Digital Days Phoenix 21 and 22 February 2009

I attended both the Saturday 21 February and Sunday 22 February Digital Days event at the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Phoenix. For both sessions there were probably in excess of eighty people of various skill levels. I talked to a few folks who had just bought their first digital camera and were afraid they’d be in over their heads. Having attended (and hosted) a prior Digital Days back in 2004 at Paradise Valley Community College with Phil Mistry I told them all to soak in day one, which was designed for beginners (but also a nice reminder for the more seasoned photographers like myself) and I’d ask them afterwards if it was worth it. The people I talked to at the end of Saturday all agreed it had been worth it.

I have a number of photography websites. The one that has many of my photos is at Shutterfly. Go there to take a look if you want, but these are my "warts and all" photos. And you can sign up for a free account. Since I brought up outside sites for photographers, one I really like is Zenfolio. I have started to create what I think is a nice professional page on Zenfolio displaying some of my favorite photographs. Yet another site I like is PhotoWorkshop. One of the nice things they have are tons of educational pages.

OK, back to Digital Days. On day one, the instructor was Leslie Fisher. She was every bit as engaging and knowledgeable as Phil Mistry. Day two, for more advanced photographers, had Leslie and brought in photographer John Omvik, who spent most of the time showing and discussing Adobe Lightroom. And, we had a live shoot with models. That was a lot of fun. Actually going in and taking photographs trying out the settings we had learned about earlier. For those that wanted, they could get critiques of their work afterwards in a non-threatening way.

What did I learn? First off, even for a guy like me who has taken photographs for a few years, it was good to get out and talk to other people and review the basics. Sometimes I admit I get lazy and use the automatic settings. But there is so much more to photography once you get out of those zones and take control of your camera. Now, I teach digital photography for PVCC (along with other business and i.t. courses) and never really thought much about Lightroom from Adobe. I had done some reviews so I was not unfamiliar with it. But John Omvik really showed it in action. OK, what is Lightroom? Lightroom is a program that does some editing but is mostly used to control workflow. Put another way, lets say you do a shoot of hundreds or thousands of photographs. And you want to find one from the morning of the third day or some other specific quality. You can “tag” photos in lightroom to make it easier to find them again quickly. You can also batch process certain things you like such as cropped for 8 x 10 or some lighting condition. Lightroom does NOT replace Photoshop, Photoshop Elements (I use PSE for Mac, by the way), or Paint Shop Pro. Lightroom competes with Apple Aperture as a workflow program and works in tandem with a Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. After John’s demonstration, I went home an ordered the academic discounted version from Academic SuperStore. If you are in education as a student or faculty member, you can also qualify for the nice discount.

My recommendation. Sony Digital Days, Popular Photography, and Tempe Camera (the local sponsor) did this right. If you are a beginner, you need the first day for sure. And you know what, go the second day too to learn about shooting models! Yes, and bring your camera. Then after the workshops, go out and read your camera manual and go to a place like Amazon and find a good book dedicated to your camera model and read about all the functions. Digital Days even published a series of great instructional videos I urge you to take a look at. Even if you are an experienced photographer, there is something here for you too. Now go out and shoot some photographs!

Digital Days Coming Back to Phoenix 21 and 22 February

Many of you may remember when PVCC hosted Digital Days a few years ago.  It was wildly successful, bringing in over 100 participants over a Saturday and Sunday.  Well, they are coming back to Phoenix February 21 and 22 AND you can enroll for a 25% discount.  

I will be there taking photos for this blog.  The code for registration is in the photo above, just click on it to see it.  Hope to see you there!

Jim Patterson

Jim Visits the New Apple Store in Arrowhead

The new Apple store opened Saturday July 26, 2008 in Arrowhead Mall.  I avoided that on opening day, having heard .  HOWEVER, did go to the store today (Sunday).  It was crowded, but not so much that I couldn't find the manager.  

Notice this picture was taken outside the store. Apple officials explained what I did outside the store was fine but if I wanted an inside the store shot, I'd need special permission, yada yada.  

Here's the fun news for faculty, staff, and students:  If you purchase a Mac by September 15, you get a free iPod PLUS a 10% education discount.  I priced those iPods and they are in the $150+ range, so that's a smokin' deal.  

Here is something I'm going to set up for college faculty, staff, and students this fall.  I met the Arrowhead Apple Manager, Jason Wambolt.  He and I will set up a PVCC day at Apple where they will show off their hardware and software in their new training auditorium.  It should be a cool event.  I will let you know when I have a date set.  In the meantime, now you have a friend at Apple - Arrowhead.  Use my name.  Jason can be reached at arrowhead@apple.com or you can visit the Apple Arrowhead Store.  

Oh, one more thing I want to share with you.  Most of you know about TechSmith's Camtasia, the program that allows you to record your screen action and voice for dvd and export to the web?  Well, they have a free service called Jing which allows much of what Camtasia can do but limits you to five minute clips.  You can save your Jing video to your computer or upload to their free servers.  It's available for Mac and the other guys.  

From PC to Mac and Lovin' It

One day in late April of 2008, Linda Lawson of the PVCC's computer commons came to me and in a reasoned way explained why it was making more sense to offer some computer labs with Macs.  Now, at the time I was the self-proclaimed "King of all PC's."  Linda told me the Macs cost less to maintain and they connected to the network more easily than the Dells.  I told her the only thing I was worried about was if a PC type keyboard and mouse would work on a Mac and if the Mac could run Windows.  Once that was proven to me, I gave my ok.  The next day, I finally reached my tipping point.  I was listening to Rush Limbaugh on the way into the college and he was going on and on about his Macs, about how wonderful they were.  So Linda and Rush tipped me over.  That day I called the local Apple store and went down and bought my first Mac, a beautiful little white Macbook with my educational discount, which was about a $100 savings.    

Going from PC's, something I've used forever it seems. I went from a Commodore to one of those IBM single density double disk drive machines around hmmmm 1982 or so.  Switching to a Mac, gang, isn't that painful.  Little things you adjust to.  Like remembering to go to the upper LEFT on a Mac to close a program instead of the upper right.  But really, that took about an hour or two.  Here it is about two weeks after switching to a Macbook and getting an iMac to replace my Gateway main desktop so I am now one of "them" - a Mac true believer.  You know the Apple commercials out now with the hipster Mac user and the whiney PC guy in the crumpled suit?  I'm still the guy in the crumpled suit but now I use Macs!  haha.  

Here are the nice things you will have to "endure" with a Mac, if you decide to switch:

1.  Security threats... gee, I don't run any virus programs.  Is that right or wrong on a Mac?  

2.  It's fast.  Few things run in the background to slow the machine down.

3.  The stuff works.  It sounds like an ad, but it's true.  Everything seems to work well together.  There are lots of little things built in that are very useful, like Time Machine, a painless way to backup your computer.  Set and forget.  I like that.  

4.  No more defrag.  Yeah!

5.  On the Macbook, the power connector stays in place by magnet so if somebody trips on the cord, it just pops out instead of pulling your laptop on the floor.  Again, the little things they do right.  

6.  The iMac I have is a 24 inch beauty.  I mean BEAUTY.  The screen is bright and everything is built in.  I bought 4gb of RAM for both the Macbook and iMac and the thing flies.  

7.  After switching to Macs, I discovered I had a program I loved (Camtasia by TechSmith) that only ran in Windows.  So I went to our tech guru Carol Myers and she set me up with a copy of Parallels.  As the kids would say in text, OMG!  I installed Parallels on both Macs, then installed Windows XP inside and it runs FASTER on a Mac!!!  Then I installed my copy of Camtasia and it works beautifully.   So PC users, you are having fewer and fewer excuses.  

8.  Widgets.  I have time set up for Phoenix and Seoul, where I went last month.  I have the five day weather forecast for Phoenix.  I also have it set up to display movie times.  And, this is neat, airline schedules.  

9.  The Mac "mighty mouse" really does have a right click button.  Just go into mouse preferences and set it up that way.  And your old PC keyboard and mouse will work, too.  

10.  No more stupid registry.  When you are done with a program on a Mac, just drag it to the trash.  

Have I had any problems?  Not with the Macs.  My problem was getting rid of the PC laptop (thankfully bought by fellow faculty Patri Mays) and Gateway desktop and monitor (bought by EZ Trade in from Ebay.com).  The other thing I found is a Mac holds its resale value better than PC's.  As Johnny Carson used to say, "I did not know that."  Oh, one other minor annoyance is that sometimes the Safari Internet Browser doesn't work with some sites, like Hotmail (I wonder why, Microsoft?).  All you do in that case is switch to Firefox.  

I don't want to come off as one of those pesky Mac people who put down Microsoft, but really... Vista is nothing more than Windows Me, part deux.  Microsoft lost me as a customer like the Big 3 automakers lost me decades earlier.  QUIT MAKING JUNK!  Computers are a maturing industry and there should not be the patience out there for not-ready-to-be-sold software and hardware.  Consumers and businesses should just stand up and say no.  Now, you can buy a Mac.  Even though Apple is not pursuing the enterprise market, companies are buying Macs because individuals are buying for home use.  If you consider the total cost of ownership, you will find Macs simply are cheaper in the long run.  Oh, and they just work.  

Free and Inexpensive Tools for Online Learning in Nashville

Hi, Jim Patterson back at ya. This time I am in Nashville for the League for Innovation in the Community College's Conference on Information Technology.

I'm speaking on free and inexpensive tools for online learning. As many of you know, in addition to teaching Business and Information Technology at Paradise Valley Community College in Phoenix, I am also the online learning coordinator. I've always had a fascination in the lower cost to free tools that are out there. Plus, none of our budgets support buying all the equipment we need. And, I like choices! Sometimes a free version is exactly what I need to do what I want.

You can enhance an online course with many free or nearly free programs. You can start with some of the links I'm going to put in here or you can Google it! That reminds me, if your college wants to get out of the email business I'd suggest looking at what either Google or Microsoft is offering for free. I'm sure other companies will jump on offering free applications and email to colleges, too.

An early consideration on whether to use a tool or not is is it complicated? Can you get trained? Also, why are you using the tool? It should be to enhance and further education, not just to provide some gee whiz.

You can work with Adobe tools like Captivate, Breeze, and Authorware. They cost, but your college may have a discount. I have an example of something I did in Breeze.

Another commercial product for online instruction is Toolbook. There is the cheaper Assistant version or the full blown Instructor. It will produce interesting and engaging content for cd/dvd, Flash, or the Web. And there are trial downloads available at SumTotalSystems.

What is an LMS? That stands for Learning Management System. Many of you teach online classes and may use BlackBoard, WebCT, eCollege, Desire2Learn, Sakai, or Moodle, for example. The last two are free. I just did an evaluation for Quality Matters for a course from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and they use Desire2Learn. But did you know you can go on the cheap and use Yahoo? Yahoo for instant messaging (can you say virtual office hours??) and Yahoo Groups for discussions. Google also offers a similar service called Google Talk.

You want to do Flash but can't afford or have the time to fool with Adobe Flash? Try SWISH instead. They have a deep, very deep, educational discount. You can buy it at that discount from lots of educational discounted software companies. One I use a lot is Academic Superstore. Another is Journey Ed.

Camtasia. I love these guys. You can record desktop demonstrations with narration and video easily. You can publish to flash, cd/dvd, and streaming video. Check out the examples and the trial software by going to the TechSmith site.

Wink is a freeware alternative to Camtasia.

Blogging... just like I'm doing. Why do it? IT IS EASY. You can be a "journalist" in seconds and publish your stuff to the Web. If you have the Google Toolbar installed with your browser, you can see Blogger is the free blog of choice. Blogging is so easy you can use it for student assignments. They often get a kick out of seeing how easy they can post to the web. Then again, I bet many of them know that already.

Everybody is doing podcasts these days it seems. There are many commercial editing programs out there but Audacity is free. PVCC's Mike Ho and Student Life do a lot of podcasts and Mike tells me they get THOUSANDS of hits on that page. Give a listen to some of the 'casts.

Now this next program is going to be addictive. It is called Hot Potatoes. It is freeeee! You can produce mix and match, fill in the blank, even interesting crossword puzzle quizzes. You can output to an html file or package into a zip for import into BlackBoard, for instance. It doesn't really record the grades for you but it makes fine review-type fun quizzes.

Everybody has a digital camera. Some use their cell phones. Others, like me, have gone wild and have spent a lot of money on equipment. Photos are fun and easy and a great way to build rapport. I use Photoshop Elements. You can download a trial and then purchase the real product for well under $100. Take a look at my photography page. Then click on the portfolio link on the left side. That was made with Photoshop Elements. Not bad, eh? Now, how about a pretty darn neat photo editing program that is free? Try Picasa. It will also build nice galleries for you. I have both Photoshop Elements and Picasa on my home and work machines. Some additional photography sites that have gallery building and limited editing would include Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, and Flickr. Click on the link to see my personal Flickr gallery. And the 2007 CIT has a Flickr site of pictures and comments... give it a gander. Oh, before I forget, Kodak has a neat Digital Learning Center if you want project ideas and learn how to get more out of your digital camera.

All of us use PowerPoint slides. Publishers give them to us and we create our own. But posting the PPT file takes time and space. Impatica is a program that can scrunch a PowerPoint file down by up to 95 percent. I had a nice PowerPoint slideshow on how to give a great presentation on my web site. Nice idea until I found out my students were printing page after page of the slideshow in the computer lab! So I used Impatica to produce this slideshow. Impatica is not free so check to see if your college has a site license.

You can incorporate simple video into your class without breaking the bank. Many of the newer video cameras have USB connection, so that makes it easy to import video into your computer. And I bet you might have had some free or trial video editing software bundled with it. If not, I'd suggest Adobe Premier Elements, the partner program for Photoshop Elements. Or, how about the free Microsoft Movie Maker? For simple videos, I use my Logitech QuickCam Ultra Vision which records video in near darkness. There is a free program that will output very small videos that play with Real Player. It is called Real Producer. You can stream the video or make a nice small video from the original and post to your website or LMS, for instance. Here is another addictive toy you are going to love. Go visit Flixn now and get started with simple videos. It will record up to five minutes, then you can post the URL anywhere for viewing. Click here to see my sample Flixn video for you. And my TechSmith friends have a free thingie out there similar to Flixn called Jing. And of course, you can house your videos on YouTube. Look at what a couple of fool college professors did from PVCC! Well, one of em is a fool. You guess which one. haha.

And there is the whole open source movement. Again, get your Google site up and ready to do some searching. One nice suite of programs similar to MS Office is Open Office. In the Spring of 2008 PVCC will be hosting a "Dialogue Day" on open source products for education. Visit the Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction or MCLI for more information.

Let me know if this has been helpful... I'm at jim.patterson@pvmail.maricopa.edu at work or you can visit me at my faculty webpage.

Going from XP to Vista - Lessons Learned (May 29, 2007)

A few days ago I made the plunge and decided to install Microsoft Vista on my laptop and home computer. Many of you know I am a faculty at Paradise Valley Community College and teach Microsoft products, so I have a professional need to be playing and learning this operating system.

My bottom line upfront advice is unless you love pretty colors and 3-D hootsaws, there is no need to rush into Vista. If XP is working fine, you are good for awhile. Microsoft will not support XP for very long, but at least you know there is no need to rush.

Microsoft, for some odd unknown reason, has many flavors of Vista. Personally, I think it is stupid. The more confusing you make it for the consumer, the more the consumer is likely to think "hmmm, LINUX?" That is another story, as there even more flavors of Linux, but at least going Linux won't bust your back pocket. More on Linux in a bit...

Anyway, if you are going to go with Vista, here are a few considerations. They have something called a "Vista Upgrade Path" which essentially means you cannot upgrade to a lower level Windows. For instance, I could upgrade my laptop from XP Home to Vista Business (keeping my old settings) but could not upgrade from XP Professional on my main computer to Vista Business. On my main computer, I had to format my hard drive and install the operating system fresh, not a bad option in my opinion. Anyway, click on this Microsoft link so you can figure out for yourself what you need to do.

By the way, I usually install a program or operating system first on my laptop. Once I get that figured out and running fine, then I take what I learned and apply it to my main computer.

Here's another thing I learned: give yourself time to install (it does take several hours) and then tweak. Microsoft leaves on so many #$%$ security warnings and what not that Vista was unusable until I was able to get in and turn off all the darn warnings, pretty visuals, and things that I was not interested in. Vista, like many programs, is bloated. It comes with a bunch of junk you don't need. I know, I know... some of you are thinking "GO MAC" or "GO LINUX." First off, I've tried Macs and just do not see what the big deal is. They are expensive and are not problem free, no matter what their cutsie ads are saying. Linux? Ahhh, another matter. I continue to play around with a few flavors (and there are a bunch): Knoppix and Ubuntu. The Paradise Valley Community College Computer Commons lab technicians like Randy Babick turned me on to Ubuntu Linux recently. Like Knoppix, you can create a boot cd/dvd disk with Ubuntu so you can fool around with another operating system without messing up your Windows installation. One of the challenges of using a Linux operating system is finding workable drivers for your peripherals. I like my scanner, my printers, my tablet, and cameras to work on an operating system. BUT, the thing about Knoppix and Ubuntu is it is free. Another Linux flavor to look at is Linspire. By the way, they recently have announced a development agreement with the Ubuntu people. If all the Linux types could row the boat in the same direction it would give some hope of a legitimate competitor to Windows and Microsoft. My advice is download a few of the Linux flavors, create a CD bootable disk, and play around with them in your spare time.

Now, back to installing Vista! When you start the Vista installation disk, it will give you an opportunity to save all of your important data from your old computer. This is a good feature! I use two (I know, I"m paranoid) portable USB hard drives as a backup for my documents and pictures, so I was able to have the Vista startup disk make a backup of those files. It ended up being a +15gb file, but I was able to run it once Vista had installed and had all of my settings and files working in the new operating system. My email pretty much worked, although I scrapped the new Windows Mail for Outlook (within Office 2007). Some of you may want to use Thunderbird, which is free but will not let you read your web-based email accounts.

I did find a few little surprises after installing Vista Business... on my main computer, my old Logitech 510 webcam did not work! Vista simply said "nope, not gonna run" in Vista, no matter what I did. OK, fine... so I went out and got the latest and greatest Logitech camera, the Ultravision, and it works fine. In fact, one of the neat features of this camera is how it can somehow magically light an almost dark room. Spooky, but it works. The picture you see of me at the rop of this page (frightening, huh?) is from a nearly dark room.

NOW, I am going to save you time. You can learn from my mistakes. If you want this Aero and all the pretty junk that comes with Vista, fine. You will go ga ga over Vista. As for me, I want a system that runs fast, runs the programs I want and the peripherals I use, and to heck with the pretty 3D thingies and sounds that go ba boom. You are going to waste time trying to find out where everything is in Control Panel, for instance.

Here is the first utility to download: TweakVI from Totalidea. Go ahead and start with the free version. There are all kinds of tweaks you can set in Vista; you really need to take a look. This one will improve the performance of your operating system, I promise. Another great site you need to save is Tweak Vista. In fact, before I did the Vista install, I printed out all of these Vista Tweaks I was likely to use and circled them as a reminder. Click here for even more Vista tweaks. Everybody's needs are different, so use the tweaks that fit your style.

Oh, one other surprise when I installed Vista was that a version of McAfee Virus Checker I had was not compatible with Vista. Uggggh, so I downloaded and happily use the FREE version of AVG from Grisoft. I should have switched long ago. It works fine with Vista. And did I say it is FREE???

I love free or low cost good working programs and utilities. Given most of the commercial stuff on the market today costs big bucks and is filled with garbage, why pay for what you don't use?

Let me give you a perfect illustraton of bloatware. Roxio. I used the Easy Creator 9 Suite under XP. Many of the programs in the suite I just did not need, so I didn't install them. All I wanted was a good utility to let me easily burn CD's and DVD's. Well, I tossed this product out after installing Vista. It is simply not Vista ready, no matter what their site says. Nero is another choice but that is another case of a sub-$100 program with alot of bloat. So I did a search. I found a gem of a CD/DVD burning software called Ashampoo Burning Studio 7. Download this sucker and try it out for free. I've tried it and it flawlessly burned music and videos. None of the burns are speedy; one of the things I dislike about CD/DVD burners. BUT, the software just WORKED!

By the way, my hunt was made much easier once I found this "best ever" site from the Tech Support Alert folks. Some of the stuff they recommended I wasn't too fond of but some of it was great!

This is enough to get you started on Vista. In my next installment, I am going to recommend more great tweaks and utilities to make your Vista experience better.

Happy Computing,

Jim Patterson
Professor of Business/Information Technology
Paradise Valley Community College
Phoenix, Arizona
TheCogentCommunicator@gmail.com