tech, news, productivity, views and stuff
Music videos are once more available to YouTube viewers in the UK after the streaming site reached an agreement with songwriters’ group PRS for Music.
In March, YouTube blocked thousands of music videos to UK users, after failing to reach agreement over fees.
Read more.
Apple will (as is usual at this time of year now) be making an announcement on the 9th September 2009, which is 090909 not that I think that is significant, but it is the date in question!
Anyhow the event is called It’s only rock and roll, but we like it.
Generally at this time of year Apple announce new iPods, for example back in 2007 they announced the iPod touch.
So what can we expect to see? Well the rumours indicate that we will see new iPods with cameras including not just the touch, but all the nano and the classic.
Will we see a Tablet, hmm, I hope so, but I am not expecting too.
I have now installed my copy of Snow Leopard. I have installed it onto an external LaCie Poulton 1TB Firewire drive for my iMac.
My current OS is Leopard 10.5 and that is also installed on a (different) LaCie Poulton 1TB Firewire drive. I am using external drives as the internal drive on the iMac was a little too small for me at 250GB – when did 250GB become too small?
So far everything seems okay and Snow Leopard appears a little snappier than 10.5.
My main concern is that EyeTV 2 is not compatible and so I will need to go out and buy EyeTV 3 which means that is not such a cheap upgrade as I would hope.
Adobe CS4 should work fine, and I already have iLife 09 and iWork 09, so no worries there.
Over the next week or so I will be installing various apps to check they work before moving over my data.
The advantage of not upgrading is that I can always fall back on my previous installation if it really doesn’t work out.
Well having set up one of my new LaCie Poulton 1TB Firewire drives I am installing OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 onto it.
The external drive needed to be formatted for the OS X operating system and the partition map set up to allow me to install the OS onto it. All relatively simple with Disk Utility.
Then I set it to install, said it would take 47 minutes, wonder if those are real minutes or Apple minutes?
I ordered my copy of Snow Leopard earlier this week and was pleased to receive it on day of release at about 7.3oam this morning!
I am intending to install it on a different external drive to the one I currently run Leopard 10.5 on as a fresh install and then install my applications as and when required.
I prefer to do it this way as I don’t have to worry about crowding the drive with unused applications or filling the memory with “helper” applications for apps I don’t run.
Of course the main downside is that none of my preferences are there, so I have to “add” them all back in again.
Following on from the success of the Hood 2.0 Workshop at ALT-C last year, at this years ALT-C I shall be running another workshop, Hood 2.1 – it’s still a Web 2.0 World out there.
Background
Web 2.0 is exciting and innovative, with new services appearing almost daily. These services can incorporate social networking, video and audio production, sharing, collaboration and user-created content. Some will be useful for providing information and entertainment, some will allow us to create innovative learning activities.
This stimulating and interactive workshop will explore new Web 2.0 services that can be used to solve some of the issues facing learners.
Ideas to be explored
During the workshop participants will be shown different learning scenarios and activities that utilise a range of new and exciting Web 2.0 services.
It is expected that the workshop will utilise the newest and most exciting Web 2.0 services out there, but could include: the use of Audioboo.fm for fieldwork; using Jing to create learning resources and web reviews; and using ipadio to allow learners to create a series of work-based podcasts.
Participants will discuss and debate the Web 2.0 service and the scenarios in small groups, covering how they could be utilised within their own institutions.
The groups will also discuss how the pedagogy needs to drive the scenarios and not the technology, and address how Web 2.0 can empower learners to take responsibility for their own learning. Each group will provide feedback through either a blog entry, an audio podcast or a video presentation. These will then be made available online to allow further comment and discussion beyond the workshop, and also allow other conference delegates to participate.
Intended outcomes
The participants will have a greater understanding of the innovative role of Web 2.0 to support.They will have considered how Web 2.0 can be used to redesign the pedagogy, the curriculum, and assessment methods to secure a substantial positive impact on learning.
The participants will have presented the results of their discussion to other participants and to other delegates through the use of a variety of learning technologies and Web 2.0 services. This will allow them to understand which services are innovations of true value, rather than mere fads.
I thought this should be straightforward, but in the end ran the installation application three times before I managed to install all applications and all options.
I am impressed with the speed and efficiency over my older PPC apps and so am well pleased.So far have only run Fireworks and Dreamweaver. Was impressed with the fact that Dreamweaver “found” my sites and I could instantly start using Dreamweaver to edit my website.
After much deleting and arching I have freed up 200GB of hard disk space.
I do consider it strange that I now view 200GB as “small” when a few years ago I considered 250MB Iomega Zip disks as “huge”.
The iMac I use the external drive with only has an internal drive of 250GB, which is why I now use an external 1TB drive as my main startup disk.
The first laptop I was given at work had a “huge” hdd, 20MB, yes MB not GB.
I am going out to buy some more external storage, I have started to look at 2TB drives… I have considered a Drobo, but am wondering about the noise, I do like my quiet Lacie Poulton 1TB drive and will probably get some more of them.
Before installing Adobe CS4 I decided that I better clear out some free disk space so that it will not only install fine, but run fine as well. I had bought it for my new iMac, but that’s on hold at the moment.
So what’s on the hard drive?
Well though my files, photos and music take up a fair bit of space, it is EyeTV recordings which take up the most space. I have been a little lax (because I had the space) in editing and exporting recordings.
Generally I only export the recording in the native MPEG2 format, partly to avoid loss of quality, but in the main as it is very quick. After exporting I might copy the Wi-Fi access version into iTunes so I can then put it onto the iPod pretty quickly, but that’s not always done, it depends on the recording.
Of course if I don’t want the recording, it never gets exported and just gets deleted.
After exporting, I try and move files to an external hard drive, to free up space, but it shouldn’t and it does still surprise me by how much space the recordings take up…
Now I know I could export as a DivX format and reduce the file size significantly over the MPEG2, however then I will have a later problem if I want to export into a different format for a different device.
Until we have a consistent video file format then I would rather maintain the high quality large file size of the native MPEG2 recording then try and mess about with a smaller DivX recording for a different device.
I watch the recordings on a variety of devices, the iPhone and various iPods, the PSP, the PS3 and an Archos PVR device. The iPod h.264 recordings for example would not play on the PSP (always) likewise they would not play on the Archos unless I paid €20 for the “extra” to allow the Archos to play h.264 files, if I was willing to pay that I would pay the €20 to allow the Archos to play MPEG2 files natively!
So at the moment I am editing, exporting and in some cases realising that I am never going to watch that special which went out at Christmas and I am deleting!
