Well,
that was quick. Right after yesterday's surprising announcement,
Sony flew its yet-to-be-released NEX-VG10 camcorder into London just in time for
today's showcase event. Naturally, we had to get our hands on this shiny baby,
and boy we were impressed. In case you missed the news, this snazzy device is
the world's first consumer HandyCam with interchangeable lens, meaning you can
share E-mount lenses with your young NEX DSLRs, or take advantage of
the abundant A-mount lenses with the help of an adapter (which will cost you
extra, mind you). Likewise, there are also hot and cold shoe mounts on the mic
shaft to cater your current camera accessories. Read on for our thoughts on the
rest of the camcorder -- we've put together a little sample clip for you at the
end as well.
There
isn't much to complain about with this $2,000 (and, sadly, possibly £2,000 for
the Brits) piece of kit in terms of appearance and ergonomics. We like being
able to hold it by either the seemingly solid body (using the strap) or the mic
shaft, and both ways provided comfortable grip without much fatigue due to the
light weight (even with the bundled lens). We were also able to quickly master
the jog-dial control next to the 3-inch screen, but for this price, we expected
a touchscreen interface as well to make life easier. As for the bundled F3.5-6.3
18-200mm lens, we found that zooming required a bit more effort than we liked,
so thankfully there's auto focus mode -- just like any ordinary camcorder -- to
save us from further wrist work with the focus ring. We must also point out that
unlike the Olympus PEN,
this Sony camcorder didn't pick up any mechanical noise from its lens auto
focussing; otherwise, this kit totally wouldn't deserve such price tag.
Of
course, what we really care about is the picture and sound quality. All is
revealed in our sample reel below (remember to enable HD playback mode), but in
brief: stunningly accurate colors, sharp 1080/60i picture, and impressive audio
sensitivity (notice how the mic was able to pick up conversations from afar; you
can also enable just the front mics to minimise background noise). You may
notice some shakiness while we were adjusting the lens -- we'll blame it on our
lack of practice from the little hands-on time we had. Regardless, the NEX-VG10
certainly lived up to our expectation, and we look forward to hear what the
filming hobbyists think of this prosumer-level camcorder when it comes out in
September.
Update: commenter
aim120 dropped us a link to Sony's own sample clip. Enjoy!
Those I've highlighted are the articles which I've read and find useful as resources as to how we could use such social media to engage our audience and interact simultaneously with them and learn at the same time.
gust 2009
Twitter Style Guide, Sherry Main, Social Media Today, 16
August 2009
Twitter Scavenger Hunt Helps Students Learn More About
Campus,19 Au
25 Twitter projects for the college classroom,
OnlineColleges.net, 10 August 2009
Twittering in an educational setting, Elizabeth Hannan, Social
Media Today, 17 May 2009
Twitter as a Learning Tool. Really. Pat Galagan, ASTD,
March 2009
'How to use Twitter for Social Learning' is a great site to bookmark and explore. This site contains over 200 + articles and resources about using Twitter for Learning and is a great resource.
Why Develop for Android?Android is an open-source platform based on the Linux kernel, and is installed on thousands of devices from a wide range of manufacturers. Android exposes your application to all sorts of hardware that you’ll find in modern mobile devices — digital compasses, video cameras, GPS, orientation sensors, and more.
Android is an open-source platform based on the Linux kernel, and is installed on thousands of devices from a wide range of manufacturers.
Android’s free development tools make it possible for you to start writing software at little or no cost.
Publishing to Android Market incurs a one-off registration fee (US $25 at the time of writing) and, unlike Apple’s App Store which famously reviews each submission, makes your application available for customers to download and buy after a quick review process
Here are a few other advantages Android offers you as a developer:The Android SDK is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, so you don’t need to pay for new hardware to start writing applications.An SDK built on Java. If you’re familiar with the Java programming language, you’re already halfway there.By distributing your application on Android Market, it’s available to hundreds of thousands of users instantly. You’re not just limited to one store, because there are alternatives, too. For instance, you can release your application on your own blog. Amazon have recently been rumoured to be preparing their own Android app store also.As well as the technical SDK documentation, new resources are being published for Android developers as the platform gains popularity among both users and developers.
This article also includes a step by step walkthrough development for android app using Android SDK. With so little offering courses on Android development currently, it could prove to be a good read. ;)
There are all sorts of new trends that have hit the world of viral marketing over the past year. People are doing cool things with HTML5, creating interactive YouTube videos and interactive games, creating cool YouTube takeover campaigns, response campaigns and more. These ideas are still relatively new and surprising, but if you don’t act now they’re going to be old hat. Get into web video in 2011, while its still approaching its apex and you’ll have more of a chance of standing out and not just fading into the piles of copycat campaigns.
Online video is everywhere and it is only going to go further in 2011. This year we’ve seen Facebook become a major online video engine with viewers watching 16 minutes of video on Facebook per month and growing; the New Twitter launched, allowing users to watch videos directly from their Twitter feeds; more and more television viewers are cutting the cord and making the switch over to online video; and connected television services like Google TV and Apple TV are bringing web video to the television set
more and more people getting smartphones, but network speeds are also increasing and more and more online video sites are launching HTML5 video players to allow for mobile video viewing. With so many people watching online video, and the number growing exponentially, you must understand why you have no other choice than to cater to this market.
App of the Week: Find My iPhone
By Doug Aamoth on November 23, 2010
The free Find My iPhone app locates any of your connected Apple products running the latest iOS 4.2 software and displays them on a map.
if your device gets lost or stolen, download the Find My iPhone app to an iPhone 4, 4th-generation iPod Touch, or iPad and sign into the app using the same MobileMe credentials that you used on your missing device.
You'll then see your forlorn iPhone on a map and can remotely lock it, delete all the data, or send a message to the screen asking for it to be returned. If it's lost somewhere in your couch cushions, you can also have it play a loud two-minute alert sound even if it's been set to silent.
"Interoperability is important to Web designers," the W3C said in releasing the results. "Good test suites drive interoperability.
They're a key part of making sure Web standards are implemented correctly and consistently
True. I personally feel it is very important to cater to your desired audience and not risk our audience missing certain fuctions or informations in the website.
Internet Explorer 9 has topped all other browsers in conforming with the HTML5 specification, including Google Chrome and
Firefox,
W3C pitted the just-released version of IE9's developer platform preview against Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari, evaluating the five browsers in dozens of
tests across seven categories of features
IE9 scored 100% in five of the seven categories, including audio, video and XHTML5. Chrome scored 100% in four categories, whereas Firefox and Opera scored 100% in three categories and Safari did so in only
two
despite excitement over HTML5, the specification may not be ready for prime time. A W3C official recently said it's too
early for Web sites to deploy HTML5 because of interoperability issues.
Video Presentation about touch based devices and future prototypes might come true in the near future.... can watch examples from the Chapter - Recent Innovation onwards
Google Fusion Tables in documents listWith this week’s update, we’re also integrating Google Fusion Tables into your documents list. Google Fusion Tables is a data management web application that makes it easy to gather, visualize and collaborate on data online. Now you’ll be able to store and share your Fusion Tables with the rest of the files in your documents list.Recently, people have used Google Fusion Tables to:Visualize evacuation zones for New York City during Hurricane IreneHost data sets made public by the State of CaliforniaGather data from local flu shot clinics for Google Flu Vaccine FinderMap shelters and road status during the tsunami crisis in JapanGo to Create new > Table from your documents list menu to get started visualizing or sharing tables of data in .csv, .xls or .kml files.
Adobe has released an embeddable video player that plays HTML5 native video in browsers that support it, and falls back to Flash in browsers that don’t.
It’s cross-browser and cross-platform, so it works on iPhones, iPads and other devices that don’t support Flash. Using Adobe’s new player, these devices can show videos in web pages without the Flash plug-in.
iStrategy will arm you with the deep understanding of aligning social media and digital strategy according to your organization’s processes and operations to achieve the objectives you’re after. Join us to network, share ideas, and most importantly find out how to build your marketing strategy to its fullest potential.
I've came across banner ad which brought me here while reading. Social Media Conference IStrategy being held in Singapore. Maybe it can be useful for accommodating to our Education arena needs. Speakers come from Facebook, Amazon, AMD, Philips and more.
Nice find.
To any and all CeL folks: Attend if you think this is relevant. The marketing principles do not necessarily apply in our context, but there might be some takeaways.
Otherwise, look for something with a greater emphasis on education.
At Adobe’s MAX conference the other night, that message was made manifest with a live demonstration of a Flash to HTML5 conversion tool, which is currently in the works. The tool is incredibly impressive in that it can convert full Flash animation into HTML5 on the fly
Watch the demonstration video to get an idea of how users will be able to take elements from within the newly converted HTML5 code to re-insert elsewhere on a web page
Those animations or interactions will now be viewable on all kinds of devices — including the iPhone () and iPad. This is where we think that this HTML5 conversion tool has real possibilities. It’s one thing to be able to convert a movie or animation
Adobe might be serious about wanting to push Flash and Adobe Air () on mobile platforms like the BlackBerry PlayBook, HP’s webOS and Google’s () Android (), but that doesn’t mean that the company isn’t listening to its customers and providing cross-platform solutions that can work on the many different device types
Typical instructional design and pedagogy focus on breaking down a subject into component parts, gaining mastery of those parts, whether they are steps in a process or techniques or parts of the anatomy, and then reassembling them in the learner's mind and in practice so that the result is overall mastery of the broader subject. That may be oversimplified, but this basic approach goes back to Aristotle, at least. It's not debated in education, it's assumed that this is the best approach for learning anything, including complex processes or highly nuanced behaviors in shifting contexts.
Centola's conclusions. He studied positive changes in people's behaviors regarding health care, changes that resulted directly from placing subjects in carefully designed social networks with the goal of improving their health decisions. What he concluded was that smaller, tighter social groups had more success improving health behaviors than larger, looser social groups (ie, the typical Facebook connections). Maybe you already see what it took me a while to notice. Both of them had success. Social networks designed for a specific purpose can do something pretty amazing: They can change people's behaviors. Any educator or trainer whose goal is actually to impact both thinking and behaviors (to change lives!) rather than just getting people to pass a test or check a box, should be paying close attention. And maybe getting a little excited.Researchers in education have long known the power of social groups to alter behavior. Brown, Collins, and Duguid made this case a while back
these three went on to say that highly complex behaviors are picked up, absorbed, through relatively informal social exchange more quickly than they could be if they were "taught" in the usual break-it-down sense. We're talking about complex behaviors. Processes. Highly nuanced interpersonal interactions. Centola's study suggests to me that we now have an online tool, the social network, that is fully capable of carrying the power of culture to shape behaviors and establish norms. And it can be done on purpose.
Today, Google launched a new community on YouTube for Google Docs users to share tips and ideas for using Google Docs in education and other arenas. The community features how-to videos created by Google and by Google Docs users just like you. The video playlists cover everything from the very basics through advanced features of spreadsheets in Google Docs.
While it’s certainly true that HTML5 has the potential to change the web for the better, the reality is that t
hese kinds of major changes can be difficult to grasp and embrace. I’m personally in the process of gaining a better understanding of the subtleties of HTML5′s various new features, so I thought I would discuss some things associated with HTML5 that appear to be somewhat confusing, and maybe this will help us all understand certain aspects of the language a little better, enabling us to use the new features in the most practical and appropriate manner possible.
Apple loosened its iOS terms of service to allow the usage of third-party development tools. Though Flash content is still not supported within the iOS browser, the Packager for iPhone can now be used to create standalone apps. Adobe also confirmed that it will work hard to keep the product updated. This change of heart by Apple has brought joy to Flash developers everywhere as their Packager-created apps are now reportedly being approved by Apple
Google () announced Wednesday morning that it has begun rolling out mobile editing for Google Docs (). The update isn’t yet available for everyone, but it should be available to all over the next few days.To date, only Google Docs spreadsheets have supported mobile editing. When the the update hits, all Google Docs documents will be editable on devices running Android () 2.2 (and higher) and iOS 3.0+.We’ve not been able to test it out yet, but Google has released a little video — as seen above — showcasing the new mobile editing capabilities of Google Docs.
That means that...
- You can work on that important memo...while on the bus or train to work.
- If you're behind on a group proposal, but really want to make it to the ball game tonight, your whole team can work on it from the bleacher seats.
- You can take minute-by-minute notes at a concert so you'll always remember the setlist. And your friends can jealously follow in real-time at home.
- and the list goes on!
Hey it's a very informative video presentation on migrating your skills to the mobile world but you're not quite sure how to get started.
If you are still thinking a mobile web app is just a tear down simplified version of the actual website, you should watch this.
Well I was thinking it was supposed to be that way a couple months back.
* Be warned contents can get technical and is long but it's better than reading lines of texts.
Mobile learning 2.0 is more about creating learning experiences-engaging and challenging activities that result in significant changes to knowledge and
behavior.
If you find that there is a particular advantage to being mobile, then look at the end goal of what you're trying to achieve and reverse-engineer it.
One of the decisions you will need to make is whether or not to develop your
mobile learning application within your company or to use a custom developer.