technology

"I Was There. Just Ask Photoshop" - via NYT

I was trolling around the internet and found this New York Times article about Photoshop and its increasingly widening appeal.

Games and Learning 4.0

I'm in Madison for the Games and Learning Conference. I've wanted to attend since I found out about it but our history institutes always conflicted in the past. Here's a live blog feed. This is much more engaging than the Distance Learning Conference I attended here two years ago - or maybe it's just more my style.

Investigating Kindle

Like everyone else who buys books from Amazon, I had seen the display ads for the new Kindle. I didn't think much about it beyond, "Oh, another electronic book gizmo like the Sony eReader and other earlier tries." I had basically dismissed it given that I have enough trouble keeping track of a laptop and a PocketPC.

Apparently, I was wrong. A colleague mentioned having seen a Kindle and that it really is different. So, of course, I had to investigate further. Now, I think I will buy one as a birthday present to myself. I haven't been paying enough attention to Jeff Bezos' vision and I need to play catch-up - especially so that I don't miss out on any more great investment opportunities like I did when I thought Amazon had maxed out on the online book-selling market.

Scan and Release: Digitizing the Boston Public Library

The Everything is Miscellaneous Blog recalls the author's adventures in the "depths" of the Boston Public Library here.

Technology and Historical Research

Here are some initial observations on this thoughtful post from the AHA blog:

Many times it is the more specialized journals that contain the articles that most interest a researcher. The AHR covers a broad range of topics, and rightly so, but often doesn't have the more narrow source material that needs to be cited.

It would be interesting to track links going bad just over the last few years given that that appears to be less of a problem than in the past. Standardization of I.T. system upgrades that change website configurations and utilizing bots to track those updates down are two possible solutions to "lost" URLs. A significant number of our peers still dismiss the web as a big black hole instead of seeing its true potential - especially for those of us without major research libraries readily available geographically.

Additionally, search engines like Google have become much more useful in finding matches to exact titles if for some reason the original link goes bad, especially if the correct metadata has been applied to the document before placing it online.

It will certainly be interesting to see where we are even two years from now. Tools like Zotero certainly make research much more manageable.

Flip Video Camera

When I was researching Dad's new GPS unit we're getting him for Father's Day, I found a review of The Flip video camera. I have one from about 7 years ago but haven't used it as much as I had planned to. The Flip's ease of use and small size (similar to an iPod) sold me on giving it a try. The video quality isn't perfect but it will be workable on the web. Plus, I'm trying to get passed getting things "just perfect" before I am willing to try them.

The ease of use straight out of the box is outstanding.

Video Slideshare Tutorial

I was doing some prep work for our summer institute and found this great video Slideshare tutorial.

MODS

Was involved in some great tech discussions yesterday. I now have a better understanding of MODS.

Another Angle on Social Networking

This morning's Chronicle dispatch points to a new social networking site about social networking projects, including those emerging from university environments such as Stanford.

The push technology will make it easier to keep an eye on. We'll see a year from now (and probably just six months will do it) what type of impact the site does or doesn't have. It's great being able to get to this type of information but there is also the goal of maintaining a balance of being overloaded by same information.

Cell Phone Info

Liz Lawley points to two features we all can use on our cell phones:

mobile phone services that make me happy

Over the past few weeks, I’ve found myself using two services a lot on my mobile phone, and when I talk about them at conferences people tend to “oooh” and “ahhh”…so I thought I’d post about them here, as well.

The first is one I thought most people knew about, but I’m finding that’s not true. It’s Google’s “411” service for automated directory assistance. You call 800-GOOG-411, and are prompted for city, state, and business name or type. It then gives you a list of matches, and you tell it which item on the list is the one you want. Then they connect you. There’s no charge for this at all, which makes it a whole lot better than the phone company’s directory assistance. And the voice recognition quality is very good.

The second service I’m enamored with is also based on voice recognition. It’s called Jott, and when you call their number it listens to your message and transcribes it for you. You can have it send the resulting text to you or a contact via email or SMS. You can even have it send the text to a web service like Twitter, Remember the Milk, or your blog. It’s ideal for times when you say to yourself “I need to remember to…” but you don’t have your computer or a notepad handy. The voice recognition is really amazing, and it will let you spell out words that it might not interpret correctly. This evening, for example . . .

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