You can download the multimedia presentation (210 Mb) using images taken in Paris this past summer. The movie is 14 minutes long. This presentation integrates images with street sounds recorded primarily with my Sony PCM-M10 audio recorder.
There were two things I was most excited about with this new presentation: (1) the inclusion of live sound snippets (rather than commercial music) seems to work better (to me anyways), and (2) creating a multimedia presentation that plays well on the new Apple iPads. See the sidebar for help on getting this movie transferred to your iPad (if you have one).
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
iTunes Rocks the iPad
I quickly found that there's a lot that I want to do with the iPad that I can't do if I don't know how to use the free iTunes software to sync between my "pad" and my computer. You can probably get around just fine with transferring documents such as PDFs without knowing a lick about iTunes. But it really helps if you become iTunes savvy if you want to fully maximize using photos, music, and videos.
About a month ago I created a 14 minute movie that goes over various aspects of why and how you'd want to use iTunes. You can download that 85 Mb movie here:
I have a lot of documents I work with on my 16 Gb iPad but documents currently account for only 0.4 Gb of my available space. Photos and audio currently take up 1 Gb of space, and videos are taking up 10 Gb of space. You can see that in my case I'd want to be able to get photos, music, and video easily on and off my iPad so I could look, listen, view a variety of things. On the other hand, if you only have documents on your iPad there's a big, big, big chance you're not really using the device to its full and beautiful capacity.
To me the iPad, at heart, is a fantastic multimedia device. Documents (with annotations and more) are a bonus, but multimedia (lights, cameras, action!) are the heart of the power of this small dynamo.
Of course the other alternative is to rely on choppy YouTube videos. You know what I mean: watch 30 sections, wait a minute, watch 30 more seconds, wait another minute. That's soooo 1990s. And those videos are generally not great quality. But with a bit of knowledge you can get full beautiful videos on your iPad that play flawlessly since you're not relying on an internet connection. In fact, once you learn how to use iTunes with your iPad, you can put the movie I created on your iPad for easy review in the future (hint: it comes with chapters so you can easily go to specific sections if you want).
About a month ago I created a 14 minute movie that goes over various aspects of why and how you'd want to use iTunes. You can download that 85 Mb movie here:
I have a lot of documents I work with on my 16 Gb iPad but documents currently account for only 0.4 Gb of my available space. Photos and audio currently take up 1 Gb of space, and videos are taking up 10 Gb of space. You can see that in my case I'd want to be able to get photos, music, and video easily on and off my iPad so I could look, listen, view a variety of things. On the other hand, if you only have documents on your iPad there's a big, big, big chance you're not really using the device to its full and beautiful capacity.
To me the iPad, at heart, is a fantastic multimedia device. Documents (with annotations and more) are a bonus, but multimedia (lights, cameras, action!) are the heart of the power of this small dynamo.
Of course the other alternative is to rely on choppy YouTube videos. You know what I mean: watch 30 sections, wait a minute, watch 30 more seconds, wait another minute. That's soooo 1990s. And those videos are generally not great quality. But with a bit of knowledge you can get full beautiful videos on your iPad that play flawlessly since you're not relying on an internet connection. In fact, once you learn how to use iTunes with your iPad, you can put the movie I created on your iPad for easy review in the future (hint: it comes with chapters so you can easily go to specific sections if you want).
Monday, September 13, 2010
Scrivener 2 Coming Soon
Keith Blount (developer of Scrivener) has just posted some more news—specifically about the new features in version 2. This is a must read post, though parts may not make a lot of sense if you haven't already started using Scrivener version 1.
If you are a faculty member in the SOE you should download a trial version of Scrivener 1. It lasts for 30 days of usage (real usage, if you use 3 days a week then it will last 30 weeks).
In this post Keith officially announces that Scrivener 2 will be released in late October, and that all copies of Scrivener bought on August 1 or later will be able to upgrade for free to version 2.
Check out the full post here:
If you are a faculty member in the SOE you should download a trial version of Scrivener 1. It lasts for 30 days of usage (real usage, if you use 3 days a week then it will last 30 weeks).
In this post Keith officially announces that Scrivener 2 will be released in late October, and that all copies of Scrivener bought on August 1 or later will be able to upgrade for free to version 2.
Check out the full post here:
Saturday, September 11, 2010
ScreenFlow 2 Update
Recently I wrote about the wonderful ScreenFlow software program for doing recordings of what's on your screen to create screencasts. One of the best features of ScreenFlow is the editing environment after you've recorded what's on your screen. In addition, ScreenFlow is great for making different sorts of multimedia products. For example, you can add still images, other video (e.g. from a Flip camera), and other audio to your original screen capture product.
However, what if you want to use ScreenFlow for creating multimedia where you don't need any screen capture video? Does it still work well? The answer is yes! There is a trick to get this to work easily—the trick is needed because when you start up ScreenFlow it will assume you want to start recording a new screen capture. You can close this recording window, but you have no way to start off with a blank project. That's where having a template comes in handy! I recently created a ScreenFlow project template that I named "ScreenFlow 1024 Template." This just tells me the size of the template is 1024 x 768 pixels. When I open it up there's only one media element in it: a Photoshop document of a scanned image. I can now easily add other media elements: audio, video, images. I can also easily delete the one starter image. Voila, now I have a very quick way to start a new multimedia project in ScreenFlow without having to take a bunch of extra steps.
Except for projects that involve a large number of images (40 or more), I'll likely be using ScreenFlow for all my multimedia projects now. (For those projects with large number of images I'll use FotoMagico Pro as it handles them better.) If you'd like a copy of my template, send me an email and I'll provide a link so you can download it. Of course, you'll need to have ScreenFlow itself installed on your Mac computer!
However, what if you want to use ScreenFlow for creating multimedia where you don't need any screen capture video? Does it still work well? The answer is yes! There is a trick to get this to work easily—the trick is needed because when you start up ScreenFlow it will assume you want to start recording a new screen capture. You can close this recording window, but you have no way to start off with a blank project. That's where having a template comes in handy! I recently created a ScreenFlow project template that I named "ScreenFlow 1024 Template." This just tells me the size of the template is 1024 x 768 pixels. When I open it up there's only one media element in it: a Photoshop document of a scanned image. I can now easily add other media elements: audio, video, images. I can also easily delete the one starter image. Voila, now I have a very quick way to start a new multimedia project in ScreenFlow without having to take a bunch of extra steps.
Except for projects that involve a large number of images (40 or more), I'll likely be using ScreenFlow for all my multimedia projects now. (For those projects with large number of images I'll use FotoMagico Pro as it handles them better.) If you'd like a copy of my template, send me an email and I'll provide a link so you can download it. Of course, you'll need to have ScreenFlow itself installed on your Mac computer!
Friday, September 3, 2010
OmniFocus for iPad
OmniFocus for iPad may be the killer app out there right now for padders. That said, it helps a lot if you also use a Mac, perhaps even an iPhone, so all your stuff gets synced up nicely.
OmniFocus is one of the applications that works under the getting things done approach. Put more simply, it's a task management or "to do" software. I've used OmniFocus on my Mac and iPhone for over a year now, and together that made a visible impact on how productive I am. I never forget the "big stuff" (at least "big" to me), but the problem is forgetting the small stuff that's so very important.
This software product is $40, clearly at the high range for iPad apps. But I wouldn't think twice about buying it again now that I've had it for over a month. It is the app that I use the most on my iPad—and I use my iPad quite a lot these days.
There's really no reason for me to write another review of the OmniFocus app since others have already done that work so well. I highly encourage you to check out some of these reviews so you can see for yourself what the software does and how it accomplishes its objective so elegantly.
One review that contains lots of pictures (very helpful) was written at MacSparky shortly after the release of this app:
A shorter review, but still very useful, was written by Franklin Tessler for MacWorld:
A third review is provided at 148 Apps:
Finally, a final review that includes a YouTube video is provided at TiPb:
Beyond the reviews of the iPad app itself, perhaps the most important article you can read is titled The Psychology of OmniFocus written by Ryan Norbauer in December 2009. The reason you would want to buy this software (Mac, iPhone, or iPad version) becomes apparent when you read Ryan's article.
OmniFocus is one of the applications that works under the getting things done approach. Put more simply, it's a task management or "to do" software. I've used OmniFocus on my Mac and iPhone for over a year now, and together that made a visible impact on how productive I am. I never forget the "big stuff" (at least "big" to me), but the problem is forgetting the small stuff that's so very important.
This software product is $40, clearly at the high range for iPad apps. But I wouldn't think twice about buying it again now that I've had it for over a month. It is the app that I use the most on my iPad—and I use my iPad quite a lot these days.
There's really no reason for me to write another review of the OmniFocus app since others have already done that work so well. I highly encourage you to check out some of these reviews so you can see for yourself what the software does and how it accomplishes its objective so elegantly.
One review that contains lots of pictures (very helpful) was written at MacSparky shortly after the release of this app:
A shorter review, but still very useful, was written by Franklin Tessler for MacWorld:
A third review is provided at 148 Apps:
Finally, a final review that includes a YouTube video is provided at TiPb:
Beyond the reviews of the iPad app itself, perhaps the most important article you can read is titled The Psychology of OmniFocus written by Ryan Norbauer in December 2009. The reason you would want to buy this software (Mac, iPhone, or iPad version) becomes apparent when you read Ryan's article.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
