Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Now I Feel Old: Schools to Get Multitouch Interactive Whiteboards [Whiteboards]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5621379/now-i-feel-old-schools-to-get-multitouch-interactive-whiteboards

Now I Feel Old: Schools to Get Multitouch Interactive WhiteboardsTime for a next-gen spin on the age-old debate of whether a blackboard or whiteboard is better in the classroom? I pose that question because Panasonic's interactive multitouch whiteboard comes days after we saw Sharp's LCD blackboard. Who feels old?

Measuring 77-inches, Panasonic's UB-T880 whiteboard can be used by three people at once (making it "multitouch"), though it's worth pointing out that one will be holding the electronic pen, with the other two using more primitive tools—their fingers.

Snazzy features such as the ability to write in FOUR DIFFERENT COLORS, highlight in THREE DIFFERENT COLORS, listen to audio on the speakers and even activate the board remotely to turn PowerPoint pages, for example, are surely worth the AU$2,869 price-tag (USD$2,500). All that's written/drawn on the whiteboard can be saved to Word, Excel or PowerPoint once the Panaboard software is installed. [Panasonic via Gizmodo AU]

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How To: Automatically Upload Pictures To the Internet as You Take Them [How To]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5621475/how-to-automatically-upload-pictures-to-the-internet-as-you-take-them

How To: Automatically Upload Pictures To the Internet as You Take ThemAlthough technological advances have made uploading photos easier over the years, it's still impossible to have pictures you take with your DSLR transmitted immediately and automatically to the internet. Or is it?

In this article, we'll share out top secret industry secret method, which lets you use two cool gadgets together to automatically upload your photos as you take them, no matter where you are.

In order to pull this off, you're going to need the items pictured above. Seeing all this stuff laid out may seem a little daunting, but the basic idea is simple: the Eye-Fi is a special SD card that has a Wi-Fi antenna and a processor inside that allows it to automatically upload pictures, over a Wi-Fi network, to an online service. The mobile hotspot generates a Wi-Fi network anywhere, using a 3G signal.

To begin, you're going to want to configure your wireless hotspot to work in conjunction with your mobile PC. To set up your mobile hotspot, simply plug the device into the USB port in your computer, and follow the on-screen prompts for a quick installation of your mobile hotspot Access Manager.
How To: Automatically Upload Pictures To the Internet as You Take Them
Configuring your mobile hotspot isn't that hard hard, but you will need to enter a few pieces of basic information including an SSID and Network Key to allow access from any mobile device. Once you've configured your settings and are given an IP address, simply punch that into the URL bar of your favorite browser to gain access to your mobile hotspot's settings menu.
How To: Automatically Upload Pictures To the Internet as You Take Them
Luckily, the default formatted settings should work just fine for what you're looking to do, though keep this window open somewhere on your desktop in-case you're having trouble—some minor hiccups could affect your data transfer, but we'll touch more on this a little later. Now that your laptop/netbook is configured to run from your mobile hotspot, it's time to configure your Eye-Fi card, which is a strikingly similar process to configuring your Mi-Fi.

Pop your SD card into your computer (if it's a laptop, there's a good chance you've got a built in slot, if not, you'll need an external SD card reader). If it's the very first time you're using your Eye-Fi card, your computer should default you to the Eye-Fi Manager Software download screen. If your card has been used before or previously configured, check out the download page here.
How To: Automatically Upload Pictures To the Internet as You Take Them
Your Eye-Fi Manager is a web based interface that will allow you to customize your available network connections and map other potential cloud based pages to 'forward' your photos to. Configure your Eye-Fi card to work with your mobile hotspot by clicking on Wireless Networks in your Settings tab, and selecting your mi-fi.
How To: Automatically Upload Pictures To the Internet as You Take Them
The Photo Destination tab will allow you to choose from one (or multiple) of many social networking sites like Flickr, Facebook and Picassa to function as a repository for any and all images you take while your Eye-Fi card is in the camera.
How To: Automatically Upload Pictures To the Internet as You Take Them
Once you've chosen which website you'd like to send your photos out to, you're ready to pop your Eye-Fi card into your camera, and begin shooting. Keep in mind, your camera must be on for the images to transfer (so don't turn it off immediately after snapping a shot and expect to find it online), and we recommend keeping your mobile hot spot in your pocket for if you plan on moving around a lot. Upload speed is good, as long as you're in an area with good 3G coverage.

The service we used, Flickr, took a bit longer to receive the images (five minutes or so), though that's still a lot better than the amount of time it would take to find a Wi-Fi access point, transfer the pictures to your computer, and upload them.

Some Quick Tips For First Time Users:

Keep your camera on while using Eye-Fi: Turning your camera off between taking pictures will disrupt the data flow. Most cameras (especially point and shoots) will automatically turn themselves off after a set period of time, though this can often be disabled in the settings menu. This helps segway into our next point...

Bring extra batteries: If you plan on importing all of the pictures you take from an event, and your camera has to remain on the whole time, chances are you're going to need a spare battery or two. Pack accordingly.

WEP/WPA Security Settings: By default the MiFi runs WPA security which the Eye-Fi should work fine with. Our Mi-Fi was tweaked to run WEP which is compatible with more devices. In the interest of full disclosure, if you want to also run WEP on your Eye-Fi and MiFi, you'll need to access the MiFi's hidden configuration page. To do this, connect a notebook to the MiFi using a wireless connection. Fire up a browser and go to http://192.168.1.1/adv802.html. From there, you can tweak several hidden features in the MiFi.

How To: Automatically Upload Pictures To the Internet as You Take ThemMaximum PC brings you the latest in PC news, reviews, and how-tos.

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Libox is Your Own Personal P2P Network [Apps]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5621380/libox-is-your-own-personal-p2p-network

Libox is Your Own Personal P2P NetworkThe tiresome process of syncing your new stuff with your old stuff and your laptop stuff got a little easier today, with the launch of Libox—a personal P2P streaming application for all your media.

Libox has launched on iTunes, with an accompanying desktop client scanning the media content of your 'primary' computer, then distributing it all via a P2P network among your own devices. This could even beat Dropbox for modern media convenience. [Libox via TechCrunch]

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Evom Is a Minimal, Drag-and-Drop Video Converter [Downloads]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5620334/evom-is-a-minimal-drag+and+drop-video-converter

Evom Is a Minimal, Drag-and-Drop Video Converter Mac OS X: The Mac has a few good and free video converters, but nothing is quite so simple and elegant as Evom. Backed by ffmpeg, it'll easily convert your video to the format you need with very little effort.

Evom Is a Minimal, Drag-and-Drop Video Converter

While Evom does a great of the standard operations you can get with most apps of its kind, it has a few minor features that really set it apart. Aside from its great, minimal interface it lets you convert video to audio (MP3 format). This is great if you want to use Evom's ability to pull music videos from the web and save the audio directly to iTunes. While Evom focuses on the iPod/iTunes standards, it can also help you create files that are upload-friendly for video sharing sites.

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Create Synchronicity Is a Tiny, Portable Backup and Sync Utility [Downloads]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5620838/create-synchronicity-is-a-tiny-portable-backup-and-sync-utility

Create Synchronicity Is a Tiny, Portable Backup and Sync Utility Windows only: Portable, open-source backup utility Create Synchronicity is a tiny but powerful way to run backups or synchronize folders on your system, an external drive, or to another PC on your network.

Once you've launched the utility, you'll need to click on the New Profile icon and type in a name for the profile, which will open up the settings window where you can choose the source and destination folders and choose the other options you might want. Once you're done, you can easily run the backup profile, or setup scheduling options to happen automatically. Create Synchronicity is free and open source, works on Windows systems only.

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