And He Blogs

* = in some areas

The Internet is great for fact checking. When it comes to fact checking, I find that Paul Thurrott does a great job with this. When it comes to the new iPhone, Paul does some debunking of the hype surrounding the new 3G version. The purpose of this post is to bring attention to his fact checking and to add my own comments. This Friday the iPhone 3G goes on sale and the big headlines are, and Apple’s website says “Twice as Fast, Half the Price”. Walt Mossberg’s headline reads “Newer, Faster, Cheaper iPhone 3G“. Other reviewers have varying headlines and opinions. Now I know that columnists generally don’t write their own headlines (unlike bloggers, hehe), but the bottom line is if anyone tells you the iPhone is cheaper, they are wrong. If someone tells you it’s faster, well it depends. If someone tells you it’s newer, well they couldn’t be more right. It IS new!

So what should the purpose of a review such as Mossberg’s be? To inform a potential buyer whether a product is worth it or not, and to point out a company’s misinformation. This post is not a review. I don’t own an iPhone. I’ve heard great things about them. I know at least two people who own one and they say it’s the best phone they’ve ever had. I may own one some time in the future, but is now the time to get one? Why should I get one now?

If you answer “because it’s cheaper” or “it’s half the price”, your not telling me the truth. If you plan to buy one and not activate it with AT&T (if that’s even possible) or only get a talking plan and not a data plan, then it is cheaper than the previous iPhone. If you do plan on using it (with data) then here’s the breakdown. The original iPhone cost $599. Let’s repeat that one. The original iPhone was $600, and early adopters stood in long lines for it. It then dropped to $400 two months later (iPhone 2.0). Thanks Apple. That phone was cheaper. The new iPhone costs $200, but let’s be clear, that’s “up front”. Let’s break down the pricing plan. I’ll round up to make the numbers simpler:

You must sign a 24 month contract and if you have the data plan, which is what the iPhone is made for, this phone is more expensive to own, period.

As to the “it’s twice as fast” claim, well that appears to be true, if you’re going to use the phone where there is 3G coverage. However, unless you live in a large U.S. city, you’re not going to get 3G. Let’s try saying this - It’s slightly more expensive to own the iPhone 3G, and while the 3G network is faster, the coverage is not where the slower EDGE network is right now. With that out of the way, tell me what’s better about the new iPhone?

The most realistic review is from David Pogue of the New York Times. His basic points are that it is still a great looking phone, the audio clarity for calls is much improved, and the GPS capabilities and other software have been improved. However, he immediately points out that the phone is not less expensive. Thank you, David. Mossberg points out some deficiencies with battery life, but doesn’t adequately dispel the “half the price” myth. The other review that Paul points out is by Ed Baig in USA Today. He also says it’s cheaper, and that’s not in the headline.

Why am I going on about this. Because it’s wrong! Some people can afford to get excited about a product that costs more than the last model. Some people can’t! To hide its costs and say it’s less by half is inexcusable. New models of technology products should give you more for less. I’d even settle for more for the same cost. All reviews of the iPhone should call out Apple immediately for saying it’s half the price. If you were able to get an iPhone from Rent-A-Center for $2000 for two years versus $1840 for two years would they be able to get away with saying it was half-price? No.

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I thought about several ways to begin this post, and I was hoping the title wouldn’t scare people off thinking that I was going to vent. No, it’s not that kind of air. It’s actually Adobe’s AIR, or Adobe Integrated Runtime (yes, I’ll just use AIR from now on). AIR has actually been around for well over a year now. I first used it at the 2007 Faculty Academy here at UMW for a program called Twittercamp, which is a program that would aggregate “tweets” from Twitter and display them on a screen (preferably a large flat panel screen). Alan Levine and I have been using it for the conferences we’ve been involved in the past two years, including this year’s Faculty Academy and the NMC event in Princeton. AIR programs function like Flash programs do on the web, only you download them to your computer. You first need the Adobe AIR “runtime” program, then you can install and use all of the AIR apps you want, even use them simultaneously. There’s no need to open a web browser to use these programs.

The question for a while now has been is it worth downloading the AIR “player” and then installing the individual programs? Is there anything compelling out there to use? I can now say that it’s a definitive YES! The point of these programs is that they are small, and quickly installed. To use the programs, they require that you have a live connection to the Internet, but they function on the idea of working “in the cloud“. So after you get Adobe AIR installed on your computer, go install the following programs:

TweetDeck - I’m getting the feeling that this is going to be the next “must have” program, next to using Twitter of course. TweetDeck is one of the many (thousands?) Twitter intermediaries that pull in Twitter posts (tweets) and display them in a unique way. It’s still in early beta (0.151b as of this writing), but it already has some uniquely great features. It allows you to get a handle on how tweets get viewed. TweetDeck sets up as many columns as you need to view your tweets how you want to. The first column is usually the “all tweets” column, but you can move the columns around. You can set up groups by picking individuals that you follow and giving that group a name. Then you see their tweets in another column. You can create another column that is a search term. I used the term “edupunk” and now I get a column that updates automatically with tweets that have the word edupunk in them. You can have still more columns with replies to you, or direct messages. A recent new feature is the ability to collapse the view to a single column. I expect great things from this program.

Adobe Media Player - Now you might be saying, “who needs another media player?”, and you’re right. However, this is well done, and if you use Adobe software on a regular basis, there is enough Adobe content to make it worth it. Add to that clips from TV shows and some “HiDef” content, and it makes for a worthwhile download.

Destroy Flickr - OK, I don’t get why there’s the hostile name because DF is all about a pretty interface for viewing Flickr photos. Photos just look better on a dark neutral grey background, as opposed to Flickr’s all too white web page. Again, it’s a quick install of an Adobe AIR program and you have the many viewing options, called canvases. It remembers where you have been and saves those views in a history, called workspaces. You also have control of uploading and downloading photos to and from your Flickr account. UPDATE: Note the comment from the creator of DestroyFlickr, Jonnie Hallman, below. I got the name wrong on the first go-round. Sorry!

If you want to check out other AIR applications go to freshAIRapps and see just what the potential for the AIR platform is. Note: Because of a current negotiation with Adobe of the use of AIR in their website’s domain, another location for the FreshAIRApps may be at Refreshingapps.com.

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This is a post that I’ve been contemplating for a while and it will not just be a rant, but offer some advice for fixing issues with Windows Vista. I’ll also offer a little perspective to Microsoft’s new OS, something lacking in today’s blogospheric culture. It took an article in PC World to say enough is enough. That and the fact that today marks the last day you can purchase Windows XP in retail stores. In their latest issue, PC World declares Windows XP as one of their top products of 2008. OK, I get it. Very funny. XP is better than Vista - it’s “leaner, meaner and less bloated than Vista” says PC World. Let me give you one advantage that XP has over Vista. There weren’t any blogs around when XP was released. If there were, you would have seen the same gnashing of teeth that you see with Vista’s release. Today, what you have is a cacophony of users, mostly repeating the meme of Vista is a disaster/nightmare/abomination, the “worst version of Windows ever”. I’ve even heard the comparison to Windows ME. Meanwhile, a bizarre love affair with XP has begun.

Now I admit that I was ready to blame Vista for certain problems I was having. As I pointed out then, there were some audio issues that needed to be ironed out. There also was some weird behavior in the copying function, which has since been corrected with Service Pack 1. However, I have been mostly happy with Vista. I upgraded my Toshiba Tablet PC because XP was giving me fits. (I now believe, by the way, that the computer itself was a big part of the problem). So what’s so good about Vista? Well, let’s start with what was Windows XP’s biggest problem.

Security. It’s better in Vista. Have you read all the headlines about Vista being a security risk, and all of the people hacking Vista? Me neither. However, this has actually been turned into a complaint, with a generous amount of help from Apple with their “switching ads”.

“Oh, this sucks. Now my computer is too secure.” Like it or not, more people are trying to hack Windows. More than 90% of the people using computers in the world are using Windows PCs. User Access Control (UAC) can be frustrating. It can, and possibly should be tweaked. But compare it to XP. For XP to be functional, with the need to install plug-ins for web browsers, and the need to do other system file manipulation, it’s almost essential that it be used in admin mode. Not a good idea. Vista forces you to use a computer in protected mode. The additional (and maybe excessive) prompts are the trade-off for more security.

There are lots of other good things about Vista, not the least of which addresses the complaint of XP’s “Fisher Price” interface (remember that one?). Vista looks good and it functions very well on a relatively new PC. Search and indexing are much improved in Vista. Partitions are easily resized. It has very good Tablet PC support with much better handwriting recognition. It has very good built-in voice recognition. It does a much better job of isolating programs that have crashed, so that they don’t freeze the computer. Vista Media Center is much improved. And so on.

What will happen to Vista from here on out? Well, it will grow on people. Drivers will be improved and programs will be updated to run better on Vista. A majority of problems with Vista lie in poorly written drivers and software, and not with Vista itself. Sure, I want Vista to work better. I want it to work great. So in that spirit, here are some tips to get you there:

Ed Bott’s “Fixing Windows Vista, one machine at a time“, and

Vista Tweaks Part 1 & Part 2.

And here is some nice perspective on the similarities to when Windows XP was the new kid on the block:

Hasta La Vista, Windows XP

There I feel better.

UPDATE: After I published this, I noticed that Ed Bott had posted an audio interview with Larry Magid of CBS News, talking about XP’s last day and whether Vista is a worthy upgrade.

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I usually consider myself a video guy, as well as an audio and imaging guy too. You know a New Media Specialist. So a new document publishing service shouldn’t deserve much of my attention. Unless, of course, the system enables the use of video in documents. Well, enter Calameo into the conversation and you might see why I’m excited. First, what Calameo does is allow you to share documents online, just like Flickr for photos and YouTube for videos. You can upload Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, or the equivalent in Open Office documents. PDFs and text files are also allowed. You can make your documents public or private. Once you uploaded a few documents, your Calameo home page will have that familiar file sharing look to it (again, think Flickr or YouTube). From here you have lots of possibilities to share you documents. You can embed thumbnail versions in web pages or you can invite friends via email to view your documents. There’s even a direct publishing link to aggregation services like Delicious. An RSS feed of your publications is also available.

But now for the reason, I am excited. You can embed Flash (FLV) video within documents. You can also embed Flash animations or MP3s as well. However, with video you can create a flexible document that offers all of the advantages of an online document with a video component that helps the document come alive. Viewers can then print out the document (minus the video, of course) and have a hard copy of the how-to instructions, report, or term paper (to offer some examples).

The documents use Flash technology and the viewing of an online document gives a much better experience than a PDF in Adobe Acrobat. You can zoom in and get a more detailed view, and then the view follows your mouse around the screen. It’s a much more intuitive way to see a document online and much more of a pleasure. Videos embedded in pages can be played automatically, or started with a click of the play button (which can get somewhat obscured because the controls are a bit faint). The service is in beta, but you can sign up and get an account right away. As usual I blew by the terms of service so you may want to read them before you find out you are giving away the rights to your document. There is, however, a section to add a Creative Commons license to your publications. They seem to have thought of most everything. Much more play by yours truly is in store for this service, but I can see educators who might want to share documents in a more flexible way, taking advantage of this service.

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Netflix announced today that it is going Blu-ray exclusive. It was the same day I ordered one of these.

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One last time I’ll attempt to turn you on to the significance of what Michael Wesch from Kansas State University is trying to do. His talk at ELI 2008 in San Antonio is titled "Human Futures for Technology and Education", and his subtitle is "The Crisis of Significance". As the facilitator notes, Michael is famous for his "The Machine is Us/ing Us" video, and he continues to challenge us with more recent productions from his Digital Ethnography students.

It’s hard to summarize all of the goods points that were made in his presentation, but his central point revolves around how the classroom, and the nature of education, needs to change. If the top questions faculty are getting in their classes are "How many points is this worth?", "How long does this paper need to be?", and "What do we need to know for this test?", then that is a crisis of significance. "All learning starts with good questions" states Wesch, and if the only thing that the students are worrying about are what grade they are going to receive then there is a problem.

In fact there is so much here, and we all have so little time, I should just let you get to it right away and listen/watch for yourself.

UPDATE: None of the ELI sessions are available. Sure hope this is temporary.

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I’ve talked about Professor Michael Wesch and his Digital Ethnography class at Kansas State University a couple times in the past (here, and here). His class, and especially the videos that have been produced as a result are a wonder. The good professor’s latest post is a wealth of information related to putting together a YouTube mash-up. There is so much good information here, and it starts with a link to a great tutorial on Web 2.0. More great resources include the article Recut, Reframe, Recycle from American University’s Center for Social Media. He mentions one of my favorite tools, Video DownloadHelper, a Firefox plugin that assists you in grabbing/downloading YouTube videos (and other media!). He puts a plug in for a video conversion site called Vixy.net that does media conversion. I’ve used that one, but I’ll put in my vote for another site called Zamzar that performs a similar service and adds, document, image, and audio conversion as well. He also mentions using music with a Creative Commons license, and provides Jamendo as a good place to find some CC tunes.

Read the post to see all the resources, and some of the videos that were produced in the past. Watch the video above to see a fine (and funny) example of a "movie trailer mash-up" (based on one of my favorite movies, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles). Thank you, again, Professor Wesch.

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(This is to get me out of my blogging funk)

HD DVD group cancels CES press conference in wake of Warner announcement.

Fight photo courtesy of Ari Bakker

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UPDATE: I discovered the culprit of my Ultra CS3 woes. Sony Vegas 7! I installed it on my way to installing Vegas Pro 8 upgrade and it immediately borked Ultra. After I installed version 8, I was able to uninstall version 7 and Ultra was back to working. Soundbooth sucks anyway, so while I don’t know whether it borked and unborked with Vegas, I don’t care!

I have really (really, really) liked Vista on my laptop/tablet (Toshiba Tecra M7). I have an editing workstation with Vista Ultimate on it. I need to do audio and video editing with this machine. It’s giving me more than a reasonable amount of trouble. The most strangeness is coming from Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium. The suite was running OK, though there was a very minor problem with Premiere. It would give an error about starting in Admin mode, but it would still work fine. Now Premiere and Soundbooth are KO’d (Ultra never worked, it gives the same “stopped working” error). I’m trying out Sound Forge 9 and that runs like a champ. The latest Camtasia runs fine, but there is an audio issue. I can only record from the microphone. I can’t record what’s coming out of the speakers (in other words audio from programs that have sound). That’s an issue that TechSmith needs to fix.

So what to do? I like Vista. I like the improvements that it delivers, provided you throw the proper amount of memory at it (2GB is my recommendation). I know people are having driver issues with it. That’s not all Microsoft’s fault. Companies had a year before Vista shipped to address that. However, Microsoft changed some fundamental handling of the audio hardware and it’s wreaking havoc. I need audio to work right in several programs. I don’t even care who is to blame right now. I need the programs to run. Is Vista Ultimate the problem? I have Vista Enterprise available to me. The Camtasia issue is the one that might push me back to XP, it’s just that I am not looking forward to the re-installation. I have the weekend to think it over. I always look at these as learning experiences, well at least I used to when I was doing more tech support. Now it’s a little old.

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Thanks to an intrepid UMW Blogger, it was brought to my attention that one of my favorite bands is releasing their new album as a download on October 10. How much will it cost. Well, you name the price. "No really, it’s up to you."

I never really care about how much a record sells by a band. It has no correlation to whether the music is any good or not. However, this will be pure profit going to the band, and it’s up to the listener what that profit is. It’s time to find out whether this free-love, hippy, Internet stuff is really worth anything. I don’t know the details about whether there is any DRM on the digital tracks, but knowing Radiohead, I’m guessing not. So how will that affect piracy? Well, since you CAN type in "0.00" Why would you pirate this?

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