In our national quest for demanding minimum standards be attained by children, I want us to change our focus: NCLB should stand for No Computer Left Behind. You see, I am a bit worried that the technology industry is beginning to participate in the soft bigotry of lower expectations--for my computer.

I sense a growing trend toward a "device" (not a computer as we have traditionally grown to understand them) that contains less hard drive space (if any), fewer programs (if any), and a significantly simplified operating system. The brains of the machine, the storage capacity of the "device," the operating system per se is all dependent on the internet. The development of this operational model is well underway with cool online "applications" like ThinkFree, Google Documents, et.al.

Using these tools you can create documents in your web browser with tools that closely approximate the Microsoft Office suite. You can save the documents online in your free 1 gigabyte of storage space. Advantages abound: access your documents from any computer with access to the internet. Share your documents with anyone with a simple click or two. Allow others around the world to participate in the editing process--even live in a collaborative work session. Print your documents from any computer to the printer at hand.

Aside from the office-style products, there are online podcasting, screencasting, photosharing, photoediting, videosharing, videoediting, file conversion services (to name a few) as well. Shared "television viewing" services are even beginning to appear. Free and very inexpensive server space, like Amazon S3 and Box.net, for data storage is proliferating. But, gradually these free services seem to be moving to a more sustainable business model, which I alluded to in my last post. Could a business model develop that further excludes those who cannot pay "by the document" or "by the gigabyte" thereby deepening the digital divide between the haves and have nots?

If the rumor mill can be trusted, and one never knows!, at MacWorld this week Apple may introduce an internet-dependent "device." The rumor mill is calling it MacbookAir. Whether the rumor is true or not, my expectations for my computer's performance remain the same. I need the greatest possible storage (for digital media), the greatest possible processor speed (for digital media creation and distribution), and massive amounts of fast RAM. When I leave the house, I typically keep working on the road and still want as much computing power as I can get.

I don't want to give up any processing or computing power, any program functionality, or any system functionality to the creeping, crawling, unsecured world wide web. I don't want to dumb down my machine or open it to data-mining. I don't want to have to pay extra so as not to be bombarded with advertisements every time I brighten the screen or save a file to some great server in the sky. I want to minimize any dependancies to something located in the ether of "over the rainbow."

This week Apple announced their new Mac Pro with Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” 3.2GHz processors, 1600MHz dual independent frontside buses, 12MB of L2 cache per processor, up to 4 terrabytes of disk space and 32 gigabytes of 256-bit-wide, fully buffered RAM with Error Correction Code (ECC). Now ladies and gentlemen, that's a machine! I'd love to own one so I can run the world! OK, I'll settle for using it to make digital video more efficiently.

Perhaps a market exists for a small internet-dependent "device," especially if it can easily "plug in" to it's own "mother ship" at home as well. I must confess that indeed Apple struck gold with the iPod in a time when all of the nay-sayers were asking, "Who on earth would want to watch a movie on a 1.5 inch screen?!" Well, as it turns out, the answer is: millions of people the world over. And I'm among them.

An internet-dependent device would induce an interesting business model into the technology industry, potentially doing to itself what iTunes has done to the music industry: creating a metamorphosis in the current technology content and distribution models. But a significant difference would exist: the music you buy today, for the time being at least, lives on your machine, in your procession. With the new model, you might not own the music or the video or the computer program. You might pay for access to these collections of digital bits that live on the big servers in the sky. Your access is granted or denied. The long term implications are substantive, and the scope of possibilities are interesting to consider... Yes, interesting indeed. No one knows the impact a crawling baby will have in 30 years.

I just don't want us to sink to the lowest common denominator of "cheap" and "good enough" (not that Apple ever has, in my opinion) or lose affordable access to the real horsepower the digital era affords the common guy/gal on the street, like me! Leave no computing power behind!

What are your thoughts on these issues as this post only skims the surface?

I have long thought of education as a media rich content delivery system with a high degree of human interaction. In that light, how can the iTunes media content distribution system afford our students and teachers a deeper, richer teaching and learning experience?

We have certainly seen the impact of iTunes in the music industry. How can educators leverage this same content distribution model to positively impact teaching and learning in school? The possibilities are enormous and fantastic.

Student-created Media Content for Teaching and Learning
With the powerful digital media creation tools afforded students today, rich content development by students for students is certainly happening in many schools. (Check out MabryOnline.org if you are not aware of the broadcast quality, exemplary work those middle school students and their teachers have done.) But student- and teacher-created digital media learning objects is just a small part of a larger perspective.

iTunes University Courses
For those who may not be aware, iTunes U has taken off with a flourish and features courses from many of America's best universities: Duke, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Yale, MIT to name a few. I have it on good authority that this list will grow explosively in 2008. Middle and high school students need to be exploring these courses, listening to these professors, getting to know more about their future educational encounters. Educators, can we say rich and outrageous "differentiated instruction?!"

K-12 iTunes Learning Resources
But iTunes U has now started going much further. Look at the lower right hand side of the main iTunes U window! Apple appears to be adding media rich learning content from some very noteworthy sources: American Public Media, American Theater Wing, The Research Channel, Smithsonian Global Sound, and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to only name a few. I suspect (have on good authority?) that this effort is only going to expand significantly in the coming months.

I'll speak to one recently added resource. PBS has just added to iTunes U resources from 4 affiliates: K-12 teachers' classroom resources organized by content like Earth and Space Science, and Engineering; global history in regions including Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East; series that include Ken Burns' The War and The Jewish Americans; and QUEST: Science and Nature. Professional development resources from PBS are also here.

In my mind, forward thinking K-12 educators will want to leverage the iPod (especially the iPod Touch and even the iPhone) for learning. As more and more professional content creators add their resources to iTunes U, doing so will only become easier. Teachers can easily add a link on a classroom blog or website, a link that takes students directly to a specific podcast for download to their iPods.

How to Add a Link to an iTunes U Resource to Your Blog
As you can see in this post, I have included several links to iTunes U. Clicking on the link launches iTunes (Mac and Windows must have iTunes installed.) and takes the user to the linked resource. This is easy to do! Let me give you the simplest way to add a link to your blog post.

• Go to iTunes U.
• Find the link to the content you want your students to download or watch on the computer.
• Place your cursor directly over the link. (The cursor becomes a little hand when positioned over a link.)
• Right click on the link.
• Select "Copy iTunes Store URL" from the contextual popup menu.
• Immediately go to your blog post and paste. (If you copy anything else to your clipboard before pasting the iTunes link to your blog, you will lose the link and need to go back to iTunes U to copy the link again.)

If you want to write the html code yourself, the actual html code will look something like this:

<a href="itms://deimos3.apple.com/indigo/main/main.xml" target="_blank">iTunes U</a>

where everything in the first set of quotation marks is the link you copied from the copy step above. And in the space in the html code above that reads "iTunes U" you simply add the text you want to appear in your blog for the link, perhaps: "Click here to go to Tonight's Homework Podcast" without the quotation marks.

More that Just iTunes U
I suspect that in the near future teachers will be able to design interactive content for the iPod Touch and iPhone. The only people that will be more excited about this learning tool than I am are the students! The iPod becomes an anytime, any place, interactive learning kiosk for kids. Imagine homework assignments that are literally interactive online and on-iPod learning experiences. I've actually been talking about this for years.

Students are required to take ownership of their own learning in their own space outside of the school building. The teacher is everywhere, in living color, with them. Class time is reserved for more individualized student learning and project-based instruction.

More that Just Content Delivery
And don't think of the iPod as only delivering content. The iPod Touch and the iPhone sport the slick touch interactive interface. You can use these as assessment devices--a feature I suggest Apple is going to leverage in significant ways in the relatively near future, making portable, quality, interactive, learning assessment ubiquitous.

From my perspective, IT and system level curriculum specialists need to begin designing formative assessment tools that teachers can use with students. Imagine: an online tool in which the teacher types in the questions and assessment distractors (multiple choice options, True/False, fill in the blank, even pictures and movie files could be used).

I'm thinking class sets of the iPod Touch where the students go to the online assessment site, touch their screens for each question and provide immediate feedback for the teacher through the classroom WiFi network. Such a process ultimately takes the teacher out of the tedious and time consuming clerical business of grading papers and puts them in the data assessment business--making instantaneous, meaningful judgements about student learning and designing time-sensitive interventions to maximize achievement. We frequently speak of teachers needing to work differently, not more? This is a classic example!

Nay Sayers
Don't be quick to say this will never happen. That's what the record industry said, and they certainly have far more political and financial clout than educators in this country!

Don't be quick to say "If we buy every student a $250 iPod Touch they will sell it for crack cocaine!" [I actually heard, with my own ears, a parent say that about student laptops! I think I unintentionally gasped aloud in complete shock.] This is the very same mindset that didn't want pencils and paper in classes because students might pass notes in class. Bad things happen in this world. If we let that keep us from doing good things we wouldn't drive our cars either. This is also the same mindset that causes those who try to refuse to grow to become bitter and more irrelevant to their students.

The positive possibilities here are endless. Our students' interest in the iPod is high. We can leverage this unprecedented interest, this participatory experience, this emotional connection... for learning. What an exciting time to be an educator!

Years ago I purchased NetNewsWire, an RSS feed aggregator designed for the Mac by NewsGator Technologies. (Their Windows RSS feed reader, FeedDemon, also seems to get high reviews, but, being a Mac head, I have never used it.) I actually tried several feed readers at the time I began feeding at the RSS trough, but of all the readers I tried, I fell in love with NetNewsWire.

In an extraordinary move, a few weeks ago NewsGator Technologies made all of their RSS feed readers, including NetNewsWire, free downloads for everyone--not your standard business model! (They do sell other software and services.) I highly recommend this cool tool. No, I highly recommend this essential tool.

Many people still don't know or have a really fuzzy understanding of what RSS feed aggregation is. And for those who do know, RSS is often used much too little. RSS is far too powerful to be so little used. If you do not subscribe to RSS feeds, you are really missing out.

What Is It?!
The easiest way to explain RSS feeds and their aggregation (fancy word for "collection in one place") is by example: If you had a child at Mabry Middle School, where every teacher blogs (even the counselors, media specialist, nurse, the PTSA, etc.), you could easily have to check 10 or more web sites (blogs) to keep up with what is going on in your child's school. On some days the teachers have posted, and sometimes they have not. The daily process of checking each blog quickly becomes a little tedious--even with the generous use of numerous bookmarks.

So, let's make this easy!

On the first day of school, use an RSS feed aggregator, like NetNewsWire, to subscribe one time to each teacher's blog. (You never need to go to those blogs again if you don't want to.) From that day on, every time you launch NetNewsWire, or any RSS feed aggregator you choose to use, NetNewsWire tells you how many new posts have been published by which teachers. All of the posts come to you in one place--in my case, NetNewsWire. When I launch the program, it looks at every blog or website to which I have subscribed and brings me the new posts.

In NetNewsWire I can read a summary of each new post. If I find it of interest, I can click on the summary and see the entire post. I can even click on the title of the post and open the blog from which it came.

If I have two children at Mabry, I can have two folders: one for the teachers of one child, and one for the other child. I can have a folder for news sites like CNN and the BBC, a folder for technology sites like Wired and Boing Boing. I can even have NetNewsWire search the internet for posts about specific topics and keywords with which I want to keep informed with the latest information. In this post I am only scratching the surface of the many powerful possibilities, but lest I overwhelm those who are first learning about RSS aggregation, I'll stop here.

As far as I am concerned, every student in middle school and up (at the least!) should use an RSS aggregator daily. This can be a powerful learning and research tool when used well.

Why Not Use Your Browser's RSS Capabilities?
For one thing, only the latest version of Internet Explorer has any RSS functionality built into it. Since a significant number of internet users use older versions of IE, this may explain why RSS subscription has not become standard practice. The old version of IE can't work with it at all.

And while both Safari (for Windows and Mac) and the new version of Internet Explorer have RSS functionality built into them, they lack some of the amazing additional functionality provided in the free RSS feed aggregators you can download from NewsGator Technologies.

How Do I Use It?
All you need to know is that blogs and even many websites create RSS feeds. One of the ways you can tell a site has an RSS feed available (not all do): they are typically identified with an icon that looks much like the one pictured next to this paragraph--small orange, "radaresque" icons. (I picked one that's a little fancier than usual.) You click on the feed icon which launches NetNewsWire or whatever aggregator you have installed on your machine. (The fancy feed icon pictured in this paragraph is linked to this blog's RSS feed!) You select the folder you want the posts from the feed to appear in within NetNewsWire. You have now subscribed. Now all of the new posts from that feed, that web site, that blog will automatically appear in NetNewsWire everytime you launch it.

Go ahead and try it. Download a free aggregator from NewsGator Technologies. Click on my feed icon near the bottom left sidebar or in the paragraph above, and watch what happens. This is a better, more efficient way to work!

Teach the parents of your students how to subscribe to your blog. Teach your students how to subscribe to your blog. (Don't even tell me you don't have one! I'll leap right through this screen and point my finger in front of your nose for your not using best practices!!)

If You Are A Geek (Like Me)
You will want to check out this post about tweaking NetNewsWire to provide you with abundant functionality. Also read this post. You can: have NetNewsWire feed you your blog stats, your mail, posts about you, comments made to your blog, podcasts, create smart folders, post an article to your del.icio.us account, post an article or a highlighted section from an article to your blog, show you blogs that aren't actively posting, show you blogs that are using the most bandwidth, send podcasts to iTunes to sync to your iPod, send your feeds to Safari on your iPhone (or other mobile devices, or any computer browser in the world), have your feed summaries appear in the sidebar of your blog, and on and on and ...

Educators, this should rock your world!

Articles on Wikipedia
RSS
Web feed
Aggregator
NewsGator Technologies

Articles about Blogs and RSS for Teachers and Parents at MabryOnline.org
Under the Hood of Our Website
How to Subscribe
Overview Information (which contains numerous resources about RSS)

Let's go a little deeper into NetNewsWire--which, I remind you, is now free. If you haven't read this earlier post, start there unless you fancy yourself a bit tech savvy (meaning you understand the concept of RSS).

You collect all of your RSS feeds in NetNewsWire. You read all of the posts that arrive in NetNewsWire from all of the sites to which you subscribed (this is almost always free). As you come across a post you find of interest, you can open it in a tab in NetNewsWire to see the actual webpage or open it in your default web browser. These are the standard options you would expect to find in any RSS aggregator.

This is what I call munching through the feeds. It's a quick process of skimming and scanning, even using the search features if you're looking for something in particular, to find important or interesting information from your collection of RSS feeds.

Post to Your Blog
But you have more options. You can select a portion (or the whole thing for that matter) of an important post and click on "Post to Weblog." NetNewsWire launches your blogging GUI software* and creates a new post containing the highlighted material. At the end of the quotation NetNewsWire adds a citation to the source of the quoted material. What an efficient way for educators to work professionally! (You can customize the look and feel of this feature if you're feeling uber geeky.)

Do You Have a Del.icio.us Account?
You can also select "Post to del.icio.us" and NetNewsWire, using your del.icio.us account settings, opens a standard del.icio.us window for you to fill out thus saving the URL to your del.icio.us account.

Clipping Folders Rock My World
But here is one of my favorite features: you can create Clipping Folders. Let me explain by example. As a teacher I could create a clipping folder for each of the subjects or units I teach. I come across important resources from my RSS feeds that I want to share with my students. As I read the resource in NetNewsWire and decide I want to share a post with a class, I click on "Add to Clippings."

I then drag the clipping from the general clippings folder to one of the specific clippings folders I created. For this example, we will say I created a "Civil War" clippings folder where I'm collecting all of the posts on the Civil War that I want to share with my Social Studies students. In one location, my "Civil War" clippings folder, I can build a webquest for my students.

Now this is where the program rocks! I tell NetNewsWire to create an RSS feed for my "Civil War" clippings folder. It gives me a link (URL) to the RSS feed for my "Civil War" clippings folder. (Don't worry about how it does this. It's just very clever!) I post the RSS feed link to my blog and require my students subscribe to it.

Wow! Now every time I add a site to the "Civil War" clippings folder, it shows up in each of my student's RSS aggregator, where ever they are, for them to read and study.

Not Just for Teachers
System and state level curriculum specialists, this has important implications for your work as well. You can have the educators you supervise subscribe to specific clippings folders you create.

Public Relations can set up a clippings folder in which you add posts from schools and teachers who have done noteworthy work you wish to highlight. Then place that RSS feed in a column on the system's main website. Set it to show the 5 most recent posts from your clipping folder. Now you have a simple way to distribute fresh highlights to your system website from individual websites in your school district--yet another important reason to have blogs as school websites instead of regular html pages! Don't forget to have the local paper(s) subscribe to this feed as well.

Mobile Access
NetNewsWire also offers you access to your RSS feeds on your mobile phone as well. You can skim the post summaries on your iPhone. As you read the summary, that post is marked read. Send the ones you want to read in detail to your general clippings folder. When you have time and are seated at a computer with a larger screen, you will notice the summaries you read on your phone are marked read on the computer. You can go back to the general clippings folder to read the posts you wanted to revisit in more detail.

Windows Users
I am assuming that NewsGator Technology's Windows RSS feed aggregator, FeedDemon, would have to have very similar functionality to NetNewsWire as the company owns both.

More...
I've only scratched the surface. NetNewsWire has more powerful functionality than I've discussed so far. Here are a few things to whet your interest: smart folders that search your subscriptions intelligently; special subscriptions from search engines, tags, bloglines, even local files; most and least viewed statistics; bandwidth usage per feed, etc.

Now That You're All Excited
In order to use clipping folders and use the mobile features I believe you have to have a paid annual subscription with NewsGator. The annual subscription isn't expensive, and I do not know if they offer site licenses. I would suggest taking things one step at a time. Download the aggregator. Use it. If it's a comfortable fit, explore it in more detail. When you fall in love, purchase a subscription.

* Blogging GUI Software: This will be the subject of some future post I'm sure. But for now: You can purchase really inexpensive programs that run on your computer and link you to your blog. Rather than using your web browser to publish to your blog, you launch the program and fill in the window. Click publish. Done. These programs often add additional functionality to publishing (making adding pictures from your computer or from flickr easier, for example) and are especially helpful when you publish to multiple blogs. I really like ecto (Mac and Windows). I have played a little bit with MarsEdit (Mac only), and Adobe's Contribute (Mac and Windows). I'm sure others exist as well.

In my recent work in Oregon, I had the opportunity to meet more incredible educators doing great things for the children in their care. One of them had such exciting new ideas about using technology to help her hearing impaired students with cochlear implants increase their hearing and language skill development. This teacher's dedication is an inspiration.

As we talked, I was thinking that Videocue, by Varasoft, might be just the solution for what she wanted to accomplish. While her objectives can be met with a lot of time invested in recording and then editing digital video, she, like all teachers, has tremendous demands placed on her time and therefore needs a really quick and easy, practical solution. After playing with Videocue this morning I have concluded that this software will do just what she needs.

The Objective...
She wants her students to be able to see the printed text they are reading, hear it read aloud in a natural human voice, and also see it signed for them--all in real time.

The Workflow...
Videocue is very powerful teleprompter software. But, as I have done in the example below, you can use it just as effectively on your computer screen without purchasing a teleprompter. I got a little wild and crazy in my example, just to show you some of what the program can do. However, the workflow can be just this straightforward:

1. Type (or copy & paste) your text (script)
2. Click record
3. Read your text
4. Save the file
5. Upload the movie to your blog

Some Details...
The program window is divided into three parts (left to right): assets, text, tracks. To accomplish this teacher's objective, you would type (or copy and paste) the text you need to read and sign into the main text area (middle) shown in the picture (click to enlarge it). Your camera video input (and any movies, stills, or audio you have imported into this project) appears on the left of the text window. (Mac laptops, and even the iMac, purchased in the last few years all have a built in video camera.) Drag the camera icon on the left to the right of the first line of text.

Before recording, go to the Export Settings... under the File menu (pictured on the left; click to enlarge) and check "Include Captions," which will overlay, at the bottom of your finished movie file, the text you are reading so your students can read as they listen and watch. Click the red record button. Sign the text as you read it.

The text scrolls through a highlighted bar. Use the space bar to pause the text or use the up and down arrow keys to speed up or slow down the scrolling text. If you have selected "Include Captions" in the export settings, the words in the highlighted area will appear on screen in the finished movie while as the viewer hears you read them. Therefore, to appear natural, you want to make sure what you are saying is in the highlighted area as you say it. This simple step synchronizes what the viewer sees with what is being heard.

You can rehearse if you wish, as the software has a rehearse feature. I found that after just a couple of tries, I had adjusted the speed of the scrolling text to a comfortable reading pace.

When the window reaches the bottom of your text, the scrolling stops, and you are prompted to name your file and decide where to save it. If you have ftp access to your file server, Videocue can even be configured to upload the file for you!

An Example...
To the right is a quick example I created using Videocue Pro. It's not a fancy example. I just threw it together literally in a matter of minutes to demonstrate to busy teachers that this can be a very easy, quick, and practical video podcast solution. The program is easy to use! Click the apple to see the video podcast example.

I Covered Just the Basics...
This post has covered just the basics! Videocue Pro has plenty of bells and whistles--some were demonstrated in my example movie. You can download a trial version and take it for a spin on your Mac. (Sorry Windows friends, this only works on the Mac. If you know a similar package for Windows, click comments and share.) Brian Novak, at Varasoft, provides a special discount for educators. You can find their education pricing at this link.

Another solution, called ScreenFlow, was just announced by Varasoft this past week. It goes well beyond the function of a simple screen capture utility. I'll save it for another post.

Yes, my name is Tim. I'm a geek. I'm not in recovery. I realized this on the first day the iPhone went on sale, and I was sitting in my folding lawn chair, surfing the web on my laptop, from inside Lenox Mall, just outside of the Apple store with hundreds of others who also needed therapy for their technology addiction.

I've loved my iPhone though I've been dismayed with the AT&T network. The phone continues to grow in functionality with the addition of the Apps store at iTunes––where users can download applications that have a growing variety of functionality. Many are free. Most are very inexpensive.

At present, I've tried nearly 100 apps. Some were quick any easy discards. Some have really limited functionality, yet I can't bring myself to abandon them yet as they are growing. Some gain more functionality as more and more people use them. And even some of the applications that I really like, have need of improvement. (This platform is indeed in its infancy.) And, finally, many will also work on the iPod Touch.

Today Time.com published their Top 10 iPhone Apps. I use and love several of the ones on their list. So, to celebrate the season, in a series of four posts, I've decided to post my 12 Apps of Christmas. If you don't celebrate Christmas, you can still join in the festivities by thinking of this mini-series as "These Are Just 12 of My Favorite Things." They are presented in no particular order.

1. Fake Calls

When I was a principal in Cobb County, I knew of several colleagues who would have their secretary call them at a particular time during a boring meeting. They would immediately flee the meeting claiming some horrid emergency at school demanded their immediate attention. Clever

Well, now the secretary no longer need be complicitous! With FakeCall, even your iPod Touch can act like a cell phone. Schedule "the call" to come in whenever you like (at a specific time or in so many minutes from now), from whomever you would like in your address book. Your iPhone or iPod Touch rings at the designated time; you act conspicuously worried as you mumble quietly, unintelligibly into your device to the imaginary caller (whose picture can even appear on your phone); you collect your belongings and quickly scurry from death by boredom.

At just 99 cents, what's not to love here?!

2. iTalk Recorder and iTalk Recorder Premium

Turn your iPhone or iPod Touch into a digital recorder. The simple, elegant user interface gives you control of audio quality. You can Pause and later append to any recording already on your device. Add notes to recordings. The basic application is free as of this writing. The premium version is selling for $4.99.

Using iTalkSync (a free computer download as of this writing), you can download the AIFF audio recording to your Mac or PC when your computer and device are both on the same Wi-Fi network. You will need to use a file conversion utility to convert the AIFF file to an mp3 format if you plan to upload it as an audio podcast to the web.

The iPod Touch will also require at least version 2.2 of the operating system and a mic attachment of some sort. The mic attachments did not work on the iPod Touch prior to OS 2.2. Several mic options are available. I have personally used these four with success:

1. My older version of Macally's iVoicePro for the iPod Classic now works on my iPod Touch with OS 2.2. I can only assume the new version of the iVoicePro works with the iPod Touch as well. The mic has a mini jack for external input. And the new version also has a USB port.
2. The Belkin TuneTalk Stereo for the iPod Classic also now works on my iPod Touch with OS 2.2. It has a mini audio input, autogain button, and a USB port with cable.
3. My old XtremeMac MicroMemo for the iPod Classic also now works on my iPod Touch with OS 2.2. The device features a mini audio line in. I do not find these available on the XtremeMac site; so, they may no longer manufacture them though they are listed on Amazon.com.
4. But I suppose my favorite is the Shure Music Phone Adpater While this attachment has some extra features that are great, it's the quality of the recorded sound that I love!   Of all of the iPod mics I've used through the years, this mic has the best sound quality by far! It's actually designed to be connected to earbuds that plug into the end of the cable so your favorite earbuds can be used with the iPhone to make calls. In this configuration you can easily switch between listening to music and taking a phone call. However, I've attached the mic, without any earbuds connected, to my iPod Touch and used the mic for recording. The wire allows you to put your iPod Touch in your pocket or on a belt clip while having the mic attached to your tie, shirt, or blouse with the tiny clip.

3. Jott Notepad for iPhone

Jott allows you to record a brief memo. Jott transcribes the memo into text with astounding accuracy and sends an email and/or a text message to the desired recipient(s). You can setup groups of recipients: the department heads, all staff, your family, yourself... Forget the typing––just Jott! Jott Notepad for iPhone is free as of this writing.

I've written about Jott before: All Good Things... . Well, I couldn't break up with Jott, even though it is now a subscription service. However, they do offer a limited free plan.

Jott has a growing feature set which can be used in conjunction with other services. For example: you can Jott to your blog (limited blog engines supported); you can Jott to Google calendar; you can Jott a tweet to Twitter. (It's just getting a bit crazy, isn't it!). Jott also has a nice web interface and a tiny "application" you can run from your desktop to manage your jotts.

If you haven't heard about Jott, you should explore it. It's one of my favorite things. When the dog bites, when the bee...

Stay tuned tomorrow for part 2!

4. iBlogger

If you like blogging with ecto, Mars Edit, or Contribute, you will probably like iBlogger. iBlogger connects your iPhone or iPod Touch with all of your blogs--in one easy-to-use interface. I can now do "mobile blogging" on the go without going through the tiny web interface of each of my blogging systems. The screenshot from my iPod Touch (to the right) shows you what yesterday's post looks like through iBlogger.

A significant number of blog engines are already supported, and more are being added. All of my blogs on MovableType and Blogger work. I can easily publish text, pictures, links, and select categories and tags. If I wish, I can even include my GPS location in any post with a simple click.

iBlogger is a nifty little application that is made by illumineX, inc., who just bought ecto from Adriann with an understanding that he will continue to work very closely with the company as they develop ecto3 and add a richer feature set to iBlogger.

5. Stage Hand  

I give lots of presentations through Keynote, Apple's amazing version of PowerPoint. Using Stage Hand, I can control my Keynote presentation from my iPhone (or iPod Touch). Using your device, connected to your computer over a WiFi or a computer-to-computer wireless network, Stage Hand allows the you as the presenter to see on the handheld device the actual slide the audience sees, rotate the device to see the slide notes, the presenter's display, the elapsed time or a countdown timer. On the iPhone (not available on the the iPod Touch), the countdown timer will gently alert you at specified intervals by vibrating the phone in your hand.

From your iPhone or iPod Touch, with a simple touch, you can also move a highlight around on the audience presentation screen and even resize the highlight in real time to focus audience attention. You can control the output volume of your computer's audio. You can fade the screen to black or white. While in the middle of a presentation you can easily navigate to a specific slide without ever letting the audience see that slide selection process.

Because of its potential, I purchased this program when it first came out even though, at that time, it had some serious limitations and significant issues. I thought the developer was on to something that just might turn out to be awesome, and I wanted to support the programs development. I must say that have not been disappointed! This app rocks my presentation world!

6. Pandora Radio

Pick a song, an album, or an artist you like, and Pandora will search its collection and create a internet radio stream to your iPhone or iPod Touch tailored just for you--for free! No advertisements, no bothersome DJ, just 100% music based on what you like and what others who liked that same music also liked.

Or, you can choose to listen to a station that has already been created by someone else. You may also choose a station based on a genre of music. Stream the music to your iPhone (WiFi or AT&T) or iPod Touch (WiFi required). If you hear a song you really like, bookmark it, bookmark the artist, buy it from iTunes, email that station to a friend: it's all just a touch away!

I became familiar with the Music Genome Project shortly after it started in 2000. I had no idea it would blossom into such an amazing social user experience.

I think of Pandora as radio without everything you hate about radio!

7. Instapaper, and Instapaper Pro

Sign up for your free Instapaper account. Drag the "Read Later" button to your browser toolbar. When you find an article of interest while surfing the net, but you don't want to read it at that moment, click the button. Now you can read it on the go, say: on the plane on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

The paid version has a wonderful feature I wish every application had on the iPhone: tilt scrolling: the more you tilt the device, the faster the text auto scrolls! You just read.

8. NetNewsWire

I've been a fan of NetNewWire for a long time, from back in the days when you actually had to purchase it for your computer. Now it's a free RSS feed reader for your computer and your iPhone or iPod Touch.

With NetNewsWire, your RSS feeds are always at your fingertips. Organize your feeds. Open selected feeds up to a blogroll. Include headlines on your blog from selected feeds. Use clipping folders. NetNewsWire is a powerful feed management system!

In your NetNewsWire account, you can set up locations. If you use a specific location for your iPhone, you can choose which feeds you have on the go with your iPhone or iPod Touch.

9. WriteRoom, EasyWriter, and EasyWriter Pro

These programs are very similar, but with slightly differing feature sets at present, I can't decide which one I like best. WriteRoom is known for its distraction free word processor for the computer desktop.

Their iPhone (iPod Touch) application gives you a larger keyboard in landscape view and allows you to share documents through your browser (unsecured) over the same WiFi. I find that I can actually type a good bit faster, making fewer typos, with this keyboard! You can send the text through email. You can email entire documents and get typical document statistics.

EasyWriter also gives you the larger landscape keyboard and includes easy access to email. It allows you to create your own text snippets that can be used over and over between documents––their solution to the lack of a clipboard on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

WriteRoom (below)

10. Cooliris (pictured above)

If you don't use CoolIris on your web browser, you're missing out!

Now Cooliris is available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The gorgeous 3D Wall interface allows you to easily and beautifully search news, photos, and videos from YouTube, Google, Flickr, Yahoo and others.

Scroll across the wall by flicking with your finger or simply tilting in the direction you want to travel. Pinch and expand to zoom in and out on the 3D Wall. When you want to drill down, simply touch to play the video, see the larger image, etc.

You can save directly to your device photo gallery, email, or view pictures or video in your device's Safari browser.

11. Air Sharing (pictured to the side) and MobileFiles (pictured at the bottom of this section)

These are similar applications. With Air Sharing you can mount your iPhone or iPod Touch as an external drive and place any number of document types on the device for later viewing and sharing.

You can place files in the public folder in Air Sharing to give others access to them from your device!

Mobile Files provides similar functionality but works in conjunction with a paid MobileMe (.Mac) account. MobileFiles allows you to access and sync data from your .Mac account onto your device.

  

12. Fitnio  

Using the GPS in the iPhone (Sorry iPod Touch users, this app will not work on your device.) Fitnio calculates, in real time, your speed, distance traveled, and calories burned as you walk/jog/run or ride. It also keeps a running total of the data from a comilation of each walk/run/jog and cycle. I use this little app every time I walk and cycle. OK, OK. So I need to get out there more often... :o)

I must confess that I had a hard time getting accustomed to not pressing the power button to put the device to sleep after starting Fitnio and didn't collect the data from several events because I couldn't break that habit. But when you follow the directions, it actually works amazingly well!

I know many bloggers are using Skitch to record, annotate, upload, post, and share screenshots and shots from their webcams. It's a powerful little application. And it's currently free. I'm not sure if it's still in beta.

Since I really don't personally like the "blobby" look of the annotated text in Skitch, I've avoided it. I've begun using a different application with very similar functionality: LittleSnapper (for Mac). I like it. However, unlike Skitch, LittleSnapper currently does not allow you to capture images from your webcam.

LittleSnapper makes screenshots easy. Users can snap the full screen, an area of the screen, or a specific window on the desktop. Additionally, you can snap an entire web page currently in your browser, even if it's not all visible on the screen. LittleSnapper has its own built in browser as well, so you can navigate a website at will from within the application, snapping screenshots as needed.

The edit tools are well done and, in my opinion, look more professional than Skitch. In item #1 in the included sample snap, I wanted to show you how the text tool looks. Of course, you have control over font size and color as well as the transparency of the background. Text can be numbered (as seen here) or not.

In item #2 notice the highlight tool is used in this snap which dims (grays out) everything on the page (including the boarder around the snap unfortunately) except the highlighted area. If I hadn't used the highlight tool, the screenshot is nicely shadowed as you can see in the other post from today which includes two screenshots by LittleSnapper.

In item #3 notice the use of the blur tool--handy and quick and easy to use. Also, as you would expect, you can draw circles and ovals, rectangles, adjust the color and thickness of arrows--all of the things you would expect.

The program includes a free QuickSnapper Account to share your screenshots. Click on the snap above to see it at my QuickSnapper account where you can view it in full size, comment on it, embed it in a blog post, and even tweet it. I didn't take the time to name or tag it. Shame on me! I should have.

You can also easily upload your screenshots as a png or jpg file to your Flickr account or to any FTP account directly from within the application. Also worth a mention: you have a handy library window that allows you to organize and edit your screenshots with ease. Users can sort them by websnaps (captures from webpages), screensnaps, based on ratings, and by using folders and even smart folders.

LittleSnapper is a practical little application.

Many were in mourning when iMovie '08 replaced iMovie HD. Frankly, I was one of them. I am an experienced Final Cut Pro user, but I frequently created quick video podcasts in iMovie HD. It is a powerful and intuitive video editing application!

But now that I've learned to work with the completely and radically different iMovie '08 interface, iMovie '09 has been released, and iMovie HD is no longer available from the Apple site as a free download. In fact, it's not available as any kind of download. And, I suspect that some future upgrade of QuickTime or the OS will quietly kill it.

So how does iMovie '09 compare to iMoive '08? I really don't know yet. I'm about to install it and find out. I've read some reviews and have decided to retain iMovie '08 on my machine in my "Vintage iMovie" folder along with iMoive HD. (I've decided to see if the HD, '08, and '09 versions can peacefully coexist on the same machine before installing '09 on my laptop. I do a lot of iMovie training and want to have as many versions available to me as possible. I never know which version a training facility will have on their machines.)

I'll let you know if the 3 versions seem to play well with each other on the same machine.

Here's an interesting review of iMovie '09 by Jeff Carlson of Macworld.com.

I've used CoolIris since way back when. In fact, when I first discovered it, it wasn't compatible with Safari and had far less functionality than it has today. Even then, it was cool. The 3D wall is elegant and impressive. I started to download the PicLens Publisher (CoolIris was originally named PicLens, and the PicLens Publisher still carries than name.) and enable my site, but... Well, for different reasons, not the least of which was not completely understanding the site implementation process at the time, the implementation didn't happen then.

If you're unfamiliar with CoolIris, this is definitely worth a look-see! I blogged about the CoolIris iPhone app back in December. The plug in, which works with Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox, makes the presentation of multimedia on a large display nothing less than awesome. I can see lots of potential here and suspect that this company has some very interesting ideas in development as I type!

Today, Alan Levine piqued my curiosity more deeply about using CoolIris' browser plugin as a presentation platform. The thought had crossed my mind "back in the day", but I knew that, at the time, I would never be able to figure out how to get it to work or if it even could. Well, Alan has. And I love it!

I've gone to dabbling and now have my site CoolIris enabled. I was surprised at how easy it was to do really. (Still a bit puzzled about adding YouTube video to the 3D wall. Wonder if it must be downloaded onto the desktop and uploaded onto your server to make that work. If you figure out a way to get it to link to the YouTube site and play in your 3D wall, let me know how you did it!)

Below is a screen shot of all of the photos on my blog in the full screen 3D wall. (I've noticed I need to use more file formats that support transparency and less jpg compression.) Nothing really spectacular here unless my site were a photo gallery, or my YouTube channel, or a school-based curriculum site with teacher- and student-created instructional multimedia content. And I won't start describing the features of the plugin because there are many.

And, as you can see below, you can embed your media.rss file directly into your blog or web site for an interactive user experience. The basic embed just appears as a boring, flat blob. Ahhh, but try any and all of the bulleted suggestions below...

• Click and drag on the black wall below to scroll through all of the pictures I've uploaded on my site in the last couple of years.
• Want to drill down onto a specific picture? Just click on it specifically.
• Want to embed my blog's latest 3D photo wall on your site? Click on the <e> at the bottom of the window.
• OK, just go insane and click on the "Go Full Screen" button in the far bottom right hand side of the embed below..

But, by far, the coolest thing to me is Alan Levine's leveraging this presentation platform as a tool for presenting live to an audience. By tweaking the media.rss file, as he describes in his post, you can have your presentation images "on the big screen" serve as links to websites or files on your hard drive. This tool, unlike Keynote or PowerPoint, makes non-linear presentation a delightful eye candy experience, affording the presenter the luxury of being able to seamlessly and elegantly jump wherever the "moment in audience" make take him or her. And, remember, the brain craves novelty and motion. This provides both while not distracting from content but rather welcoming the audience to become more involved in the content.

I'm really eager to give this a try!

Maybe I'm the last person to learn this. Maybe everybody knew it already. But... Just in case...

Mac users: you can have your favorite dashboard widgets float above your computer desktop while you work! Just go to your dashboard, then click and drag on the widget you want to move to your desktop while you use your keyboard shortcut to close your widgets. [To find the keyboard shortcut that opens and closes your dashboard widgets, go to System Preferences ➜ Exposé & Spaces as pictured below. Click image for full size.]

A number of people frequently ask me about how I control my presentations from my iPhone as well as what I use to create the presentations they see me give. This post is offered to provide some quick answers to those questions.

Let me start by saying that all three applications I use on my iPhone will also run on the iPod Touch. All of them require a WiFi connection. I use a computer-to-computer connection between my iPhone and computer and will explain why later.

Presentation Software
When I am presenting a keynote (not a workshop session) I typically use Keynote '09. I shudder to say such a thing, but Keynote is Apple's version of PowerPoint. But the truth is, in the world according to Tim, Keynote is vastly superior to PowerPoint. The developers of Keynote have paid a great deal of attention to the art of design and communication. I perceive the program to be more welcoming and engaging for the audience–hence the reason I suspect so many people ask me what I am using. The transition options afford the presenter the opportunity to bring the audience deeper into the nature of the conversation itself.

That said, I have also been developing a presentation style that uses CoolIris. I have yet to "go public" with this though I have shared my experiments with a handful of people. The use of CoolIris as a presentation medium interests me because it affords me the option of making the keynote experience non-linear–a notion I really like, a lot. I blogged about this when I saw Alan Levine's post about how he did this very thing.

The only reason at the present that I haven't "gone live" with a presentation using CoolIris is that all video used must be Flash encoded. My success with getting a high quality Flash encode has been dismal. At present I haven't been successful using H.264 as the compression codec to get a quality visual experience. Anyone have solutions?

iPhone Presentation Control Options
I currently use two different solutions. Each has advantages and disadvantages. A third option also exists that I will use when I actually go live with a CoolIris-based presentation. I've heard a fourth application is available but have no experience with it and will not list it here.

Stage Hand
I love Stage Hand, developed by Wooji Juice. It connects the iPhone to my Mac via a little (free) application running on the Mac called Stage Manager through a WiFi connection. I always set up a password protected computer-to-computer network from my Mac dedicated to my iPhone. You could share a public WiFi connection, but most venue's WiFi is being hammered by hundreds of users, and this would slow your connection to your Mac. For presentation internet access, I use a wired connection.

Features

• You can jump around in the presentation without the audience ever seeing that process. Skip slides as needed.
• Adjust the volume of your computer output from the iPhone.
• Add a highlighter to the screen. Adjust its size. Move it about in real time. Turn it off.
• Blank the screen.
• Show Keynote's presenter display (or not)
• Quiet audio feedback from the iPhone when advancing slides, etc.
• Rotate between presenter notes (varying font sizes) and the slide view
• Have the phone vibrate at timed intervals to notify you as your time elapses
• Works with Keynote '08 and '09
• Several other features

Limitation

The one thing that bugs me just a tad about Stage Hand on the iPhone is the ever-so-short lag between when you advance the slide on the iPhone and when you can see the result on the iPhone screen. The audience sees the slide change all but instantly. However, the presenter experiences just a second of lag. Unlike the Remote offered by Apple, Stage Hand seems to advance the slide on screen for the audience first and then advance the slide on the iPhone screen. I rather prefer it the other way around.

Apple's Remote for Keynote
Not to be confused with Apple's remote application for controlling iTunes and the AppleTV, this application, offered by Apple, connects the iPhone through a WiFi connection to the presentation computer running Keynote '09 only. It works solidly.

Features

• Advance slides quickly on the iPhone and then on the screen with the swipe of your finger
• See the slide on top and the presenter notes on the bottom
• Preview your next slide in landscape mode

Limitations

• As of this writing, the feature set listed above is all the application will do.
• Only works with Keynote '09 and not Keynote '08
• Presenter notes have one small font size. If you're like me, I have to get the iPhone positioned exactly in the right spot for these bifocals!

Air Mouse
Air Mouse is another critter all together. This turns your iPhone into a mousepad and keyboard that controls your computer via WiFi. So this application gives you more functionality in that it will basically allow you to do anything on your computer from your iPhone, including scrolling and right-clicking. So this application would be ideal for navigating through a 3D wall presentation via CoolIris in the browser.

Air Mouse is a clever little application with too many features to list here. The only real drawback I've experienced is getting accustomed to the "feel" of the application, which is significantly different from using your trackpad on your laptop or a connected mouse.

So there you have it. Keynote is available through Apple's iWork series at a nice discount to educators, though the three applications together are not very expensive at all, especially when compared to their Office counterparts. And the three iPhone/iPod Touch applications run between .99 and 7.99 as of this writing.

I frequently have people ask me what software I used to create MabryOnline.org. It was a version of MovableType 3, by a company called Six Apart. We purchased the school license for only $300, "back in the day." With a $200 hosting plan at Dreamhost, we had this killer web presence for only $500--and a lot of my blood, sweat, and tears. (Actually, bad words stood in for the tears as I was teaching myself how to do something that was so complicated to me at the time: install a blogging system on a server, create and linked in a database, and create a collection of blogs that would need little or no maintenance, be easy for teachers to use, and look like a website.)

But after the tortuous experience of teaching myself how to do all of this, I can't tell you how much I liked MovableType, now that I had learned and understood it. But all good things come to an end. The MovableType 3 product life cycle ended, and MovableType 4, with powerful, enhanced functionality and a completely different "under the hood" approach to managing the building and implementation of blogs came along. But in addition to this vastly enhanced feature set, the cost of a license now was well beyond the reach of all but the wealthiest schools. I checked with them a few of months ago. A license similar to the one we had at Mabry Middle School would now cost an unbelievable $16,000! I was stunned.

So I set my eyes on WordPress MU, another blogging system. But WordPress is open source and therefore free. I even set up a working copy on my server and played around with it. "Free" sounded really good to me. More and more school districts around the country are catching on to using this platform as their web presence rather than paying companies big profit margins to do it for them. The only problem I had with WordPress: it lives in a programming language I do not know: PHP. (MovableType 3 lived on top of PHP; so, I never had to know PHP to use it effectively.) But in WordPress, without some understanding of PHP, the user has little control of styling the look, feel, and emotional tone of the blog. I suspect that this is the reason you can spot a WordPress blog from a mile away: few really know how to dig into the code to really get a totally customized blog.

This would never do for me. I not only enjoy the whole design and branding aspect of web technology representing who we are to the world, I feel using design to create and shape public image and support as well as the nature of the institution itself is a critical and powerful aspect of using these tools well. However, I'm just not up for a big battle between me and a programming language. Those battles make my brain hurt and require a lot of time I just don't have.

So last week, I went back and explored MovableType again. I was stunned. I was shocked. In fact, I couldn't believe what I read on their website: their license is now free for a K-12 institution and individuals???! Certainly I read it wrong or this was an error on their site. I sent them an email. "Is this really true," I asked? This quotation from their support staff: "Yes, you are correct, K-12 schools AND Individuals qualify for the free Movable Type Blogger license."

Wow! From a $16,000 license fee to free--just like that! So, over the next few months, in all of my free time (which doesn't exist), I'm going to install MT4 Pro on my server and come up to speed on this latest version. If I fall in love with MT all over again, I'll upgrade my personal blog. Maybe I'll even help K-12 institutions work their way into this space. I'm sort of excited about it, actually. With the dawning of HTML 5 and CSS 3 right around the corner, I will now have thousands of reasons never to sleep again!

I absolutely love, and regularly use, my computer keyboard's numeric keypad. I find typing numbers using the numeric keys above the alpha key set cumbersome and inefficient. (And I must also confess to wishing the telephone and the computer numeric keypad had the same layout—preferably defaulting to the keyboard's numeric layout!)

Problem: My laptop keyboard lacks the numeric keypad. I could travel with a USB keypad, but that completely defeats the point of owning a laptop: portability.

Solution: I just discovered my newest bit of application love: the NumberKey application for the iPhone and iPod Touch from BALMUDA design LTD. This application turns the iPhone or Touch into a keypad. And, a really nice "touch," it looks great, as if it belongs next to the laptop. The iPhone or iPod Touch connects to the laptop (via WiFi) through a small free application running on the laptop called "NumberKey Connect," that I have auto launch when I log in to my laptop. NumberKey on the iPhone feels natural and is responsive with no apparent delays between what you type and what you see on the computer screen. The look (skins: for example—make it match your white keyboard) and functionality of the application can be customized. And while the iPhone/iPd Touch's key size is somewhat smaller than a standard numeric keypad, using NumberKey is vastly superior to using the numbered keys on the standard alpha keyboard.

Tim likes!

photo credit: CC by momentimedia @ flickr

For some time now, I've been perplexed about how to get a quality video that plays in the Flash media player. Most of the encoded videos I see playing in a Flash player are so heavily compressed, they look, well, quiet frankly, just awful. I know YouTube is encoding more and more of their video, which plays in their Flash player, using the H.264 codec from Apple. Those videos look awesome as the H.264 codec produces a high quality visual result with a significant reduction in file size. But how are they doing it?

After dabbling with this issue for some time, I have stumbled upon a solution. It might not be the "correct" way, but I have discovered a compression process that works. If you have a better solution, do share!

Compression Overview
Video files are large: huge, in fact. The original example file I will be using in this post was 403 megabytes for a 1 minute and 45 second video at a size of 820 pixels wide and 550 pixels tall. (This file was already compressed using H.264 when I exported it from a much larger HD movie I had created from 150 of my photographs.) Therefore, we need to compress movie files so they can be played over the internet. When you export a video file, you choose how the video file will be compressed. Compression can become a complicated process really fast because each compression option typically has numerous different parameters.

Perhaps the most important choice is the first one: which type of compression (called a codec--which stands for compress/decompress) you will use. The codec is the way the video is compressed before you upload it to the internet server (compress) and the way you decompress it to play it on the end user's computer (decompress). When a video will not play on your machine, odds are high that your video player (QuickTime, Windows Media Player, RealPlayer) does not have the same codec on your machine the movie was compressed in and therefore can not decompress the file so it will play on your machine.

Player Overview
When an end user plays a video, the computer uses a media player application to decompress the video file so you can watch it. Macs typically use QuickTime. Windows typically uses Windows Media Player or QuickTime, which also works on a Windows machine. When playing a video file from internet, the browser often uses one of these players, often within a browser window, to play the movie file.

Perhaps because Internet Explorer was so issue riddled for so many years, causing QuickTime movies to fail to play in the Internet Explorer browser, many people turned to the Flash player, which works fine on Windows and on Macs. YouTube videos, for example, play through the Flash player to maximize browser compatibility. The only problem with the Flash player is that the codecs typically used for flash movies compress the video so much they create very poor playback quality.

Compression Codecs
Two of the standard codecs used for movies played through a flash player are On2 VP6 and Sorenson Spark. These codecs shrink the file down significantly! But the problem is they look, well, "compressed." You can see very noticeable "compression artifacts." To my eye, On2 VP6 creates fewer compression artifacts than Sorenson Spark. But both are just unacceptable to me.

The H.264 codec, created by Apple Inc. produces the most natural video image of any codec I've ever seen. Typically, when you have great video quality, the file size is huge. But, amazingly, the H.264 codec gives both glorious video quality and small file sizes. This has rapidly made the H.264 codec very, very popular. YouTube, for example, has started using the H.264 codec for its high quality videos.

Comparison of Codec's Video Quality and File Sizes
In the images below, you can see a comparison of the image quality and the file sizes created by the H.264 codec, the On2 VP6 codec, and the Sorenson Spark codec. The comparisons are all based on an original movie that was 820 pixels wide and 550 pixels tall even though the pictures are considerably smaller.

All of these examples were exported with a data rate of 1,200 kbytes per second, which is another parameter that has a huge impact on video quality. A data rate of 1,200 kbytes per second is insanely high for the web but produces much higher video quality. (The higher the data rate, the more bandwidth playing a single movie file will consume. Web masters typically try to conserve bandwidth as it costs them money.)

You can click on any picture to see the larger image thus seeing the compression artifacts more clearly. Notice, in example one, the QuickTime .mov file compressed with the H.264 codec is by the far the clearest with clean, crisp black borders around the individual pictures in the movie. However it is by far the largest file size!

The Flash flv file, in example two, compressed with the On2 VP6 codec is drastically smaller. But, when you click on the image to see the full size version, you will see that the black borders framing the pictures are noticeably jagged and the image loses detail.

The Flash flv file, in example three, compressed with the Sorenson codec is slightly larger than the On2 VP6 codec but is still drastically smaller than the H.264 codec result. But, when you click on the image to see the full size version, you will see that, not only are the black borders framing the pictures noticeably jagged, but the area around the cactus in the bottom right is heavily pixilated (boxy), the child's face lacks detail, and the image has become blurry.

Again, these issues are not very noticeable until you look at the images full size, in the size the movie file actually will play in the browser. So, in my mind, the question has always been, "How do I get the pristine visual clarity of the H.264 codec into an flv file format that the Flash player can play in any browser with the fewest issues?!" The answer is below!

The Solution
I took the original QuickTime .mov file compressed with the H.264 codec and exported it as an mp4 file, yet another file format, using the H.264 codec. (If I had only known this little trick when I created the original movie file of the 150 photographs, I could have created the original as an mp4 file using the H.264 codec instead of a .mov file format. Thus, I would have avoided recompressing the file and probably would have acheived even greater visual detail!)

The mp4 file format is considerably smaller than the .mov file format. And since it too can be compressed using the H.264 codec, you get excellent visual quality.

And here's the amazing part. To get the .mp4 file format to play through a flash player, it must have an .flv file extension. All I had to do was replace the .mp4 file extension with the .flv file extension, and, amazingly it now plays in the flash player! But best of all, it is now the smallest file size of all: only 16.1 megabytes!

Keep in mind, as you watch the video below, that the file is actually twice this size. It was designed for a larger window size (820 pixels wide) that will not fit in this blog's post area (about 500 pixels wide). So you are seeing it much smaller than it was intended to be seen.

In Darren's comment, posted to Prepare to Geek Out , he asked what flash player I was using to play the video in that post. Well, to answer his question requires a whole post (probably deserves more than one!).

Quick Answer
The JW FLV Player which can be found at longtailvideo.com.

Things I like about the JW FLV player:

• You can purchase a license (which I have done) or use the free, non-commercial, creative commons version of the player, which has restrictions.
• You can skin the player to have a particular look and feel.
• You can include plugins that add additional functionality, like the link or embed code at the end of the video, which they call the Viral Plugin.
• You have several monetization options, which really don't apply to me, but others may find of value.
• You have a web-based setup wizard that allows you to configure the code you will place on your site.
• Site implementation is rather straight forward.
• You can embed metadata into your player for each implementation of video on your site.
• If you want to dig deeper into web video compression, embedding, streaming, and the javascript API, they offer some really good tutorials. (Just noticed these!)

Things that tend to go sideways for me about the JW FLV player:

• The web-based setup wizard gets quirky for me by not showing the preview in the setup wizard window when I use a skin. At first I thought the skin was just not working, but it was. The preview in the setup wizard window was all that wasn't working.
• The setup wizard offers two types of code for your blog: javascript based code and an embed code. For some reason, (lack of sleep?) I had the hardest time figuring out how to get from one to the other. It isn't hard at all. I just missed the obvious, I guess.

Another Option
However, my favorite option for a flash player is SlideShowPro. SlideShowPro is unbelievably powerful and so totally slick! It can be vastly more than just a flash player you embed on your site with content. You also have other purchase options and can, for little money, purchase SlideShowPro Director, which is a complete and incredibly powerful content management system for photos and video. But with all of this power, comes a bit of a learning curve.

I've been playing with (learning) SlideShowPro on my personal site for my online photo collection, which contains over 10,000 photos, all managed through Adobe's Lightroom 2 using SlideShowPro's Export plugin to upload the photos into SlideShowPro Director and using SlideShow Pro for Adobe Lightroom and SlideShowPro for Flash to create the actual slideshow itself that then links to the content in SlideShow Pro Director. I've been dabbling with it on and off now (more off than on really) for about a year. I'm just now getting to the point where I think "I get it."

Here's a brief example of my workflow:

• Shoot photos and import them into Lightroom 2 for tagging, touchup, and organization (Or make videos and upload them to SlideShow Pro Director)
• Arrange the photos into collections (albums and galleries) in Lightroom 2
• Export the albums directly out of Lightroom 2 at full size into SlideShowPro Director (You don't have to use full size, but this has its rewards!)
• Create a flash based slideshow in Lightroom 2, using the SlideShowPro for Lightroom plugin, or...
• Create a flash based slideshow in the Flash application itself using SlideShowPro's Flash component
• Embed the flash player on your site.

Using the above workflow, the flash player can be linked to the media RSS feed from any SlideShow Pro Director album or gallery of albums. (I frequently use the exact same flv player over and over again but linked to a different content RSS feed.) As you update the contents in the album or gallery in SlideShowPro's Director, it automatically updates the content that is played in the player! And, with the options I implemented, every time an end user hits my photos in full screen mode, SlideShow Pro Director checks out their screen size and then creates images from the full size images on the server that are the exact size of their monitor--no compression artifacts and no pixilated upsampling. Total sweetness! SlideShow Pro Director is a very, very powerful content management system: smart albums based on EXIF meta data, tags, managing image focal points, etc.

The flash player you create in Lightroom or in the Flash application has numerous customizable features and looks totally professional. In fact, if you know a lot more than I do, you can dig into the bowels of the Flash and Director API and create whatever you can imagine. And, you have the ability to intermix video and photos. The photos can pan and zoom. I could go on and on about this series of products.

Rarely do I actually recommend a product, but I must say that I highly recommend SlideShowPro's entire family of products. They are affordably priced and very powerful. Installing it on my server was very straight forward. (You can also have them host your content for you for a recurring fee.) And they have had excellent support for me when I had questions. I've even had email exchanges with the owner of the company to solve a problem or make some feature requests. These guys really are listening!

But there is an issue... It took me some time, a good bit of time, actually, to get my head around how the SlideShowPro product workflow would unfold for me in a practical application on my personal website with all of my photos. As I didn't use the product consistently and have zero knowledge of Flash, the learning curve felt intense to me. But, let me assure you, for me, it was absolutely worth it! I really think I should have just hit it hard for a few days until "I got it" rather than dabbling a little here and a little there. Now, they have a very nice collection of excellent video tutorials that make understanding the process much more obvious!

Which Option to Choose?
For an occasional video embed, probably the JW FLV player would be the best option. It's less complex and more straight forward. But if you want to deliver instructional content on a regular basis, I would suggest a very close look at the SlideShowPro product line for video and photo content management. I can envision this being used to deliver online staff development in a school district. I think that even as a classroom teacher, I would be all over SlideShowPro.

So, Darren, with the awesomeness you do with your math students, if you're looking for a routine video management system for their math instruction, to upload your classroom interactive whiteboard instructional videos as well as your movies that bring math to life, I'd look seriously at SlideShowPro. Check out their introductory video at this link and imagine that being the digital hub for your math class!

As a musician who actually initially became interested in technology so I could compose, print, produce, and record music as a young twenty-something right out of college, I am just astounded at how much technology has advanced since those days! I could go on and on about what it was like to record my first project back in the day, but today's post highlights something vastly more fascinating: the band, The 88, has recorded a new single using a $10 app, FourTrack, on the iPhone! I bought FourTrack when it was first released. Even in its first iteration the program was really novel and functional.

Now, I typically find a lot of today's pop music rather aweful, I'm just getting old I guess, but their iPhone recorded song, Love Is the Thing, is indeed catchy. Their novel idea for recording it is will get them a lot of media attention. You can read the details of the recording project, with lots of pictures, at this post on their website. Very clever guys! And you can buy their single at the iTunes store for .99. Why not?! (I include the links to their single wishing them huge success!)

As I've said so many times, the world can now be anything we can imagine. The hard part is the imagining, which requires creativity, which we are killing off in our schools at the very time in our history it would serve humanity best ...

If you are upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 you have to completely wipe your machine clean and start from scratch? Does Microsoft literally recommend you just purchase a new machine rather than upgrade? Is Walt serious? Inquiring minds (who avoid Windows as much as possible) have to know!

Link to the podcast of Walt Mossberg (Wall Street Journal) discussing migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7. (You must have iTunes installed to watch the podcast.)

In the wee hours of this morning, around 4:30AM, I had my first experience with augmented reality. No, I wasn't dreaming. This was the real thing, just augmented!

"What is augmented reality?" you ask.

Let me explain.

I love Yelp, an application for the iPhone. Yelp is a social network in which those who participate share information about businesses. I first learned about The Veggie Grill through Yelp. Hundreds of people had eaten there, had liked it, had rated it highly, and wrote glowing comments about it. So I tried the restaurant, and now it is one of my favorites in LA.

The new version (3.0) of the Yelp application has a hidden feature. Apparently fearing the App Store might not approve the new concept, or perhaps this was a stroke of genius by the marketing department, no one knew the application had "The Monocle!" You have to go through secret gyrations, rather literally, to activate the hidden augmented reality feature set.

Monocle is sort of like a one-eyed Oracle. You launch the new version of Yelp on your iPhone and then shake the phone violently. After two attempts, the screen welcomed me to "The Monocle!"

Now, I hold my iPhone, running Yelp's Monocle, up in front of me and peer through the screen, which has activated the camera and shows me, on the screen, what is actually out in front of me--reality. As I move the iPhone around in 3D space, information overlays appear in the direction of restaurants ahead of me in that direction--augmenting reality in real time with overlaid information. I just follow.

I can touch any of the overlays (which contain a name, up to a 5 star rating, general pricing information, and the businesses category) to get detailed information about the business from the Yelp site. As I walk, Monocle guides me to the location I choose!

This is nothing short of radical!

Imagine the day you walk in front of a restaurant and the Monocle shows you the menu. Or, you walk by a store and the Monocle shows you the sale items inside!

Below is a screen shot from my iPhone when I was standing on the balcony looking out over the street below. Five restaurants were near me. (As you can see, I waited until day break to make the screen shot.)

We chose a nearby French restaurant, Creme de la Crepe Café, that had numerous positive reviews and a high rating. One touch later and Google Maps was providing us with turn by turn directions. I must recommend Creme de la Crepe Café, pictured below. The food was indeed authentic and delicious. The staff was French.

The challenges presented for this technology to work well: your databased longitude/latitude information must be spot on; you must have clear, unfettered access to the GPS signal and the compass. Also, when too many places are nearby, the screen becomes really difficult to read!

I have the basic news apps on my iPhone: AP, the New York Times, NPR, even the Wall Street Journal. I've had the CNN site bookmarked on my phone until today. I deleted it after purchasing CNN's new mobile app for the iPhone. It's the best news site application I've seen to date--complete awesomeness!

The app only costs $1.99. As a friend of mine pointed out, however, you still have to suffer with advertisements on the paid application. Sad. But at least I don't find it nearly as intrusive as CNN.com's video ads before every video. [By the way, I've found a way around that!] On the iPhone app you only get a still image ad while the video loads. And I'm delighted you can watch live newscasts and video over WiFi, 3G, and Edge!

Turning the phone horizontally gives a very nice coverflow slideshow for news events and videos all based on category. Touch the picture to flip the image and reveal the barebones basics of the story with a link to watch or read if you desire.

My CNN provides immediate access to news, weather, and traffic based on your physical location and on any locations you setup to monitor. The news stories link to local media.

iReport, shown at the bottom of this post, is probably my favorite, not because of the content, but because of the concept. In this section you can view featured iReport articles or video. But what is really impressive: Submit. The user can submit photos or video right from the iPhone. So if you find yourself in the middle of a news-worthy event, you can shoot it and upload it to iReport on the spot. Very slick! CNN even offers some suggested assignments for iReporters.

Sharing and following news stories and topics is easy. When you choose to follow a topic, that topic is loaded into your "My CNN." Topics, naturally, are broader than individual stories. For example: I touched "Follow" on a story about Iran's nuclear program. Four stories, all related to Iran, appeared in "My CNN." You can also share news and iReports via Text Message, Email, Twitter, and Facebook. I'm not sure if selecting "Save for later" will allow you to read the story offline when you have no access--like on an airplane. Now, that would be very nice!

Other nifty little features remain undiscussed. I like the new CNN app, a lot. The designers did a great and thoughtful job.

Once again, I confess to frittering away too much money on apps for my iPhone and iPod Touch. I know I do this. Yet, I just can't stop. I justify it too easily since most of them are so inexpensive. But with over 150 apps currently actually on the phone, these things add up. Many, of course, are free, but still, a therapy session or two would probably have been less expensive!

The apps on my devices come and go with regularity. I really like some of them, but others are... well, more transient.

So I thought I would share some apps I like and use as well as one or two I have kept my eye on but not purchased yet. The list is in no particular order. Some apps will work on both the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Some apps will only work on the iPhone 3Gs. Most probably only work on OS 3.x. Check the fine print at the app store before making your purchase to be sure the app will function as you expect.

Voice Memos

For simple audio only recording, this application, which comes as part of OS 3, is great. I plug in my little Shure mic, which I love and previously blogged about here, and use Voice Memos almost every time I present. When I plug my iPhone back in to my computer to charge, the newly recorded voice memo is automatically placed into the Voice Memos playlist in iTunes. A quick mouse click, and I have an mp3 file ready for upload. This is an easy tool to use to create audio-only podcasts. And, in typical Apple style, the design of the interface is gorgeous.

Zip Car

I doubt I will ever use this application because no Zip Car locations exist near where I live. But if they did, and if I didn't have a car, this app is just too cool! Select and rent a Zip Car through your iPhone. Have the phone take you to the car using Google Maps. When you are close, honk the car horn from the iPhone to locate it in the lot. Unlock the car with the iPhone. Check the car back in from the iPhone when you are finished using it. This would be a must in urban areas where parking is so impossible and expensive as to preclude car ownership. Clever, clever, clever.

Dragon Dictation

This isn't a full fledged dictation/transcription application. But for a short email or to catch a thought before it flitters away, it really works nicely! I'm rather impressed with the accuracy and speed of the voice transcription. I used several dictation/transcription products about 10 years ago and abandoned them. They didn't work well enough and need to be "trained." Not so with Dragon Dictation. I like it more than I like typing on the tiny keyboard. For me, this application replaced Jott, which I had previously liked and used. Jott is a fee based service and has many features beyond the scope of Dragon Dictation.

FlightTrack Pro

If you travel as much as I do, this app is essential. It auto downloads your flight info from TripIt, another essential for the frequent traveler, and keeps your current flight information in the palm of your hand. (My entire flight arrangements process is automated. All I need to do is go online and make the reservation. From there it is automatically placed on my calendars, iPhone and online, and the detailed flight information is populated into FlightTrack Pro. Everyone who subscribes to my calendar knows where I am. TripIt even tells me, of the people I follow, who will be in the same city when I am there.)

With FlightTrack Pro, you know up-to-date information about delays, gate changes, current weather, and more. You can even quickly tweet (and email), directly from the application, information about your trip as it unfolds. This application has been invaluable when, because of arrival delays, I needed to know what actual gate I was going into and the exact gate from which my connecting flight would depart so I didn't have to stop to find out. Haven't missed a connection yet!

Sun Seeker and Theodolite
These two apps use augmented reality to layer information over the world as seen through the iPhone camera lens. Sun Seeker shows the solar path of the sun in the sky, winter and summer solstice paths, and provides date and time specific information about the sun. If I were buying a house, I'd want to know the sun exposure of the property. (I live for bright!) Gardeners will also find this tool handy.

Theodolite, pictured below, overlays a compass, GPS, map, zoom camera, and 2 axis inclinometer onto the world all around you. Use it for boating, hiking, surveying, etc. Save information overlaid on camera images for later use. (Sorry, I blurred the image from the camera lens by accidentally jerking the iPhone when I took the screen shot below.)

[Oops! I snuck in two applications in this section! This then leads me to a growing number of scientific data collection instruments that work together with the iPhone to collect data in the lab and in the field. (See this link at Pasco for an example.) Behavioral sciences are also included in this conversation. School psychologists, teachers, teacher aides, and even parents can use Behavior Tracker Pro to support the behavioral treatment plans for children with Autism and behavior disorders. This section alone could turn into an entire post. And then there are applications for classroom observations.... I think I'll just have to revisit all of this in a stocking stuffer post.]

Navigon

I had a difficult time deciding which realtime navigation GPS to purchase for my iPhone and finally decided on Navigon North America, and Europe--two separate applications. I also purchased the TomTom Navigation car kit, which works beautifully with the Navigon software and significantly improves reception of the GPS signal. (Apparently the GPS signal is very week compared to radio/TV and is independent of the application or phone. The car kit has an improved antennae system.) This application has helped me get on location twice when the navigation system in the rental car had "issues." The above screen shot was from a recent trip to Cashel while in Ireland.

Yelp!

Having lived in LA for less than 2 years, I still have no idea where to go for this, that and the other. Yelp has been a fantastic resource! No matter where I am, I can locate restaurants (or any number of businesses) near where I happen to be. I found my optometrist through Yelp's customer recommendations, a cool locally owned bookstore, numerous restaurants, a framing store, etc. I hear rumors Google is in final discussion with Yelp! for a purchase rumored at about $500,000,000. The Yelp! community is large, younger, and vibrant.

WorldCard

I just found this little application. Take a picture of a business card with your iPhone. Using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) the application finds the information on the card, gives you the option to edit and approve it, and then uploads the information as a contact to your address book. Nice! I'd say it's about 90% accurate, and again, anything that can save squinting at tiny letters and numbers on a business card and trying to type them on the iPhone's small keyboard is a huge help. The application is available in several different languages.

Mark the Spot

Mark the Spot is a free application that allows you to report areas where the AT&T network is having performance issues. Regrettably, it gets used too often. AT&T states that they use the information to improve the network.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a free portable document solution: I can access any documents I place in my Dropbox from any computer that has an internet connection. I can use this application to get to those documents on my iPhone. If I "favorite" an application, I can view it when I don't have a phone or WiFi signal (an airplane flight without GoGo, for example.). I can choose to share those documents or entire folders with others. This is cloud computing made easy. And, best of all, Dropbox gives you a 2GB Dropbox for free. If you need more storage, they provide that as a fee based service.

iDisk does a similar thing for those users who have Apple's MobileMe service.

Remote (for Keynote)

I use Apple's little Keynote Remote application to control my presentations when I present so I can walk around and not be bound to the computer. This application is superior to a wireless USB "clicker" device because it allows me to see my slides and slide notes virtually in real time and has the range of the WiFi signal. A simple swipe of the finger advances the presentation.

TweetDeck and HootSuite

I'm torn between these two iPhone Twitter clients that use a column and/or tab view to provide quick access and more organization to tweets. I haven't decided which of these will ultimately be "the one." Each has some features I really like. If only all of the features were on both applications!

This post was going to be entitled, Last Minute Stocking Stuffers, but the busy holiday travel schedule precluded its getting posted. So now, it's Apps to Ring in the New Year!

I just couldn't limit myself to 12 apps! I admit it.

This year I just couldn't do it. In the three part series, I actually mentioned about 15 apps or so. But who can blame me? There are over 100,000 of them available!

So, in this final post, I thought I'd toss in a few stocking stuffers for the season. Here you go...

NetNewsWire

A while back, I posted about my experiment with Feverº. I abandoned the Feverº self-hosted RSS feed aggregator application (which you install on your own server) because of performance issues. On my server, if not everyone's, it just ran way    t o o     s l o w l y.

I've gone back to NetNewsWire, which now links to your Google Reader account and, especially after using Feverº, feels incredulously fast and responsive. The iPhone application interfaces with your Google Reader account to give you access to your Google Reader feeds through your iPhone.

Fuze Meeting

This application is unlike any of the others I mention; because, I don't own it, nor have I ever used it. I'm keeping my eye on it at the moment. The Fuze Meeting site claims to provide HD content and desktop sharing in real time across computers and platforms, including the iPhone, for global meetings. Their current fee structure is very reasonable when compared to other similar services. However, there are currently some limitations.

This service is of interest to me as it indicates the direction technology can, and probably will, take us. Couple this with the patent Apple filed in 2009 to embed cameras into the active screens on a device, and Star Trek's old communicators ("Beam me up, Scotty.) become vintage. (You know how annoying it is to do video chat right now where the person you see is obviously looking up or down at the camera, and not "at you?" Well this patent is for technology that would allow you to look directly "at the person" because your camera would be in the screen itself somehow. Apple is notorious for patenting technology that never makes it to market, but this would be a great one to really get to use!)

Miscellaneous Stuffers

Well, I had to leave out Shazam and SoundHound. I've blogged about Shazam in the past. Now it has some serious competition, and SoundHound is only one of the newbies in the App store that many would argue is even better than Shazam. These applications identify music after listening to it through the iPhone's built in mic. Very clever. With SoundHound, the user can even hum or sing a melody and the app will identify the artist, title, etc. SoundHound has other cool features not currently found in Shazam.

I still like WriteRoom, which made my list last year. Now that the iPhone has Cut/Copy/Paste, this simple little word processor, which syncs and shares, is a nice tool that, for me anyway, beat out EasyWriter.

RedLaser uses the iPhone camera to read product bar codes (astoundingly fast!) and then lists that product and/or similar products for price comparison. My experience with the app is that the "scanning" of the bar code is faster than the scanners at the super market.

Then we have live video distribution via the uStream Live Broadcasting App, the uStream Viewing Application, which allows you to watch live and saved uStream channels, and the uStream Recorder, which lets you record for later broadcast. These applications are among the first of their kind and have limitations. But they indicate where the future will most likely be!

Knocking Live Video allows real-time video to be sent from one iPhone user to another over the 3G network! I haven't tried it yet, but I'm eager to see how well this performs.

ReelDirector is a simple yet surprising movie editor on the iPhone. Students can now shoot and edit in the field.

Storyboard is a nice tool for creating storyboards on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Once students understand how to use the tool (which shouldn't take them too long) I suspect they will be much more thoughtful in envisioning their project before the shoot ever takes place. Users can even play the storyboard back in real time as well as export (email) the completed storyboard project as a PDF.

And who doesn't like the Animoto iPhone app?!

In Part Two of this four part series, I got a little distracted and mentioned

scientific data collection instruments that work together with the iPhone to collect data in the lab and in the field. (See this link at Pasco for an example.) Behavioral sciences are also included in this conversation. School psychologists, teachers, teacher aides, and even parents can use Behavior Tracker Pro to support the behavioral treatment plans for children with Autism and behavior disorders. This section alone could turn into an entire post. And then there are applications for classroom observations...

Let me quickly mention an application that can be used for classroom observation: iObserve. In my mind, the power of this tool is in sitting down with teachers (or students for that matter) to discuss what they value and want to track. This tool is very flexible and can be used, not to evaluate, but to foster professional growth and meaningful conversation toward shared goals.

So many others. Go ahead, check these out too!

And before I call it quits, I have to mention one final stocking stuffer. This isn't an app from the app store that runs on the iPhone or iPod Touch. This is a system preference that installs on your Mac (only, sorry Windows friends) called Airlock. It's so clever. Using your iPhone or iPod Touch's bluetooth signal, your computer keeps track of where the device is. When it moves out of the range you define (up to about 30 feet), it locks your computer screen. When it sees your device within range, it automatically unlocks the computer. You can also run scripts with it.

Since I always have my iPhone on my person, this would keep my computer secure when I'm not by it. Currently, the developer is working with Apple over what they say Apple claims are issues in the Bluetooth firmware. So the software may drop the connection at times even when the iPhone is within range if you are using a wireless bluetooth mouse at the same time. (Which I do.)

The Copenhagen Bike and now this...I guess I'm still just a kid at heart!

I'm not sure the iPhone-controlled Parrot AR.Drone is available right now if for no other reason: wouldn't the WiFi signal strength be a huge limitation? I'm not so sure the signal will go as far as this video seems to suggest. And WiFi signals are not that "portable." You can't easily create a wide range network in an open, empty field, for example.

[Update: Their site is back up now. It appears this little thing is for real! I've never been a huge gaming guy (it consumed too much of my time, back in the day), but with augmented reality, live video feeds streaming to your iPhone from the 2 drone cameras, awareness sensors of other drones in the area, multi player option, the ability to engage augmented reality drones, autopilot and soft landing, and the open development SDK for game development, this product should be huge. In response to my above concern, the drone generates its own WiFi network. And, with the augmented reality tags (pieces of paper with a symbol printed on them, the drone pilot doesn't see the tag, s/he sees the AR "enemy" in 3D through the live iPhone video stream! This is pretty mind blowing stuff.]

But isn't this do-able? I know a group of high school students in Arizona that could probably pull this thing off: start by grabbing the telemetry data and porting it into the iPhone then leverage the iPhone API to control the craft. Wouldn't this be an awesome Physics class project?

Image via CrunchBase

Those who use Firefox have a number of plugins you can use to download YouTube video onto your computer. Many of the more popular ones are incredibly easy. Some allow search and file conversion functionality built right in to the menu bar.

But Safari users generally have a more difficult time locating plugins for the Safari browser. In fact, I've used a little application, TubeTV, for this purpose. It will search, convert, and save to iTunes if you wish.

But I was looking for a way to download without ever having to launch an application. I found this solution.

Here's the shortcut for downloading YouTube videos when using the Safari browser.

1. Go to the YouTube page with the video on it.  
2. [Command] + [Option] + [A] to bring up the Activity window in Safari.  
3. Under the Address Column find the YouTube page.  
4. Under that column, look for the largest file size, which will be the video file itself.  
5. Double click it to download it.  Done.

It sounds more cumbersome than it is.

The file will probably download as a .flv file.  If you have Perian (a free open source QuickTime component that adds native player support for the most popular video formats) installed on your computer, QuickTime will play the file.  Depending on what you want to do with the video file, you may need to recompress it into a different file format.  I've used Stomp (Mac only) for years.  You could also use the (generally) free Zamzar online file conversion utility.

The fact that this can be done, in total, from storyboard (if they had chosen to) all the way to upload to YouTube, on a $299 device, the iPhone 4, that also happens to make phone calls, is astounding. When Apple makes this all possible on an iPod Touch and the iPad, they will rock in the education market!

I really think that the accessibility of these powerful tools will demonstrate an increased need for creativity and empowering message.  Since virtually anyone can now create stunning rich media, what is so important that you are compelled to say it with tools that can render your message so powerfully as to compel global action?

We live in a very different time than just a few years ago...

Be sure to watch it in full screen.

If ever I posted a Cool Tools Alert, this would be one!

I was elated that, yesterday, Apple announced a new iPod Touch complete with a forward-facing camera, for video conferencing, as well as a rear-facing HD camera for movie making.  Combined with the iMovie application for these devices, an inexpensive additional purchase through the iTunes store, this device becomes a viable movie-making solution for the classroom setting.

iMovie on the iOS device has limitations, to be sure; however, the projects students will be able to storyboard, shoot, edit, display, and upload on this small, hand-held device that retails as inexpensively as $199, are more limited by the students' imaginations than by the hardware and software.  The finished movie products can be stunning, as evidenced by my previously posted iOS iMovie project, Apple of My Eye, created by Michael Koerbel and Anna Elizabeth James.

Additionally, with the new $99 AppleTV, students could share their movie projects with the class via AirPlay, in the upcoming iOS 4.2 update. In most school settings, this would probably require an HDMI to VGA cable to connect the AppleTV to the classroom projector. Projects can also be uploaded to YouTube with a simple touch.

These two new features, movie production and sharing, alone, make the device a worthy classroom investment.  But the iPod Touch has numerous other learning-centric applications that make it an incredible tool for the classroom.  Below, I'm listing just a handful of applications specifically related to podcasting and movie production that I personally use.  The number of content-specific applications are just too numerous to begin a list.

Podcast Creation Applications (only a few)

• Voice Memo (standard on the device)
• Storyrobe
• SonicPics

Movie Creation Tools

• iMovie
• MovieSlate
• iSlate
• ReelDirector
• Storyboard
• Animoto
• VideoPano

Previously, schools purchased the Flip camera to provide an affordable video production solution for the classroom.  However, now, in my mind, the iPod Touch is a vastly better deal as it offers so much more than just movie-making to the learning environment for only a few dollars more.  The Flip HD is currently selling for  $179 at Amazon and will only shoot and edit video. Certainly Flip will be forced to revisit their pricing structure.

Many schools simply can't afford classroom sets of laptops, iPads, or even netbook-type devices.  But a powerful computer with an intuitive touch-based interface, that will video conference over WiFi, produce movies, make podcasts, and run numerous content-specific inexpensive applications, all for only $199, is a steal!

Apple has knocked this one out of the park!

Disclosure Statement:  I am in no way financially affiliated with nor profit from this product endorsement which is solely made based on my personal opinions and experiences.

Well, it's that time of year again, when I reflect back on the year.

In past years, I've posted my 12 Apps of Christmas series. But this year, I want to be a little different. Instead of solely focusing on iOS apps for the iPhone, and limiting myself to 12 of them, which I could never do anyway, I'm broadening my scope to include any application, iOS or desktop, webware (online applications or resources), as well as hardware. The criteria for this year's selection is simply frequency of use: What do I find myself using over and over again, more or less on a daily basis, because I personally find that use practical and joyful.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things.. will be a series of 4 posts:

1. iOS applications
2. Hardware
3. Desktop Software
4. Webware.

This first post in the series, probably the largest of the four, focuses on iOS applications. Keep in mind that many of these apps have also been developed for other mobile platforms!  Here we go!

iOS applications
The iOS itself
Probably my favorite iOS "application" is not really an application but is the operating system (iOS) itself in the form of 4.0+ for the iPhone/iPod Touch and 4.2 for the iPad. I so desperately needed folders on my iOS devices! Additionally, the multitasking functionality has been a welcomed, though limited, feature. I frequently use the Home button double press to bounce between "open" recent applications.

Travel: FlightTrack Pro & FlightBoard, Navigon, Kayak HD, Night Stand
This probably doesn't apply to a lot of my readers; but, because I use these so much, I thought I would share. (Maybe your spouse travels a lot for work.)

I travel an insane amount. My travel workflow usually looks something like this: Use Kayak HD to find best fares. Book my flight. My email client, Mail on OS X, has rules setup so that incoming flight confirmations from the airlines are forwarded automatically to my TripIt account. My TripIt RSS feed then immediately places all of my flight information in FlightTrack Pro on my iPhone, iPad, and Calendar (iCal on OS X) as well as the calendars of my family members.

FlightTrack Pro provides virtually realtime flight, departure and arrival gate, and delay information as well as weather in the destination city, the layout of the plane with the seatguru seat map, and a map of the terminal. It even gives stats for the percentage of time that particular flight is on time, 15, 30, and 45 or more minutes late. You can see the flight path over a Google map and follow the plane's estimated location in flight during the flight. I've compared the location information with the onboard realtime inflight location information and found it to be astoundingly accurate.

Additionally, you can find alternate flights using FlightBoard, and call the airline all within the app. Finally, I use FlightTrack Pro to provide family and friends with depature and arrival updates through email, Twitter, or Facebook. For the business traveler or any person who travels a lot, FlightTrack Pro & FlighBoard, especially in conjunction with TripIt, are a must.

I often rent a car and drive in places unfamiliar to me. My GPS of choice is Navigon on my iPhone, using the TomTom Carkit. The carkit is essential as any GPS will very quickly drain your iPhone battery. The carkit provides charging, enhanced GPS signal reception, and augments the volume of the navigation voive. I've used GPS from many different manufacturers. I really like Navigon, which I mentioned last year, but this great app has gotten even better. It looks awesome on the iPhone 4. I also have the Panorama View 3D and Traffic Live addons.

A couple of the great features I'll mention: When approaching complex entrance and exit ramps, Navigon displays remarkably realistic imagery of the upcoming area complete with which lanes do what and the actual sinage to expect. This makes complicated big city navigation much easier.

Navigon knows the speed limit where you are. You can have it warn you when you exceed the speed limit by a specified amount that you choose. You can even set different amounts for the highway versus in town roads. This is incredibly helpful when you're more worried about navigation than local speed limits. (When I first used this application, I had no idea why it would say, "Warning." I was initially troubled, not knowing what it was warning me about. I finally saw, in the top right corner of the display, the little current speed limit sign with an exclamation point on it.)

My workflow typically includes getting the exact street address of my hotel and work locations and programming them into the GPS as favorites before leaving home. I've actually been somewhat amused at how many times I'm given the incorrect city in which a work location actually is found. Often, in larger cities, the city or village boundaries are a bit confusing to local people.

Finally, I'll mention Night Stand. When travelling, I always worry that I'll program the hotel clock incorrectly, or that's it's broken and will not alarm at all. I've even had the clocks be significantly incorrect. And if I decide to have a wakeup call, I worry the operator programmed it in incorrectly. So, I use Night Stand on my iPad as my alarm clock. I can see it from across the room, even without my glasses. And I love using the birds happily chirping as my alarm sound. It's far less jarring for those of us who aren't exactly morning people and are on west coast time with an east coast alarm.

Social Media: Twitter, TweetDeck, HootSuite, Twittelator
The iPhone versions are fine, but the iPad versions are incredible, making excellent use of the extra screen real estate. I use Twitter for a quick tweet fix on the iPhone and iPad. I find myself using the Twitter app more than any other Twitter client on my iPhone--almost exclusively. And I'm currently torn between TweetDeck and HootSuite on the iPad. I like the ability to share across multiple social media platforms. Currently, I'm leaning more toward HootSuite as my preference on the iPad and TweetDeck on the desktop. I especially like how HootSuite keeps click data/stats. Twittelator interests me because it will upload pictures shot on the iPhone to your own WordPress blog and use your URL scheme as the shortlink. (Twitter for iPhone is supposed to do this, but I've never been successful with the setup.)

Dragon Dictation
This is becoming a real winner to me. For quick text messages, emails and tweets, I fire this up more and more. I get a very high level of accuracy and find waiting for the application to load less annowing than using the tiny keyboard on the iPhone.

Remote and Remote
Both are made by Apple. One I use to control my presentations when I travel. The other I use to control the music libraries of the various computers and AppleTVs in the house. The new Remote application for iTunes and AppleTV is very well conceived.

CardStar
This is crazy, I know. But until the CardStar app was on my iPhone, I would not use any store discount or points cards at checkout. I refused to have a wad of them crammed into my pocket or in my wallet. But with CardStar, all of these cards (from the grocery store, the drugstore, the office supplies store, etc.) are in my phone. When I go to check out, the cashier just zaps my iPhone. In the few months I've been using them, I've saved over $400 I otherwise had been paying. I had no idea the savings were that significant. Now, I do confess to resenting the fact that these vendors now monitor my purchases. But, at the same time, I was glad to get the call about the recalled eggs that I had purchased that were part of the lot tainted by saminella. Had I not used CardStar, they wouldn't have known to call me.

RSS Feed Readers: Flipboard, Pulse
This is a delimna very much like my Shazam/SoundHoud and TweetDeck/HootSuite conundrum. I just can't decide which one I like best. I'm leaning toward Flipboard at the moment as it got insanely more personal with the ability to add your Google Reader account feeds (in total or in part). Flipboard really did deserve the nod it got from Apple recently. I prefer its clean readable approach over some of the website designs that are sometimes visually cluttered or filled with ads.

iA Writer (iPad)
I greatly prefer the keyboard in this simple text editor to the one on the iPad itself. I am annoyed every time I want to move the cursor just one or two characters or words and have to stop typing to try to position my finger exactly where I need the cursor. (Do I just have big fingertips or really bad eye/hand coordination?!) The iA Writer keyboard has keys for that: forward or back an entire word(s) or character(s). Apple could learn something here! I also use the apostrophy, colon, semicolon, etc. a lot. Having them on the screen keeps me focused on what I'm writing. Manipulating the keyboard to get to the keys you need quickly becomes a nuisance.

Other iOS apps worth a mention:
Pandora, Shazam, and SoundHound are among the all time great music apps, especially the iPad versions. I've blogged about these before; so, I won't go into detail about them here. But I highlight them again as they just keep getting better.

iMovie on the iPhone is limited but way cool! Who ever would have thought you could actually shoot and edit an HD movie on a phone?!

iTimeLapse is an app I'm now very interested in exploring more since I just purchase The Glif. (More on The Glif in hardware.) I love time lapse photography and this app does an amazing job quickly and easily creating and uploading a time lapse movie. I can see teachers using this in elementary school on the new iPod Touches.

1Password rocks my world. 1Password works on the iPhone, iPad, and desktop for both Mac and Windows. It provides an excellent password management system that can be continuously and automatically synced via your free DropBox account. With 1Password, you remove a great deal of the hassle of maintaining truly enhanced password security for every account you have. 1Password also will store all of your software serial numbers. I highly recommend everyone use this software and stop using a small number of passwords for everything in your life!

MyNetDiary HD for the iPad helps me more effectively manage my battle with the bulge. I use it every day, every meal. It helps me monitor my carbohydrate intake which greatly simplifies my diabetes/insulin management.

Disclaimer
I am not affiliated with any of these applications or their companies in any way.  I simply use these applications a lot and like them.

UPDATE: Now published in HD on YouTube. Here is the link to my YouTube channel. The videos below are in the correct aspect ratio but are lower quality.

Wow. I had no idea this would be so popular with everyone. My server has been slammed. To make the videos more easily available to everyone around the world, I've uploaded them to YouTube.

I've received numerous awesome ideas (from people all around the world) that address some of the limitations and make using the iPad as an IWB even better. I hope to get at least one more quickcast up this weekend to share those ideas. And finally, I'll republish the YouTube videos in HD this weekend as well.

Thanks for all of your feedback. I hope this is a practical and affordable solution for educators everywhere!

I don't use a CDN service as they are out of my price range. And I had a few emails from people on the other side of our world who were having issues getting this series of quickcasts to play. Too many hits. Such great distance. One little server that tried.

So I've uploaded all of these iPad as an IWB quickcasts to YouTube in HD. Because I recorded them all in the 4:3 aspect ratio, they look stretched as 16:9 HD videos, but the visual clarity of the HD uploads is so improved, I thought everyone would just deal with the stretch. (The only way to prevent the stretching would be to redo the quickcasts in 16:9. Just not happening. But any future screencasts I make and upload to YouTube will be specifically prepared for YouTube 16:9 HD from the beginning.)

At any rate, because everyone has offered so many awesome suggestions, I'm releasing 4 more quickcasts with updated information (most of which came from your numerous emails) and one solid gold nugget! I really appreciate everyone sharing your ideas with me.

Update 1: General Updates (7m:08s)
Update 2: Splashtop Remote (9m:08s) <--the must have!
Update 3: xTag Wireless USB Mic (2m:54s) Previous post w/ audio here at drTT
Update 4: Updated Limitations & Advantages (6m:20s)

These are best viewed on YouTube in fullscreen HD but are squeezed in here for those in a rush. Here is the link to my YouTube channel.

Comments are open at the bottom of this post, so feel free to add your voice.

I've just completed two HD quickcasts about a really impressive interactive whiteboard (IWB) solution for the iPad: Doceri.

If you are thinking about purchasing a physical interactive whiteboard, think again. By purchasing an iPad and software like Doceri, you probably could easily save your school about $1,000 or so (per classroom installation) and have an even more versatile tool than a fixed interactive whiteboard. And if the iPad travels with the teacher, then you have greater flexibility of use over a physical interactive whiteboard that is permanently mounted in one classroom location.

While these quickcast videos are not a comprehensive tutorial in how to use Doceri, they do provide a good overview of the current features of Doceri.

The good people at Doceri are actively working to add some very impressive features to their already awesome product. I don't know if I am at liberty to share those or not, but this will be a product to place on your watch list. They are actively working to leverage the unique power of Apple iOS devices to extend Doceri well beyond a mere content deliver mechanism. I am eager to see how this product, already the most powerful in its class in my opinion, evolves into a comprehensive tool that teachers will just not be able to live without.

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with nor am I receiving any consideration of any kind from Doceri or SP Controls, Inc., for bringing this product forward. I do so only because I would have to have and use it if I were working in the school setting. I use it now every time I present to educators.

Part One - What You Are About to See (7m.34s)

Part Two - Feature Overview (23m.10s)

This quickcast was created in HD using ScreenFlow and includes a live, simultaneous, side-by-side screen recording of both the iPad running Doceri and the computer display controlled by Doceri running on the iPad. (I'm delighted that Google allows my YouTube account to post large HD videos! And, on that note, all media used in this recording are used without violating any copyright laws.)