Today Apple announced the launch of iTunes U.

iTunes U is a "dedicated area within the iTunes Store (www.itunes.com) featuring free content such as course lectures, language lessons, lab demonstrations, sports highlights and campus tours provided by top US colleges and universities including Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Duke University and MIT."

The content currently is a little unusable (poor video quality, difficult to follow), but I love to see this happening. They got some pretty great universities to buy into this (Standford, Duke, MIT) with some pretty good programs.

I love to see that eLearning targeted for college age students is being created for devices that almost all students have (iPods). This makes learning "hip".

Way to go Apple, and the universities that signed up for this.

Labels: eLearning Technology

Ok, I have to admit it. I am a huge dork for fonts. I love using fonts that are used in Movies, TV Shows, posters, etc. I just ran across a site that links to the "Top 25 Geek Fonts" that are free to download.

Some of the cooler fonts offered:

• Star Wars (pictured above)
• Goonies
• Ghost Busters
• X-Files

Check them out at the link below:

Top 25 Geek Fonts

Today I wanted to pimp a couple software tools that I have been using lately that I thought deserved some blog love.

MeetingSense

MeetingSense is an application/add-on to Outlook from Yon Software. MeetingSense is a tool that allows you to easily, and intuitively track meeting minutes, assign tasks from meetings and manage your meeting agenda.

It is a great tool for keeping track of decisions that are made in meetings, and for assuring that tasks that are discussed get completed.

Some of the cool features of MeetingSense:

• Add action items to meetings that get automatically created as tasks in outlook


• Automatically send meeting summaries to all participants in the meeting (this is key for getting follow through on action items)


• Archiving of past meetings (which is searchable)

Basically it is what you want Outlook meetings to be. It is kind of like Outlook meetings on steroids.

Joost

Joost is the latest project from the founders of Skype and Kazaa and in short Joost is "a new way of watching TV on the web." Yeah, I know what you are thinking, you have probably heard the same thing about Youtube. But Joost is different...the content is good.

So what is the difference between Joost and other video on the web? Basically I see it as there being two types of video on the web:

1. Youtube type content
2. Professional content

Youtube content is uploaded by users all around the world, and is usually illegally uploaded copyrighted content, mildly pornographic, incredibly lame, or some combination of the three. The positive of this video is that the content is presented, for the most part, commercially free.

The professional content, such as ESPN and Yahoo video, is usually pretty good, but it is usually displayed in a very small area, and bloated with more ads than content. So you have to sit through 30 seconds of commercials to see a 30 second video highlight of some incredible shot in last nights basketball game in a 300x300 pixel area.

What makes Joost different from Youtube and Professional content is that it contains a wide array of channels, such as National Geographic, Cartoon Network, Extreme Sports, but not in short segments like most other professional content on the web. They allow you to watch the full program of TV content, with few commercial interruptions. Since it is professional content it doesn't contain much of the crap that appears on youtube.

Joost also allows you to watch the entire programs in high-quality full -screen mode, so you don't have to squint to view the content.

Currently Joost is still in beta, and you can only beta Joost if you have been invited by another Joost user. Luckily, I am a Joost user, so if you are interested in participating in the Joost beta add a comment to this blog posting with your email address (but don't include that @ symbol in your email address so you don't get picked up by spam bots) and I'll forward you a Joost beta invitation.

For more information on Joost visit any of the links below:

Joost.com

Ever try to use Presenter Video created using the On2 VP6 codec and have problems with it displaying in Articulate Presenter?

How can you get On2VP6 Presenter video to display in Articulate Presenter?

1. Insert your On2 VP6 FLV as you normally would insert Presenter Video
2. Publish to your desired output
3. Navigate to your output directory
4. Open the "data" folder
5. Open the "presentation.xml" file in notepad
6. Find this chunk of XML:


7. Modify the width and height value to match your desired width and height for the video
8. Save the file
9. View your output

Note: Currently Articulate Presenter 5 does not support FLVs created with the On2VP6 codec, that is why you have to use this workaround. The issue is that when AP5 came out the On2VP6 codec had not been released, and at that time, we couldn't correctly determine the dimensions of the FLV.

Also, FLVs created with the On2VP6 codec will only display in Flash Player 8 and later.

Labels: FLV