Snapguide is a free, simple and very slick iPhone/iPad application for creating and sharing step-by-step "how-to" guides. Even though it only made its App Store debut on March 27, it's easy to see why Snapguide could be big - maybe even Instagram big.
You create attractive guides right from the app taking advantage of your iPhone or iPad's camera and some sweet Snapguide creation tools. Text, photos and video clips are combined in a step-by-step sideways swipe format and each guide features your name and pic plus like, comment and share buttons on the front cover. The results can be stunning.
You'll recognize the social components as being highly reminiscent of Instagram - simple and workable. The explore buttons will let you search for any category of guide you'd like instead of relying on app-generated suggestions.
Now, initially, the range of guides isn't as wide as you'd like to see, but the app is in its infancy and topics will certainly broaden in the coming weeks and months. For now, titles include everything from "How to Roast Your Own Coffee" to "How to Keep a Parrot as a Companion Bird."
Face it, everyone knows how to do something, but doesn't necessarily have the venue to easily share it. Sure there are DIY sites on the web, and YouTube videos are useful for learning new tricks, but this particular mobile format lends itself so well to easy creation and consumption. There is a Snapguide website as well, but the creative fun is definitely in the mobile app.
So, have fun with this one, kick out a few guides of your own and see how Snapguide grows. Looks like a winner.
She choked on tear gas while I ate my sandwich. It was noon at the Subway in Oshawa where I'm attending a social media conference, but night in Egypt - and I just couldn't break away from her frantic tweets.
They outlined:
Her anger at the density of tear gas used.
Her concern for the people run over by police in front of her.
Her panic at the young man who was beaten severely nearby and needed an ambulance.
Her fears for friends and pleas for information from other Twitter users in the crowd.
Her twitter handle is @nadawassef and for 40 minutes I was scrambling through the streets of downtown Cairo with her. The contrast couldn't have been more stark.
My human rights have been secured through not much effort on my part.
I stumbled upon this happy little bookstore video on tumblr today. It's been out for only five days and already has over 1.5 million hits.
Now, I love spending time in bookstores. But the variety and immediacy of downloading books for the Kobo and Kindle apps on my iPad has been so seductive that I seldom hit the bricks and mortar buildings anymore.
When I do pull open the big heavy doors of McNally Robinson or Chapters, the smells of the paper, ink and coffee slam the pleasure centres of my brain so hard that nothing short of my two impatient sons can nudge me toward the checkout.
I love technology. My next device will probably be a Kindle Fire. But there's something incredibly alluring about spending hours among thousands of hard copy books and other people who are just as crazy about them.
E-readers may have conquered my head in terms of selection, price and convenience. But seeing this playful little video reminds me that I have to get out to the bookstores more often. My heart tells me they're not going to be around much longer.
There's a story by Geoff Kirbyson in last Sunday's Winnipeg Free Press that MTS Allstream and Rogers are spending $1.5 million over the next six months to upgrade the wireless service for Jets fans and everyone else who uses the MTS Centre.
So, here's a related question for you:
Q: Which of the following is most likely to have free wireless service in Winnipeg? a) Safeway stores b) Your child's orthodontist c) Winnipeg Convention Centre d) Any McDonald's
You're smiling right now, because you know which one it isn't.
Let's say you want to live tweet an election debate, conference, trade show or other event at the Winnipeg Convention Centre. Or maybe you need to send email or access an important document for just-in-time delivery to the floor of your convention?
And forget the 3G or 4G (or any G for that matter) - you want the speedy snap of wireless.
The WCC will give you an hour's worth of free wireless, then pull the plug on their sluggish signal. After that you have to hike over to the offices on the mezzanine floor and make arrangements to pay by the hour or day to keep using it.
Get Wireless
Convention Centre pulls plug on free wireless after one hour.
Now, I like the WCC. I'm not a critic, I'm a customer. Over the past 30 years, I've enjoyed wonderful events there, everything from concerts and home shows, to the Signature Awards, political debates and the yearly career symposium. But the lack of robust, free wireless for the past couple few years is now quite bothersome. It's a situation that's been documented in an excellent post by Erica Glasier last summer.
While some North-American conference centres are announcing free WiFi - doubtless enough of a factor in bookings to equip themselves with it - and our own hockey palace is boosting its signal, the WCC is silent on its plans.
It's not like conference attendees can get much free WiFi at the Delta next door, either. The hotel has no wireless in the rooms - only high speed cable access. The only place you can get free wireless is in the hotel's main floor lobby. But at least it lasts for more than an hour.
I do have faith, though, that the WCC will come through, because it's their turn - even if they have to partner with another service provider and plaster a "free wireless compliments of" message throughout the building.
In spite of logistical challenges in outfitting a building of that age with systems that will work well, the centre must get it done. How can conference goers land at our new airport terminal, enjoy strong and free WiFi there and while taking in a Jets game - and not expect the same from the venue that's hosting their conference?
Get a Social Voice
Even before the free WiFi is up and running, though, the Convention Centre should really take a dip into social media for voice lessons. If you search for Twitter, WiFi, or Facebook on the WCC website, you can hear - or see, rather - the digital crickets chirping. If you Google "convention centres on twitter" you'll find WCC's more progressive Canadian counterparts are already on Twitter - and finding their social voice.
Sure they use it as another broadcast channel for events ranging from United Way wind-ups to State of the Province addresses, to boat and bridal shows. But much more importantly, they use it to connect with their community and their guests.
After all, people don't connect with buildings, they connect with real people inside those builidings. So, these centres are using their authentic social voice, rather than their institutional voices on Twitter.
Here's a sampling of how other Canadian conference centres court their guests by using their social voice on Twitter.
Now, this might look like the nuisance stuff. But I am so impressed that there's someone tweeting for the Ottawa Convention Centre that would take the time to ask a guest about their meal and the speaker at an event. That scores you big points. And if someone does have a bad experience, like the fellow with the note on his bike outside Edmonton's Shaw Conference Centre, you get to smooth feathers or pass the message on to someone who can make it better.
Those kinds of social media interactions are the daily grind of dedicated community managers and such a welcome human voice. And at the WCC - it's a voice they need.
Get Manitoba Bold
So how about it WCC? This is 2012. Tech is a part of everyone's life including the conference and event patrons who converge on your facility. The competition down the street is putting big bucks into making sure their guests have a great WiFi experience.
My Manitoba Bold idea for you?
Let your guests connect with each other through strong and free wireless, and give yourselves permission to start connecting with them through social media.
Get wireless, social and Manitoba bold. We'll all enjoy you more.
I know, I know...YouTube is blocked in your school and you'd love to download videos directly to your iPad to play them for your students through your LCD projector.
But until now your only options have been to use a clumsy Dropbox upload method, experiment with Roadshow's limited Vimeo-only capacity, or pull TED talks down directly through the iPad's dedicated TED app.
Frustrating. You want your YouTube vids, right?
Well, enter TagDiskHD+, the only iPad app that lets you quickly save YouTube videos directly to your iPad with no iTunes sync - and without the resolution limits of a Keepvid upload to Dropbox.
Experiment with the free lite version. But once you see how easy it is, you'll want to spring for the $4.99 paid app for unlimited downloads.
What I love about this app is its simplicity.
Change the URL in the top browser from http://www.next4phone.com to m.youtube.com.
Open the separate YouTube browser below it and search for a favourite video.
Select the video, but don't hit play.
Click the download arrow to the left of the top browser field.
Hit OK when the "Enter URL to download" box pops up.
Your video will begin downloading very quickly. To finish:
Click the "downloads" button at the bottom of the screen to check the progress of your download.
Once the download's done, click the "disk" button at the bottom.
Your video is now sitting pretty in the "documents" folder.
Sound like a lot? Do it a couple of times and you'll be surprised how easy it is.
Then pull down as many YouTube videos as you want and show your
students, colleagues, family, geo-caching club, guitar teacher, etc.
Realistically, this feature should not inspire ooh, aahs and sharp intakes of breath. After all, it's a function that seems so natural. But if you've been searching for a way to do this - and know just how impossible this has been for an iPad that hasn't been jailbroken - you just might gasp, ever so slightly, the first time you see it happen.
When we drove the streets hardest hit by the Minot flood we entered a wasteland of abandoned homes, abandoned belongings, and - in many cases - abandoned dreams.
No one washing their cars, weeding their gardens, blasting their stereos or heading for the convenience store. No families out for bike rides, no one walking their dogs - not a pet in sight. No kids playing hop-scotch or running through sprinklers.
No usual Saturday hustle - just quiet desolation.
We were confronted with street after street of empty homes, all bearing outdoor scars of where the badly behaved Souris River ravaged their contents and turned Home Sweet Home into financial headaches for thousands.
Answering the call
We were all answering the call of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to clean out these houses - rip out every wet sofa, tear down every soaked wall, remove every carpet, every bloated hardwood floor, every heavy appliance, literally anything that had been touched and tainted by the water. It all had to go, right down to the studs, and be piled on the front property along the street so the owners could rebuild.
Everything touched by the Souris flood waters had to to be piled out front.
You couldn't help but feel for the owners, most of whom were advised against getting flood insurance, and who were now taking shelter with family and relatives anywhere but in the homes on which they were still paying mortgages.
So, when we and 300 other Mormons rolled into the parking lot of the Latter-day Saint Chapel - from Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana - we were amazed.
The Church turned the chapel into a command centre that operated for weeks, filled with food, equipment, generators and everything needed to tackle the mess. We supplied the labour.
I'm a lot more comfortable writing press releases than wielding a hammer.
Shouldn't wrecking things be easier?
The Church is big on organization. Our organizers, Brother and Sister Ludlow from Thousand Oaks, California, had just finished wrapping up a similar project in Joplin, Missouri, and didn't have time to go home before being called to do the same work in Minot.
They put us into groups of 10 and we fanned out to clean or "gut" as we called it, the homes.
Usually, this could be done in one back-breaking day. Ours took the weekend. Many of us had office jobs - a few were handy, and the work we would do would be valued at anywhere from $8,000 to $20,000 depending on the home. But we wouldn't have taken a dime for our work.
The first day's shift was 10.5 hrs. I was whipped after the first two - or thought so at least. It was a hot day and the masks we wore because of the possibility of inhaling mould felt were like breathing through a scarf. I was surprised at how hard it was to "destroy" a home. Shouldn't wrecking things be a lot easier?
But like most things in life, you don't know what you can do until you push yourself. My second and third wind came. By the end of the day, I was whipped but very satisfied. The coolest part of the whole project - the thing that made it even more worthwhile than I knew it would be was this...
Meeting Kelly and Sarah
Kelly Warren is a K-12 special ed teacher who lives with her two-year-old son and her mother Sarah. Coming face to face with Kelly and Sarah was such a wonderful feeling. The fact that Kelly was a teacher was especially gratifying to me since I work for a teachers' union and they always have my respect.
Kelly and Sarah filled us in on the flood, the evacuation - all the details surrounding this major trauma in her life as a first-year teacher. We were so relieved to know that she had signed a contract in a neighbouring town 40 miles away and that it came complete with teacher accommodations.
Both Kelly and Sarah expressed heartfelt appreciation for the work we did and followed it up with this warm and thoughtful email.
"Sending out a heartfelt thank-you from Minot from Sarah and Kelly Warren! When left with only words to try to convey our gratitude, I am left feeling inadequate to say the least. Your group and their cheerful and giving attitude doing such "dirty" work was very uplifting and helpful at this glitch in our road. Your help gave us a much-needed surge of energy to take steps forward instead of feeling paralyzed by this overwhelming situation. Thanks again and I have no doubt that your impact on us and Minot will be felt for years to come."
But the folks in Minot, including Kelly and Sarah, aren't out of the woods yet. They have so much work to do. We imagine the pressures at this point are intense. That's why we were so happy to have had a small part in opening up the possibility that they can rebuild their home.
Three hundred volunteers in 99 tents camped around the LDS Chapel.
Happy to serve
We left Minot Sunday afternoon with some minor aches and pains, but our hearts were definitely full. We had definitely pushed ourselves beyond our comfort zone. We had helped a wonderful family do what they couldn't do for themselves - in a very small way, like what our Saviour did for us.
We felt blessed to provide service to people who needed it badly. Of 4,100 homes affected, the Church cleaned out 570.
I love Sarah's closing comments in the short interview I grabbed above. "If anything comes out of this whole flood, maybe it's just a realization that we're all connected and that to work together is a wonderful thing - and to just stay positive."
That's a wonderful message to take away from this project.
Stay positive, Kelly and Sarah. It was a privilege to meet you.
I stumbled on a video yesterday that is worth discussion on so many levels. Click it and you'll come away smiling. Research it and you'll be concerned.
1) At first blush it's a fresh, inspiring reminder that we are all so much more than the labels others assign us. The message is positive, life-affirming, one that lifts the spirits - a powerful attention grabber for a keynote or conversation starter for a workshop.
2) It's also anti-psychiatry which I have problems with. We all know people who both need and have been helped by mental health professionals. This to me is a dangerous extrapolation from the "you are much bigger than a label" message.
3) If you think about it, it's also an indirect shot at Big Pharma which has a drug for most of the psychiatric conditions showcased in the video. Bashing Big Pharma is beyond my ability because I simply don't know enough other than the fact there are gigantic amounts of cash involved in treating psychiatric conditions with chemicals.
4) But here's the rub. As brilliant as the video is, it was produced by the Citizens' Council for Human Rights, an organization entirely controlled and funded by the Church of Scientology which takes a rabid anti-medication position on psychiatric illness.
So while the video may remind us to see the people we teach, love, play and work with as much bigger than any label which may have been given them, its ultimate goal is to serve as a public relations campaign for an organization that itself has issues with control and manipulation.
How do you download video straight to your iPad without an iTunes sync? Before Roadshow, there were only two ways I knew of.
In a previous post, I showed you how to save video directly to iPad via the Dropbox app after uploading with your desktop or laptop first.
You probably also know you can save all the TED talks you want directly to the iPad with the TED app.
But here comes Roadshow. Its own built-in browser, automatically identifies video available to download on any of the pages you visit.
The three-step procedure is super simple and this free app lets you save 15 videos before it asks you for a one-time payment of $4.99 for unlimited downloads.
Once you hit your page, thumbnails of any videos found there pop up above the Roadshow browser but take a while to establish themselves so you can eventually click them and save the videos to your collection. The delays can be a pain if you are indiscriminately browsing. You can stop them by touching one of the video thumbnail with two fingers, but that will clear the shelf of others previously identified but not downloaded yet.
Identify first, then open Roadshow
My advice is to first identify the page you want to download video from in Safari, then open the Roadshow browser and paste the exact URL for that page into it. The hunt and paste method saves a bit of grief.
Other than that, the video downloading process works fine, and doesn't give you a lower-res version of the video like the TED app does. It's pretty radical to realize what you've just done - video to iPad with no iTunes.
But there is one big limitation - it won't do YouTube.
Ok, don't walk away yet - it's really not Roadshow's fault. Because of YouTube's terms of service, the app is not allowed to save YT video and that limitation would apply to any other app in the App Store. So, you're limited to saving video from a much smaller universe - sites like The Onion, MSNBC, and others.
Worth seeing small miracle
I haven't experimented with many video embeds beyond Vimeo and I know those do work. But finding useful video content through other sources is a hard for people who live and breathe through their YouTube favourites and playlists. To save YouTube videos directly to your iPad without a sync, you're left with the more cumbersome Dropbox method I described above.
Is Roadshow worth a five buck investment? I dislike iTunes syncing so much I'd have to say yes. You might feel otherwise - so take Roadshow for a free spin. You can pull down 15 videos to your pad the way you've always wanted to - with no iTunes sync.
It's worth something just to see that small miracle happen.
I love this interview with BYU professor Charles Knutson because it could have gone the direction of so many other alarmist cyber-safety interviews that only concentrate on the perils of kids going online. Knutson gives a genuine upfront nod to the dangers, but doesn't believe "technology is the problem" and flips the entire premise of the interview for the rest of the segment.
Scrub past the opening banter to the 7:05 mark to watch the good professor affably lay out his argument for why video-games - especially MMORPGs like World of Warcraft - have value and why online games meet the same fundamental needs real world games have always met.
Owen Wilson's character meets Hemingway in Woody Allen's new flick.
Recently, while watching Midnight in Paris - Woody Allan's new smart and satisfying rom-com - I was reminded of Hemingway's spare and forceful style of prose.
Every evening, Owen Wilson's character is transported from modern day wanderings with his fiance in Paris, to the 1920's nightlife of the city, meeting a succession of artists and writers from that era.
Thinking about the scene where Owen Wilson meets Hemingway, I was reminded that as great as Papa was, there was a book he read by female pilot Beryl Markham that made him feel "completely inadequate."
Those words are never uttered in the movie, but he did admit as much in a letter to Maxwell Perkins - and the words speak for themselves.
"Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West with the Night? I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would have put pen to paper except to write in her flyer's log book. As it is, she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But [she] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers. The only parts of it that I know about personally, on account of having been there at the time and heard the other people's stories, are absolutely true....I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody wonderful book."
I had the good fortune to read West with the Night years ago. If you're looking for a good summer read, download it from Amazon or find it at your local bookstore. And if you're looking for a clever romantic comedy that pleases the eyes and intellect, check out Midnight in Paris.
As you know, the smart movies often don't last long.
1) I remember wiping tears away when I played Dan Hill's Canada in the house of a Chilean friend.
2) I remember being surprised to see a Canadian flag outside a museum in the Southern U.S. and instantly choking up with love and pride looking up at that Maple Leaf. It had been a half year since I left home. I wouldn't be back for another year. I was a mess for about five minutes.
3) I remember being in Texas and proudly keeping my arms at my side one hot July 4, while a community club full of Americans recited the Pledge of Allegiance. We were all grateful for who we were. None more than I.
4) I remember talking with a friend's wife from Detroit, who said her sense of personal safety increases the minute she crosses into Canadian airspace.
5) I remember being embarrassed taking two Cuban refugees to a hockey game in the Winnipeg Arena. They courageously hopped the plane at Gander, Newfoundland, weeks earlier and asked for political asylum. That night, half the crowd didn't know the new words to O Canada and the other half were too Canadian to sing it with any passion. They look puzzled at the half-hearted delivery and I apologized for us.
So, I feel a deep love for this breathtaking, largely empty country of only 34.5 million. It's a love not borne out of adversity or testing - or even anything as dramatic as military service in some far-away land.
Rather, it's a deep recognition that I have been truly blessed to live in a tolerant, caring, safe, democratic country. One that cares enough for its citizens to provide them a safety net when they're down and opportunities to get ahead with hard work.
I'm fortunate to have every nationality and ethnicity under the sun standing beside me. To be born in a place with natural resources other countries would give their eye teeth for. To share my life with family and friends who enjoy the same blessings as I do because of our geography.
We're living the world's dream up here - but I'm not sure enough of us know it.
Ever heard of PDF-A files? How about JPG 2000 lossless? Know what an M.DISC is?
Well neither did I until I attend the Preserving Your Roots, a family history conference held the weekend of June 4th in Regina, Saskatchewan.
The event, organized by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, centered on how to archive - not simply backup - family history (genealogical) records from hard copy to digital formats.
Knockout keynote
There were sessions on how to use Google for family history work, choosing the best software downloads for genealogy work, how to retouch family photos and more - including a knockout keynote by Gary W. Wright who works for the Church and is Senior Product Manager for Digital Preservation.
Wright gave a powerful presentation on how to digitize all the tangible stuff that binds you to your family members who have already passed; photos, vital records, journals, music, artwork, oral histories, newspaper clippings, family videos, books, maps, etc.
He's written a 16-page document called Preserving Your Family History Records Digitally that details the hardware and software you'll need, offers solutions to problems in archiving this special information.
Clear picture
He paints a clear picture of the challenges involved in digital preservation:
"It is NOT merely backing up your data! Rather it is a process that involves storing digital records (i) with descriptive information (ii) for a very long time (iii) in multiple locations (iv) at the highest resolution you can afford; (v) periodically migrating the records to new storage media in order to prevent data loss or the inability to read the data; also to take advantage of new storage technology; (vi) changing file formats before they become obsolete; and (vii) providing access to your digital collection now and in the future."
Free download
If you're at all interested in the subject, Wright's paper is worth the free download. There's also a wealth of other tech tip resources on the site. And if you've never had the pleasure of starting to research and preserve your family's history, why not check out the free FamilySearch website and see where your family line takes you.
Free wi-fi means I'll drop more cash at your fast food outlet or eatery. So why don't more restaurants and merchants offer it?
Why do most restaurants want to sell me wi-fi access over lunch?
When I go to my local Perkins or Salisbury House, or visit a good number of eateries, one of the first things I do is fire up my iPhone or iPad to see if I can surf on their dime.
So often I can't.
Instead they want to make money from me by sending me through a big service provider.
Yet, I can sit down at a McDonalds, stroll through a Safeway or wait for my sons at the orthodontist and get free access.
Those who do give me a chance to enjoy a little digital respite at no charge make me feel valued. It's an unexpected perk that cements my loyalty.
While those who hope to make a buck from selling me access come off as marketing dinosaurs. The fact that free access will increase the frequency of my visits and leave me pre-disposed to dropping more money in their establishments is lost on them.
But maybe it's not about the money. Could it be that it's a filter to discourage youths from sucking up bandwidth by filling up the booths while tethering their iPod Touches to the house router?
Whatever the case, the kids aren't there. And neither are the business customers that would appreciate a smart 21st-Century marketing gesture.
The bottom line is that more traffic equals more dollars - and those who won't serve me wi-fi gratis get fewer of mine.
What better to go with Winnipeg's NHL franchise, Bomber stadium and Canada's largest IKEA than a set of majestic mountains. Someone I know did this won-der-ful mash-up. And even though I love Winnipeg just the way it is, I think these peaks look good on us.
Snapguide is a free, simple and very slick iPhone/iPad application for creating and sharing step-by-step "how-to" guides. Even though it only made its App Store debut on March 27, it's easy to see why Snapguide could be big - maybe even Instagram big.
