FM transmitters for iStuff can be pretty pricey, but they sure are handy for watching movies or listening to tunes from your iPad when you're on a road trip.
Since I wanted to pump some cool tunes through my car stereo yesterday, I ran into a London Drugs in Regina fully expecting to get hosed.
I skipped the usual $79 to $100+ name brands to see if I could find something reasonable.
I took a chance on a cheap off-brand transmitter for a miserly $35. It was meant for iPhone 3G/3Gs and older iPod Touches - and didn't say a word about iPad compatability. But it works brilliantly from almost any position in the car, doesn't need batteries and measures about 1" x 1.25".
Had we had one on our road trip to Edmonton in January, we could have untethered the iPad from the audio cord and spared the boys a lot of leaning forward from the backseats.
My 14-year-old son spends hours every day meticulously composing Japanese phrases in his notebook for fun.
He scans Twitter's short pithy messages in Japanese for reading practice, views his Facebook profile entirely in Japanese, pesters me to go to oriental food markets to buy junk food, and has appropriated our discount bin DVD of Ramen Girl to capture glimpses of Japan and listen to the dialogue.
In the words of an 80's hit by The Vapors, I fear he is turning Japanese - I really think so. This is on the heels of his successful self-initiated push to learn Spanish, last year, and his assiduous following of language hacker Irish Polyglot (@irishpolyglot) and his fluentin3months.com blog.
So, I asked him about the resources he uses most often. This is what he recommends for beginners like him.
1) jisho.org - Denshi Jisho is an awesome English-Japanese/Kanji dictionary. Kanji characters can be searched by radicals.
2) renshuu.org - Solid site for vocabulary, Kanji and grammar practice. Also has a library of useful grammar tips.
3) alljapaneseallthetime.com - Great blog written by Khatz (or Khatzumoto) an American who learned Japanese with digital flashcards, and by watching Japanese TV shows and listening to conversation.
4) Japanese My Way - An iPad app with flashcards, dictionary and tutorial videos.
Ok, you're in for a treat as Meaghan Smith, Halifax's young, retro-styled crooner comes to crush it at at the West End Cultural Centre in Winnipeg, June 9.
The London, Ontario native snagged "best new artist" at the Junos in March and "pop album of the year" at the East Coast Music Awards back in April.
Smith has launched a North-American tour to showcase what the National Post called her "swingy, nostalgia-tinged, soft-pop," and promote her album The Crickets Orchestra. She will hit the 'Peg a week after her Provo, Utah gig and before a string ofCanadian and U.S. dates.
Career as animator
But, and here's the cool part of Smith's journey to rising star status, no one in North America would have ever heard her great pipes had it not been for a change of direction a few years ago. You see, Smith was set for a career in animation - and a promising one at that. She credits her family's modest budget for her love of illustration and music.
"We couldn’t afford cable, so to avoid doing homework, I occupied myself with other activities, like drawing and singing. And with three (mostly fuzzy) TV channels to choose from, I ended up watching a lot of animated movies and old musicals. Some of my favorites were Calamity Jane, My Fair Lady, and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers."
You'll notice Smith's animation handiwork in some of her early videos, in her video biography, and by mousing over the banner on her website to conjure up what looks remarkably like a fluttering Twitter bird.
Eventually, Smith worked up the courage to put on "secret concerts for a few of my friends in the stairwell" of the animation building where she was studying. A sound engineer encouraged her to use the building's studios to record a demo and she began booking local gigs to gain confidence performing.
After graduating, Smith moved to Halifax, and worked for four years to raise $30,000 to cut a CD. She then spent two months on the streets of Toronto living on home-made vegetable soup and sleeping at Tim Horton's.
Finally, recognition
Smith's Omnichord-based remake of the Pixie's Here Comes Your Man for the soundtrack of the movie 500 Days of Summer got her the first big accolades and gave her some solid momentum.
She's still nowhere near a household name, but her recent awards are the foot in the door to North American consciousness. And with her clever writing, throwback rhythms, some stronger branding, and a few good tours, let's hope the Mormon girl with the velvet vocals can establish a big career for herself.
EXPERIMENTAL POP THAT ROCKS: I caught up with Matthew, Grant, Steven and Oliver of Behind Sapphire an hour or so before their March 29, 2011, gig at the Exchange Community Church in downtown Winnipeg. Missing is Lindsay. Video was taken with my Flip Ultra HD just before dusk, largely with available light through large windows.
Look, I'm in love with my Flip Ultra HD. Can you blame me?
Sure, Cisco killed this little one-function wonder this week just a month after I got mine. Guess they figured 15% growth wasn't good enough - or maybe they just weren't cool enough, I'm not sure. But I'm definitely in hello mode: and nowhere near abandoning it yet.
I heard about these simple camcorders from following teachers and PR people on Twitter. Grabbing quick interviews seemed so easy: get in close, push the big red button, get your subject to speak up, and voilá - clean, no frills video for your blog, website or social networks.
So, thanks to some Air Miles points that had been languishing in my account, I took delivery of this magical little machine about a month ago and have been testing it ever since.
I'm so impressed.
Oh, the Flip is not perfect. Plenty of nits to pick at a time when just about everyone can shoot video with their smartphones. But for someone wanting to cut his teeth on video, it's perfect enough.
Here are my observations on this hard-working gadget whose untimely demise won't keep me from enjoying it:
1) The first thing that strikes you is how a little box with no moving parts can deliver such great video. When you first flip the USB out and attach the the Flip to your computer, you can instantly appreciate the quality.
2) Natural light is by far what you want to shoot in. The colours are great and the images are sharp and clear. Life is good - and good lighting makes it even better.
3) Results in hotel lighting are a mixed bag. In dimly-lit rooms, you'll get results that are less focussed, grainy, and complexions turn ruddy. Brighter lighting in lobbies and hallways will alleviate some of this, but nothing comes close to the beauty of natural light.
4) Use the modest zoom sparingly. Image crispness drops off sharply on maximum.
5) If you're shooting very close - desktop stuff for example - the Flip's fixed focus will give you fuzzy results. (How's that for alliteration?) If you want to shoot a demo of an app on your iPhone or iPad, the blurriness is frustrating. The solution is to simply hold a decent magnifying glass in front of the lens. Graceless yes, but it works.
6) There is no direct jack for an external mike, so you're stuck with the one on the camera. But if you're interviewing subjects up close, the Flip balances the sound in front of and behind the camera rather well - much better than the iPhone's biased mike.
7) There are two workarounds for sound, though. One is to buy an external stereo mike that plugs into the bottom of your Flip. You can plug an external mike into that. The other is to buy the FreedomMIC from Scosche. This little beast plugs into the bottom as well, but receives sound from up to 100 ft. from its wireless lapel mike. The Freedom Mike is a bit of a unicorn, though. There was plenty of talk about them during a Sept. 10 newser last year, but no one has yet seen the mythical mike instore. Hmm, did they get wind of the Flip's impending demise?
8) I love the fact that there is no DVD to pop in. The Flipshare software is uploaded from the camera to your computer through the unit's USB. No need to carry around a charger either. Just plug the USB into your laptop or desktop.
9) As for juice, The Flip comes with a rechargeable battery pack, but in a pinch you can snap in three lithium AAAs - so practical.
10) The editor that comes with the Flip Share software is simple and limited. The titles, for example, are big and dumpy and the editing features are primitive. But the software does make it easy for you to upload your videos to social networks and share them with family and friends.
Even though I sense a more sophisticated around the corner for me, I'm still in the honeymoon phase with this simple, single-function gadget. Prices have already dropped on the website making them a great buy for beginners like me. And to supplement my baby steps in video with the Flip, I'll be buying Sony Vegas Movie Maker HD or Final Cut Express to cut my teeth on editing.
Hey, you can still learn a lot without breaking the bank, right?
I can't be faithful to just one Twitter app. Sure I can point to a favorite depending on the platform, but I would never stick with just one.
Echofon I love Echofon on the iPad because of the way it displays the lists of people I'm following and who are following me. People I follow are listed in alpha order making it easy to scroll through and find exactly who I'm looking for. My followers are listed chronologically. No other app presents this info better - it's a must see.
The whole Echofon experience is simple, easy, a pleasure to use - and I love the bright theme.
But I rarely use Echofon on my iPhone, though, because I just can't bump up the font size big enough for my tastes (can you please fix that, guys?). A larger font feels like my visual home, and Echofon just can't take me there on the iPhone.
TweetDeck
TweetDeck is awesome on my laptop and desktop, because I can run those great notifications in the background. It's the undisputed powerhouse when it comes to features and ideal for participating in #edchat and other education-related discussions. When you first graduate to TweetDeck it's pretty heady stuff seeing that flight deck with multiple columns and fancying yourself a power user.
On the iPad, though, TweetDeck takes much too long to load. I can't fit as many columns on it as on the desktop and I'm much more limited to the amount of tweets I can see at once.
TweetDeck for the iPhone is a complete wash for me. What it does so brilliantly on the laptop or desktop, just isn't possible on the smaller screen - so why bother?
Twitter
I love Twitter on my iPhone, and use it almost exclusively. I can kick the font size up, I feel comfortable with the pull-down-to-reload feature and I love the translation option which lets me follow Japanese speaking astronauts or tweets from Arab countries and actually find out what they're saying.
On the iPad, I don't know if it's Twitter's dark theme, the horizontal swiping or what, but it just doesn't turn my crank. I know I'm not alone in feeling that the iPad iteration wasn't as brilliant as the one for the iPhone.
And the Twitter desktop app? Despite the new look and functionality, it still remains the least efficient way to tweet. Its only value, in my books, is when demo-ing Twitter at workshops. There is little point using anything else because it really is the entry point for newbies and the interface most will use to start tweeting.
Switching Between Apps That having been said, I have switched and will continue to switch between these apps depending on the need and the mood.
All of which has me worried about Twitter's objective of buying up the universe of third-party apps with which to tweet.
I don't want one app, built by one group of people, however brilliant, to be THE Twitter experience for me and the only tool I will ever be able to tweet with. I love the variation in looks, purpose and function.
After letting the genie - and the genius - out of the bottle by initially making the Twitter API open to everyone, why would you want to lock up all of that power and diversity and shove it back into just one container?
Can you really get hooked on shiny, happy commentaries on Mormon motherhood and domestic bliss? Well, urban online mag Salon certainly thought so when it published Why I Can't Stop Reading Mormon Motherhood Blogs by Emily Matchar, a "young, feminist atheist" early this year.
As Matchar puts it, the appeal seems to go beyond the expected niche for these blogs.
"They're members of a large, close-knit network of Mormon lifestyle bloggers -- young stay-at-home-moms who blog about home and hearth, Latter-day Saint-style. From Rockstar Diaries (Naomi) to Underaged and Engaged (Stacie) to Nie Nie Dialogues (Stephanie) to Say Yes to Hoboken (Liz), Mormon lifestyle bloggers occupy their very own corner of the blogosphere.
"Their lives are nothing like mine -- I'm your standard-issue late-20-something childless over-educated atheist feminist -- yet I'm completely obsessed with their blogs. On an average day, I'll skim through a half-dozen Mormon blogs, looking at Polaroids of dogs in raincoats or kids in bow ties, reading gratitude lists, admiring sewing projects."
The creators of these blogs are Instagram-hip chroniclers of puking babies, doting husbands, harried shopping trips, forays into vintage fashions, and weekend DIY projects gone awry. But despite being a running log of domestic vicissitudes, these blogs are contemporary cool and some, like Nat the Fat Rat, are pretty darn candid.
And as one of Matchar's 464 commentors writes, "you are attracted to the positivity."
That positivity shines through even in the face of tremendous adversity, as in the case of Stephanie Nielson (below), who experienced a near-fatal plane crash and lived to blog about it and the struggles she faces raising her kids in the aftermath of severe burns. "I am Stephanie Nielson," she says. "And I am not my body."
Some may be uncomfortable with faith-based references mingling so casually in these posts. But as a blogger and a Mormon myself, I know that blogging is all about growth and personal development - and these women are writing what they know and blogging who they are.
It's been said that audience is essential for a blogger's growth. In that respect these women owe their audiences. And it's nice to know that their readers, even those that don't share their faith, are finding value in their work.
Yes, Manitoba's new media industry is $433,000 happy after this Monday's announcement of a whack of funds to boost the profile of the province's interactive digital media firms around the globe. The announcement was made by Lynne Yelich, federal minister of state for Western Economic Diversification.
This video has the smooth production values you'd expect, Kevin Hnatiuk, executive director of New Media Manitoba is positively effusive, and a buoyant atmosphere prevails. You can even see United Way Winnipeg's social media guru Erica Glasier grabbing some video with her iPhone.
Oh, and in case you missed it, Erica and Kevin Glasier were responsible for the inspired design and quick turnaround on the Pray for Japan t-shirts that local HOT 103 personality Ace Burpee is currently hawking.
The flash of inspiration here? The shirt's QR code takes you directly to the Red Cross mobile donation site. Brilliant concept, worthy cause and only $20.
The desire to learn my family history is exerting a substantial pull on me. I find I'm being moved to get moving on a project which previously held little interest.
Now, I'm starting to discover some very cool things. And I'm also noticing that genealogy - the detective work of getting to know your bigger family who have already passed - is starting to make inroads even in popular culture.
NBC's Friday night line-up boasts "Who Do You Think You Are?" a co-production with ancestry.com that traces the family history of one celebrity. Each week, the guest celeb sets out on an journey that gradually reveals astonishing nuggets about the lives of the folks that populate their family tree.
Now the show originated in Britain years ago and spawned knock-offs in Canada, Australia and elsewhere. But our family came to it late with the U.S. product now in its second season.
So last week, we propped up the iPad at the dinner table to take our first look. The guest, 80's pop star Lionel Richie, was often startled at the unfolding developments - especially when he learned his great-great-grandfather was a white plantation owner.
But the show focused on his great-grandfather and pursued the circuitous trail of a man who was divorced by his decades younger bride for suspicious reasons. He was the presumed renegade that no-one in the family knew or talked about.
Ultimately, the reason for his two-year period of travel away from his wife was revealed to be his commitment to building a national fraternal organization for African-American men long before the American civil rights movement found its legs. The work and sacrifice Richie's ancestor lived was often poignant.
Who knew that genealogy could make such great TV?
Another discovery that had my mind chewing on possibilities was the fact that this past February in Salt Lake City, the RootsTech 2011 conference made its debut.
Even though I have barely dipped my toes in this work, RootsTech, co-sponsored by the good folks at FamilySearch, seems like a pretty powerful draw - one that melds my budding interest in family history with a full-blown love for all things tech. You can YouTube RootsTech to get an idea of the scope of the event. The 2012 date is February 2-4.
Funny that the stars align themselves the way they do sometimes, but another smallish thing that will help me get get my feet fully immersed in genealogy is that I bought, or got rather, a Flip Video camera (thank you Air Miles), that makes it duh simple to shoot decent HD video.
It struck me just a few days ago that I should fire up the Flip to record my dad's stories about his youthful flight from the Russians during WWII and get some of the dates, times and places that were important in his life. Naturally, I'll plumb his memory for names and birthplaces of relatives I need to research.
I must hustle on this project. My dad is 72. I need to ferret out and record those stories while his memory and health are still relatively strong.
My family means the world to me. And the prospect of researching my ancestors is one that has me itching to start. I want them to be real for me - for my kids. And the question that gets bigger for me each day is quite simple.
I was floored when I discovered Erica Glasier: Oversocialized. This rich repository of posts on all things tech from the interactive/social media guru at United Way Winnipeg absolutely rocks. Check out this amazing slide deck on QR codes. Watch them full screen for maximum impact. Erica knows her stuff, I suspect, as few others do.
Before we get to the heart of this viral matter, click play above, stop your twittering long enough to get sucked into this incredible video, then come back and we'll talk. Go ahead, I'll wait....
Lib dubs are infectious video blasts of school spirit meant to inspire awe in viewers, pride in students and staff, and purposely designed to go viral via Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media.
They're bright, loud and chock full of turn-by-turn surprises requiring incredible timing, choreography, and coordination. And the absolute rule for lip dubs is they must be done in just one seamless camera shot.
The challenge is to bring viewers through the front doors of the school and immediately launch into a series of visual stunts while lip-syncing to the works of Lady Gaga, the Black Eyed Peas, Rihanna - or any other Grammy-worthy icon.
Typically, the camera winds through the hallways, poking into classrooms, band rooms, science and computer labs, and voc-ed facilities, all the while making its way up and down staircases, shooting high and low and, in the case above, even being raised up by a cherry-picker.
Over-the-top action
The action has to culminate in an over-the-top rally in the gym or other cavernous venue and must pack a huge raucous punch before ending abruptly or setting up a denouement before the credits.
Pop the term "lip dub" into YouTube search and you'll find dozens of examples of school videos with various levels of talent, equipment and production values. They all have one thing in common, though. Everyone has a blast and school spirit rocks off the charts - and stays that way as the video's hit count escalates in the days and weeks ahead. The one you just watched was sitting at 350 hits yesterday afternoon. As I post this, 24 hours later, it is just breaking 6,000 views.
Think of it, every student and staff member gets to say "check out what our school did" and their relatives and Facebook friends get to say, "yeah, I saw you on the stairwell" or "that wig you had on was so random!"
What I love about the offering from Shaftesbury High School in Winnipeg is that it projects the school's enthusiasm so well, it can double as a marketing piece for the school. In fact, it was designed with that dual purpose in mind and now resides on their schools splash page. What I also find unique is that rather than opting for a hip-hop anthem, the song used was penned by a teacher.
'Complete and utter mayhem'
The other nice touch in this lip dub is the fact that the staff members are so very conspicuous as they ham it up with the students. At the 4:40 mark, Principal Riffel and Vice-principal Wiebe introduce the pep rally as "wild, insane" and "complete and utter mayhem." You know they're having fun, too.
And did you notice any bad behavior in the video - anyone making rude gestures or sulking in the corners? Of course not. Kids' love this stuff. It's not only a symbol of pride for them but will earn them social credit with their peers from other parts of the city - especially when they get some ink in the local newspaper.
I can't think of a healthier way to compete between schools. Downsides? I can't see any. But just how does a school put one of these together?
I don't have a clue. Maybe some of you do and can weigh in below with your comments. But my advice is to get the blessing and cooperation of your principal first. Then go to the most technologically savvy group of staff and students at your school, show them the Shaftesbury video and ask, "How can we make something like this happen?"
After the story boards, the logistics, the shooting, editing, and exhilaration are over, you and your students will have a video you'll be chuffed about and can distribute far and wide. More importantly, you will always remember the experience.
