Student Tablet User Group Update

I spend most of my time outside of working for GE on my first co-op on STUG and Tablet Tips.  My last big project on STUG was doing a complete redesign of the intro and credits of Tablet Tips.  Not to sound self content with myself, but I feel like the new style of the video makes Tablet Tips look far more professional.  Our current weak point of the podcast is now the audio.  We are using the built in microphone and have not found any way to improve our quality without spending money, which we don’t have.

The next project that I really want to work on is a total redesign of our website, but I just haven’t forced myself to undertake that challenge.

In the past few weeks there have been some major milestones reached.  The primary way to judge the success of a video podcast is by number of views.  We have accumulated 7,463 views on YouTube and 2,719 views on Blip.TV.  While these numbers are not that low, I still hope that Tablet Tips can expand its audience and accumulate more views in the coming months.

The metric that I have consistently been proud of is gleaned from Google Analytics.  While our number of views hasn’t been very high our Average time on Site has consistently been hovering around five minutes.  Coincidently this is approximately the same length as one episode of Tablet Tips.  Using a slight jump in logic, it can be concluded that people are watching about one episode on our website when they visit.

The other metrics that I constantly follow are the Google search results for terms that directly relate to STUG and Tablet Tips.  After some quick Google searching of my own I have determined the following:

Search Term	Rank in Google Search Results
STUG	9
Tablet Tips	4
Speed School of Engineering	13
Student Tablet PC	6
Louisville Tablet PC	7

The big accomplishment here is getting Tablet Tips in such a high standing.  It is a rather vague term and had to overcome a lot of references that didn’t have anything to do with Tablet PCs.  As for STUG, we still have to overcome the Sturmgeschütz III, but the fact we are now on the first page of the search results is exciting.  There are some other search terms that are important but they are typically some combination of Tablet PC, Speed School, Engineering, and University of Louisville.  Most of those in any combination yield some reference to STUG’s website in the first page of results.

 

The next steps for STUG includes the possibility of having to make a poster for an upcoming conference on Tablet based learning.  Our focus in on using new media to educate students on the use of Tablets in the classroom.

Also, STUG will be attending Podcamp Ohip next weekend in Columbus Ohio.  I hope to enhance my understanding of the podcasting and the podcast community along with some networking with other podcasters in the area.  Expect lots of pictures, some video, and a few blog posts relating to the Podcamp.  If I can I’ll be posting while I am at the conference, but more likely I’ll be posting a lot about the unconference after I get back.

STUG Podcast in Full Swing

This is definitely big news. I'll start by explaining how this all got started.

I have been heavily involved in the Student Tablet Users Group from the beginning. Actually, I helped found it. One of our projects that we had on our wish list for last semester was to release instructional videos. This would be a combination of screen casts and other instructional material.

I'm very excited to say that this has become a reality!

Tablet Tips can be found on both YouTube and Blip.TV
http://youtube.com/SpeedSTUG
http://tablettips.blip.tv

The podcast is just really getting started. I'm sad to say the production quality is quite poor. All of the recording is done using my sub-standard webcam. The Logitec Notebook Pro is the exact camera. It can record 640 by 480 video at a full frame rate but doesn't have the crisp looking video of the professional podcasts I enjoy watching.

For having a current budget of $0 and having spent $0, I'm really proud at the quality of what STUG has produced. I'm also excited that the website is slowly morphing into a decent looking video and informational hub for tablet information.

There is still a long way to go. Currently there are a few episodes in planning stages. Steven is working on getting a tablet to configure Linux under and then have a tutorial on the correct way to get everything running. I'm going to review my Toshiba M405 soon and hopefully some OneNote tutorials will be in the near future soon.

Long term goals (long term as hopefully before the end of the semester) is to have some videos directed toward future speed school students and parents of those students. Maybe even having a brief video for show at orientations.

So far this project has been very successful and I hope that it can continue.

Tekzilla: Online Backup and Carbonite - Yeah, that was my email!

Rewind one week, I was watching Tekzilla and they mentioned that in the next episode they would be doing a segment on Online backup. Me, being a HUGE fan and user of Carbonite, immediately paused the episode and emailed them.

I patiently waited a week until the next episode aired. I forced Cassie to watch it and just as I had hoped, my email was used on the show! Yes, I am in fact the Jared the mention in the show! Here are a few quotes they pulled out from my rather lengthy email...

Before I started attending classes in Fall 2006, I purchased a two-year subscription to Carbonite for my tablet. It backs everything up without any interaction so I don't have to worry. For my new computer it took about a week to backup the 50 gigs I threw on it, mostly pictures and songs.

I've only used it once to restore a big group of corrupted files, but it was fairly painless.

She definitely hates it. It seems to nag at her constantly that her backup is out of date and simply won't back it up on its own. Also, Mozy seems to slow down her tablet even when its set to low priority. She isn't willing to shell out $50 a year for Carbonite, but she definitely agrees that Carbonite is way better.

They also mentioned how I've experienced hard drive failures in the past. They also didn't miss a beat mentioning how I've lost all of my family pictures from the summer of 2003. Apparently I've been burned... I'm inclined to agree.



Here is the entire episode... The backup part about Carbonite starts at about 19:22




Just because I could... here is the clip uploaded to YouTube. I ended up having to edit this clip on YouTube because it took 15 seconds for the movie to start. I'm not sure, but this clip might be pulled down by Revision3. I don't know how strict they are about posting clips.



As a regular viewer of many Revision3 shows, I was very excited to see that my email was used in the show. Not only was my email used in the segment about Carbonite, it basically was the segment! This was the first time I've ever emailed into a show like this. I have to say, I might email in a little more often, especially when it involves something like Carbonite that I am really passionate about.

In conclusion, I would have to say this brightened my holiday. It always makes a geek happy when someone talks about him. Rock on Tekzilla!

Rocketboom adds Facebook Application

I will admit, I am a little excited about this.  In the latest episode of Rocketboom (June 20, 2007), right at the very end, they snuck in the fact they have a Facebook app.  Basically, it is just a player that displays the shows and you can cycle back through old episodes.  It is really simple, but I'll probably try and watch it on there from now on.

One of the best things about Rocketboom (and new media in general compared to old media) is the number of ways you can watch it.  You have the web site, YouTube (and other similar service), iTunes, and now even Facebook!  It is really impressive how wide spread the episodes are.  They probably spend quite a while propagating each episode to all of the different services.

The quality looked nice in the player, although it takes a little longer to load than some others.  I did like the quality of video that Democracy provided.  I was watching my Video podcasts with iTunes but it decided it would rather blue-screen over playing content.

As of when I installed the application, it had only 85 users and appeared to be an underground app.  This means it was not yet in the catalogue of applications that have the partial Facebook seal of approval.

Software: iTunes and QuickTime Under Vista

It has been a while since I upgraded to Vista, and I am glad I have. However, I am still having problems. The main one that has bothered me recently, that I actually want to be fixed, is that I can not watch my video podcasts. The culprit is not iTunes, it is QuickTime. Basically, when I try to watch a video podcasts, like clockwork, I bluescreen. I actually am scared to click on a podcast under iTunes because I have to suffer through a reboot. (On a side note, reboots on Vista are not that bad. They are about the same as XP except software starts working faster but the actual loading of files into RAM takes forever because of the cache that Vista uses.) I am really fed up with the crashing and I was excited when there was an update for QuickTime, but just today I tried playing a podcast (after preparing for a reboot) and yet again I received a bluescreen.

Look up, that is the bluescreen that keeps popping up. Actually, the bluescreen comes in two flavors. One, which I was getting at first, was only being shown for a few seconds and then Vista would reboot happily. However, I have now been getting a bluescreen that stays up long enough for me to get out my camera and take a picture of the screen. This specific type of bluescreen is one of those enjoyable ones where it freezes the audio output on a loop and a nice screeching loop of the first sound of the movie is played.

Lately I have been having to watch the podcasts that I really want to watch on their websites. I really have been watching a lot fewer podcasts since I upgraded to Vista.

Software: Second Life

I've had an account for quite some time, I don't remember my birthday off the top of my head but it was in mid 2006. I guess I've really not been there from the beginning, but I know one thing is for sure, I am still a n00b. I can admit it, but I will blame my video card.

My tablet was not designed to be a powerhouse gaming computer but Second Life still runs alright on my computer. My computer has a score of 3.1 under Vista for gaming graphics but I have noticed some imporvements in the game since I doubled my RAM to 2 GB. I have a shared graphics memory, up to 256 MB, but I went back down to 128 to try and fix some problems, and the new RAM I installed is of faster speed. The game does crash every now and then. However, my main problem is textures just going to solid black. This makes the game impossible to play because slowly everything blends in together. Luckily, restarting the game fixes the problem. I have been playing with some settings and I might have solved the problem.

Back to the actual game. I don't know if I want to reveal my name in this post, although it would not really matter, I am not online very often. However, I am trying to learn the inner workings of the game. I have listened to several episodes of The Traveling Avatar in hopes of expanding my knowledge about my second life. Some of them were really good. However, it has yet to be seen if it has actually improved my ability to manage my second life.

I really have not done much in the game besides wast the money that was given to me when you make an account. I don't own land, I haven't put my own money into the game (until recently and it was not that much), and I haven't made money. I really do need to get around to learning how to start turning a profit.

One of the things I plan on doing over the next week is making my avatar look more like me and have a little more customization to it. Right now it is almost the default except for a few things I have changed. Overall, I look like a bum. Hopefully, after I spend some time working on it, I will eventually post a picture of my avatar here.

Cassie has spent more time working on her avatar and she looks a lot better than me. Her hair still needs more work but she has been shopping around to solve that. She even has different outfits that all look really good on her avatar. I just have a plain white shirt. Maybe I'll get around to making some custom clothing here during my short break.

I'm glad I finally have some time to relax.

Podcast: Ask A Ninja & Mythbusters

I love it when my favorite things come together into one place. In this case it was Ask A Ninja and Mythbusters. Last night a new episode about ninja myths aired it was one of their better episodes. The myths they were busting were actually interesting and it was a rather comical episode. Go figure that Grant was the most ninja like of the entire team!

Episode 78: Walking on Water
It's "East Meets West" in this episode of MythBusters. Shrouded in secrecy and mythology, not to mention cult popularity, ninjas are perfect fodder for the MythBusters. The whole team joins forces to pit science against martial arts mystique. Can ninjas run on water as movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon would have us believe? In "Walking on Water," Adam, Jamie and a ninjitsu master try their luck at aquatic agility. And if that doesn't work, the boys get confrontational as they compete to see how ninjas — masters of illusion — could create the impression of water running. In "Samurai Swing," Kari, Tory and Grant find out if a ninja could stop a samurai sword with his bare hands. To avoid the sharp sting of steel the team devises a ninja rig to clap onto the sword, and it seems like this myth is all in the timing.
Premiere: April 25, 2007

Podcasts: How I do miss them...

Last Saturday night I upgraded my Tablet to Windows Vista. As a result I have been having to spend every waking moment fighting with compatibility problems. Most of the serious problems are driver related (my printer, scanner, and camera. The camera now works) but one software error has arisen.

Getting to the point of this post, iTunes crashes when I try to play video podcasts! This is very upsetting because about half of the content I watch comes from a podcast. The following is a list of podcasts that I actually watch regularly. (I'll leave off the audio ones because they have been working).

• Diggnation
• Rocketboom
• DL.TV
• Cranky Geeks

I have been without my shows for almost... well, just a few days now. It's not to say that I don't have other ways of watching my shows, it is just that iTunes was always my favorite. I did try using Democracy for a while but it crashed (under XP) and was not able to really play audio podcasts along side me videos.

It is not that I do not have other ways to get my podcasts, every website host them so you can view each episode in the browser. Also, I could just open the files that iTunes downloaded with another program such as VNC. However, its still not the super easy way they iTunes provided when I was under XP.

To be quite honest I am not even sure if it will crash if I try to play one again. The last two times it bluescreened and was rebooting within a few seconds (but the boot process took the normal two minutes). I might try again, but when I do I'll just be expecting another bluescreen.
Hopefully Apple releases a new version soon, although the current version claimed to be compatible with Vista.

In the mean time, I will probably just watch my shows in a browser. It won't kill me but I sure do miss the higher quality video iTunes provided.