iPhone Programmers Wanted

Just gave a presentation on the iPhone, the SDK and the Amazon Kindle with Gordon Snyder and Vince DiNoto. In the presentation, we discussed the recently announced iPhone Developer University Program. If you teach programming or your college teaches programming this is a great opportunity to become part of a program that I think will really get kids excited about about software development. The news below regarding demand for iPhone programmers doesn't hurt either!

Demand for iPhone programmers surges by 500% | iPhone World

oDesk, a firm that specializes in outsourcing freelance programmers to companies that require programming work to be done reports that demand for iPhone programmers has surged by 500% from March 2008 to September 2008.

Presentation at NSF

I'm presenting today with Gordon Snyder and Vince DiNoto at the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technical Education (ATE) Conference. The title of our talk is: The iPhone, the SDK, the Kindle and the Future of Mobile Learning. here are the slides -

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: apple iphone)

Guy Kawasaki's 10 Ways to Use LinkedIn

Here's one of our favorites - Guy Kawasaki - posting a slideshare presentation detailing 10 Ways to Use LinkedIn. Not only a great example of Guy's presentation style, but also a great introduction to LinkedIn - a social networking site every professional should be involved in.

Linkedin

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: linkedin kawasaki)

UStream Experiment

Apologies for the quality of the video and the audio. This is a presentation titled "How to Become a Thought Leader for $0" by Paul Gillin, author of "The New Influencers: A Marketer's Guide to the New Social Media." I was not right up front and only started streaming the presentation about 15 minutes in. I was stream the video live, there is about a 30 second lag. I used my MacBook with built-in iSight camera and a Sprint broadband card for the Internet connection. With dwindling travel budget, I think tools like this are going to become increasingly important - with very little additional cost, you can stream your classroom content, speakers, conferences, meeetings - just about any live event. We'll we refining this approach with better cameras, better microphones and better preparation. Stay tuned!

How Do You Keep Up With All This Stuff?

The title of this post is a question I get asked all the time. Not only at my college, but at presentations I've given around the country. This is a screenshot from Google Reader's Trends feature. As you can see, I subscribe to 170 blogs and have read over 10,000 items in the last 30 days. I've learned how to go through these 10,000 items very quickly - starring stories that are interesting and worth coming back to later; sharing items with with other Google Reader users that are "friends" or "followers;" and finally emailing stories to real friends that are not Google Reader users.

Good Ideas

This is somewhat of a follow up to my earlier "Do you feel overwhelmed ... " post.

Are you the person in your organization who is always thinking outside the box? Coming up with ideas that are ahead of their time? It's a difficult and often lonely position to be, but take heart, because there are more of us out here than you might imagine.

Don't give up on your good ideas; nurture them, share them, grow them and by all means embrace them. And whenever you feel discouraged, remember -

Good ideas have lonely childhoods.

Great Line from Zoho

Zoho Blogs » The Cloud is Now “Officially” Full of Vapor

Microsoft has announced today that they will be announcing MS Office for the web late next year; seriously, it is an announcement for an announcement! Those kinds of things used to be called vapor,

Capturing Live Content

There are a number of tools for capturing and streaming live content to the web. UStream TV.com is just one of many. Here is some video I captured of David Armano at a conference capturing the content using his 17" MacBook Pro. David is VP of Experience Design at Critical Mass - a marketing firm that is really pioneering the use of social networking tools and new digital media. As I say in the audio narration, with dwindling travel budgets and increasingly sophisticated students, we need to begin looking at these tools for professional development, outreach, and even live streaming our classroom lectures. I'll follow up later with some links for other similar tools.

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Slideshare Presentation Packs

Image of SlideShareOne of my favorite Web2.0 sites slideshare.net has added a great new feature. It was already possible to upload a presentation and share it with someone by embedding the presentation in a blog, website or even a course management system, such as Blackboard or at our college ANGEL. A new feature allows one to create a presentation 'pack' using a group of related presentations and share or embed the entire set (pack). I see all sort of applications for this, such as a way of sharing content with conference attendees, sharing your lectures with your students or creating an embedded review tool for a text or exam. I'm a member of the slideshare group - Effective Presentations - here is a pack created from all of the presentations members have shared with the group.

The result - in one simple space, I can share a wealth of expertise and opinions on how to make more effective presentations. So whether you're organizing a conference, presenting at a conference or teaching a class, give slideshare and their presentation packs a shot - I know you'll be hooked.

| Get your Presentation Pack

Do You Ever Feel Overwhelmed ...

by the bureaucracy in your organization?

 Don't get discouraged - you're not alone!

Venn Economics

Venn Economics
Originally uploaded by armanz

Here's a great use of the Venn diagram - from David Armano - that describes today's economic situation so perfectly.

Financial Crisis 101: CDOs Explained

Anyone who reads this blog knows how much I love innovative approaches to presenting information - particularly complicated, technical information. Garr Reynolds at Presentation Zen posts a great video explaining CDOs or collateralized debt obligations - which are among the investment instruments that are partially to blame for our current financial crisis. Marketplace Senior Editor Paddy Hirsch uses a whiteboard and a marker to explain CDOs in 6 minutes. If you teach economics or business, this is a great way to begin a discussion of our current mortgage crisis.

Baltimore WiMax Pricing

Image via Wikipedia

Lynnette Luna from FierceBroadbandWireless provides some pricing details for Sprint's WiMax rollout, which has begun in Baltimore, Maryland. A couple interesting things jump out. First, rather than focusing on one market segment - such as mobile broadband - Sprint is aggressively going after DSL/Cable broadband, mobile broadband and WiFi hotspots. Clearwire is targeting deployment in 140 million points of presence by the end of 2010, although some analysts think 2015 is more likely. A killer feature of the offering is the combination of home and mobile broadband services at a relatively inexpensive price - $50 per month. Xohm's pricing plans increase chance of service's success

The smartest thing about Sprint's no-contract service plans is the Pick 2 plan, which enables customers to use the service as both a home Internet access service and a mobile broadband service. Subscribers lock in two devices, such as a modem and laptop card, for $50 per month. This should help alleviate the frustration surrounding poor coverage and a lack of a nationwide footprint on the mobile side as subscribers will still see the value in being able to plug in a self-provisioning modem and surf the Web from home with localized mobile broadband access.


I suspect, however, that the Home plan might be the biggest hit early on. The pricing, at $25 per month initially and $35 thereafter, is competitive with existing DSL and cable offerings. And the main advantage is the fact that the Zyxel modem Sprint offers is a self-provisioning modem, meaning subscribers plug in the modem and activate service via the Web. DSL and cable service can be activated the same way but often require a truck roll. Moreover, the Xohm service can be canceled at any time.


Here's a breakdown of Xohm's no-contract service plans:

• Home plan: Designed as a wireline broadband alternative that includes a self-provisioning Zyxel modem for $80 that plugs into any WiFi router. The plan is $25 per month for the first six months and $35 thereafter.
• On-the-Go plan: Designed as a competitor to existing mobile broadband. Devices include laptop cards, USB modems and the Nokia N810 tablet. Promotional pricing is $30 and $45 after six months.
• Daily-on-the-Go plan: Targets pay-per-use WiFi customers at $10 per day.
• Pick 2 plan: The most interesting pricing plan that allows customers to use the service as a home Internet access service and a mobile broadband service. Subscribers lock in two devices, such as a modem and laptop card, for $50 per month.

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3G Not Fast Enough? What About 4G/WiMax?

If you've been watching WiMax developments the last couple of years, you might be interested in the following webinar.

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Screencasting 101

 If you're looking for ways to jazz up your website or your online course, consider screencasting, which is the process of recording and narrating what you're doing on the computer. So whether you teach software applications (MS Office, CADD, Accounting, etc), use powerpoint for your teaching or lectures, or use the web or other applications in your course consider screencasting. Really powerful and simple applications of screencasting include:

• recording the answer to a students' question; 
• demonstrating how to research information on the web;
• demonstrating how to perform a specific function in a software application; and
  
• showing students how to login to and naviagate your online course.

The following video is from Techsmith, the makers of Camtasia Studio and Jingproject. Jingproject is free to download and use and allows you to create and share videos of up to 5 minutes in length. If you want to explore screencasting, Jing is a great place to start. As you get comfortable with screencasting and find you want to do more, consider tools such as Camtasia Studio, which you can download and try as a free trial and purchase at a reasonable price with the academic discount. So without further adeiu, here's a quick introduction to screencasting from Techsmith, called Screencating 101.

WiMax Not Dead Yet

Image via Wikipedia

Here's a story on some tests of a Sprint WiMax deployment in Baltimore, Maryland. Very intriguing results. Click on the link to watch video from the test.
XOHM WiMAX In Baltimore: Speed Tests With XOHM ExpressCard

XOHM WiMax just plain blew away Verizon EV-DO. To be fair, the EV-DO speeds we experienced were significantly slower than what we normally see at home in New York and we’re betting XOHM was also slower in that location than it should have been. But if we just look at the differential, we’re talking about a speed increase with XOHM of 50 to 300%, depending on the page

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The Next 100 Years of Science

Image via Wikipedia Here's a great video from fora.tv. The Long Now Foundation presents co-founding editor of "Wired" magazine and author of "Out of Control" Kevin Kelly giving a history of scientific methodology and sharing thoughts on the future of science.



 

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