More Apple Integration?

December 9, 2007December 9, 2007 / Cole Camplese / 2 Comments

Ok, so less than 10 minutes after posting about how nicely QuickTime plays with a Podcast Producer Server I decided to take a look at some of Apple’s other content creation tools and see if there is really a concerted effort across the board to encourage instant publishing. What I was curious about is if the suite of iLife applications enable a user to create and instantly, with a single click, share that content to the emerging campus infrastructure Apple is promoting — I am talking specifically about iTunes U, Podcast Producer, and Blogs. In all cases, it easy to share to .Mac and iWeb — two tools that do not play in most of higher education’s plans. What I found was interesting, if only to me.

Keynote

Keynote is the best presentation tool on the Mac (or any platform) and it would only seem appropriate that I could instantly publish to Podcast PRoducer just like in QT. So I explored the “Send to” menu item and I get the option to share it with the other iLife apps and strangely enough, YouTube. Nothing for Podcast Producer.

I then figured it had to be under the Export option, but again nothing for Podcast Producer directly. I am guessing I could use the QuickTime export and then open in the QT Player and use its share to Podcast Producer feature … one step too many.

GarageBand

I figured since GB is the best Podcasting tool on the Mac it must play nicely with Podcast Producer. Again, nothing that sends it directly to Podcast Producer. I am also quite surprised given Apple’s push with iTunes U that it doesn’t allow you to go directly there as well. When you attempt to use the Share menu in GB you do get a few options that are of real value — again, letting you go right to a couple of the other iLife apps.

iMovie

iMovie is a powerful content creation toolset that actually gets quite a bit of use on campus. Mostly used by students, it only seems obvious that you should be able to publish quickly and easily into spaces like iTunes U via Podcast Producer. Checking the Share menu there doesn’t offer anything too surprising, except for the YouTube option again. There is a really nice matrix for sharing that Apple provides, but nothing to go straight to PodCast Producer. Again, it looks like you have to send it to QT to get it to Podcast Producer quickly and easily.

iTunes

Since the previous apps let me go directly to iTunes, I figured I should check to see how easy it is to publish out of that environment. I was really actually fairly amazed that I can’t do anything out of iTunes … but, upon further reflection, iTunes is built for managing and acquiring new content — not sharing it in the other direction. In this scenario, it is more like a platform much like iTunes U, a blog, or any other place content is stored, managed, played, etc.

Final Thoughts

So there it is … Apple has done an amazing job of giving us an end-to-end set of tools to create and share digital media — especially in education. I am not bashing on any of it, but what I am saying is that the consumer focus of Apple’s iLife suite keeps it from fully realizing its potential when it is used in a connected education setting where digital media creation and sharing is being promted. Asking students and faculty to understand how to use more than one application for creating and sharing content isn’t too hard, but it lacks to overall elegance that the solution could rely lean on.

Podcast Producer Integration

December 9, 2007December 9, 2007 / Cole Camplese / 2 Comments

We are looking very closely at Apple’s Podcast Producer for use in and around campus. I wrote a little about it the other day while sitting in a meeting … this morning I opened the QuickTime player on my MBP to record a very quick piece of audio. When I went to the export it I saw a “Share …” option in the File menu. Not remembering that from the QT Player in 10.4 I decided to check it out. What I saw really surprised me … an option to share the file to a Podcast Producer server.

What that means to me is that I can open QT Player anywhere, record audio/video, and instantly publish it to our Podcast Producer Server. I haven’t looked at it beyond that, but it certainly makes me realize there is big power coming together here. With a chain like iTunes U, Podcast Producer, simple creation tools, and facilities on campus to help people make digital content, sharing just got a whole heck of a lot easier. I will be interested to see how/if workflow can be invoked from a simple “Share …” command in QuickTime. If it can, the possibilities for quick and easy content creation and distribution is only limited to what one could dream up. I wonder in the Windows version of QT Player can do this?

I’ll share more as we get further down the path. I am also curious to see what happens when I click the login button … will it give me a new set of options to invoke custom workflows? If that is the case we can build workflows to put things in all sorts of places … want to publish to an iTunes U course space? Done. Want to publish via your Blog? Done. Want to push it to our streaming server? Done. I am hoping the integration I see lets me take the final step and really create once and publish to many environments.

Time Machine and Backup

November 7, 2007November 7, 2007 / Cole Camplese / 11 Comments

I upgraded to Leopard — unfortunately for me I purchased it from the Campus Computer Store one freaking day before my Apple Distinguished Educator (not for resale) came in the mail — crap! Oh well. I didn’t really have much to say about it here on the blog, but it is a very nice upgrade. My MBP upgraded perfectly, but my iMac at home was not as lucky. It required two days of trouble shooting and four (yes, four) installs before I got it working properly. I got what I thought was a Windows only feature — a blank blue screen. Then after it finally installed, it locked me out of my account, insisting that I was not the administrator of the machine … Apple Support forums said installing the Keychain update would fix it. There is a slight problem there, you can’t install stuff if you aren’t an admin. Took me a while, but using the root account I was able to reset the password and all has been fine since.

There was one other little problem … for some reason (coincidence I am guessing) one of my three external hard drives I use decided to die. It makes a horrible clicking noise and never mounts. Not a big deal, storage is cheap but that is the one drive I used to store all of my documents — not music and movies, but (in some cases) decades old files. Scared the shit out of me. Good thing I am a backup freak show … I was able to use my Apple Backup software and recover everything in about an hour. Worked perfectly. This is the third time I have had to do a full on restore of parts of my digital life. If you don’t backup, do yourself a favor and go to the store, buy a hard drive, and backup your stuff.

It looks cool, but is it a real disaster recovery tool?

The whole scenario has me thinking and wondering if Apple’s fancy new Time Machine is a safe and viable backup strategy? It seems very slick for going back in time and grabbing a deleted file or two, but is it a true disaster recovery system? If it isn’t should I have yet another hard drive to do real backups on? I have had terrific success with Apple’s Backup software I get with my .Mac account … what will Time Machine do when my primary hard drive goes down — you know, the one with Mac OS running on it — and I have to reinstall the OS to try and restore? Will it work that way?

The iTunes U Ecosystem

October 26, 2007October 26, 2007 / Cole Camplese / 5 Comments

I have spent the last week in Seattle at Educause. During the week I have had several chances to meet and talk to colleagues at other institutions and from the companies I work with. It has been a fun, rewarding, and thought provoking week — total exhaustion aside, I think it was one of my more productive trips. I’ll save my overall Educause thoughts for a different post … this one is about the emerging opportunities I see on the horizon for content delivery to mobile devices for teaching and learning.

One of the short demos I went to at the Apple Booth was given by one of my good friends at Apple … he shared some amazing stories of how different Universities are using iTunes U for content, outreach, and campus news. Some really good stuff — although ETS Talk didn’t make the cut. The second half of the presentation focused on the mobile side of the equation … how the iPod (in its various forms) create an ecosystem of sorts for managing and delivering mobile content … it got me thinking about it more.

One of the neat things you can do in Seattle with an iPod Touch or iPhone is walk into a Starbucks (you may have heard of those things … coffee shops I think) and get instantly connected to what seems like a location aware network. Once connected a new opportunity on the device emerges — a commerce opportunity. In this case the fact that my device knows I am in a certain place, the network lets me in, and I am presented with an opportunity to acquire content is a very cool thing. I am not one to frequent the old Starbucks at home, opting instead for the local shops but this is an interesting model for us to consider in the delivery of podcasted material.

Another very cool feature to mention is when I am in an open WIFI zone my iPhone gives me the opportunity to purchase content from the Apple Music Store. They even let me look at what is hot, the top 10, and other ways to browse music in multiple genres. Again, this is great but for this to be valuable to me in an academic sense I need to authenticate into my Universities’ iTunes U space. Think of the potential — as these devices hit our campuses students can gain access to learning materials in a true anytime, anywhere fashion. Imagine being a faculty member and creating a podcast two hours before class on a relevant (late-breaking) topic and publishing it to your iTunes U space. What if when you do that you could instantly send an SMS, eMail, and an update to your FaceBook entry that new content is available … students receive the update and can (with their Touch or iPhone) grab that content out of the air. Just in time mobile content delivery is only one option … there are dozens of scenarios — tours, travel updates, and so much more — especially if you can rely on some sort of location aware technologies.

It all seems to rely on the fact that your device knows your identity and can make that connection. Well, guess what? When you buy an iPod or iPhone the first thing you have to do is sync it with iTunes … when this happens, why not use the local iTunes U space to create a connection? Let the iTunes U space on your campus take part in the activation process … when you log in with our school identity all sorts of great things can happen — auto-synced University bookmarks, account information, University wide calendar events, and more. One of those things is a pairing of the device with your iTunes U access. Seems easy enough to me and it paints a really powerful end-to-end picture of the way iTunes U could sit in the middle of so much more than content management.

iPhone (and iPod) SDK

October 18, 2007 / Cole Camplese / 4 Comments

I am not going to rehash the news that Apple will finally release an iPhone SDK, but will make special note of the fact that this means there will (finally) be an iPod SDK. What is so great to me is that I actually sat in an Apple conference room five years ago (?) when the first iPod came out and told them straight faced that unless they released an SDK they would have a loser on their hands. I hate looking so stupid … but vengeance is mine, Apple will indeed allow third party developers extend the most popular device on the planet. The thing that really interests me is the notion Fraser Speirs writes about — how long until there are as many OSX powered devices as there are Macs in the marketplace. With that as the starting point for this, the rules of the mobile device game just got changed in a whole new way for those willing to play in the Apple landscape.

The iPod Touch and Tipping Points

September 10, 2007September 24, 2007 / Cole Camplese / 11 Comments

As an Apple fanboy — man I hate labels (or is that a tag) — I was interested in the release of the new iPods last week. It seems strange to me that the new stuff hasn’t made waves with people like some of the other iPod updates in the past … especially given that at least one of these new devices has stepped into all new territory as it relates to features and usability. Lots of people got jacked up when Apple released the iPhone and were crying that the iPod didn’t do the things the iPhone did — full screen, wifi, touch controls, and more. Well, with the release of the Touch, it is all there. I think it represents a change that in the next 12-24 months will signify a radical change in the whole portable space for teaching and learning.

I was hanging out in my office for the 30 minutes I had there today and one of my students (who happens to work in ETS now) stopped in to tell me he had purchased a new Touch. I asked him if he thought it would be big on campus. He immediately told me that most students wouldn’t get it … I can see that, today. He went on to tell me until it could connect to universal wireless and posses massive storage it wouldn’t be a hot device on campus. I begged to differ — now keep in mind that I value his opinion and I certainly feel like he has the pulse of the student population much more within his reach, but there are some factors at play here that may make this device something to prepare for.

First of all the Touch is expensive, but not all that more than other devices that let you get online to work your FaceBook profile, check your email, respond to questions in ANGEL, browse ESPN, and just about everything else you can do in a browser — did I mention it fits in a pocket? See we know some stuff about our students … they do very specific things with technology. Here is a brief summary of what we know … somewhere around 80% of them own laptops and nearly all of them have wireless access … we also know that under 20% actually carry them to campus and the number one reason they tell us they don’t is because they report they are too big! Sure the VPN on our campus is not yet compatible with the Apple offering of the iPhone, but honestly how long can that last? With the price drop on the iPhone we will see all sorts of new touch sensitive devices show up this year (even before the Holiday season) in the hands of faculty, staff, and students. That in and of itself could provide a tipping point. What will happen over the next 12 months will change the game — the iPod Touch v1 will give way to a faster more powerful V2 device with a lot more storage, better VPN, and more tools than ever to access all the stuff they do. Did I mention that close to 85% of our students are on the FB and that 25% of them spend more than 5 hours a week there? Having access to all that in the palm of their hands will drive change.

We’ve been thinking and looking at the role mobility plays in education for quite some time now … I was the PI on an HP grant several years ago (maybe 5) that asked us to look at this exact topic. The tools were lame then and didn’t allow us to do the things we envisioned — they aren’t now. Couple that with the close to 250 sections of courses with an iTunes U space and it is easy to see that the time is right for a portable access device to an ever-increasing sea of digital academic content. I am going to argue that the iPod Touch will be the first mobile device that will actually make it to classrooms and live with students like only their iPods and cell phones do now … wait a second, they already carry this stuff. Jeez, I wonder how many of them own iPods now? Let’s call it about 50% of the PSU student population (and the number of MP3 ownership is at about 87%) … I wonder if they’ll refresh and buy new ones? I wonder if the new students showing up will come with them (did I mention our freshman own MP3 players at a higher percentage than our seniors)? But they don’t own cell phones do they? Yeah, 93% of them do … again, imagine if the devices they carry let them hit the network to do the things they stop into our labs for. Another little insight — most of them spend less than 10 minutes on our machines … know what they do? Yep check email, update profiles on FB, and check ANGEL. What the hell did Bob Dylan sing?

I wonder if the WIFI enabled iPods will change the way students do stuff? I’ll let someone else answer that. Thoughts?

Some Thoughts for Apple and Keynote

August 17, 2007 / Cole Camplese / 1 Comment

I am an avid Keynote user and have been since it first hit the market. I love how clean and elegant not only the design tools are, but also the resulting presentation files. Let me also say that I use it a ton. A big part of my job is sharing progress, giving updates, giving presentations, and all sorts of other show and tell style events. This means I have lots of Keynote files — I tend to have four or five that I use constantly for a year or so at a time. I tweak them with each talk slightly for the audience, but for the most part 90% of the slides stay the same. When I do this I do a “Save As” and create a new instance of the slides. This results in lots of very similar, yet slightly different versions of my slides … This drives me crazy!

What I am really after is something that is just like Keynote, but with the cross-over functionality of iPhoto. iPhoto’s new “Events” feature is killer. Why not allow us to store stacks of like slides (not presentations) as Events (or something) in a completely different view of the application — a content management view. Let me organize each slide as an asset unto itself. I could then use an “photo album” metaphor to drag individual slides onto the presentation stack (or timeline, or whatever) to create new slideshows. Giving me the ability to manage all my slides as assets, just like Apple does for iPhoto, iTunes, and now iMovie, would give me unprecedented control over my content.

So to review, what I want is Keynote as it stands today, but with a new content management view that lets me store all my keynote slides and slideshows in one place. I don’t care how the individual slides are stored, but the whole way you can scrub through the events in iPhoto to see the contents of that grouping would be ideal for slides that have very similar information, but might have been changed slightly with context sensitive information. I would then be able to click into that slide event grouping, select the right one for the presentation I was preparing and drop it into a Presentation Stack that I could enter to edit my preso just like I do now. And give me some real ability to store some meta data about each slide so I can search this massive database of content I am constantly creating and tweaking.

Does that make sense? It does to me and I need it!

I’m Actually Blogging About a Keyboard

August 13, 2007August 13, 2007 / Cole Camplese / 3 Comments

Those who paid attention to Apple’s latest round of announcements also saw that they released a new keyboard. I am using it to type this post … let me say that I was/am a big fan of the keyboard design of the MacBook, so when I saw the design of this new number I was excited. With that in mind I plunked down the $49.00 for the new wired version and it showed up today. I have to say I like it quite a bit. After I got my bluetooth Apple Keyboard I thought I would never go back to a wired version, but this is nice. They do have a wireless version, but it is much more like a laptop keyboard — without dedicated number keys … it just doesn’t do it for me. This is not a review, you can find those everywhere online … but let me summarize, I like it and you may not.

This thing fits me well. It takes a slight amount of getting used to, but I am really liking the feel. I beginning to notice what a difference it makes to have input and output devices that work for you does. Typing faster means greater productivity when you live in a blogging/searching/writing world … it is like finding the right mouse, it just helps. I switched to a 24″ display at work several months ago and I can’t tell you how many cycles that has saved me over a 20″. Sounds crazy, but having the right gear makes a huge difference. I can imagine most people see that for someone like Tiger Woods — having the right clubs makes a huge difference for him. Sure he would kick ass with my irons, but a stroke difference means being Tiger and not someone else. Trust me, I am not comparing us to Tiger, but all I am saying is that having the right tools for the trade helps!

Does this mean I will field requests from people tomorrow asking for 30″ displays and faster machines — probably. Does it mean we’ll do it — probably not. But, it does mean I am all for people making their home setups work just they want them. And that does it for a blog post about keyboard … jeez.