On any given day, Franco Trimboli’s hobby makes the news.
During office hours the 42-year-old who lives in suburban Melbourne is a coder, digital designer and project manager for the educational branch of the jobs website Seek.
But Trimboli is also the little-known founder of Tveeder, a website that provides a live transcript of almost anything that airs on free-to-air TV in Australia. Even if you have never heard of it, you will certainly have read an article or watched a news bulletin that relied on it.
The site is freely accessible to anyone, but has become an essential tool for almost anyone working in the media or politics.
When it works, people copy and paste its success; when it fails, they curse its misses.
For the working journalist, Tveeder has for years been like a spare limb – it scribbles down the press conference, the leadership spill, the politician’s tears or the police commissioner’s briefing, or even an episode of MasterChef, all in real time. In its 10 years of life, it has captured an estimated 2.4bn words.
When Tveeder is down, a dozen people will unfailingly trumpet their dismay that “Tveeder is down”. There are long-running lists of people’s favourite Tveeder bloopers – it often has particular trouble with names, having once rendered Barnaby Joyce as “Barnaby bok choy” and Josh Frydenberg as “Josh frightened bird”.
During the pandemic, as daily press conferences have become appointment viewing, Tveeder has emerged as a quiet hero among its users.
But many of them would know little about how Tveeder works, or how it came to be. The website is bare, with a no-frills, black and yellow palette, reminiscent of home brand butter. There is no “About Us” tab and no menu, just six channel options and the endless feed.
Tveeder may seem like magic but the way it works is simple, Trimboli says.
Under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, all free-to-air channels are required to provide captioning between 6am and midnight on their main channels, and to caption news and current affairs at all times.
The channels employ or subcontract fleets of human transcribers to provide the captions, which can be switched on when watching any modern TV. All Tveeder does, Trimboli says, is capture that data and upload it. No artificial intelligence or voice recognition is required.
Trimboli says people think Tveeder is a bigger operation that it is. It has no staff. It is not a company nor a charity. There is no Tveeder board. It is run entirely by Trimboli and occasional volunteers, in his spare time, and costs him $500 a month out of his own pocket.
Initially designed for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, Tveeder is a personal project that has grown into a public resource.
Amy Remeikis, Guardian Australia’s politics live blogger, says Tveeder is “instrumental” in live coverage, and has improved the transparency of communication between public officials, journalists and readers.
“I’ve often thought about who runs it, because we all owe them a massive debt of gratitude,” she says.
Remeikis discovered Tveeder while covering Queensland state politics, when a reporter covering a federal election shared it with her – it was like a secret code.
“It was a revelation for when you needed to file quickly – as you do on election campaigns,” she says. “It completely revolutionised live reporting, which was also still in its infancy then.”
Now, during the pandemic, “it’s a way of getting large quotes out very quickly, which, when people want information and want it quickly, is absolutely crucial.
“I have always assumed it was someone who developed a code to help the hearing impaired,” Remeikis says. “Which is why I’m just so grateful for the service, and would never criticise it – we might have co-opted it, but it was never made for us. We should just be happy we have something which for the most part makes our job easier.”
‘Most of my relatives are oblivious to what I do’
Trimboli is a calm and deliberate man whose other hobbies include cycling, sketching and illustration, smart-watches and supporting Collingwood.
Like so many others, he is home schooling – which means he now has three jobs: his day job, Tveeder and teacher.
Trimboli and his family live in a low-slung, red brick house, on a nondescript street. Bright banksia screen a window, and there is a small basketball hoop in the back yard. Three young children run around the house. Trimboli works at a desk set up in the bedroom. His wife, a security engineer, works in the study. He says the children frequently leave Lego strewn across the computer when he is working.
“Not many of my family would realise what I do,” he says with a laugh. “I think my wife tolerates the fact that I have lots of different interesting side projects. And it’s just who I am. It’s part of my persona.
“I think that most of my other relatives are oblivious to the projects that I create. If anything, it’s an amusing story at a family party.”
Trimboli grew up in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, the child of Italian immigrants who arrived in the 1960s. His father was a builder and Trimboli, for more than half his life, was the same. He studied design and then architecture at university.
He never expected or desired to work in a field that intersects so heavily with politics or journalism. When he was a young boy, Bob Hawke ruffled his hair and shook his hand on the campaign trail. “But I never really followed local politics or world politics until I grew up,” he says.
Trimboli loved technology, sparked by the video games boom of the 1980s, and moved gradually from architecture into digital product design.
“I don’t have any friends that are journalists,” he says. “But I’ve always been interested in the evolution of journalism, how it’s evolved at great pace.”
The idea came to him in 2010, when he was working for a messaging company called Whispir that was making a text service to allow deaf and hearing impaired people to access New Zealand’s equivalent of the triple zero phone line. It got him thinking about applying the same process to live TV.
He has few regrets that Tveeder has been thoroughly hijacked by journalists – even when that demand makes the site crash. (He also encourages users to submit feedback via admin@tveeder.com.)
“It brings me lots of joy to see journalists using it,” he says. “If anything, I feel bad about not continually investing in the actual features of the platform.
“It helps journalists focus on how they add value. It reduces that cognitive load and allows you to think, ‘Well, what is the story here?’ You know, I can just report what someone is saying, that’s easy to do with Tveeder now. What else can I add to this story in real time?
“If it drives further transparency and speed in reporting of breaking news stories or important issues, then for me, that’s a win as well.”
Soon after Trimboli launched Tveeder in 2011, the ABC’s current director of news, Gaven Morris, invited him on a tour of its Ultimo headquarters and showed him how Tveeder was being used by journalists. The ABC News 24 channel, now rebranded as ABC News, had also recently launched. The two services, essentially the same age, are like family friends who have grown up together.
For the first two years of Tveeder’s existence, News 24 was the only channel it streamed. In 2012, it added colours to help make clear who was speaking. In 2013, it added ABC1, SBS and the commercial networks. Since then it has essentially been the same.
Now, during the pandemic, the ABC’s own text live blog still uses Tveeder, and openly acknowledged it in a behind-the-scenes piece from May 2020. The Sydney Morning Herald and the Age ran a similar piece last year about “the bloggers who bring the news live”. Tveeder isn’t mentioned but it’s there in the pictures, front and centre.
“The whole media industry in Australia owes the creators of Tveeder a very big debt,” Remeikis says. “I think anyone who wasn’t aware of Tveeder before the pandemic, is now.”
Splicing together Insiders and Rage
At any given time, Trimboli says, about 1,000 people are simultaneously viewing Tveeder, and that rises to 5,000 during pandemic press conferences.
“It’s more than just journos that are hitting the site,” he says. “It is everyday viewers and consumers as well.”
During the bushfires, Trimboli noticed that people without TV reception, or people who could not listen to the radio because of deafness, relied on it. “I have received emails from people who have said, ‘Thank you very much for your Tveeder service, I was able to access the captions on my mobile phone.’”
Politicians use it too. In 2016 documents released as part of Senate estimates revealed that Tveeder was the 15th most visited website from the prime minister’s office.
Remeikis says staffers will often message her when they cannot believe what Tveeder has just transcribed. “You’ll get messages of ‘DID THEY REALLY SAY THAT?’ And usually, when it’s someone like Barnaby Joyce or Bob Katter, yes, they did. What you think could only be a transcription error is actually word for word what they said.”
But of course, it has also been wrong. Famously, on multiple occasions, Tveeder has spliced together Insiders and Rage. “It always seems to be Insiders and Rage for some reason,” Trimboli says. “Why does it always happen on a Sunday morning?”
Trimboli keeps the site’s capacity capped, which sometimes results in it going down when demand peaks.
“It can be solved, but that would just compound the costs,” he says. “If I was paying $1,000 a month, I don’t think my wife would be very happy. Over $12,000 a year on a side project. That is halfway to a small car at that point.”
Tveeder takes no ads and only occasionally receives donations.
“We might get, you know, $10 one week or $50 another week,” Trimboli says.
“But any contributions are well received, and we’re very appreciative. A lot of people have wanted me to kind of monetise it … but the ultimate aim of Tveeder isn’t to make money.”
If the media and politicians use Tveeder so heavily, should they help to fund it?
Trimboli says: “It’s a really good question … perhaps there’s an opportunity for them to pitch in.”
But if not, he is happy to keep doing so.
“From my perspective, if it’s a platform that’s helping journalists be better journalists, and if it helps politicians be more accountable, then it’s worth me spending the money to maintain it. It should be accessible to all. If it helps the quality of journalism, then I’m happy for it to be free. Forever.”
from Hacker News https://ift.tt/3mq0Zvr
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