Category Archives: Gadgets & Apps

iPad guided tours

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I ordered an iPad (which shipped today) without having a clear idea of how we (Barb and I) would use it. Surf the web, check email, maybe read a book or two.

After watching the guided tours that went up on the Apple website today, I think I underestimated this little slab of magic. I was very impressed with the Keynote app. That’s the Apple version of PowerPoint. I can easily imagine whipping up a presentation while waiting for a flight.

Pages looked awfully good, too. I’d call it a word processor but it looks like a lot more on the iPad. I have Pages on all my Macs but rarely use it. I think I might on the iPad.

We won’t know until people get their hands on the iPad and start playing with it, but I think it’s going to become THE computer (or whatever we wind up calling it) for a lot of folks. If I had to guess, I’d say that 90% of the stuff that most folks doing on a laptop will be easier and more fun on the iPad.

Annnnd… click. iPad pre-order

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I assume I was one thousands Apple fans waiting in front of their computers to pre-order the iPad. I imagine a computer deep in the marketing department at Cupertino, with Apple execs standing around, watching a counter whiring ever-faster.

The iPhone had people standing in line. I can’t think of many products that generated such interest and demand. A few gaming boxes but they didn’t have the broad appeal of these Apple devices.

iPads will begin shipping April 3rd.

Books: Analog and digital

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I love books. I love to read but I also love books, the physical object. Hardback or paperback, I love the way they feel in my hands… the way they smell. I like scrawling notes in the margin and highlighting passages. Reading is a very tactile experience for me (and probably for most).

In a couple of days, I will join millions of others in pre-ordering the Apple iPad. I’m looking forward to using all of features and apps (current and future). I can’t imaging giving up my beloved books for a digital experience but I’m trying to keep an open mind. It is possible I will enjoy reading on the iPad.

With that in mind, I’ve been making a mental list of titles I plan to put on my virtual bookshelf.

  • Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
  • Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
  • Complete works of William Gibson
  • 1984, George Orwell (haven’t read since high school)
  • Life After Death, Book of Secrets by Deepak Chopra
  • Mac OS X, David Pogue
  • The Religion War by Scott Adams

Some of these are books that I have read several times (or expect to). I assume I will be able to highlight, annotate and search passages of my digital books. It might also be fun to link from the text of the book to a website. I haven’t heard or read anything about such a feature. We’ll see.

YouTube SimpleGallery

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I love WordPress. I won’t bore you with all the reasons. But one very big one is: plug-ins. These are little add-on’s that add extra functionality to your blog/website. Today one of our sites needed a way to display multiple videos on a single page. I found several plug-in’s that looked like good candidates and settled on one called YouTube SimpleGallery. It’s free but I made a small donation to the developer.

I usually test plug-in’s here, to get the hang of them. If you click on the VIDEO tab at the top of the page,you’ll see a bunch of thumbnail images that –when clicked– play the video on YouTube.

You can also configure the plug-in so the video pops up in its own window.

A “teaching moment” or Big Brother?

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YouDiligence.com is the brain-child of Kevin Long. According to a blog post on ESPNB’s Jock-O-Sphere, the service works like this:

“…for a small fee — $1,250 a year for 50 athletes or less, or $5,000 a year for 500-750 athletes (described as pennies a day for each athlete) — schools are essentially given a broad-scale monitoring system for their athletes’ Twitter, MySpace and Facebook pages. Enter in the keywords you’d prefer not to show up in your student-athletes’ stream — these can range from curse words to alcohol and drug references to just about anything; it’s entirely customizable — and the instant any of these buzz words are posted to a student-athletes’ social media stream, administrators can be alerted via e-mail and a detailed account of the instance is added to a spreadsheet log … instead of online a few hours later on a blog or newspaper’s Web site, which could be potentially damaging to the program.”

This is a really interesting post (by Ryan Corazza, a freelance writer and Web designer based in Chicago), whether you’re in the world of college athletics or not. Would you (would I) be okay with your company monitoring what you post on social sites? Are you sure they are not? Would it make a difference in what you post?

Disclosure: At least one of the schools mentioned in the post is a “university partner” of the company I work for, Learfield.

For the record, I don’t see anything wrong with schools keeping an eye on what their student athelets are saying/writing. I mean, it’s out there. You should assume everyone is reading every word you post.

If you feel that your school is censoring your freedom of speech, then it’s decision time.

Google Buzz

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I’ve been noodling around with Google Buzz a bit and my early impression if very positive. Now, I’m not going to even try to explain Google Buzz. You can watch the video below if you’re interested. And I’m not going to encourage you to “follow” me on Buzz. Or try to sell you on social media, or anything else. This is one of my “for the record” posts.

I will say that more and more of what I find interesting is going to my social media streams, which will now mostly show up on my Buzz profile page. If you have a Gmail account you have (or soon will have) Buzz.

Streaming video of committee hearing

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I took the little BT-1 Bluetooth webcam back to the Missouri capitol yesterday for a hearing. Used twitcam to stream. The audio was poor to marginal and the video about what you’d expect from a $150 camera. It was basically a final field test and I was pleased.

If you look closely (red arrow) in the top left corner of the photo above, you can see the aluminum legs of the small tripod holding the camera. I was about 20-25 feet away. The camera was very unobtrusive and it was convenient to be untethered and out of the way.

One of these days there will be a high-profile news conference we’ll want to stream live and I’ll just grab the BT-1 and the MacBook Pro. We don’ need no stinkin’ satellite truck.

PS: I have no idea why Wilfred Brimmley is on the committee (top center)

twitcam

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Streaming live video has never been easier. Ironically, the bigger challenge is coming up with something anyone would care to watch. Which I clearly demonstrated this morning at the Coffee Zone.

In the photo above, you can see my BT-1 wireless webcam atop the Rocket Fuel storage tank. I was sitting about 25 feet away and never lost the signal.

Instead of uStream or qik (which works with mobile phones only, as far as I can tell), I used a nifty site called TwitCam. The screenshot below is really all there is to twitcam. And, yes, it’s free. For now. You just log in with your Twitter info and go. TwitCam records as it streams. No option for live stream only, as far as I could determine. I don’t see how video can get much easier than this.

As soon as I can come up with something worth the bandwidth, I’ll take this back to the state capitol.