SketchUp

While researching for a program on other Google products I discovered a 3D modeling software called SketchUp. Now at first it seemed rather intimidating but I think I finally have it figured out. Here's a model of my dream kitchen for my house. Working in a facility with kids and teens we are always looking to new ways to stimulate kids and give them new opportunities to stimulate development. I am pleased with this progress. Since I am using the free version there are limits to what I can do with it. I can post it to 3D warehouse and Google Earth both of which I plan to do since it's part of the experience. The nicest part of this is that it's a free software so the library can definitely afford to offer it. The main limitation is having someone to support it, thus my trying to learn it.


So what do I work on next? Well, there are still some rather high end software out there, enter Blender, a 3D Modeling and Animation software. Now if I felt intimidated by SketchUp I was really a wimp. Blender is COMPLICATED, there are a ton of buttons and controls and many are toggle buttons. Learning the interface is a major step according to the tutorials I found. But surprisingly the whole software is only about 20 MB and again it's free. I do hear that once you get going it makes much more sense so I do have hopes, especially since I managed to build a sphere with little trouble, that was very hard in SketchUp. Getting the sphere transparent and overlapping another might not be so easy but we'll see.

Visitors are up

Well, I'm playing around with having a Frappr Map vs Clustrmap. Personally, I like the Clustr as it has a cleaner look on the page but Frappr has some fun features like visitors can add their picture and a comment along with a pin to the map. However, the best info I get from Stat Counter. I put this on last fall and I'm getting some really interesting data from it. First of all I've had a significant increase in visits from the Blogger Navbar. Also from Technorati and Del.icio.us. I also am getting lots of attention from the PBWiki for Learning 2.1 but perhaps that's because only 2 other people have added their blog there.

I am disappointed that few people are coming from the Ning network, ExplorediscoverPlay, that Jamie set up for Learning 2.1. After all that has gotten several members and since it started and people are using the chatterwalls and generally having fun there. Then again they may be having so much fun in the Network they aren't going to the blogs. The PBWiki has been pretty quiet so anyone going there is going to follow what ever leads they can get.

ToonDoo Comic Strip Maker

It's Sunday and we walked the gauntlet of people anxious to get into the building trying to get into work. I have to give one of my coworkers, Russ Reed, credit for finding this.

There are some other Comic Strip Generators though:
Comeeko
Stripgenerator
Comic Strip Generator
Read Write Think - geared to kids
Stripcreator
Make Beliefs Comix - another specially for kids

Check them out!

Thank you Zamzar!

I had discovered this from another source and I love it! It solved an issue I had with getting submissions to an animation this summer. Just have the kids post to YouTube and I can convert them to avi's for including in the final video for the Plazma in the lobby and in the August Film Festival! I just tested and the animations from 3D Choreographer loaded great but the CoreFx still presents a problem. We may need to set aside some floppies for those captures.

If they don't have internet access Staff will still need to assist with posting. The idea here is to minimize the need for staff intervention.

Temporary Page Element

Okay it's just temporary but I am very excited that my daughter will be returning from Norway in a week. So for the next week, I have a countdown counter in the upper right corner of the blog. So I can see exactly how long before she arrives!

Apple news

Apple has gotten a lot of news this year with the announcement of the forthcoming iPhone. But they have a lot more going on despite the delays to Leopard.

There is a new Mac Pro (well about a month ago) with 2 quad core processors! This week they upgraded to MacBook but it's not a drastic change, now I have the bottom line laptop instead of an upgrade. They are also getting ready to release a new version of Final Cut Studio. I actually had guessed that was coming but when the Quad Core was announced I figured I had missed. But the new Final Cut comes out May 31! My prediction meter is going up, I personally give credit for that to all the pods I listen to on the bus with the mp3 player from Learning 2.0 last fall.

Apple is finally taking off DRM

That's right they are finally doing something not just issuing calls to remove DRM. They announced Monday a deal with EMI music to put the entire catalog on iTunes DRM free. There is a catch, it costs $.30 more but you get twice the bit rate so I think it's worth it especially for classical the tends to loose a bit at the 128kbps rate. I even have my first purchase picked out. EMI has a big catalog but one part is a big Classical collection. They are the only label that has Alison Balsom, a phenomenal trumpeter. I hadn't gotten any of the tunes from iTunes with her as the nuances of her music would get lost in the downloadable version. The new version is CD quality so every little nuance will be there to enjoy. So I'll be checking every week until they get posted and once they are I buy it. i think it's important to show the music companies that this will work. That people will buy music legally if what they want is available when they want it. They don't want such restrictions.

I have not purchased audiobooks from iTunes as I can get them cheaper from Audible and don't have to have an iPod so audiobooks are strictly a Windows thing for me. That's why I did the compromise and loaded the Windows partition. Sometmes I wish I had just gotten the ipod. A refurbished shuffle is available for only $49 so it would have been cheaper than a copy of Windows but my player was free and Jan's was only $30 last year and we have them already. Besides where else was I going to test Office 2007? I do have to admit I generally use Open Office instead though. I just prefer Mac OS.

NING has a community for Library 2.0!

Since Social Networking is so much a part of Web 2.0 I decided to take a look at this company that provided software for creating social networks. The cool part is it's free!

In searching through the networks there I stumbled on one dedicated to Library 2.0. I found a reference to the Wired article on our Learning 2.0 project and how it is taking the world by storm. No wonder Helene was named a Mover and Shaker this year.

Next I found a link to a blog called Other Librarian and an article on non-tech Library 2.0 things you can do. Since not all staff are naturally tech savvy, I thought these might be interesting ways to approach Library 2.0 for some of our staff.

But to help bring people up to speed, what about creating online courses with Moodle, an open source e-learning software? I hadn't heard of it but it seems someone has developed Sloodle, a mashup of Moodle and Second Life. How virtual can we get!

Okay, I'm running out of time today so I'll explore more tomorrow.

Daylight Savings is a rip-off!

You know Daylight savings only works if you sleep late. If you are one of the people who gets up early because of having to be at work early (my husband) or just does it because you like to do stuff before going to work, there is no savings, you just get up that much before the sun comes up. I just checked and since I get up at 5 a.m., I save - - nothing and never did! What I get is to have reduced sleep all summer because I have a harder time getting to sleep with the sun is still up or has just set. If I get up at 5:30 I would save a measly 19 hours and at 6 only 79 under either daylight savings scheme, to gain from the new system I have to get up at 6:30 and then I only save 2 hours more! Does anyone really think 2 hours of daylight will make a speck of difference? What I've lost is an hour of sleep everyday it exists. My husband has to be at work at 7 and has a half hour drive so we get up at 5 to shower, eat, make the bed, and update his podcasts before he has to be on the road (in the dark I might add at 6:30 now).

Chronic late sleepers will figure out how to adjust their work schedule to allow them to not gain anyway. So really it's all a waste of time and energy. So if you are a late sleeper who gets up at the last minute to squeak into work at 8 or 9 then yes the time change will force you to save some daylight. But for the rest we just lose sleep.

If you are interesting in finding out is you actually do save anything in this check out this website. You will need your latitude and longitude and what the difference is between you and UTC is:
http://www.frictionlessmedia.com/DaylightSavings.htm

DRM blues

Steve Jobs has added his voice to the "get rid of DRM" crowd. Of course, lots of people are pointing out that he's holding out with an all or nothing stand. There are plenty of small labels that want their music DRM free.

We deal with this issue all the time with NetLibrary and OverDrive. Both of these are shackled to Windows Media DRM 2.0. Those files won't play on Mac OS or iPods. and just to keep things annoying, Microsoft opened their new store exclusively for their new Zune player. Guess what files from the Zune store won't play on Creative, iRivier, or SanDisk. They might manage NetLibrary and OverDrive but not Zune.

Actually there are quite a few music stores that don't work with many portable players. Some are for streaming only, though at least most of those are free. It's facinating that the iPod has such a large market share but it can only accept DRM-Free MP3's, ripped from CD, and iTunes Music. According to the Steve Jobs letter mentioned earlier 90% of the content on iPods comes from ripped Cd's. If you don't already know, ripped music is music that has been converted to MP3 some other digital format froma CD. Record Labels really don't like to hear this and have threatened to put DRM on CD's so If you plan to use the music on a portable you have to buy another copy for the portable device. What this will mean is that if you have an iPod, your son has a Sandisk MP3, your daughter has a CD player, and your husband has a PocketPC, you might have to buy 4 copies of the music for each player. Actually the son and husband might be able to share but not anyone else. What is the standard today is to get the CD, make a copy for the daughter to use and rip it to mp3 for everyone else. Then the CD may just sit on the shelf somewhere. Now the copy under current law is legal, that is considered FairUse. though multiple copies wouldn't be. Ripping to MP3 is a bit questionable and Windows Media Player is now applying DRM in that process so you can't share the MP3 with many players, I'm not sure of the limit but I think it's 5. Each time you move the file you must connect to the web to get the license for the new player. So far I don't think iTunes does that but it could be just a matter of time.

Although, I agree that all this would be simpler with only one DRM scheme, I suspect the record labels love it. They now have an excuse to make people buy multiple copies of music for each player they own. I suspect they would love tying even CD's to just one player. So if you and your whole family love a particular CD, you can't share it unless you trade CD players too.

New Mashups

Yahoo Pipes - a mashup variation on an RSS Feed aggrigator. Put together your own Feed and set up filters to remove the stuff you don't want.

Doggdot.us - this one is a mashup of Digg, Slashdot, and Del.icio.us. For those of you who like those guys someone has them together in one place.

Hmmm, rumors

I've run across several podcasts, blogs and other resources talking about Google's newest MS Office wannabe, Presently. But in searching Google all I find is other people talking about it, Google is absolutely mum, so I'm beginning to think this one is just rumor. First of all, I wonder why Google would call this one Presently when they call the former Writely just plain Docs. For Presently to make sense Writely should have kept it's name and Spreadsheets should have been Excellently, Additionally, or Summarily perhaps?

I have used Spreadsheets and Docs and like them both somewhat but neither is quite an Office killer. I really can't see a corporation using them when almost any corp has Office and major co

Microsoft Office 2007

Okay, I have it, they gave full licenses to attendees of the Launch event in January at the Convention Center. You download the demo but the license you got at the event removes the restrictions and time limits, woohoo. I was rather surprised at the download rate since I was doing it through the WiFi at ImaginOn, on a weekend when we were full of MySpace and YouTube users.

All I can say is, forget everything you know about Office! Or at least where all the tools are. They did away with the Menu and made it all tabs with bigger icons for the tools. No, you don't lose screen real estate as instead of the Menu Bar you now have a group a tabs and each tab has it's own set of tools. They also changed a few shortcuts so be prepared there too. For long time Office users there will be a delay while relearning but from what I can see it seems to be more intuitive. So new users may find they are learning faster and can get more done. Sigh, I'm teaching Office 2003 this month to Home Schooled children and am having to really work at keeping from using 2007 from my laptop instead of 2003 like they will have on their computers.

I feel sorry for all the Technology teachers who are still catching up on the 2000 to XP to 2003 upgrades.

The only other comment I can make right now is they are continuing the trend to have most of the clipart and templates available online only. In fact I'm not sure they have as many as the minimal clipart in the compact load of Office 95 (you only got about 40 but files were available for another 400). Of course, this might just be since I got it free for attending the event and didn't buy the discs. But I haven't done that since Office 97. My husband is pretty tolerant of my interest in keeping up with computers but I do have to set a spending limit and the MacBook blew the whole budget for a while.

Google news

First you'll never guess the most popular Google Search term. It's




Yahoo!



Yep people are going to one search giant to find the other.


Google is also putting more pressure on Microsoft with another addition to Docs (formerly Writely) and Spreadsheets. So far this one is only getting mention in Google's blog and some blogs and podcasts that follow it. I got this from CNet's Buzz Out Loud podcast. At present, (pardon the pun) it's called


Presentation


Okay, I don't think it's original either but what can I say. I checked and it's not in Google Labs yet but I promise to try it once it is available. Google is rapidly becoming one of my favorite one stop web spots.

Upgrades, arrgh!

I'm back after a hiatus to catch up on other areas of my life, including a 3 week visit over Christmas from our daughter who is spending a year in Norway.
This brings Skype to mind. This is a rapidly evolving company. Around Christmas they had an upgrade to version 2. It introduced video calls! I had expected loss of quality and was happy that the audio is just as good even if I did add video to the mix. I will admit the video is rather jumpy and low resolution but hey it's free and let's us talk for hours about a third of the way around the earth! The important part is that the voice is as good or better than a land based phone across town. Adding the video is not quite the same as being with her but it's sure close. Now for the arrgh. They just released version 3! This one allows desktop sharing, a shared whiteboard, conference calls, and a ton of mashups and widgets from the web, they are also offering some Web 2.0 services of their own to compete with other services out there like Picasa, Flickr, etc. From what I can tell this is rapidly becoming a Web 2.0/3.0 product. I have to admit that many of the new products only work on Windows so I'm safe from them but can anyone keep up here?

Of course as hard as it is to keep up with Skype, last night I discovered that there is no keeping up with Flash. Several kids regularly go to Disney.com to play online games at ImaginOn. This is a very popular site for younger kids but last night it was no go at the library. Disney has bought into the latest version of Flash and we are a version behind. I put in a Help Desk Ticket about it and it seems we had been running Flash 7 up until very recently when we were upgraded to 8. I guess Disney skipped right over 8 and went straight to 9 because they won't let you do anything on their site without upgrading to 9. All you can do is click on the download the upgrade link. Poor IT, when a high demand online service does this, we are forced to ask to respond.

24th Thing

Image Generators and Bloglines seem to be favorites today. However, Chris B had a great idea for using Del.icio.us for Library Reference Desk. However, everyone really enjoyed the whole experience and had unique ways to use them.

It really is all about the E's, but Web 2.0 brings in C's too.

Audiobooks complaints

These aren't my complaints but ones staff seem to get a lot from the public.

Don't play on iPods - True they don't and iPod users have the bulk of the market for mp3 players (about 50-60%. In fact I have looked at a lot of similar services and so far I have only seen a few that would work on iPods and they quit offering the service to libraries. Now the books are only for purchase by the public. At present only Overdrive and NetLibrary offer services for free borrowing from libraries and they are exclusively Windows Media DRM. iPods to have the biggest martket share of players but books are not easy to get onto the players. A greater time commitment is required, unless you are willing to buy all the audiobooks you listen to. The best options for these people are iTunes and Audible as sources for books. Both are going to charge fro every book downloaded. I think Audible can be cheaper in the long run through their subscription plans.

Can't download using a Mac - Again a valid complaint but not a big issue. Apple computers are still less than 10% of the computers out there. If the user has a newer Intel mac, they can run Windows either through Parallels or in another partition on the Mac. but this is really turning the Mac into any other PC. Older macs can try using Windows Virtual Machine if they can find a copy, but it never ran that well and might not help.

SanDisk Digital Audio Player

I got my mp3 player last Friday and since I've used them for the last several years I figured I'd post a review here.

I've read the cNet reviews and wasn't expecting much but I'm frankly a bit impressed. First I'll mention the major points from cNet and then give you my take.

cNet Review comments-
Sound isn't good - improved on version 2 player

No speed control in version 2

Menus hard to navigate

Books don't play in correct order

No line-in recording

Did I mention they didn't like the sound quality?

Okay, here's my perspective.

First of all I suspect if I was willing to try the earbuds that came with it I might agree with cNet but the earphones that are comfortable to me give great sound with it. I have yet to find mp3 player earphones that I can wear for more than 10 minutes so I'm afraid I can't bring myself to try them. However, I have used my favorite earphones and I've listened to music, FM, and audiobooks on it. I tried the player with mid-priced computer speakers and they sound as good as a decent stereo. So scratch the Sound Quality complaint.

The FM tuner is surprisingly good. My house is noted for bad reception and I even drew in WDAV from Davidson with no problem and believe me Classical Music is a good test. If it sounds good anything will.

I guess someone might miss the speed control given the comments about that feature in Overdrive Console but I've never had an mp3 player with that feature so I don't see it as a complaint big either.

I had no problem with the menus. I didn't even look in the book Helene gave me.

I loaded some music and books from 3 sources. NetLibrary, Audible, and OverDrive using the link Frank sent us. Everything seems to be playing in order but I do have the random play feature turned off. In fact it came with it turned off, I did turn it on briefly just to see if it worked and it turned off again just fine. Personally, since that one came from user comments I suspect they didn't even know they had it turned on. NetLibrary gives all books as a single file so order of play isn't an issue but it could be with OverDrive that breaks all books into one hour episodes. The player kept the book in order so that wouldn't be a concern if you only used the player to listen to books. But the file name is long and the part number is at the end. When navigating through the files you can't read the whole file name. It's good that the player keeps them in order for you. I did rename the files so I could easily see what part I was on so I could go listen to some music or radio and go back to the right section with less guesswork. I also keep each book in it's own folder to prevent mixups.

Not many players do have line-in recording. Though it is on the Creative Zen Nano Plus but not often. Unless you have a lot of cassettes of phono recordings you want to convert to mp3, I can't see much use for it anyway.

My final take, I give it a 9.5 out of 10 and am very happy. I wish I could find another for my husband.

My only real disappointment was that it also loses it's place when the battery runs out, stress on "also." This is a complaint I have with the other players I have. The good news is this one has a screen with a battery charge level so I can change it just before it runs out. It did keep it's place while I did a change with the player off.

Tracking the blog

I added a Statistics Counter from StatCounter last Friday. I had no idea how many people were finding my blog! I was playing with StatCounter today and discovered they have a cool mashup with Google Maps on there so you get a map of where your hits are on a world map. I had a hit from Thailand, India, and Spain! Also New York, Michigan, California and lots of other places along the east coast of the US. I just added a blocking cookie to my browser that keeps my visits from being counted and confusing the counts. Of course, I have to do it on the PC's I use at work too but the hard part is remembering to do it. I feel a bit slow not doing this right way. I knew I have readers as I have some comments. Helene I know has viewed it a few times, so did Jamie and some other PLCMC staffers. But now I know not only how many but where they are and what brought them to me. I was pleased to see several from del.icio.us and technorati, but also a few from search engines I hadn't heard of.

Continuation

Since I already have the blog going I'm going to keep track of it. No I won't check stats several times a day but I will add anthing new I stumble upon and thoughts on those discoveries.

Last week I realized that I had no way of knowing how often people visit this blog (should have used Wordpress) so I set up with StatCounter and added the code so I could check it. It was rather surprising. I just put it in on friday and by this morning I had gotten 50 loads. I admit about 8-12 were me with viewing after publishing a new post. They give a lot of information including where the link came from. Not surprisingly several were from plcmcl2 but a few were from del.icio.us and technorati and there were a few that really surprised me that had nothing to do with Learning 2.0.

Surprisingly, my daughter complained that she didn't think anyone other than myself and a former teacher were reading her blog since we are the only ones to comment. I hope she tries out the suggestions I made. Anyway I'm using what we did here in so many ways it's almost silly.