Clay’s Blog

Just read an article at Information Week about the business of copyright. The article refers to a recent report by the Computer and Communications Industry Association that shows that more value is generated for the economy by the exercise of fair use rights than is generated by copyright alone. To those of us who have been urging people to exercise those fair use rights aggressively, this is welcome vindication. Like an atrophying muscle, our fair use rights will simply go away – taken by greedy corporations and their lobbyists if we don’t use them and fight for them.

Just ran across the latest version of the really cool Lightbox Javascript and CSS widget by Lokesh Dhakar today. It lets you link to an image or set of images that appear in a highlighted box while the page in the background is dimmed. It’s a great way to showcase an image on a web page. It’s easy to use and not too difficult to setup on your site. There’s even a nice WordPress plugin by Safirul Alredha. Also check out Leightbox by Simon de Haan, a modification to allow non-image content using inline DIVs

Take a look at how it works by clicking the image of a nice shelf cloud that I snapped with my phone camera on the edge of a thunderstorm in Uptown New Orleans near Tulane last week. Once you have the javascript and css linked to the page, you just add a tiny bit of code to your link tag like this: rel=”lightbox”

As promised, I’m going to try to collect in one place all of the resources I have found for dealing with eBooks on the Sony PRS-500 Reader System.

First let me start with a website that is a central clearing house for all things related to eBooks and eBook readers: the MobileRead Forums. If you can’t find it there, it just doesn’t exist. There are separate forums for each type of eBook hardware – here’s the one for the Sony Reader. In addition, most of the software you would need to edit or convert eBooks for the Reader or any other platform can be found there as well.

In working with eBooks that I already have, I have found that several tools have come in handy: BBeBinder and Book Designer. BBeBinder is especially useful for converting HTML documents to the native .lrf eBook format of the Reader System. Book Designer is a much more full-featured tool for converting almost any type of text file or eBook format to .lrf format (and several other formats, as well). Of course, the files need to be DRM-free for the conversion to work.

Because PDF is such a second-class citizen on the Sony reader, one of the steps in my process is to export text from PDFs (when possible) to HTML or RTF. Once I have the text extracted from the PDF, I can use one of the other tools to create an .lrf file.

In future posts, I’ll create some walk-throughs of selected conversions, including some Adobe Captivate animations.

I’ve had about a month to play around with and use the Sony PRS-500 eBook Reader System. The device uses technology called e-ink from E Ink Corporation. The e-ink technology provides nearly the same experience as reading printed paper. I have to say I have been very excited about this technology and couldn’t wait to get my hands on the PRS-500. After a month of use, I can honestly say, I still really like the Sony Reader. But, as with most tech, when it comes to implementation, there will always be room for improvement.

Let me start by listing the negatives (of which there are actually quite few). The biggest problem with the Sony Reader is that there is just not enough contrast between the black text and the light gray background of the screen. There is just no substitute for black text on a white background that regular paper gives you. This problem is really only evident when lighting is too low. A good book light can really mitigate this issue when one is not in a well-lit room. Second, in terms of physical usability, it’s very annoying for right-handed people that Sony has placed both of the buttons to go forward one page on the left side of the screen. This issue, again, is not a very serious one, since using the device for a short period of time is all that is required to get used to the button placement to the point of it fading from consciousness. Finally, the Reader System’s support of PDF eBooks and documents is nearly useless in its actual implementation. The text zoom feature that is available for the native .lrf format eBooks is not available for PDF files. And, for that matter, even text files from the Gutenberg Project require additional processing to work well on the device.

Nevertheless, the benefits and fine features of the device far outweigh these problems. And because there is an active and vibrant community of users, there are several very useful tools and tutorials available to make the most of the Reader System. I’m looking forward to color e-ink displays and to more interactive implementations of color e-ink that would include markup tools similar to Tablet PCs, like those found in the iRex iLiad device, but at a more reasonable price. Look for a post in the near future with all of the tools and resources I have gathered for managing and converting files for use with the Sony Reader.

In preparing for a class on PowerPoint 2007, I ran across a little tutorial on YouTube outlining how to embed a YouTube video in a PowerPoint 2007 presentation. Unfortunately, the audio in the tutorial is really poor, so I thought I’d list the steps here and create a Captivate animation for it as well.

To embed a YouTube video in PowerPoint 2007 follow these simple steps:

1. First turn on the Developer Tab on the Ribbon by clicking on the Microsoft logo at the top left of the window and selecting PowerPoint Options all the way at the bottom of the menu. Next put a check next to the unchecked item to show the Developer Tab
2. Go to YouTube and select a video to embed
3. Copy the URL
4. On the Developer menu choose “More Controls”
5. Select Shockwave Flash Object
6. Click and drag on the PowerPoint slide to add the Flash object
7. Right Click the object placeholder and select properties
8. Set the Movie property to the URL you copied
9. In the URL delete “watch?” and change the “=” sign to a ⁄
10. Adjust the options for Looping or AutoPlay if desired

Make sure to test the presentation and keep in mind that the video is streaming from YouTube, so an Internet connection is required at the time of presentation.

In an earlier post, I wrote about Microsoft’s Surface technology and work done at NYU on multi-touch display technology. Peter Hutterer at the University of South Australia’s Wearable Computer Lab has just demoed a new version of his MPX, Multi-Pointer X Server under Linux. There’s an article on his blog and a video of his multi-touch extension of MPX under Ubuntu. Here are the hardware details. Now I just need to get my hands on a compatible touch screen and try this out

Wired ran an article in the latest issue about a new website that takes the idea of user created video to the next level with a focus on experimental methodology in the sciences. The Journal of Visualized Experiments offers howtos on hardcore experimental methods. These methods have been bound up in tacit knowledge which is extremely difficult to extract from the brains of seasoned researchers. Now with a little work and a community of inquiry spirit, these bits of specialized expertise can be easily accessed as needed. This kind of site really brings to the fore the fact that video has reached the level that desktop publishing reached in the last decade. What’s next you might ask? Desktop fabrication. Work has already begun on DIY open source rapid prototypers.

In preparing for our recent Faculty Symposium on Digital Trends: The Mobile Classroom, I took a video lecture that I had in AVI (Xvid encoded) format and converted it into several formats to play on portable devices to demo in the presentation. Getting the video on my iPod Video and Playstation Portable was straightforward and familiar. But the phone was new and even though I knew it could be done, it took some experimentation and an inexpensive hardware purchase.
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I wrote the other day about Microsoft’s new multi-touch display technology, called Surface. I just saw a TED Talk with Blaise Aguera y Arcas on a software product that was recently acquired by Microsoft and a tool that takes advantage of it. The underlying technology that re-envisions how we interact with data is called Seadragon. The current implementation of Seadragon is called Photosynth.

I am not a fan of 3D interfaces in general, but this is clearly a powerful implementation that make sense because of the nature of the represented objects. Because the content being organized is one we naturally interact with in three dimensions (the external world of objects), making sense of pictures of objects in three dimensions is natural. What Photosynth and Seadragon underneath it give us is a powerful way to represent and navigate these natural 3D spaces. Very cool stuff.

Have you been waiting to try out Microsoft’s newest operating system, Vista? Don’t want to install Vista on your PC until you know what you are in for? Now you have options.

If you already have an install disc or are lucky enough (like me) to have access to the Enterprise Edition through our campus agreement with Microsoft, you can install Vista inside a virtual machine using Virtual PC 2007 – and now you can get VPC 2007 for free. That’s right, Microsoft is giving away their virtualization software at no cost. And if you have a machine with a Core2Duo or one of the quad core versions of the processor and a couple of gigs of RAM, you won’t notice much sluggishness at all while you test drive Vista.

My Core2Duo machine at home runs Vista in Virtual PC 2007 noticeably faster than my Alienware FX-55-based machine at work. But it’s not so slow as to be unusable in any way. So give it a try. I am planning to use my virtual Vista install to test compatibility with various video codecs and utilities that I use on a daily basis. If I find that all of my apps run well in Vista, I plan to upgrade my Core2Duo machine.