And He Blogs

As much as anything else, the purpose of this post is to demonstrate once again how technology is literally changing our lives. This Times story describes how the Navy is spending $600,000 to camouflage a building on the Coronado naval base in San Diego, because it’s shaped like a swastika. As the Wikipedia article points out, air pilots used to have swastika pins on their lapels for good luck, and the inside of the nose cone of the Spirit of St. Louis had one too. Note that the building above is a "right facing" swastika, and the symbol in the nosecone is "left-facing".

Let me make it clear that it is not my intention to gloss over Nazi atrocities and the strong association of the Swastika with the Nazi party. It’s just fascinating how we are forced to re-visit issues because of new technology.

The satellite image is a screenshot from Google Earth. The nosecone image is a Creative Commons image from Wikipedia.

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"Izza Blendtec blender", states the poor soul who tripped and his video camera (accidentally) fell into this obviously not-your-average blender. More Brilliance from the folks who brought you "Will It Blend - iPhone Edition".

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Sorry, but I couldn’t just do an update in my original post on Falling Water. I wanted to highlight the fact that a DivX version is available for Fallingwater, The Movie . Which means you can watch this movie full screen, if you so choose. It is featured quite prominently on the video page, and I’ll just add that they said "Best Choice", not me.

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This is short, but it’s a stunner. Done entirely with computer graphics, watch Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece Falling Water come alive. Thanks Apollo Pony!

UPDATE! The good news is that there is a DivX version. The bad news is that the video has exceeded their bandwidth.

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As I promised in my screencast on Embedding (live) YouTube Videos In PowerPoint, here is a video demonstrating how to download a video from YouTube, convert it, and insert it into a PowerPoint slide. I’ll be using my old friend Riva FLV Encoder to convert the downloaded FLV into an MPEG1 video file. This is a format that is compatible with the insert video function in PowerPoint. You cannot directly embed an FLV file in PowerPoint (maybe someday?), at least not easily.

It’s a little less than 10 minutes, and the main video is about an 8MB download. So without further delay, here is the screencast entitled Embed YouTube Video in PowerPoint Offline .

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A blast from my video encoding past has resurfaced. Three Faculty Academies ago, I spotlighted a program called Riva Producer Lite. It essentially lets you encode video into the FLV (Flash Video) format with an interactive component. You could create web linked "hot spots" right on top of the video, with very little programming. While they also made a more feature-filled version of Producer, they have made a stand-alone FLV Encoder freely available. I have been using the Sorenson Squeeze program to get very high quality FLV files, but the Riva encoder does a good job, especially for free.

What I didn’t realize about the Riva encoder is that encodes to and from FLV format. What does that mean to me and you? Well it means if you have an FLV video file you can transcode it from FLV to AVI or MPEG. You can then use the video in a program like PowerPoint. Just recently I did a screencast on using YouTube videos live in PowerPoint. Well, if you don’t want to rely on a live Internet connection for your videos in PowerPoint, you’ll want to download and then convert them into a format PowerPoint will recognize (FLVs are NOT recognized). The Riva FLV Encoder is a tool to do just that. Expect a screencast that will outline the steps necessary to get videos from YouTube and use them in PowerPoint.

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I have a new and blossoming relationship, with a blog editor, and it’s from . . . gulp . . . Microsoft. I’m trying not to feel icky about it, and that’s not hard because there is so much to like about Windows Live Writer. It’s a cinch to set up the connection to your blog, even Wordpress blogs (single and multi-user versions). You can have multiple blog connections and switch between them effortlessly. If you ever want to get to the dashboard of your blog, there is a link that you click (labeled Manage Weblog) that will get you to your admin pages.

You can insert hyperlinks and images with ease. As far as images go, you just pluck them from your hard drive and WLW handles the upload to the proper directory. You have lots of control of the appearance of the images, even the ability to add effects and watermarks. You can also insert tables, as well as maps from Microsoft’s Virtual Earth.

Finally, inserting video is extremely easy. Just plug in the URL that’s provided and it will show you a preview. YouTube and Google video work, as I’m sure many others do. There is another, separate tab for Microsoft’s Soap Box video site. Anyway, did I mention that adding video was easy?

What I’ve mentioned so far is what comes with a standard install of WLW. You can also add "plug-ins" (what a quaint little term). There are plug-ins for adding Flickr images, ink from a tablet PC, even SnagIt screen captures.

All of your categories are available to you from a drop-down menu, and you can add categories too. You can also get a live preview of your post and see how it will look in your blog, and even preview and print out your blog post. I’ve installed WLW on a Windows Vista and XP machine, though it is a part of a Windows Live "suite" install (programs like Live Mail and Windows Live Photo Gallery, also worth a look). The experience that I have had with WLW blows away anything I’ve tried previously, such as Flock and Performancing. So it leaves me with a dilemma. Do I avoid it because it’s from Microsoft, or do I reward the people who created this jewel and use it to make my life easier? You might begin to see which way I’m leaning.

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It’s the start of a new semester and that means that the senior seminars get under way. Those classes are designated “speaking intensive”, and so they will have a presentation component to them. One of the popular questions I get asked is how do I embed video in my presentation. Well, you certainly can insert a video that you have already on your hard drive, but with YouTube being such a popular resource, I thought I’d share a screencast about embedding YouTube videos in a PowerPoint 2007 slide. There is also a YouTube video for doing the same thing in PowerPoint 2000/2003. Keep in mind that these techniques require a live connection to the Internet, otherwise your slide will be blank.

UPDATE: People have been reporting that there is no “Custom” field any more that calls up the Movie URL dialog box. Well don’t worry about that. Just place the modified YouTube URL in the “Movie” field in the main “Properties” dialog window. I need to update the video to reflect that.

One further note is that a similar technique is used if you want to embed a Flash animation (a .swf file). Check out the Inserting Flash Movies Into PowerPoint screencast.

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