people will find novel uses for the tools in Mapalong. In fact, we want them to because it will help us refine and build better tools. We work in an agile way because that’s the only way to design an emerging narrative space. Without realising it we’ve become architects of a narrative space, and you probably are, too.

Many projects like shops or brochure sites have fixed costs and objectives. They want to guide the audience to a specific set of actions. The site needs to be an enacted narrative space. Ideally, designers would observe behaviour and iterate. Failing that, a healthy dose of empathy can serve. Every site seeks to teach, educate, or inform. So, a bit of knowledge about people’s learning styles can be useful. I once did a course in one to one and small group training with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. It introduced me to Peter Honey and Alan Mumford’s model which describes four different learning styles that are useful for us to know. I paraphrase:

1. Activists like learning as they go; getting stuck in and working it out. They enjoy the here and now, and are happy to be dominated by immediate experiences. They are open-minded, not sceptical, and this tends to make them enthusiastic about anything new.
2. Reflectors like being guided with time to take it all in and perhaps return later. They like to stand back to ponder experiences and observe them from many different perspectives. They collect data, both first hand and from others, and prefer to think about it thoroughly before coming to a conclusion.
3. Theorists to understand and make logical sense of things before they leap in. They think problems through in a vertical, step-by-step logical way. They assimilate disparate facts into coherent theories.
4. Pragmatists like practical applications of ideas, experiments, and results. They like trying out ideas, theories and techniques to see if they work in practice. They positively search out new ideas and take the first opportunity to experiment with applications.

Usually people share two or more of these qualities. The weight of each can vary depending on the context. So how might learning styles manifest themselves in web browsing behaviour?

• Activists like to explore, learn as they go, and wander the site working it out. They need good in-context navigation to keep exploring. For example, signposts to related information are optimal for activists. They can just keep going, and going, and exploring until sated.
• Reflectors are patient and thoughtful. They like to ponder, read, reflect, then decide. Guided tours to orientate them in emergent sites can be a great help. Saving shopping baskets for later, and remembering sessions in enacted sites can also help them.
• Theorists want logic. Documentation. An understanding of what the site is, and what they might get from it. Clear, detailed information helps a theorist, whatever the space they’re in.
• Pragmatists get stuck in like activists, but evaluate quickly, and test their assumptions. They are quick, and can be helped by uncluttered concise information, and contextual, logical tools.

An understanding of interactive narrative types and a bit of knowledge about learning styles can be useful concepts for us to bear in mind. I also think they warrant inclusion as part of an articulate designer’s language of web design. If Henry Jenkins is right about games designers, I think he could also be right about web designers: we are narrative architects, designing spaces where stories are told.

—∞—

In 2003, my wife Lowri and I went to a christening party. We were friends of the hosts but we knew almost no-one else there. Sitting next to me was a thirty-something woman and her husband, both dressed in the corporate ‘smart casual’ uniform: Jersey, knitwear, and ready-faded jeans for her, formal shoes and tucked-in formal shirt for him (plus the jeans of course; that’s the casual bit). Both appeared polite, neutral, and neat in every respect.

I smiled and said hello, and asked how they knew our hosts. The conversation stalled pretty quickly the way all conversations will when only one participant is engaged. I persevered, asked about their children who they mentioned, trying to be a good friend to our hosts by being friendly to other guests. It must have prompted her to reciprocate. With reluctant interest she asked the default question: ‘What do you do?’ I paused, uncertain for a second. ‘I’m a web designer’ I managed after a bit of nervous confusion at what exactly it was that I did. Her face managed to drop even as she smiled condescendingly. ‘Oh. White backgrounds!’ she replied with a mixture of scorn and delight. I paused. ‘Much of the time’, I nodded with an attempt at a self-deprecating smile, trying to maintain the camaraderie of the occasion. ‘What do you do?’ I asked, curious to see where her dismissal was coming from. ‘I’m the creative director for … agency’ she said smugly, overbearingly confident in the knowledge that she had a trump card, and had played it. The conversation was over.

I’d like to say her reaction didn’t matter to me, but it did. It stung to be regarded so disdainfully by someone who I would naturally have considered a colleague. I thought to try and explain. To mention how I started in print, too. To find out why she had such little respect for web design, but that was me wanting to be understood. I already knew why. Anything I said would sound defensive. She may have been rude, but at least she was honest.

I am a web designer. I neither concentrate on the party venue, food, music, guest list, or entertainment, but on it all. On the feeling people enter with and walk away remembering. That’s my job. It’s probably yours too.

I’m self-actualised, without the stamp of approval from any guild, curriculum authority, or academic institution. I’m web taught. Colleague taught. Empirically taught. Tempered by over fifteen years of failed experiments on late nights with misbehaving browsers. I learnt how to create venues because none existed. I learnt what music to play for the people I wanted at the event, and how to keep them entertained when they arrived. I empathised, failed, re-empathised, and did it again. I make sites that work. That’s my certificate. That’s my validation.

I try, just like you, to imbue my practice with an abiding sense of responsibility for the universality of the Web as Tim Berners-Lee described it. After all, it’s that very universality that’s allowed our profession and the Web to thrive. From the founding of the W3C in 1994, to Mosaic shipping with <img> tag support in 1993, to the Web Standards Project in 1998, and the CSS Zen Garden in 2003, those who care have been instrumental in shaping the Web. Web designers included. In more recent times I look to the web type revolution, driven and curated by both web designers, developers, and the typography community. Again, we’re teaching ourselves. The venues are open to all, and getting more amazing by the day.

Apart from the sites we’ve built, all the best peripheral resources that support our work are made by us. We’ve contributed vast amounts of code to our collective toolkit. We’ve created inspirational conferences like Brooklyn Beta, New Adventures, Web Directions, Build, An Event Apart, dConstruct, and Webstock. As a group, we’ve produced, written-for, and supported forward-thinking magazines like A List Apart, 8 Faces, Smashing Mag, and The Manual. We’ve written the books that distill our knowledge either independently or with publishers from our own community like Five Simple Steps and A Book Apart. We’ve created services and tools like jQuery, Fontdeck, Typekit, Hashgrid, Teuxdeux, and Firebug. That’s just a sample. There’s so many I haven’t mentioned. We did these things. What an extraordinary industry.

I know I flushed with anger and embarrassment that day at the christening party. Afterwards, I started to look a little deeper into what I do. I started to ask what exactly it means to be a web designer. I started to realise how extraordinary our community is. How extraordinary this profession is that we’ve created. How good the work is that we do. How delightful it is when it does work; for audiences, clients, and us. How fantastic it is that I help build the Web. Long may that feeling last. May it never go away. There’s so much still to learn, create, and make. This is my our party. Hi, I’m Jon; my friends and I are making Mapalong, and I’m a web designer.

The new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union will be implemented on May 25th, 2018. We used this opportunity to rework many of our internal data processing structures, removed unnecessary trackers and apply this strict and transparent regulation also to all our customers worldwide.

Image from pixapay.com.

At Auphonic we store as few personal information as possible about your usage and production data.
Here are a few human-readable excerpts from our privacy policy about which information we collect, how we process it, how long and where we store it - for more details please see our full Privacy Policy.

Information that we collect

• Your email address when you create an account.
• Your files, content, configuration parameters and other information, including your photos, audio or video files, production settings, metadata and emails.
• Your tokens or authentication information if you choose to connect to any External services.
• Your subscription plan, credits purchases and production billing history associated with your account, where applicable.
• Your interactions with us, whether by email, on our blog or on our social media platforms.

We do not process any special categories of data (also commonly referred to as “sensitive personal data”).

How we use and process your Data

• To authenticate you when you log on to your account.
• To run your Productions, such that Auphonic can create new media files from your Content according to your instructions.
• To improve our audio processing algorithms. For this purpose, you agree that your Content may be viewed and/or listened to by an Auphonic employee or any person contracted by Auphonic to work on our audio processing algorithms.
• To connect your Auphonic account to an External service according to your instructions.
• To develop, improve and optimize the contents, screen layouts and features of our Services.
• To follow up on any question and request for assistance or information.

When using our Service, you fully retain any rights that you have with regards to your Content, including copyright.

How long we store your Information

Your Productions and any associated audio or video files will be permanently deleted from our servers including all its metadata and possible data from external services after 21 days (7 days for video productions).
We will, however, keep billing metadata associated with your Productions in an internal database (how many hours of audio you processed).

Also, we might store selected audio and/or video files (or excerpts thereof) from your Content in an internal storage space for the purpose of improving our audio processing algorithms.

Other information like Presets, connected External services, Account settings etc. will be stored until you delete them or when your account is deleted.

Where we store your Data

All data that we collect from you is stored on secure servers in the European Economic Area (in Germany).

More Information and Contact

For more information please read our full Privacy Policy.

Please do not hesitate to contact us regarding any matter relating to our privacy policy and GDPR compliance!

In a previous blogpost we talked about the Opus codec, which offers very low bitrates. Another codec seeking to achieve even lower bitrates is Codec 2.

Codec 2 is designed for use with speech only, and although the bitrates are impressive the results aren’t as clear as Opus, as you can hear in the following audio examples. However, there is some interesting work being done with Codec 2 in combination with neural network (WaveNets) that is yielding great results.

Layers of a WaveNet neural network.

Background

Codec 2 is an open source codec designed for speech, and aims for compression rates between 700bps and 3200bps (bits per seconds).

The man behind it, David Rowe, is an electronic engineer currently living in South Australia. He started the project in September 2009, with the main aim of improving low-cost radio communication for people living in remote areas of the world. With this in mind, he set out to develop a codec that would significantly reduce file sizes and the bandwidth required when streaming.

Another motivation according to David, was to be free from patented technologies used by closed source codes which he believes “require expensive and awkward licenses and are stifling innovation”. His belief is that this work can be done without requiring the use of patent protected codecs, so all his work is open source.

Potential Applications

Rowe’s perceived applications include VOIP trunking, voice over low bandwidth HF/VHF digital radio, (especially for amateur radio, so as to avoid issues with the use of proprietary codecs), and developing world and remote area communications, including military, police and emergency services.

Why we’re interested here at Auphonic is for its potential for longer podcasts, presentations and audiobooks, allowing for low storage and minimizing the effect of bad network connections.

How it Works

To achieve the lower rates sought, speech has to be reduced into the smallest possible information/data, and this means that the amount of redundant information that is transmitted has to be minimized.

To do this, Codec 2 uses harmonic sinusoidal speech coding. This splits the speech into 10 - 30ms segments, called frames. Each frame is then analysed for the fundamental frequency (or pitch), and the number of harmonics that fit into a 4Khz bandwidth. Further, for each of the harmonics within the 4khz range, the amplitude and phase are recorded.

This information is then coded, and the decoder reconstructs the audio based on this data.

Codec 2 Block diagrams - Encoder (left) And decoder (right)
Figure from Rowtel.

Audio Examples and Comparison with other Codecs

Whilst it all sounds great in theory, how does the reality match up? Let’s have a listen.

Here is a short wav audio file:

Applying Codec 2 (without the WaveNet decoder) at the different rates available, 3200bps, 2400bps,1600bps,1200bps and 700bps, we get:

These examples show significantly reduced file sizes.
Putting that information more meaningfully in terms of how much storage you would need for an hour of audio:

• At 3200bps, 1 hour of audio requires only 1.37MB (this would fit on one old 3½-inch floppy disk!)
• A rate of 2400bps equates to 1.03MB/h
• A rate of 1600bps equates to 0.68MB/h (Or approximately 2 hours of audio on one floppy disk!)
• A rate of 1200bps equates to 0.51MB/h
• A rate of 700bps equates to 0.3MB/h

So great compression, but the result is clearly not natural sounding.

As a comparison here is the same audio as a 8kb/s MP3:

The file size is significantly larger than Codec 2 and the quality is arguably still not useable. You can clearly hear what is sometimes called sizzle - the weird metallic sounds you hear on low quality MP3s.

There is a final codec which is worth comparing, one that that seems to capture the two ideals of usable quality at low bitrates that we want: Opus.
Because of it's convincing low-bitrate performance, Auphonic already offers Opus encoding all the way down to 6 kbps, the lowest bitrate that Opus supports.

Comparing Opus at this 6 kbps rate to the 8kbps MP3 shows a significant improvement - although slightly muffled, it still sounds natural:

Returning to Codec 2, and purely as s a bit of fun, here are some samples of Codec 2 on music! (Note that Codec 2 is not designed for music, it was only ever conceived for use on speech).

I personally couldn’t listen to the MP3 at this rate, so let’s listen to what Codec 2 does!

Codec 2 at different bitrates:

As you can hear, it is not suitable for this application at all!

Codec 2 and WaveNet

As we have heard, despite the impressive bitrates achieved, the end result is not very natural sounding.
However, where it starts to get more interesting is the work done by W. Bastiaan Kleijn from Cornell University Library. He has been using with Codec 2 running at 2400bps on the coding side, but replaced the Codec 2 decoder with a WaveNet deep learning generative model (for more informationsee the paper Wavenet based low rate speech coding).

Here are some samples from the authors:

Comparing to Codec 2 you can hear a significant increase in quality, and if you compare to the original, there is not a significant decrease in quality.

Conclusion

Whilst the (original) Codec 2 project represents very interesting work, it is limited, and the end result is not suited for podcasting. Also as we heard in the audio examples, it can only be used for voice recordings, and not music.

However, Codec 2 in combination with a WaveNet decoder improves the quality a lot and the low bitrate (2400bps) would be extremely interesting for podcasts and audiobooks distribution as well: one hour of audio would require only 1.03MB of storage!

Auphonic will add support for Codec 2 output files when the WaveNet decoder is in a usable form. For now we have just added support for Codec 2 input files.

Back in late 2016, we introduced Speech Recognition at Auphonic. This allows our users to create transcripts of their recordings, and more usefully, this means podcasts become searchable.
Now we integrated two more speech recognition engines: Amazon Transcribe and Speechmatics. Whilst integrating these services, we also took the opportunity to develop a complete new Transcription Editor:

Screenshot of our Transcript Editor with word confidence highlighting and the edit bar.
Try out the Transcript Editor Examples yourself!

The new Auphonic Transcript Editor is included directly in our HTML transcript output file, displays word confidence values to instantly see which sections should be checked manually, supports direct audio playback, HTML/PDF/WebVTT export and allows you to share the editor with someone else for further editing.

The new services, Amazon Transcribe and Speechmatics, offer transcription quality improvements compared to our other integrated speech recognition services.
They also return word confidence values, timestamps and some punctuation, which is exported to our output files.

The Auphonic Transcript Editor

With the integration of the two new services offering improved recognition quality and word timestamps alongside confidence scores, we realized that we could leverage these improvements to give our users easy-to-use transcription editing.
Therefore we developed a new, open source transcript editor, which is embedded directly in our HTML output file and has been designed to make checking and editing transcripts as easy as possible.

• Edit the transcription directly in the HTML document.
• Show/hide word confidence, to instantly see which sections should be checked manually (if you use Amazon Transcribe or Speechmatics as speech recognition engine).
• Listen to audio playback of specific words directly in the HTML editor.
• Share the transcript editor with others: as the editor is embedded directly in the HTML file (no external dependencies), you can just send the HTML file to some else to manually check the automatically generated transcription.
• Export the edited transcript to HTML, PDF or WebVTT.
• Completely useable on all mobile devices and desktop browsers.

Examples: Try Out the Transcript Editor

Here are two examples of the new transcript editor, taken from our speech recognition audio examples page:

1. Singletrack Transcript Editor Example

Singletrack speech recognition example from the first 10 minutes of Common Sense 309 by Dan Carlin. Speechmatics was used as speech recognition engine without any keywords or further manual editing.

2. Multitrack Transcript Editor Example

A multitrack automatic speech recognition transcript example from the first 20 minutes of TV Eye on Marvel - Luke Cage S1E1. Amazon Transcribe was used as speech recognition engine without any further manual editing.
As this is a multitrack production, the transcript includes exact speaker names as well (try to edit them!).

Transcript Editing

By clicking the Edit Transcript button, a dashed box appears around the text. This indicates that the text is now freely editable on this page. Your changes can be saved by using one of the export options (see below).
If you make a mistake whilst editing, you can simply use the undo/redo function of the browser to undo or redo your changes.

When working with multitrack productions, another helpful feature is the ability to change all speaker names at once throughout the whole transcript just by editing one speaker. Simply click on an instance of a speaker title and change it to the appropriate name, this name will then appear throughout the whole transcript.

Word Confidence Highlighting

Word confidence values are shown visually in the transcript editor, highlighted in shades of red (see screenshot above). The shade of red is dependent on the actual word confidence value: The darker the red, the lower the confidence value. This means you can instantly see which sections you should check/re-work manually to increase the accuracy.

Once you have edited the highlighted text, it will be set to white again, so it’s easy to see which sections still require editing.
Use the button Add/Remove Highlighting to disable/enable word confidence highlighting.

NOTE: Word confidence values are only available in Amazon Transcribe or Speechmatics, not if you use our other integrated speech recognition services!

Audio Playback

The button Activate/Stop Play-on-click allows you to hear the audio playback of the section you click on (by clicking directly on the word in the transcript editor).
This is helpful in allowing you to check the accuracy of certain words by being able to listen to them directly whilst editing, without having to go back and try to find that section within your audio file.

If you use an External Service in your production to export the resulting audio file, we will automatically use the exported file in the transcript editor.
Otherwise we will use the output file generated by Auphonic. Please note that this file is password protected for the current Auphonic user and will be deleted in 21 days.

If no audio file is available in the transcript editor, or cannot be played because of the password protection, you will see the button Add Audio File to add a new audio file for playback.

Export Formats, Save/Share Transcript Editor

Save/Share Editor

The Save Editor button stores the whole transcript editor with all its current changes into a new HTML file. Use this button to save your changes for further editing or if you want to share your transcript with someone else for manual corrections (as the editor is embedded directly in the HTML file without any external dependencies).

Export HTML / Export PDF / Export WebVTT

Use one of these buttons to export the edited transcript to HTML (for WordPress, Word, etc.), to PDF (via the browser print function) or to WebVTT (so that the edited transcript can be used as subtitles or imported in web audio players of the Podlove Publisher or Podigee).
Every export format is rendered directly in the browser, no server needed.

Amazon Transcribe

The first of the two new services, Amazon Transcribe, offers accurate transcriptions in English and Spanish at low costs, including keywords, word confidence, timestamps, and punctuation.

UPDATE 2019:
Amazon Transcribe offers more languages now - please see Amazon Transcribe Features!

Pricing

The free tier offers 60 minutes of free usage a month for 12 months. After that, it is billed monthly at a rate of $0.0004 per second ($1.44/h).
More information is available at Amazon Transcribe Pricing.

Custom Vocabulary (Keywords) Support

Custom Vocabulary (called Keywords in Auphonic) gives you the ability to expand and customize the speech recognition vocabulary, specific to your case (i.e. product names, domain-specific terminology, or names of individuals).
The same feature is also available in the Google Cloud Speech API.

Timestamps, Word Confidence, and Punctuation

Amazon Transcribe returns a timestamp and confidence value for each word so that you can easily locate the audio in the original recording by searching for the text.
It also adds some punctuation, which is combined with our own punctuation and formatting automatically.

The high-quality (especially in combination with keywords) and low costs of Amazon Transcribe make it attractive, despite only currently supporting two languages.
However, the processing time of Amazon Transcribe is much slower compared to all our other integrated services!

Try it yourself:
Connect your Auphonic account with Amazon Transcribe at our External Services Page.

Speechmatics

Speechmatics offers accurate transcriptions in many languages including word confidence values, timestamps, and punctuation.

Many Languages

Speechmatics’ clear advantage is the sheer number of languages it supports (all major European and some Asiatic languages).
It also has a Global English feature, which supports different English accents during transcription.

Timestamps, Word Confidence, and Punctuation

Like Amazon, Speechmatics creates timestamps, word confidence values, and punctuation.

Pricing

Speechmatics is the most expensive speech recognition service at Auphonic.
Pricing starts at £0.06 per minute of audio and can be purchased in blocks of £10 or £100. This equates to a starting rate of about $4.78/h. Reduced rate of £0.05 per minute ($3.98/h) are available if purchasing £1,000 blocks.
They offer significant discounts for users requiring higher volumes. At this further reduced price point it is a similar cost to the Google Speech API (or lower). If you process a lot of content, you should contact them directly at sales@speechmatics.com and say that you wish to use it with Auphonic.
More information is available at Speechmatics Pricing.

Speechmatics offers high-quality transcripts in many languages. But these features do come at a price, it is the most expensive speech recognition services at Auphonic.

Unfortunately, their existing Custom Dictionary (keywords) feature, which would further improve the results, is not available in the Speechmatics API yet.

Try it yourself:
Connect your Auphonic account with Speechmatics at our External Services Page.

What do you think?

Any feedback about the new speech recognition services, especially about the recognition quality in various languages, is highly appreciated.

We would also like to hear any comments you have on the transcript editor particularly - is there anything missing, or anything that could be implemented better?
Please let us know!

We are pleased to announce a new Audio Inserts feature in the Auphonic API: audio inserts are separate audio files (like intros/outros), which will be inserted into your production at a defined offset.
This blog post shows how one can use this feature for Dynamic Ad Insertion and discusses other Audio Manipulation Methods of the Auphonic API.

API-only Feature

For the general podcasting hobbyist, or even for someone producing a regular podcast, the features that are accessible via our web interface are more than sufficient.

However, some of our users, like podcasting companies who integrate our services as part of their products, asked us for dynamic ad insertions. We teamed up with them to develop a way of making this work within the Auphonic API.

We are pleased therefore to announce audio inserts - a new feature that has been made part of our API. This feature is not available through the web interface though, it requires the use of our API.

Before we talk about audio inserts, let's talk about what you need to know about dynamic ad insertion!

Dynamic Ad Insertion

There are two ways of dealing with adverts within podcasts. In the first, adverts are recorded or edited into the podcast and are fixed, or baked in. The second method is to use dynamic insertion, whereby the adverts are not part of the podcast recording/file but can be inserted into the podcast afterwards, at any time.

This second approach would allow you to run new ad campaigns across your entire catalog of shows. As a podcaster this allows you to potentially generate new revenue from your old content.

As a hosting company, dynamic ad insertion allows you to choose up to date and relevant adverts across all the podcasts you host. You can make these adverts relevant by subject or location, for instance.

Your users can define the time for the ads and their podcast episode, you are then in control of the adverts you insert.

Audio Inserts in Auphonic

Whichever approach to adverts you are taking, using audio inserts can help you.

Audio inserts are separate audio files which will be inserted into your main single or multitrack production at your defined offset (in seconds).

When a separate audio file is inserted as part of your production, it creates a gap in the podcast audio file, shifting the audio back by the length of the insert. Helpfully, chapters and other time-based information like transcriptions are also shifted back when an insert is used.

The biggest advantage of this is that Auphonic will apply loudness normalization to the audio insert so, from an audio point of view, it matches the rest of the podcast.

Although created with dynamic ad insertion in mind, this feature can be used for any type of audio inserts: adverts, music songs, individual parts of a recording, etc. In the case of baked-in adverts, you could upload your already processed advert audio as an insert, without having to edit it into your podcast recording using a separate audio editing application.

Please note that audio inserts should already be edited and processed before using them in production. (This is usually the case with pre-recorded adverts anyway). The only algorithm that Auphonic applies to an audio insert is loudness normalization in order to match the loudness of the entire production. Auphonic does not add any other processing (i.e. no leveling, noise reduction etc).

Audio Inserts Coding Example

Here is a brief overview of how to use our API for audio inserts. Be warned, this section is coding heavy, so if this isn't your thing, feel free to move along to the next section!

You can add audio insert files with a call to https://auphonic.com/api/production/{uuid}/multi_input_files.json, where uuid is the UUID of your production.
Here is an example with two audio inserts from an https URL. The offset/position in the main audio file must be given in seconds:

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" 
    https://auphonic.com/api/production/{uuid}/multi_input_files.json 
    -u username:password 
    -d '[
            {
                "input_file": "https://mydomain.com/my_audio_insert_1.wav",
                "type": "insert",
                "offset": 20.5
            },
            {
                "input_file": "https://mydomain.com/my_audio_insert_2.wav",
                "type": "insert",
                "offset": 120.3
            }
        ]'

More details showing how to use audio inserts in our API can be seen here.

Additional API Audio Manipulations

In addition to audio inserts, using the Auphonic API offers a number of other audio manipulation options, which are not available via the web interface:

Cut start/end of audio files: See Docs

In Single-track productions, this feature allows the user to cut the start and/or the end of the uploaded audio file. Crucially, time-based information such as chapters etc. will be shifted accordingly.

Fade In/Out time of audio files: See Docs

This allows you to set the fade in/out time (in ms) at the start/end of output files. The default fade time is 100ms, but values can be set between 0ms and 5000ms.
This feature is also available in our Auphonic Leveler Desktop App.

Adding intro and outro: See Docs

Automatically add intros and outros to your main audio input file, as it is also available in our web interface.

Add multiple intros or outros: See Docs

Using our API, you can also add multiple intros or outros to a production. These intros or outros are played in series.

Overlapping intros/outros: See Docs

This feature allows intros/outros to overlap either the main audio or the following/previous intros/outros.

Conclusion

If you haven't explored our API already, the new audio inserts feature allows for greater flexibility and also dynamic ad insertion.
If you offer online services to podcasters, the Auphonic API would also then allow you to pass on Auphonic's audio processing algorithms to your customers.

If this is of interest to you or you have any new feature suggestions that you feel could benefit your company, please get in touch. We are always happy to extend the functionality of our products!

In the classic loudness war, music and radio producers have been trying to create their recordings as loud as possible and loudness normalization was introduced to stop that. Now one can see the start of a new loudness target war, where podcasters set their loudness targets higher and higher, mainly triggered by high target recommendations of platforms like Spotify or Amazon Alexa.
In this article, we will show how to resist the loudness target war and still be compliant with major platforms.

Resist the loudness target war! (Photo by Nayani Teixeira)

What's the problem?

“Two or three years ago it seemed that many stations were finally realizing that better radio could improve ratings. And the major myth brought over from AM radio – that a louder signal, regardless of quality, attracts more listeners – appeared to be losing its strength,” writes Robert Orban. The times of excessively compressed audio, putting loudness over sound quality, were coming to an end. We were hoping the same when we wrote about the CALM Act and EBU R128 in 2012. Those measures were meant to make programs sound more evened out and set a standard for a reasonable loudness level.

Except, Orban's article was published in 1979 (PDF, p. 60 ff.), and he concludes: "The loudness war has escalated, and quality is once again being sacrificed." 40 years later, a new loudness target war is emerging. While, yes, radio and TV stations have widely adopted the new standards, prominent competitors in the audio market are pushing for higher loudness targets once again.

Loudness war: the trend of increasing audio levels in recorded music over time. (Screenshot delamar.de)

Why LOUDER is not better

Historically, the loudness war has escalated with the advent of digital technology. Peak level normalization and quasi peak program meters (QPPM) encouraged producers to push audio signals to the limit. Just shy of clipping, signals could now be compressed to the highest possible levels, using multiband compressors and limiters. While this lifted quieter signals up, transforming a waveform into a brick, marketers thought that the louder songs on CDs and almost yelling voices on FM radio would attract listeners. On the other hand, reduced dynamics makes audio less interesting and can lead to listener fatigue, as Rip Rowan pointedly illustrated in his 2002 article "Over the Limit":

WHY IS THE LOUDER IS BETTER APPROACH THE WRONG APPROACH? BECAUSE WHEN ALL OF THE SIGNAL IS AT THE MAXIMUM LEVEL, THEN THERE IS NO WAY FOR THE SIGNAL TO HAVE ANY PUNCH. THE WHOLE THING COMES SCREAMING AT YOU LIKE A MESSAGE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. AS WE ALL KNOW, WHEN YOU TYPE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS THERE ARE NO CUES TO HELP THE BRAIN MAKE SENSE OF THE SIGNAL, AND THE MIND TIRES QUICKLY OF TRYING TO PROCESS WHAT IS, BASICALLY, WHITE NOISE. LIKEWISE, A SIGNAL THAT JUST PEGS THE METERS CAUSES THE BRAIN TO REACT AS THOUGH IT IS BEING FED WHITE NOISE. WE SIMPLY FILTER IT OUT AND QUIT TRYING TO PROCESS IT.

Hence, many spoken word producers and broadcasters luckily wisened up and committed to new standards, based on loudness normalization instead of peak normalization. LUFS, Loudness Units relative to Full Scale, is a unit that measures an audio track's average loudness. All segments of a program can then be normalized to a certain LUFS value. As we have discussed before, -23 LUFS is standard now for broadcasters of the EBU, which for example has led to advertising segments no longer being much louder than the rest of any particular program. For a short while, it seemed like a peace agreement, or at least a truce had been achieved in the loudness war.

Human loudness perception is based on average levels instead of peak levels. (Screenshot theproaudiofiles.com)

Loudness Targets and Dynamic Range

However, while LUFS adoption is increasing across the industry, this doesn't mean that people have stopped trying to be louder than everybody else. And indeed -23 LUFS is not the one-size-fits-all value. We have recommended -16 LUFS for podcasts ourselves. The loudness of a production played in a cinema should be different from one made for earphones and noisy listening environments. Some headphones expect a louder signal and don't have enough gain to work with -23 LUFS under all circumstances.

The closer a production gets to 0 LUFS though, the less dynamic range can be reproduced. However, the dynamic range also depends on the dBTP, the maximum True Peak level, which indicates the level of the highest possible peak value. For instance, the aforementioned EBU R128 standard of -23 LUFS also defines a -1 dBTP. The difference between the LUFS and dBTP levels is called Peak to Loudness Range, PLR. For EBU R128 the PLR would be 22 LU (Loudness Units), a podcast with -16 LUFS and -1 dBTP has a PLR of 15 LU. Thus, the PLR is a measure of the maximum possible dynamic range of an audio production.

Platforms: Apple, Google, Amazon, and Spotify

Our already pretty high recommendation of -16 LUFS, -1 dBTP for mobile listening was also adopted by Apple's best practices for podcasts and recommendations for Google Assistant. Some are pushing it too far, though. A daily updated analysis by podnews shows that many podcasts are much louder than -16 LUFS.

Distribution of loudness across a selection of podcasts. (Screenshot podnews.net)

This might in part be due to specs published by other competitors in the audio space:

Amazon, for instance, recommends -14 LUFS at -2 dBTP for Alexa skills, meaning a PLR of only 12 LU. While this might work for Alexa's synthesized voice, which doesn't have much variability, it produces a dynamic range too low for spoken word content.
However, Amazon also says that a skill may be rejected if the program loudness is lower -19 LUFS or higher -9 LUFS, therefore a target of -16 LUFS is perfectly fine, which means that Alexa's robot voice leads by 2 LU compared to the audio content.

Spotify normalizes audio to the equivalent of about -14 LUFS, -1 dbTP, but they still use ReplayGain, which is not exactly the same as LUFS but gives similar results. Spotify mainly decreases the volume of overly loud productions, but can also increase the volume on some playback devices if the audio is much too soft.
For pop music, -14 LUFS is acceptable, but for podcasts or classical music, it is too high. However, (pop) music can always be played a bit louder compared to speech, therefore a loudness target of -16 LUFS for podcasts is fine on Spotify as well.

Make LUFS, not war

If producers just use the highest recommended target and therefore the loudness (target) war goes into another battle, we will hear more compressed, distorted voices once again, lacking emotion and many subtleties that are reflected in the dynamic range of how we speak.

Setting a loudness target higher than -16 LUFS does not improve the listening experience in any way. However, many productions would benefit from sensitively adjusting differences in dynamics throughout the production, lifting up quieter segments, lowering loud segments, and treating speech and music differently. As pointed out in a presentation recently (video, in German), you can do that directly in your DAW or use a leveler to automate dynamics processing.

Instead of just raising the loudness target, adjusting differences in levels can help to make the listening experience much more enjoyable.

Recent album releases suggest that the music industry is still in the middle of the loudness war, often limiting the peak to loudness range to single digit LU values. (By the way, your vinyl-buying friend is right, vinyl records do sound better because they don't work with the highest compression rates.) Hopefully, podcasters, radio producers and other spoken word artists, as well as the platforms that host and publish their productions, can resist the temptation of louder and louder audio.
Make (no more than -16) LUFS, not war!

Conclusion

With some podcasts, smart speakers and streaming platforms trying to be louder than the competition, the listening experience deteriorates. However, podcasts can sound great and loud enough even in noisy environments, when well produced:

• Never set a loudness target higher than -16 LUFS for spoken word audio.
• If your audio is too quiet, try lifting up quieter sections and reducing the volume of louder sections, directly in your DAW or by using a leveler.
• These settings will work fine on all current platforms, including Amazon Alexa and Spotify.

Resist the loudness target war!

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