Get the Net: April 2011

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Gore, Ex-Apple Engineers Team Up to Blow Up the Book

If they can bring this to the App Store for under $50 it could be a game changer.

Gore, Ex-Apple Engineers Team Up to Blow Up the Book
WIRED TOP STORIES | APRIL 28, 2011
http://pulsene.ws/1rIrx

What do you do after working for Apple, a company that disrupts entire industries? Easy. You start a company to create your own ... Read more

Monday, April 25, 2011

Mashup editor Pipes - how did I miss this?

OK, still not sure how I've missed this, but I've just run across a mashup editor from Yahoo! called "Pipes."

Using a visual editor resembling a mind map or flowchart tool, you can fairly quickly stitch together content sources and filters to create a "mashup." An excellent example is this mashup of US Census data to display the population of the states in map form.

Another more dynamic mashup called YouTunes uses iTunes download rankings to pick the Top 10 songs, then displays the YouTube for the music videos of those songs.

I was able to use Pipes as a workaround to the Flickr-Flash monster. I wanted a Flickr slideshow based on search results to display on mobile devices such as iPhones, but Flickr's slideshow is in Flash. By using Pipes, I was able to search Flickr based on pre-defined search terms and display the results as an image badge, which I then embedded in a Weebly page, and it displays in iOS just dandy!

So, those of you who are currently taking NET115S, here's a new tool you might want to explore. For those of you who will be taking NET116S in the Fall, guess what we're going to do?

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Blogsy is a content creation tool built for iPad

I'm writing this blog post on a new tool downloaded from the App Store, Blogsy. Blogsy is a rich media-enabled content creation tool that integrates well with other cloud-based media sites such as Flickr and YouTube.

Blogsy connects to your accounts on those services, then allows for drag-and-drop inclusion of photos and videos into a blog post.

Here's a picture:

I find I am quickly building a content creation path that goes something like iPhone to Flickr, Flickr to Blogsy, Blogsy to Blogger. By moving media from the device to the cloud, I don't have to worry about which device the image is on, or when or how I last synced the device. Just shoot it, upload it and it is available for whatever environment I want to share it with.

It will be interesting to see whether the big guns - YouTube, Flickr, etc - can maintain a grip on these content creation services or whether other upstarts can break in. For instance, I'd like to be able to access my Instagram images directly from Blogsy. I know Instagram has released an API, so maybe that sort of thing is in the not-too-distant future.

The Wheel of the Sky - Beautiful stop-motion photography

Watch this in Hd if you can!

The Wheel of the Sky
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/meaning-of-it-all/the-wheel-of-the-sky.html

(Sent from Flipboard)

Monday, April 18, 2011

RIP, Flip

If you haven't heard, parent company Cisco has killed off the Flip camera division in a fit of corporate restructuring. Flips are great little video cameras since they upgraded to HD quality (720p), and here at Edison we use the heck out of 'em.

The main reason cited by Cisco for discontinuing the little buggers is that smartphones such as the iPhone 4 are killing off the low end of the market. Wonder if Brutus stood over Julius Caesar's body, holding the bloody knife, saying "What have I done?"

RIP, Flip.

In the meantime, you can get in on the scavenger-feeding frenzy. I scored a Flip Ultra HD at the Piqua HH Gregg store over the weekend for $75. At the time they had two Flip Mino HDs for $75 each, and two Flip Ultras (NOT the HD versions) for $50 each.

Here are some other sources:

http://gizmodo.com/#!5791601/where-to-buy-cheap-flips-now-that-theyre-dead