Special Interests archives

This afternoon, both my personal Twitter account and Stratepedia’s Twitter account became followed by another Twitter user. The usual warning signs were there:

• Our new follower’s username was “Britney” followed by a random number. Uh, yeah.
• Britney follows thousands of Twitter users, but you can count her followers on your fingers (and maybe your toes). Strike two.
• Britney’s posts are, uh, pretty direct, and always link to the same Tiny URL address. Sorry, Britney; you’re out.

In the past, all you could do was ignore “Britney” and her ilk, but no more. It’s pretty easy:

1. Sign into your Twitter account.
2. Go to @spam (that’s the “spam” account on Twitter) and follow it.

Now, when you receive a message from an obvious spammer such as our friend Britney above, just send a message to @spam, like:

@spam: @blah-blah-blah-suspicious-user-name-324234 is a spammer

The good folks who run Twitter will do the rest.

Reference: Fight Spam with a Direct Message to Twitter, TechCrunch, 10/6/08–this provides a few additional options for Twitter power users.

As a followup to Aaron’s nice introduction yesterday, I want to invite you to join in my love affair with VisualHub.  In my opinion, this software is one of the coolest things to happen to video in a long time.  Professional Developers may also find this software useful for Powerpoint presentations.

VisualHub allows you to convert many popular video formats (think .flv, .mov, Quicktime) into the specific format you need.  Sorry PC users, but as of now this is only available for Macs.  I probably use VisualHub at least once a week to convert a video from Quicktime format into a raw Flash file in order to upload it to our Learning Labs site.  You can take VisualHub for a test drive here and download a free trial version.  The website also contains very reasonable pricing options and an awesome help manual.

I’ll tell you a story about a real life situation where VisualHub came in very handy.

Once upon a time a very nice lady, we’ll call her Patty Graner, came to us with a problem.  Patty needed to insert a few video clips into her Powerpoint slides but the video we had was already in .flv (Flash) format.

So I…

1. Opened VisualHub
2. Dragged my .flv clip into the window
3. Selected MP4 (Quicktime) as my conversion choice
4. Clicked the Start button.

Check out the one-minute video below to see just how simple the whole process is.

VisualHub Demo from Stratepedia on Vimeo.

A few minutes later I had the same video in a format better suited for Powerpoint slides and Patty lived happily ever after.

The End.

*A note from Amber: Ironically, in the hour that it took me to create this post, Techspansion (the creators of VisualHub) have decided to close down their website.  Visualhub.org is still available but I’m not sure how long it will stay up.  I will post more information about the future of VisualHub as soon as possible.

Welcome to a new series in Hello we’re calling “Stuff We Love.” I was originally going to call it “Tools We Use,” but after learning that Amber loves Visual Hub and is going to tell you all about it soon, I figured this would be a more appropriate name. In this series, we’ll tell you about the software and gadgets we use on a regular basis to develop Stratepedia, and suggest ways you might use these tools in your work as professional developers, researchers, or students.

To kick off, let me tell you about something that happened to me a few years ago. Long story short, I left about $200 worth of DVDs on an airplane, and I never saw them again. Oops. When I got back home, I started looking into ways to copy the contents of the disc to my hard drive.

Enter HandBrake, a free, cross-platform utility for copying the contents of a DVD into a video file you can play directly from your computer. HandBrake is not the most intuitive software you’ll ever use, but it’s not super-complicated once you’ve figured out a couple of things. First, HandBrake offers several preset video compression options. If you’re saving clips to embed in a PowerPoint file, the iPod-related settings should be adequate. If you’re just looking to load a movie or two to pass the time on your next flight, one of the higher resolution options might be to your liking. Experimentation is the key.

Second, you’re not limited to just converting the entire disc–if the disc is marked with chapters (say, a disc of episodes from a TV show) you can save each chapter as a separate video file. If you’ve seen the CLC-related video clips we’ve shared on a few sites, this is exactly how I extracted them from a DVD to share with you online.

One thing to know: This process can take awhile! Give your computer time to convert your clips. It really depends on the length of the clips you want and the speed and memory of your computer, but it can take at least an hour per hour of footage you’re copying. Plan ahead.

One more thing to know: Commercial DVDs, as you may know, are encrypted, and the copyright owners don’t like it when you duplicate their material. That said, HandBrake can copy encrypted, commercial DVDs–but I’m not telling you to do that. Let your conscience be your guide.

Get started: First, download a copy of HandBrake for your computer. Pop in a DVD and experiment with different settings. You won’t hurt the DVD in the process. Take a look at HandBrake’s documentation–it’s a little out-of-date in places, but should guide you through some common uses.

HandBrake’s being enhanced to convert more than just DVD video–an article on MacWorld today outlines some of the forthcoming changes. I haven’t tried the new version yet, but this could make HandBrake extremely useful for converting between various file types, for free.

Give it a try, and let you know what you think in the comments below.

Those of you who attended our session at the last SIM Conference know we’re big fans of the Common Craft Show and the clever way Lee LeFever simplifies concepts for the masses. In the latest episode, Lee tackles a problem we’ve all had: How do you narrow search results to find exactly what you need? I won’t spoil the surprise–watch the video to learn. Even if you know these tips, watch the video anyway–it’s not too long and might give you some ideas about how to explain a concept in a different way.

Thanks to Gail Tiemann for pointing out that this new episode is available!

Nancy Duarte’s Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations is a hot read around CRL right now–Jim Knight recently reviewed the book in his blog, and just yesterday I saw a copy sitting on Don’s desk. It’s a great companion piece to the likes of Made to Stick.

Last week, publishers O’Reilly and Associates hosted a one-hour webinar with Duarte to discuss the book and the notion that visuals sell your story. I wasn’t able to sit in on it, and neither were you, probably, but fortunately O’Reilly already has the archived video up on YouTube, so I can embed it right here:

Watch the video, read the book, read some of the things we’ve shared about presenting in the past, and think about the slides you use. How can you tell your story–and the story of SIM–better?

After some initial trials and tribulations, I now really like that Kindle we bought a few months back. I’ve been reading Groundswell on it, taking notes in it, and toting it with me back and forth to appointments in Kansas City. That said, there are ways it could be made better. It’s a little clunky-looking, for example, and the screen is a bit small. You can adjust the print size, but that just means you’re flipping virtual pages a lot more often.

Last week, Plastic Logic introduced an alternative. Its to-be-named e-book reader is the size of a standard piece of paper, super-thin, and under a pound. And they’re working to make it flexible, giving it more of a real book feel. See DEMOfall 2008: Plastic Logic’s Reader Is Thinner, Less Ugly Than Kindle, from Wired.com Gadget Lab, for more photos and commentary.

Pricing will supposedly be competitive with Kindle, which currently sells for $349. Would a device like this cause you to look a little more closely at e-books? What features are must-haves for you to take the plunge? Or are you a dyed-in-the-wool paper lover?

You now have yet another way to keep up-to-date with the latest news from Hello (the somewhat official name for this here blog). Follow Stratepedia on Twitter, and receive notifications whenever we post new articles here.

By the way, I’m using a free service called Twitterfeed to automate this. You can, too. It takes a few minutes to set up, particularly if you don’t have an OpenID account, but after that it’s smooth sailing.

After a long week of getting Coaching Calendar up and running for the Virginia CLC schools, I’m taking a brief break and catching up on other projects today. First up: I’ve added the following feeds to feeds.stratepedia.org, our one-stop-shop for CRL and SIM-related RSS feeds. For those of you who haven’t latched onto an RSS reader yet, this is the next best thing.

New feeds:

• CRL Learns
• Stratepedia on Twitter (which I’m planning to start using more)
• For Your SIMformation (Sue Woodruff’s new blog)

Eric Langhorst was the keynote speaker at MACE and actively contributes to his blog, Speaking of History.   Today he gave a shout out to our buddy Flip! I just love it when my blog entries intertwine.   Langhorst is constantly coming up with new ways to make his lessons interesting for his students while selecting tools that are affordable for the district.

Check out his Flip project here.

Are you, or anyone you know, using video in your professional development?  Tell us about it!

A couple of weeks ago, Jim Knight began using Twitter as a communication tool for coaches. It’s gaining some traction, and many of you have begun following both me and Stratepedia.

If this is the first you’ve heard of Twitter, fear not–EDUCAUSE has released a brief overview of Twitter and its application to learning that’s as good as any introduction I could write. Better yet, visit Twitter, sign up for an account, and give it a try for yourself. Many people suggest that’s the only way to get what it can do.

I’m not a Twitter pro by any means–I only post a couple of times a day at the most, and, last I checked, I could still count my followers on my fingers and toes. But I’ve stumbled upon a few little things along the way to make using the service a bit less cumbersome.

1. Get a client. A Twitter client is a standalone program you download to your computer and configure to keep an eye on your Twitter account. This means you don’t have to go to the Twitter webpage each time you want to post or read others’ posts. I use a Mac client called Twitterific (the free, ad-supported one) on both my computer and my iPhone. More clients are available on Twitter’s downloads page, and even more can be found on the Twitter Fan Wiki. If you find a good one, tell us about it in the comments below (and/or in your Twitter stream).
2. Make replies trackable. This makes more sense in action than in words, so try this: Next time you’re replying to someone’s tweet (or just trying to get their attention), begin that tweet with the person’s username preceded by an @. For example, if you wanted to reply to something I said on Twitter, begin with @ruralocity. Then I can easily track things that are responses to something I posted by clicking my Replies tab. See “What are @replies?” on Twitter’s support site for more information, or just try it yourself by clicking the Reply icon associated with another tweet. One last thing–replies are not personal, private messages! They will show up alongside your tweets, so don’t say anything you wouldn’t say out loud in a crowd.
3. Don’t feel the need to follow everyone who follows you. Having a lot of Twitter followers is a badge of honor for some. Unfortunately, Twitter is also becoming yet another platform for spammers to do their dirty work. Both of these types of users will add you in the hopes that you’ll reciprocate. You can usually tell these types by looking at their following-to-follower ratios. My general rule of thumb? If someone’s tweets look interesting, I’ll follow them back. If I know someone in real life (or in some other, non-Twitter capacity) I’ll follow them back. How you handle it is your call.