You may recall we posted about Crowd Narration previously. That's the technology that allows two lines of chat commentary to be superimposed over whatever show or televised event you are watching. Now we're putting that technology to use with the inaugural event on the first US presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain.

To actually watch the chat text superimposed on the video, you'll need an OSD but all you'll need to participate is a web browser (and access to the debate broadcast)

To participate on the web: go to narration.neuros.tv where you'll find a familiar chat window, where the input from that window will be directly superimposed on those watching through their OSDs (per the instructions below)

If you're like me, you went into this election year with high hopes about the level of debate we'd see in this campaign, and I think we've all been disappointed as the debate has degenerated into the usual sound bites and attack ads. Perhaps with direct citizen participation, we can help to raise the level of the discussion to the level we had originally hoped for. Please come join us as we fact check, debate and discuss in real time right along with the candidates themselves.

Instructions for OSD owners below

if you have an OSD and want to see crowd narration in action:

download this file, and put it on USB, SD, or network share:
this

Next, telnet to your OSD. Instructions for this can be found at:
http://wiki.neurostechnology.com/index.php/OSD_Telnet

Change directory to where you put the file. For example: "cd
/media/SD-card" or "cd /media/USB"

type ./narration

Known bugs:
- There is no way to input via the OSD yet