Learning Paths

"Hah!"  That's what I said when I got this in my inbox a few moments ago.

Well, since I can finally try this out, I'm going to give it a go.  I really want Live Mesh to work; or at least, have a public platform with similar functionality.  It seems like Apple's MobileMe is an honest effort, but will it play nice with other platforms and have an open API structure?  Really, I want any applicationt to be able to use these syncing technology.  Because, it really doesn't do me any good to only sync 'some' of my data and files.  I need the control to do anything I want with out constantly importing it into 'another application'.

We'll see what comes of this... now that my UAC-disable laptop can run it.

So, I saw this on TechCrunch this morning and it got me interested.  I wouldn't suggest watching all of the video posted there; it's kind of boring, but I think the idea is sound.  So, I thought I would give it a try.  If anyone else signs-up, let me know in the comments.

Scoutle.com

Betsy Weber put together a great little montage about SnagIt and all the people that love this little program.  I am proud to say I am a member of this group.  Go Sninjas!

So, I was kind of excited; I got an invite to Microsoft's Live Mesh web/desktop application for syncing files.  So, I log into Live Mesh and start playing around with it. Here's a short screencast of Live Mesh and my initial reaction:

http://screencast.com/t/oimTJavoYo

You see, Microsoft needs to learn they can't force users to use their stuff.  True, I use a lot of Microsoft products, but only the ones I like.  And right now, Live Mesh is not on my list of web/desktop applications I like.  So, good try M$, maybe I'll try this again, but not anytime soon.

The funny thing is, I bet that any XP user would not have this restriction.  So why force Vista users?  I would think that M$ already knows that most 'power users' have turned off UAC and I would think those are the early adopters they want to attract to a tech preview like this.

Of course, I'm left wonder what would happened if I logged on with a non-administrator account with UAC enabled and then installed the plug-in, but I'll never know because I'm not interested in the hassle.  But, if you've tried this, let me know.  I'd give you my Live Mesh login, but it's tied to my old-school hotmail account that I only use to access Microsoft stuff.

A good friend of mine, Jethro, had a great post on his blog about a situation he faced with Twitter and his students.  What's impressed me is the amount of comments he's received on this post.  And, I think what brought the comments out is that he was unguarded.  He just posted about the situation and tried to talk about a real situation in a real way.  So, kudos Jethro, you're doing a great thing here.

1. You're talking about a relevant and current issue; i.e. 'Students see twitter post from teacher about students in class.'  These are what Education Administration textbooks are written for.  The funny thing is, those textbooks should probably be re-written, because today they would probably suggest teachers not post to twitter-like services because Murphy's law says the students will find it.
2. You've also created a great forum here.  You have a lot of like-minded people from different groups and areas talking together.  I don't know any of the other people who posted comments, but I bet you I'll run into them again because of this strong community that's been developed.
3. You've spurred other blog posts, like this one.  Anyone else blog about this post?

So, I'm sure they'll be other topics, but this one is still so interesting.  I've had a couple other thoughts that have come out of this:

• Should/could a school be managed like a business?
• What is the social agreement in public education?  Do the teachers, students, and administration support these non-verbal agreements?  Should the agreement be verbal--or written plainly?
• What can an instructional designer learn from this?  Most of the clients I work with come from public education; what baggage do people carry from the United States public education system?
• Do I dare go against the expected; is it really worth it in the long run?  (No cheap answer here, like 'it depends'.  I want truth!)

Cool stuff this blogging/twitter/social web thing.

I have a favorite music player and I really can't stand to use anything else.  And, like most people, I went through the WinAmp days (it's still around of course) and hung out with Windows Media Player; heck I even went through a Real Player phase for a while.  But nothing, I say nothing, compares to Foobar 2000. 

I wish it didn't have such a lousy name, it would be a little easier to recommend to people if it was just called Lite Music player...

I'm afraid what kind of traffic this post might bring, but I had such an amazing experience this last week I just have to share.  Work sent me to Ontario California for the week where we taught Camtasia and SnagIt at TechEd for practically 72 hours (it felt like it).  By Wednesday night we were all beat.  Some of the group went to a baseball game, but a couple of us didn't have tickets and really wanted to go to Disneyland.

So, with no real plan and no desire to spend $66.00 to get in for a couple hours, we wandered to Downtown Disney, which is just shops and restaurants near the park entrance.  We kept wandering until we were right up to the gates separating Disneyland and California Adventure.  We took some pictures and looked around, and it just killed us that we were so close but weren't going to go in.  So we started heading out and as we exited I teased the nice middle-aged lady at the gate that she should let us in.  She laughed and said she would if she could, but have we ever heard of a "Disneyland shopping pass?"  No, do tell...

The Disneyland shopping pass lets you in for one hour.  Enough time to look around the shops or (if you're four young adults) ride Pirates of the Caribbean and Indian Jones.  They take your name and (I think) photo copy your ID, and let you in.  It was great, but it left us with a moral decision; could we just stay?  What would happen?  Would Disney send us a bill or banish us from the 'happiest place on earth'?  Rather than find out, we exited the park (a little late because we ran into the parade) and checked in at the ticket booth like we were suppose to.

While the ticket lady was crossing our name off the list, I looked at her and asked, "we were having such a wonderful time, could we go back in for another hour and have dinner?"  Her boss was right behind her and heard me; they both started laughing.  "You just went in the park for an hour, came back, and now you're asking to go back in again?" they asked.  I'm not completely sure what was so funny about it, but they took it well, and I guess we were sincere enough that the ticket lady said, "okay, I'll walk you in."

Amazing!  I don't know how Disney does it, but they train their people well and give them power to do very kind things; like let a bunch of almost-30-year-olds into the park free.  I will never forget that night.  The park was practically empty, we walked on all sorts of great rides, ate expensive Disneyland food, bought souvenirs we wouldn't normally, and sang Disney's praises.  What a great experience.

Recently Chris Anderson posted an article in Wired magazine about free.  I'm not sure Disney would go for this, but wouldn't it be neat if you could get in free, buy stuff in the park and validate your entry pass?  I don't know if it would bring the same joy as we experienced; especially if you knew you had to buy stuff to earn your admission, but I do know that getting something for free is a powerful experience.

So, somewhere between genius business models and out-right miracles, there is this Disneyland experience.  And, really, it was amazing customers service and training that did it.  The end result is a night we will never forget where four more people became Disney nuts that will support the franchise more than ever.

So, I wanted to upgrade to the latest firmware Apple released for the iPod Touch.  Initially, I 'borrowed' the Mail, Weather, Map apps and had them on my iPod.  But, since they were released, I ponied up the money, installed 1.1.4 and tried to jailbreak the thing with Ziphone 2.x.  No dice, all I got was scrolling text and a lot of experience restoring my iPod.

Luckily, Ziphone 3.0 just came out and I gave it a try.  It worked!  I had a great experience, real smooth, and possibly quicker than the "45 seconds" people reported with earlier versions.

Adobe is trying a lot of fun things.  There new Photoshop express is a fun little application to use.  What I really like is that I can upload (get to at least) all my photos from Picasa and Facebook (and even Photobucket, if I used it) to the Photoshop Express gallery system.  It makes it really easy to work with my photos online and share them; like this (click the image to go to a Flash gallery):

Family

This is a little video that my friend sent me.  It's a very simple screencast that he made, but the cool thing was he sent me the embed tags to post it on my blog.  I won't say any more than that.  If you understand, you know how cool this is and how rare it is to find embeddable video that can be played on the iPod Touch and iPhone... and everyone else, enjoy a mildly boring video.

(Just a note, the first 10 seconds are black, there's nothing wrong with the video.)