ProfCast

While podcasting is an important tool in education (K12 and Higher Ed), and the "rest of the world," basic audio podcasts aren't always enough. There are a number of tools that let you create enhanced podcasts (audio and still images). But there is one tool that will take something many of us use on a regular basis and quickly create enhanced podcasts without a lot of extra work or know-how. ProfCast will let you take your PowerPoint or KeyNote presentations and create an enhanced podcast by doing little more than giving your presentation to your computer.

ProfCast records your voice as you move through your presentation and syncs your voice to each slide. It does all the hard work, you just have to give your presentation sitting at your computer. There are a couple of things to note about ProfCast.

Enhanced podcasts use only still images. So all those fancy transitions and fly-ins and things will not appear. ProfCast will simply ignore them and use an image of your slide in its final state after eveything has flown in and appeared.While this may seem like a limitation, it is actually a blessing for two reasons. First, the still images are nice and small and help keep the file size of your podcasts down. Second, since ProfCast simply ignores the motion and transitions, you don't need to maintain a different presentation for recording versus a live setting. Make one presentation and use it for both live and podcasting situations.

On important instructional feature that is used in both PowerPoint and KeyNote is the built list. This is when one bullet point appears, then you can click the mouse button or arrow key and the next bullet point appears. From an instructional standpoint, this is a great tool. It allows you to keep your audience from "reading ahead." ProfCast can make this happen, but there are a couple of strings. I'll explain them below based on the platform you might use.

Windows Users:
If you are using Windows, you will be using PowerPoint and ProfCast will automatically make a built list appear as it does when you are presenting.

Mac Users:
If you are using KeyNote, ProfCast will make your built lists appear just like they do when presenting. However, if you are using PowerPoint on a Mac, ProfCast will not be able to do this automatically. There is some issue that cannot be resolved between PowerPoint (or Microsoft) and ProfCast for Mac. Fear not, there is a way to make this work, it just takes a little planning at the beginning.

If you are using PowerPoint on a Mac and want to use built lists in your ProfCast, here is the way to make it work. For the purposes of this posting, let's assume we have 3 bullet points we want to list on a slide. The trick is, we use three slides. Slide 1 has the first bullet point. Duplicate slide 1 to make slide 2. On Slide 2, add the second bullet point. Now duplicate slide 2 and create slide 3. Then add the third bullet point to slide 3. This way slide 1 has the first bullet, slide 2 has the first and second bullets, and slide 3 has all three bullets. When you give the presentation, your audience will not know the difference. ProfCast won't know the difference either, and it will appear that you have a 3 bullet point list that builds on one slide.

ProfCast is available for both Mac and Windows and costs as little as $15 with the educational discount. Even the retail price is as low as $30-$60 (currently ProfCast is running a special pricing offer for $30). Pair ProfCast with a high quality microphone like the Blue mics discussed in the previous posting, and you have a great tool for creating enhanced podcasts of lectures and presentations.

TextWrangler

If you are like many people when you read the following term, your eyes will glaze over and you'll  get very sleepy. The term is text editor. OK....wake up, there is something for everyone here. It is often assumed that text editors are only for the true geeks of the world and unless you write code or do server admintration, you have no need for these silly applications.

I'm here to tell you a different story about text editors, specifically TextWrangler by Bare Bones Software. In all honesty, yes text editors are great tools for geeks and they do come in really handy when we write code or administer servers. However, they can be a really handy tool at times.

What happens when you try to open a Word document and it's corrupted. Word won't open it and you don't have a backup. You can also open TextWrangler and then open your Word document. Rather than the gibberish that had appeared when you tried to open your word document, you'll likely see the text of your document. the formatting will be gone, but the text will be there, and you can copy and paste it into a new Word document and reformat the content. That alone makes having this free tool worthy of the small amount of space it takes up on your hard drive.

iPhoto Library Manager

If you're a Mac user, you likely take a lot of photos and rely heavily on iPhoto. iPhoto is a great tool for managing and editing your digital photos. However, as more and more of us are taking more and more photos, we are quickly discovering there are some issues over time. For example, I take around 5,000 photos a year. Yes, I like to take a lot of photos. I do my best to keep them all organized using iPhoto events, keywords and smart albums. However, my iPhoto library eventually began to take over my hard drive. I had a 38 GB iPhoto library and there was no end in sight. So I had a couple of options:

1. delete a bunch of photos
2. back up a bunch of photos to DVDs
3. take fewer photos
4. look for a way to split my iPhoto library into multiple libraries

Options 1 and 3 were not really options. Option 2 would work, but then my albums, keywords, and organization is lost. Option 4 looked like the best alternative. So to the Web I went. As it turns out, I'm not alone and there were a number of possible solutions. After some reading about and trying some applications, I started using iPhoto Library Manager from Fat Cat Software.

iPhoto Library Manager allowed me to split my current iPhoto library into multiple smaller libraries. Of course, this still didn't solve my hard drive space issue. I needed a plan. So after some thought, I came up with a plan of how I wanted to organize my photos. At the beginning of each year, I create a new library for that year and move the library from 2 years ago to external drives. I also maintain a library of my favorite photos. I now have 3 iPhoto libraries on my hard drive:

• the current year
• the previous year
• my favorite photos

All previous years are backed up on 2 different external drives. If I need them, I can get to them pretty easily. There was some logic to my plan. I figured, there is a really good chance I'm going to want to see a photo I took the previous year, but a two-year-old photo that was not a favorite photo would be a stretch. Since I take so many photos each year, this system has worked out really well. I'm sure if you took a second and looked at your needs, you could come up with a solution too.

So why not just use iPhoto and change the library in the preferences? Simple, iPhoto Library Manager does some other things that make it completely indispensable. It not only manages all the different libraries, it also lets me move/copy albums or photos between libraries, merge libraries, split libraries and more. The application just streamlines the who process in a nice simple interface that keeps all my metadata (iPhoto keywords, edits, etc.) in place as I move photos.

Fat Cat Software offers another application the does basically the same thing for iTunes. It's a really handy application for splitting up your iTunes library. If you have a lot of iTunes content, you might want to check out PowerTunes from Fat Cat Software as well.

ChronoSync - Simple, reliable back-ups

So when is the last time you've done a back-up of your computer? Most people think about doing back-ups just after their hard drive crashes...which is about 2 seconds too late. Apple has provided a great tool in the recent years with their OS, Time Machine. Time Machine is a great application. If you plug a high capacity drive into your Mac, it will ask you if you want to use Time Machine to create a back-up. However, Time Machine isn't for everyone. Specifically, if you don't want to back up your whole hard drive, maybe you just want to back up specific folders. An example of this would be if you wanted to take a group of files from work to home and back (and for some reason didn't use DropBox) you wouldn't want to use Time Machine.

Let's say we have  a folder on our work computer that we need to work on at home or at work. So we copy the folder onto a flashdrive and carry it with us. Even if you only work off the files on the flashdrive when you're at home, you now have 2 copies of these files: one on the flashdrive and one at work. It won't take long and you'll have them out of sync. Enter ChronoSync to solve the problem and keep you in sync.

ChronoSync allows you to select folders that you want to synchronize between two different drives. There are tons of features in this application. It will archive files that are deleted, synchronize files between drive or from one drive to another, start when a drive is mounted, or on a set schedule, and so on. Even with Time Machine, I still prefer ChornoSync. I have two large external hard drives, one at home and one at my office. Every week I connect my laptop to these drives and ChronoSync goes to work. It looks for files I've changed or deleted and makes sure that whatever I've done on my laptop is backed up to the external drives. It's fast and reliable. I have it set to back up only the information I work with, not all my applications and files. Just my "stuff" like my documents, photos, music, and so on. In the event that I need to recover something, I can connect to one of these drives and recover the file(s) I need.

The archiving feature has also been a real help at times. I've deleted files, only to realize a month later, I really shouldn't have deleted them. ChronoSync keeps an archive of files I've deleted for 6 months (this is a setting you can change). If 6 months have gone by, I likely don't remember the file or what was in it, so ChronoSync will delete it for me.

There are two other great features of ChronoSync. First, you don't have to sync to a large hard drive. You could set this up to sync files/folders to a jumpdrive if you wanted. The other great thing about ChronoSync is the company. They provide lifetime updates for free. So as they improve the application, you don't have to shell out more money to get the improvements. You just have to download and install the new version.

If you don't have a back-up strategy, get one and use it. Technology fails, that is part of what technology gives us. Technology also has a very keen sense about when would be the worst possible time to fail. So back your information up.

iCal/Address Book/Mail - Often overlooked...completely useful

While most of my colleagues use Outlook or Entourage, I really prefer Apple's solution: iCal, Address Book, and Mail. This really does everything I want/need. These apps work together and throughout a number of Apple applications.
iCal
One of the things I love about iCal is the fact that I can maintain multiple calendars in one place. I have at least 10 different calendars. For example, I have a calendar for my classes and my office hours, trips, special days (birthdays/anniversaries), etc. To further make me even happier the calendars can be color-coded. You can also add multiple alarms/alerts to an event.
Address Book
Address Book is a nice simple contacts management app. It does a great job with contacts and multiple addresses/email addresses/phone numbers, etc. It is a little "clunky" when dealing with family addresses (i.e., Mom & Dad). Tehre are creative ways to make it work, but it's just a little bit of a pain.
Mail.app
Managing all the email we get can be a big problem. Apple's Mail.app takes a lot of the hassle out of managing multiple email accounts. I use it with POP3 and IMAP accounts. All my messages end up in one place.
Syncing
I sync everything between my office iMac and my laptop, my iPhone and my iPad using MobileMe. While Microsoft Outlook and Entourage are pretty well known and used in the enterprise setting. The latest versions of iCal , Address Book, and Mail.app work with Exchange Server out of the box.