Keene on Tech

How many ways can one write something in 140 characters or less? It seems more and more these days. As Twitter flits into the lives of just about everyone online, the challenge has been how to manage, organize and keep track of all the short attention span chatter. Initially, there was really just your plain vanilla browser and the Twitter.com website. You created an account, you logged in and you began posting snippets about whatever you could in 140 characters or less. People followed and you followed others. It all quickly became something like managing your email InBox without a lot of order. But this has changed and now Twitter users have many options to manage the micro-blogging tool. These tools give you the ability to better visualize the tweets, search, flag favorites, retweet something, send direct tweets etc.

So here is a brief rundown of a few Twitter applications that you might want to check out. Many of them are Mac apps but this is the platform I compute on so there is a bias here. Still, there are a few cross platform options. Please let me know if there are others I have missed or more options on Windows.

TweetDeck (Mac/PC) – This is the poster child Twitter app that was created with Adobe Air so its a cross platform offering. This app offers configurable multi-pane view of Twitter activity which you can see your friends, create and see groups, see search results, see twitter trends and even load up 12 second videos via 12seconds.tv. It also integrates into your Facebook page for status update monitoring.

TweetDeck for the iPhone – Quickly becoming the favorite Twitter app on the iPhone. Its unique in that it brings the multi column feature to the hand held device which is a nice touch (sorry for the pun).

Seesmic Desktop (Mac/PC) – Another Adobe Air app that is cross platform. Seesmic used to be a poster child for video sharing and posting but it is moving away from this to focus on its Twitter application which as become a favorite. It supports multiple twitter accounts and can hook into Facebook updates. It also supports multiple columns. Still, I find the Adobe Air app interface a little sterile but it works.

Twhirl (Mac/PC) – Another Adobe AIR app that can support multiple Twitter accounts and taps into other social networking sites. I have not experimented too much with Twhirl but it does support multiple accounts and supports various other social networking services. It appears Twhril is also developed by Seesmic.

Tweetie – This was the de facto standard on the iPhone but its losing some ground to the excellent TweetDeck iphone version. In addition, there is a desktop version of Tweetie which is nice, but it can’t display multiple columns of data the way some of the other apps can but it has a slick, modern interface.

Twitterific (Mac) – This was one of the first Mac Twitter apps and its still very good. There is a desktop and iPhone version. Its very minimal (sort of like Twitter!) but people like it because it got a minimal interface and does not distract you (as much).

Nambu (Mac) – This is a nice desktop app that lets you access your multiple Twitter accounts and configure things in one view with multiple columns, including popular posts, Favorites, etc. Nicely done. Early versions had bad memory leaks, but the developer seems to be actively patching these and issuing regular updates.

Beak (Mac) – Beak is fairly new to the Twitter app arena. It has some promise. I have not played around with it too much. The interface is very Mac modern, but it seems to lack some features of the other apps (but it looks nice!).

Twittelator Pro – This is a full featured iphone/ipod Touch only Twitter app that is well polished. If find it a little slower than other Twitter clients, but its got a lot of nice features. Its developed by Stone Design, an experienced and long developer who began developing for the NeXT platform.

Eventbox – EventBox is a great app for managing several different social networking applications such as FaceBook, RSS feeds, Reddit news, Diig, Flickr feeds and more. I like this app and use it fairly often. Its got good potential. The downfall again is that because it taps into multiple services, it does not really shine for any particular one. But if you use multiple services in addition to Twitter, it might work for you.

If I had to go and choose one app for Twitter, I would go with Nambu because its got a Mac like interface, supports multi-column views and multiple accounts. A close second is TweetDeck, but I am still getting used to the Adobe Air interface. I also like Tweetie and it might be included to use it more if it supported multi-column views.

Honorable Mention – Monitter is not a Twitter app but it is a great way to monitor (get it?) multiple Twitter searches. This is a great tool for researching trends on Twitter and covering breaking news or other time sensitive topics. Check it out. Its pretty interesting.

Double Honorable Mention- Twitter is not the only 140 character micro-blogging solution out there. Identi.ca is rapidly gaining some traction and many of the apps above support Identi.ca accounts now. You can go to their website for more info, but its basically similar to Twitter, with one big exception. Its open source unlike Twitter. Also, there is Yammer, a micro-blogging service like Twitter but aimed at the corporate business world.

This should be more than enough to get one Twittering away. And now back to old school blogging… ahh that oh so early 21st century technology equivalent of the chalkboard.

Keene

In today’s interconnected world both the physical and digital worlds collide. There is no ignoring those on the the other side of the world. We share one place, this place called Earth and today’s geospatial technology makes this so readily apparent and seamless that it is almost taken without notice. Its hard to imagine an age when we did not know what lay beyond the horizon, just as those ages ago would have a hard time believing in something called Google Earth. But the connectivity and the technology that makes it possible should be noticed. The new golden age of geography is upon us and its nothing like what you might have learned in grade school. This is all about connections, and seeing how those connections can send shockwaves around the world just like an insect caught in a spider’s web. Move one part and we’ll know you are there… Bringing the geospatial revolution together nicely is a new project by Penn State University Public Broadcasting project.   Dubbed the Geospatial Revolution Project it is one of the first I have seen to bring together what geography truly means in the 21st century, explaining how new technologies have revolutionized our relationship with the planet. It will be brought to viewers via the web in eight installments and will have outreach and educational components. Its seems to be a broad, bold project that highlights this new revolution and evolution of our connectedness. I strongly suggest you check this new series out when it launches.

Keene

The followers of all things start-up at TechCrunch just posted this about an HP, Yahoo, Intel combined launch into testing cloud computing. I am willing to bet it will get cloudier.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)

oh my…

Cloud computing. Predicting weather is tricky enough, predicting how technology can behave is an even dicier proposition. Whether one is a PC or Mac user, you have probably heard about the trials and tribulations of the rollout of MobileMe. I think Apple has been a bit humbled by its missteps, offering formal apologies and every other day updates on the service via an Apple blogger. This rather rocky public meltdown is a probably a good time to bring up cloud computing in general and why its important. Technology Review has an interesting article worth reading as it touches on issues with cloud computing and how this may affect those who depend on it. Cloud computing is not necessarily new, but it is a fairly new concept to the public at large. The TR article gives a nice simple summary of the concept…

Cloud computing has been touted as a potential tool for everything from improving business infrastructure to helping consumers keep tabs on their contacts. Storing data in the “cloud” of the Internet rather than locally allows users to access that information anywhere and at any time.

The big hitch with cloud computing is connectivity, and the quality of the connection in particular. What the whole MobileMe mess brings to light is that if one is computing in the cloud, whether it is just to sync contacts or actually using webapps such as Google Docs or Google Spreadsheets, if your connection goes down or is unreasonably slow, you are dead in the water in terms of your work. And that just is not acceptable for many users. This singular dependency is what makes the idea a little unnerving. This and the fact that most of your data will reside on servers across the globe and not on your hard drive sitting on your desk. Google’s solution to the cloud issues is found in their Google Gears (Firefox only on Macs) technology which they rolled out over a year ago. The idea is that one can still use the webapps offline on a local machine and then sync it to the cloud when you get back online. As the IT article points, out, this is probably the way forward, but we are not quite there yet. Also worth mentioning is Adobe AIR who is also throwing their hat in the ring with this web app development environment.

Associated with cloud computing is the idea of pushing data to a user when it becomes available. Blackberry users are the poster children for the push movement and Apple is trying to join their ranks by offering “push” solutions with MobileMe. However, they have abandoned using the word “push” specifically because of the various problems with MobileMe (lost emails, sluggish performance, etc.). They do still have the cloud in the graphic design for the service however. Pushing email is one thing, pushing lots of other data can be quite another issue. While many of us have come to accept broadband Internet connections, there are still many, many people who do not have fast connections or 24/7 connections. This can especially true in schools. I believe cloud computing is here to stay and it will become more prevalent, especially as the world becomes more wired with faster Internet connections. It is a new way of working and interacting with information. What we are seeing now are the hiccups (or in Apple’s case a belch) associated with implementing and adopting new technologies. We will get there one way or another via Google Gears, Adobe AIR, MobileMe, Research in Motion (BlackBerry) or some other technology yet to be unleashed. But one thing is for certain. It will indeed be a push.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)

Apple fans may be so overly enthusiastic about their devices because Christmas comes several times a year for the faithful when Apple releases new products and makes new announcements. Heck, the rollouts should be on an iCal calendar pushed out by Cupertino HQ. In any case, the four pronged launch last week of the iPhone 3G, the 2.0 version of the iphone software, MobileMe and the iPhone/Touch Apps store gave much fodder for frustration and joy. When I upgraded my iPhone to v.2.0 and started loading up on free apps, I was a kid in a candy store. How cool!…Well that excitement lasted about a day when all of a sudden my apps were crashing left and right. I could not get anything to launch after the initial installation. Hmmm…. it turns out that its easy to forget that the iPhone is running the Mac OS X and now that applications are being installed, all sorts of “interesting” things can start happening. The two gotchas that kept my apps from launching was the fact that I did not have much space on my iPhone left over. Actually, I had just over 1 GB of space (I have an 8 GB non-3G device), but it seems that may have not been enough. The iPhone uses disk space on its solid state drive as virtual memory so it needs free space to load applications and execute them. I ended up deleting my music off the iPhone to free up space and tried launching the applications again. Then they all worked (for the most part). Some were a little sluggish as I am not running on a 3G phone and just about all the apps I have need to access the web to do their thing. So if you are having app problems, check to see how full your phone is and unload little used music or movie files to see if that helps.

The second issue is launching apps if you need to sign onto a wireless network. If you need to authenticate to the network, launching apps before you do this will cause the application to crash and in some cases the iPhone to reboot. This is understandable, but it would be nice to perhaps have a message saying the network needs to be activated before the application can be launched. Maybe this is not the problem, but after I was logged onto the network, the apps launched just fine.

Covering the problems with apps launching are the folks over at iPhone Atlas who posted a special report about troubleshooting crashing apps. There is also talk of Digital Rights Management issues or problems with Apple’s firmware. A patch, v. 2.0.1, is supposedly in the works and should be imminent. One of the scapegoat apps has been the highly touted WHERE which is a location based app that feeds you information about your surroundings using the iPhones geo-referencing capabilities. It has been sluggish to work or not working at all, although some improvements have been seen. It has lots of cool potential so give it some time, both for Apple and the developers of Where.

People hold the bar pretty high for Apple. Launching a new platform is not an easy task. People can be quick to criticize the downfalls, but overall, despite the hiccups, things could have been worse with the launch of not only a new piece of hardware, but also significant software. Patience please! If users are still having problems a few weeks down the road then perhaps the gripe meter can be turned on again, but for now give it some time, take a deep breath and reboot when necessary.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)

Unless you have somehow happened to miss the news the past few weeks, today Apple finally rolled out its long anticipated new 3G iPhone along with the MobileMe and the new iPhone Apps store. And somewhere over in Cupertino, there are no doubt dozens and dozens of Apple employees who dread these rollouts. Hyped to the hilt and covered by the media to a suffocating extent, any new product out of 1 Infinite Loop always faces slings and arrows to some misfortune as well as praise. The antiperspirant must be handed out in cases at Apple’s HQ during these times. Today’s rollout was no different. From glitches activating new phones in Apple Stores, to issues with iTunes and MobileMe not behaving properly, there have been stumbles across the board angering many who are used to “they just work” products. Welcome to the world of technology!… On the bright side, the one seemingly smooth rollout has been the new iPhone and iPod Touch Apps now accessible in the new iTunes v.7.7. There is already a rich offering of apps, many that are free and even more that are priced at a modest $9.99 or less.

MobileMe promises to offer some Web 2.0 twists and revamps to the aging .Mac service which ceased existence sometime in the past day or so. Promising over the air “push” synchronization, MobileMe keeps calendars, contacts and emails synced and accessible across multiple computing devices and is touted as “Exchange for the rest of us.”. This is the really new feature with the iDisk still in the mix. The switch to MobileMe has not been smooth. Server outages and sluggish response of the web apps through the browser have plagued the new service today, but it is hopeful these things can be resolved quickly.

And then there is the new iPhone 3G. Fast and furious, slick and slim, the new device promises a few pluses over the original iphone. The details of the new device can be found all over the web so no need to re-hash this here. The 3G network capability and a better GPS system are the really new features that make this model attractive, but be cautioned the 3G phone will use more battery power (you can talk and surf the web simultaneously) so turn off 3G if you are not in a 3G area. A big addition in the 2.0 iPhone software is support for Microsoft Exchange with push capabilities giving corporate users an excuse to ditch their Blackberries. This is all designed to work with MobileMe in the computing cloud.

I want to return to the new Apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. While neither the new iPhone and MobileMe are truly revolutionary, the opening of the Apps store for Apple’s new portable devices is quite newsworthy. Its worth one’s time to browse what is already available for download now through iTunes 7.7. Some of the educational apps look very promising. This really marks the dawn of development for an entirely new way of interacting with computers, phones and information. The innovation is in the hundreds of developers who will begin rolling out applications with new possibilities never before seen in software for the masses. This is what is truly the good about today’s news. MobileMe and the iPhone 3G are very nice and all, but give me the apps and the shiny new iPhone 2.0 software that works on the old iPhones as well and I’ll be a happy camper for now. Plan on hearing more about the new apps here in the near future.

Have a good weekend and welcome to Hello World 2.0 courtesy of Apple and its band of developers.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)

When Apple bought the NeXT OS almost twelve years ago to save its own troubled next generation OS efforts, the Mac platform suddenly became a very viable platform for researchers in the fields of medicine, physics, biology, geology, chemistry and genetics to name a few. Built on the tired and true rock solid foundations of UNIX, the new Mac OS X was now capable of running many UNIX programs developed by scientists. One computer could run Mac OS X and Unix. Furthermore, when Apple integrated Intel chips into their computers along with Boot Camp and third party virtualization programs such as VM Ware and Parallels (let’s forget about VirtualPC shall we) began appearing, Macs now supported Windows as well, giving three bangs for the buck. Now, one computer replaces three on the desk of researchers… Apple has not lost sight of the fact their boxes are being widely used in research and has a dedicated portion of their web site for Macs and Science found here. The site has a wealth of information, but in particular the Productivity Lab section has some nice short tutorials for using various applications such as Keynote, iWeb and iWork (Pages and Numbers along with Keynote) and Ambrosia’s SnapzProX to present and share scientific research. I think there are better screen capture apps out there now such as the new ScreenFlow, but SnapzProX has a long track record and is quite capable. In addition, there is a link to the MacResearch.org web site which is not affiliated with Apple, but is a site where researchers can find forums, tutorials, reviews and articles about applications and techniques that apply specifically to science researchers. The mission of the site is:

MacResearch.org is an open and independent community for scientists using Mac OS X and related hardware in their research. It is the mission of this site to cultivate a knowledgeable and vibrant community of researchers to exchange ideas and information, build a community knowledge-base, and collectively escalate the prominence of Apple technologies in the scientific research community.

The web site is worth exploring and bookmarking if you are someone at an institution that has lots of research being done and uses the Mac platform. Or if you are running a lab that caters to researchers and are considering the Mac platform, this site might give you the information you need to make an informed decision. Some of the articles may fall more towards the technical side of things, but there is a wide variety of information presented so it caters to many levels of expertise. Macs are not just about its iLife or Pro media applications, they are also powerful tools for expanding our knowledge of the world and ourselves through cutting edge research.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)

Many of you use VisualHub for your video compression needs. It’s a great program that offers a wide range of options for video compression. But you may not know as much about AudialHub, which is developed by the same company. AudialHub does for audio what VisualHub does for video. It’s a great tool for converting audio into just about any format you need. What is particularly cool is that you can actually manipulate audio inside a video file, so no need to feed it audio only files. However, what I wanted to highlight here is not the software which is very nice, but actually the user manual. Most of the time people just dive into a program and hardly ever open up the manual. In this case, AudialHub’s manual is actually worth a read because it contains some helpful information about audio and audio codecs specifically. This is good information for those new to digital audio files and explains the different codecs in plain English. The entire manual is not long (40 pages). In particular chapters 3-5 are worth reading about codecs and CD/DVDs and audio. Even if you don’t end up using AudialHub, the manual is worth keeping around on your hard drive as a simple reference. Both a trial of the software and just the user’s manual are found here. Happy converting!

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)

No, its not a newly discovered dinosaur, but it is a newly developed hardware/software package that takes digital photographs from point and shoot cameras to a new level. The Gigapan is not revolutionary in what it does, but it is revolutionary in its price and ability to take your digital images off to new horizons that will more than make your Aunt Gertrude smile. She might just drop her dentures. What does it do? It is a robotic device that can enable your still camera to take dozens of images of a scene and then stitch them together into one image that you can then zoom into seeing a high level of detail. Gigapan is still in beta but will soon be unleashed on the world… The education world should take note that this tool may very well be something to add to your arsenal if you use still images in your teaching or research. Gigapan is the brain child of scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and NASA Ames, along with support from Google and a little place called CharmedLabs here in Austin. CharmedLabs has been making the hardware and CMU and Nasa have been working out the circuitry and software. Once an image is created, it can be uploaded to the Gigapan.org web site where people can explore the images, annotate them with “snapshots” and even add additional links to things they discover in the images. This is not QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR), but a close cousin. Once the system is calibrated for your camera’s field of view (a number of the point and shoot models have been tested in beta), the system rests on a tripod and the user directs the camera to the upper left and lower right corners of the images. Hit the OK button and Gigapan then fills in the gaps creating the panorama. There is a 360 degree option as well that will let you create a seamless image that you can navigate. Other devices out there can capture equally if not more jaw dropping images, but not at the price point of the Gigapan which should be in the $250-$300 range (including software) when it comes to market. The purpose of the Gigapan is to allow this type of photography to be within reach of people who have point and shoot digital cameras, limited budgets and possibly skipped geometry class in High School. The Gigapan was also developed in conjunction with the web site which serves as the public front for the images created with the Gigapan. Some of the best images are also found in a default Gigapan layer in Google Earth. I can keep babbling about this technology, but to really appreciate it, you need to see the results. Go to Gigapan.org and be prepared to say Wow! The device should be out for sale to the public sometime later this summer. I will post a note at this blog when they are available. And, btw, the software is very easy to use. It makes stitching and publishing literally a minimal button affair.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)

Content management systems come in many different flavors these days. Many of you probably use one or several at your institutions. They do make life easier for managing, sharing and editing the online digital content that seems to grow exponentially day by day. While useful and nice, they are frequently not so nice to set up and configure. Some do have GUI’s that make life easier but at some point one usually has to dig around the back end and do some scripting to install, configure and activate a CMS. And then comes all the tweaking so that it just works. For those who don’t have lots of dedicated resources for handling the back end installs and database administration of a CMS, there is a nice option that requires almost ZERO backend work… The little app is called WebYep and its developed by the good folks at Objective Development who also develop the more widely known LaunchBar and LittleSnitch. WebYep is a bare bones CMS that you can get up and running almost instantly. It allows for people to add, modify and view content and to control who has access to modify the content. One can upload pictures or files and change/add text. WebYep requires PHP installed on your server but it does not need mySQL. The great thing about WebYep is the absence of mySQL headaches. This CMS also integrates into Adobe’s Dreamweaver 8 or CS3 (Windows and Mac) and into RapidWeaver and Freeway WYSIWYG web site editors (both are Mac only apps). WebYep is not free like many a CMS. However, it is small price to pay for a very easy to use CMS that might suit the needs of educators who don’t need a CMS that is overkill or complicated. There is a basic version that runs for $42.75 and a white label edition for $131.19 that allows you to brand the CMS however you would like (the odd prices are a result of converting from euros to dollars). All WebYep licenses need to be tied to a domain name which you supply when you purchase the product. Check it out and you may find WebYep is all the CMS you need. It won’t serve up the kitchen sink, but sometimes all you really need is a good solid kitchen counter to make a sandwich.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)