And He Blogs

What happens when you release 250,000 superballs and take a picture of it? My previous post on Bouncy Balls answers this. What happens when you film it? A delightful commercial from Sony for their new LCD TV - Bravia. I strongly encourage you to get to a machine that can play the H.264 (high resolution) version, and wait for the download. What beautiful closure for an idea that a colleague called “strange and wonderful”. You probably won’t see the commercial on US television. The Bravia is for the European market. Bravia is definitely available in the U.S.

As a bonus, there are a few behind the scenes nuggets that should be well worth it too.

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A course offered by Harvard University’s Extension School entitled Computer Science E-1: Understanding Computers and the Internet! looks to be the best example that I’ve seen so far of a course that can be offered synchronously and asynchronously. There’s a whole lot more here that I need to investigate, but the course throws the whole ball of wax out there for students (current and potential, though some material is accessed only with authentication) to consume. The most notable resources being the RSS feed for the podcasts!

I’ll reserve any opinions for now, but what I saw of the Harvard course, this is a very exciting direction education is going in. I found this course via the Productive Strategies Blog. The list that is there means that I’ve got a lot of material to go through. I hope I do OK on the exams.

UPDATE: Check out the Fall ‘05 list of “Boilercasts” at Purdue University. Yikes!

UPDATE2: OK, I have to stop after this update, but this really struck me as funny, being that I once was the “AV Guy” at another school. I could never have even imagined, Boilercast Capable Classrooms!

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Just finished listening to the latest Twit (This Week in Tech for the unwashed), episode #27, and what a riveting conversation about copyright, the movie and music industries, generating revenue from podcasts/videocasts, and a whole lot more. Larry Lessig (Creative Commons) was the special guest on the show along with host Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, Alex Lindsay, and John C. “I Get No Spam” Dvorak. This podcast/videocast filled a few holes for me, not the least of which is the lack of understanding that Dvorak has about Creative Commons. Dvorak now is finally coming around (he promises a follow-up). Great information here from some tech guys with lots of experience in these various industries, and a great vision into the future of digital media technologies.

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This is actually a test post from the new Flock Web Browser.

I’m working on a project to upgrade my Home Theater and this Flickr photo is version 1.0.

UPDATE: This Blog/Flickr integration is more extensive than I thought. Flock could change EVERYTHING for me. Stay tuned.

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I was exposed to three cool new technologies this past week:

Hot Recorder - Actually this is one I’ve been aware of for a while. It is an EASY way to record the conversations you have with Skype (and now Google Talk). There are more traditional ways to record the audio from these Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) apps, but Hot Recorder just makes it simple. $14.95 for the full version which allows you to export a .wav file. Otherwise the receiver of the file needs Hot Recorder to listen.

gada.be - A new meta-search engine with cool results and possibilities, including OPML support. What’s cool is that you can search for a topic by including the term or terms in the URL, as in http://computers.gada.be or http://mary.washington.gada.be . Get the OPML listing by appending opml to the end of the URL, as in http://computers.gada.be/opml . There are a few catagories to search as well such as “social” (use /o at the end of the URL) and “photo” (/p).

Dolby Headphone - The most amazing thing I’ve heard in my headphones in a long time. There are a few demos at the Dolby site, but the cool one for me was the Diggnation video recorded at Dolby labs. At about the 4:00 minute mark they switch briefly to the Dolby Headphone audio and it’s awesome (to borrow a phrase from the kids)!

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It is . . . it isn’t . . . IT IS an iPod with video! Steve Jobs has no idea how this is going to change things.

Oh, and the title of this post refers to the name of the device. There is currently the iPod Shuffle, the iPod Nano, and then simply the iPod. Not Video iPod, VidiPod, iVod, iVid, the device formerly known as the Video iPod. Got any others?

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My colleagues know my opinions on remixes and mash-ups, but when the remix has an obvious respect for the original, I’m all for it. This brilliant reworking of the trailer for “The Shining” is transformed into a movie that is more like an “About a Boy” prequel. Waxy.org points to this Video which has gotten a lot of press. I won’t spoil anything more. Go watch and enjoy!

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