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.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
SimpleNote
SimpleNote is probably my favorite app on the iPad. Sure, it's free, but that's not why I love it. It only allows you to make, and store, simple notes without any formatting (bold, italics, and the like). So why all the likey? It has always been a good app, but last week they released version 2 which adds important new and powerful features.
For $5 you can remove ads. For $12 per year you can upgrade to their premium package which removes ads, offers 30 backup versions of notes, allows you to create notes by email, and allows you to create an RSS feed for your notes. I'm still on the fence about whether I'll upgrade to premium. My guess is I will, but I want to give the new free version 2 a month or so of usage before I make a final decision.
Syncronicity
The ultimate in smooth automatic syncing is the key to SimpleNote's beauty. If you are a Mac or Windows user you can find free (or low cost) software that "talks" to SimpleNote. So what? Currently I have all my notes automatically synced in 5 places: iPad, iPhone, Mac at office, Mac at home, and on the SimpleNote website. This automatic syncing, in and of itself, makes SimpleNote a thing of beauty. Visit the SimpleNote downloads page to learn more about other software programs that "play nice" with SimpleNote on a Mac, Windows, Palm, or Android systems.Tags
Version 1 had no tags or folder system. Simply a long list of note titles. It wasn't impossible to find notes if you had a lot of them, but it was a bit of a struggle. With their new tag system it is super easy to categorize notes and subsequently find them for later viewing. Right now the tags only sync to SimpleNote on the web, iPad and iPhone. I imagine some of the outside developers will rework their software for Mac/Windows so that those software programs also recognize the SimpleNote tags. In the screenshot (above) it shows what it looks like when I've chosen the tag "multimedia": the result is I see only the 5 notes having that tag plus a small advert at the top.Live Sharing
For educators this feature has mucho potential. If you activate sharing for a specific note then SimpleNote provides you with a web address where the sharing takes place. Email this web address with whomever you like. In real time multiple people can make changes to the "note" and the results, once again, are automatically synced across all your devices! When done with the "sharing session" then turn off the share option for that note. Why is this potentially important? There are likely many benefits including live online discussions between students, collaborative editing of text documents by a group, live updated class notes where the notetaking responsibility is distributed across several students in a class session, and many more options. Sharing may be the most important new feature in SimpleNote.Create Web Pages
An alternative to sharing is to create a web page. This is somewhat akin to the sharing option in that SimpleNote will automatically give you a web page location where others can see a specific note. However, using this option others can not make changes to the text. On the other hand, you can continue to make changes to the note and the webpage will be automatically updated. Very nice.Full Screen
This is a very nice option. In the lower right corner of your iPad/iPhone screen is a grey icon for viewing an individual note full screen. Tapping this icon hides the ad, the list of other notes using the same tag, and the top toolbar. Very nice for reading longer notes.Summing Up
I'm sure there are other features of SimpleNote that I'm ignoring at the moment—but this app is certainly worth exploring on your own. You'll need to open a free SimpleNote account at their website. You'll also need to download the free SimpleNote apps for iPad and iPhone using the relevant App Store. The regular free version comes with some limitations: including ads which are shown on part of the SimpleNote screen.For $5 you can remove ads. For $12 per year you can upgrade to their premium package which removes ads, offers 30 backup versions of notes, allows you to create notes by email, and allows you to create an RSS feed for your notes. I'm still on the fence about whether I'll upgrade to premium. My guess is I will, but I want to give the new free version 2 a month or so of usage before I make a final decision.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
ScreenFlow 2
There are two main multimedia creation tools I use on my Mac: FotoMagico Pro and ScreenFlow. There are some overlaps between these two great programs. FotoMagico Pro is better at handling multimedia created out of lots of still images. You can also add audio and video, but the focus with FotoMagico is using still images. On the other hand, ScreenFlow is primarily a screen video recording program that has powerful editing abilities. If you are primarily shooting video of what's on your computer screen, or want to bring in video from other sources (such as Flip cameras and the such), then ScreenFlow is likely the best choice of these two applications.
You can download a screencast (i.e. a movie that shows what's on my computer screen as I go through various tasks) to see a practical example of a ScreenFlow production. In this case I shot a Keynote presentation combined with live audio. Later I edited the audio and video as warranted. The movie is 11 minutes long, is a 24 Mb download, and works beautifully on an iPad (as well as a computer).
ScreenFlow version 1 was a solid release, but with version 2 they have added important features that make editing and finishing your movie easier and better. The software will record what's on your screen, plus record your audio input, plus record the video from your iSight camera (if you have one) into one integrated recording. Once done recording you are taken to the ScreenFlow editing area where you do the regular stuff (delete, copy, and so forth). However the editing environment also allows you to do many additional procedures very easily. This includes swapping the computer cursor for a custom cursor (I like a big red arrow), adding text titles or descriptions where you want, creating chapters, easily adding transitions between movie clips, creating focus effects through features like magnifying towards one part of the screen, plus many other special editing options.
Years ago SnapzPro was the best screen recording program on the Mac. But the company that makes SnapzPro has not updated their software in a long time. Camtasia Studio on Windows is a wonderful program, but their sister app—Camtasia for the Mac—is not nearly as powerful or reliable as the Windows counterpart. That leaves ScreenFlow as the best application for creating cleanly edited movies on your Mac—especially when the main focus of the movie is on capturing what's happening on the computer screen. ScreenFlow is powerful enough to be a great multimedia glue application that combines video, still images, and audio even if you don't record any video of your screen! An über-powerful program like Final Cut Pro might be better, but ScreenFlow is much cheaper ($99, $90 for academics) and much easier to master relative to Final Cut Pro.
A search via the web will bring up many good reviews of ScreenFlow 2. However, some of these reviews have been collated on one page:
If you are considering making multimedia movies that play well on Windows, Macs, and iPads then you'll want to strongly consider ScreenFlow if you're a Mac-user.
You can download a screencast (i.e. a movie that shows what's on my computer screen as I go through various tasks) to see a practical example of a ScreenFlow production. In this case I shot a Keynote presentation combined with live audio. Later I edited the audio and video as warranted. The movie is 11 minutes long, is a 24 Mb download, and works beautifully on an iPad (as well as a computer).
ScreenFlow version 1 was a solid release, but with version 2 they have added important features that make editing and finishing your movie easier and better. The software will record what's on your screen, plus record your audio input, plus record the video from your iSight camera (if you have one) into one integrated recording. Once done recording you are taken to the ScreenFlow editing area where you do the regular stuff (delete, copy, and so forth). However the editing environment also allows you to do many additional procedures very easily. This includes swapping the computer cursor for a custom cursor (I like a big red arrow), adding text titles or descriptions where you want, creating chapters, easily adding transitions between movie clips, creating focus effects through features like magnifying towards one part of the screen, plus many other special editing options.
Years ago SnapzPro was the best screen recording program on the Mac. But the company that makes SnapzPro has not updated their software in a long time. Camtasia Studio on Windows is a wonderful program, but their sister app—Camtasia for the Mac—is not nearly as powerful or reliable as the Windows counterpart. That leaves ScreenFlow as the best application for creating cleanly edited movies on your Mac—especially when the main focus of the movie is on capturing what's happening on the computer screen. ScreenFlow is powerful enough to be a great multimedia glue application that combines video, still images, and audio even if you don't record any video of your screen! An über-powerful program like Final Cut Pro might be better, but ScreenFlow is much cheaper ($99, $90 for academics) and much easier to master relative to Final Cut Pro.
A search via the web will bring up many good reviews of ScreenFlow 2. However, some of these reviews have been collated on one page:
If you are considering making multimedia movies that play well on Windows, Macs, and iPads then you'll want to strongly consider ScreenFlow if you're a Mac-user.
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