No ShrinkWrap Web2.0 Reviews

Thanks to Profy’s article on ShoutEm, I tried out their beta Twitter-esque service. Profy’s got an invite code that should let you in the doors, too.

ShoutEm describes their service as “Ning for Twitters.” While features are light, that’s a pretty good description – with ShoutEm, you can build a themed gated community following Twitter rules (140-character-long messages, public timeline, etc). The expectation, of course, is members will primarily talk about the theme. As an example, you can see the educational technology ShoutEm site I set up, and Svetlana’s profy ShoutEm site.

Setting up the site is easy. ShoutEm walks you through three steps, starting with the name, headline and web address you’d like to use. Unless you’re a paying customer, your web address uses the form *.shoutem.com. Next, select the theme and features and you’re ready to roll out your new gated Twitter.

I know this service is still in beta, so I expect some missing functionality and hitches. Some features, however, strike me as such glaring oversight that I wonder if ShoutEm intends to not include them, or include them only as part of a paid subscription. For instance:

• After creating edtech.shoutem.com, while I could upload pictures to modify theme elements, like background and header images, I couldn’t select a new theme.
• More frustrating, once I created edtech.shoutem.com, I couldn’t change the network features, like automatically accepting new members or enabling subscriptions.
• After creating a ShoutEm account and setting up a new network, my login credentials did not work for Profy’s ShoutEm site. I’m sure this is a “feature, not a bug,” as the intent is to provide gated communities. Still, I don’t understand why I can’t carry my single ShoutEm profile from one community to another.
• Also, I don’t see a way to aggregate the public timelines for all networks I belong to.
• Finally, there’s no directory of public communities. I imagine this is a feature missing due to ShoutEm’s beta status, as any social network relies heavily on the “social.” If I can’t discover new friends and networks to join, I have very little motivation to continue checking both ShoutEm and Twitter.

I see two benefits to using ShoutEm over Twitter. First, the themed network helps find members with interests I share, and sets an expectation we’ll be talking about that interest. While some Twitter directories exist (for instance, Jane Hart maintains a list of educators on Twitter), and Twitter clients like Tweetdeck allow you to create groups, it’s still a crapshoot to discover people to follow that discuss topics interesting to you. By creating themed gated communities, ShoutEm attempts to sort people out by interest, guaranteeing a group of people you (hopefully) connect with.

Second, ShoutEm allows for private, invite-only networks, possibly very useful for companies and organizations in particular. However, if Twitter is smart, gated communities (or at least groups in some fashion) is their next step to monetization, which could affect ShoutEm’s future. Also, ShoutEm competes with several other similar services, such as Twingr, Yammer and Present.ly. Each network currently has its niche, but it won’t be long until they’re poaching on one another’s features.

Laconica, on the other hand, presents an interesting alternative to all of these hosted services, including Twitter itself. Built on PHP and Jabber protocols, Laconica’s open-source, self-hosted nature is exciting all on its own – but there’s more. Laconica is built from the ground up to support federation, the ability to share public timelines between Laconica sites. Eventually, not only will Laconica support pulling messages from other Laconica networks, but it will also pull messages in from other networks, like Plurk, Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku. You can see Laconica in action at Leo Laporte’s TWiT Army and Identi.ca, and read more at Identi.ca’s FAQ page.

Micro-blogging is becoming the Wild West of Social Media, with new entrants circling the monetization wagon. Twitter has its tremendous following and large number of third-party clients adding features; Laconica brings the kitchen sink full of “I wish Twitter did …” features and innovation. Perhaps there’s room for a a few more big players in this space, capitalizing on features Twitter and Laconica choose not to support. In any event, this will be an interesting space to watch from the sidelines.

This is an evolving project. If you have suggestions or recommendations, I’d love to hear them in the comments below the post.

In order to quickly compare features, price and other items of note for the many screen recording apps available, I’ve used extjs to build a sortable chart. To sort by any column, click on a header name. Other options, like grouping, are available when clicking on the right side of a column. There are several features I’d like to add to the chart, like turning grouping off and adding a search feature, but I have to balance time between developing a nice chart and reviewing applications. Bear with me on the slow development of the chart, and let me know what you think below in the comments.

I’ll start posting reviews once the chart is complete, starting with the most popular applications. I recently explained why I’m doing this and how I’ll be reviewing the applications if you’d like more info. Based on my reviews, your comments and our faculty response, I’ll begin recommending specific applications, and somehow indicate those apps on the chart.

Several sites and articles were of invaluable help in building this list of screen recording apps, including:

• Snapfiles, Windows software: Freeware, Shareware
• MacUpdate, Mac software
• VersionTracker, Mac software
• TUAW Faceoff: Screencasting (The Unofficial Apple Weblog article and comments)
• 5 Free Screencasting Apps for Creating Video Tutorials (makeuseof article and comments)
• Screen Capture, Screen Recording, Screencasting: The Best Tools To Record Videos Of Your Screen – Sharewood Guide (Robin Good’s article and comments)
• 12 Screencasting Tools For Creating Video Tutorials (Mashable article and comments)
• Several Lifehacker articles and comments, searching for screencast
• Several TechCrunch articles and comments, searching for screencast

This is an evolving project, and I’m interested in your suggestions – feel free to leave comments below the article.

I have to admit, I have a vested interest in this project. We are in the final stages of putting together a podcasting/screencasting studio together for faculty, staff and student projects. I want to provide a tested workflow both for applications we make available in the studio and applications we recommend instructors use on their own. The intended audience (faculty members who shouldn’t be required to become technology experts) and intended purpose will drive how I evaluate the applications. In my upcoming reviews, I’ll focus on evaluating and testing several specific features and characteristics.

The Reviews.

• Ease of use for non-geeks.
  I don’t expect faculty to become technology experts – unless they want to, of course. Too often, it seems faculty find themselves in the position of being required to use a particular technology, which drives how they develop learning objects. Powerpoint is a good example – because the technology drives the development, we end up with a glut of slides with built-in themes, bullet-point lists and printed handouts. My belief and practice is technology should be implemented the other way around – faculty, as content experts, recognize a difficulty in teaching a particular skill set or course material, and look for a solution that may involve new technology. This way, the content drives the development, not the features and limitations of the selected technology. Because faculty should be empowered to create content and learning objects without slogging through help files and manuals, technology should be as transparent and easy to use as possible.
• Convert and use existing assets.
  Many faculty already have existing objects they’d like to build on, including Powerpoint presentations, videos and photos. The recommended screencast application should provide a bridge for faculty, allowing them to start with what’s familiar and branch out into new features.
• One-stop shop.
  I suspect this will be a deal-breaker for many applications I test. As much as possible, I’d like the recommended application to handle as much of the entire workflow as possible. I personally use several applications together when making screencasts – for example, I record audio and video separately. For faculty, however, I believe starting with one application is the easiest route. Don’t get me wrong – I heartily support faculty who wish to delve into technology and learn more than the superficial, official method; however, I recognize there are many who are not interested or don’t have the time, and wish to make technology as accessible as possible to as wide an audience as I can. Therefore, ideally, the recommended application will record, edit and publish/encode both audio and video.
• Multiple encoding options.
  Many faculty wish to distribute their developed objects through multiple channels – online, on a DVD, broadcast on the local educational channel and via a podcast feed, for example. The recommended screencast recorders should be able to handle publishing objects in multiple formats, accommodating as many distribution channels as possible.

The Tests.

Workflow – Record a YouTube video, a Skype interview and a Second Life session.
Screencast recorders can be used for many more things than demonstrating how to use an application. For example:

• a Communications instructor can record a video of a speech and discuss the speaker’s communication skills
• a math instructor can use a tablet to write math problems on the screen and incorporate them into a video
• a Psychology instructor might record a Second Life session demonstrating a particular cultural phenomenon
• a History instructor might create a time-lapse video of a particular Wikipedia article demonstrating how our understanding of events might evolve
• an Art instructor might record a Skype interview with several museum curators, adding pictures or videos demonstrating the pieces discussed
• or an English instructor might create a machinima-based presentation demonstrating the real-world applicability of grammar rules

Granted, most of these projects are fairly advanced, but they all start with a basic list of features – recording audio and recording video at a high frames-per-second rate. To test an application’s basic abilities, I’ll record a YouTube video along with my own audio commentary; to test an application’s ability to handle as many advanced uses as I can anticipate, I’ll record a short Skype interview and Second Life session.

Distribution – publish for online (.flv or .swf), podcast/mobile (.mp4), and DVD (high-quality .mov or .wmv).
After completing the above recordings using each reviewed application, I’ll publish them and compare file size and quality using the three most-anticipated distribution channels.

Have other suggested tests or features to evaluate? Let me know in the comments below.

This is an evolving project. If you have suggestions or recommendations, I’d love to hear them in the comments below the post.

I’m in the process of building a chart comparing features and characteristics of screencasting applications. It’s taking a while to build the chart, so I thought I’d list the apps below and begin asking people for recommendations for ones I missed. I’ve split the list up into three sections: Windows, Mac and Webapp/Other. Two notes of interest:

• I did not include Linux apps, as none of the faculty or studio computers are currently running Linux. If I have time, I might revise the list to include Linux apps.
• When adding applications to the list, I only picked … well, screencasting apps. This excludes programs with a lot of extra functionality, including my current favorite for building learning objects, Adobe Captivate. While apps like this do have screen recording features, they tend to be much more powerful and complicated for non-geeks. I’m sure I’ve offended someone out there, so I’ll explain what I mean in a follow-up post.

Several sites and articles were of invaluable help in finding screencasting apps, including:

• Snapfiles, Windows software: Freeware, Shareware
• MacUpdate, Mac software
• VersionTracker, Mac software
• TUAW Faceoff: Screencasting (The Unofficial Apple Weblog article and comments)
• 5 Free Screencasting Apps for Creating Video Tutorials (makeuseof article and comments)
• Screen Capture, Screen Recording, Screencasting: The Best Tools To Record Videos Of Your Screen – Sharewood Guide (Robin Good’s article and comments)
• 12 Screencasting Tools For Creating Video Tutorials (Mashable article and comments)
• Several Lifehacker articles and comments, searching for screencast
• Several TechCrunch articles and comments, searching for screencast

In upcoming articles, I’ll explain why and how I’ll be evaluating the applications, build a chart for comparing features and describe the workflow I personally use. I also intend to publish as many reviews as I can, and publish a follow-up article identifying which applications I chose to recommend to our faculty and why.

And now, here’s the list:

Windows software

• Abra
• ALLCapture
• AutoScreenRecorder
• AviScreen
• BB FlashBack
• CamStudio
• Camtasia
• Captivate
• Capture Professional
• Debut
• DemoCreator
• Easy Video Capture
• Flash 32
• FRAPS
• Free Screen Recorder
• FreeScreencast
• Guncam
• HyperCam
• Ignite
• Krut
• My Screen Recorder
• oRipa
• Screen Miner
• SCREEN2EXE / SCREEN2SWF
• ScreenVirtuoso
• Taski
• TipCam
• Webinaria
• WinCAM
• Windows Media Encoder
• Wink

Mac Software

• Copernicus
• iShowU
• MacVCR
• Screen Mimic
• ScreenCap
• Screenflick
• ScreenFlow
• Screenium
• Sequence
• SnapzProX

Web-based and other specialty applications

• Capture Fox – Firefox addon
• Community Clips – Microsoft Office addon
• Jing – Cross-platform application
• Screencast-o-Matic – Web-based application
• ScreenToaster – Web-based application

Sportscasters sometimes make sports interesting to watch with their instant replays, on-screen pen drawings and playback narratives. After watching some recent political speeches and reading articles like this one on FoundRead about politicians’ body language, I wondered – what if speech instructors could use the same sportscaster-style tools to critique speeches? Invite some students to play the part of the “sportscasters” and you have an assignment students not only enjoy doing, but contribute to the content of the course. Have different students participate each week over the course of the class, and you have a video podcast the class can publish. Here’s a quick example of what your class could create using Camtasia.

Click to Watch!

The magic sauce for creating this type of video is the ScreenDraw tool. To make this tool easily available, click on View > Annotation Toolbar in the Camtasia Recorder window:

After you begin recording the screen, enable the annotation tools by clicking on the ScreenDraw icon on the Annotation toolbar. This gives you access to several screen-drawing tools, including a free-form drawing pen, several shape tools, a highlight tool and an arrow tool, all with configurable widths and colors. You can access the different tools and options by right-clicking inside the area you are recording:

For more information on how to use the annotation tools, see Techsmith’s online documentation.

Do you have creative uses for Camtasia in the classroom? I’d love to hear them – share them in the comments below!

I put together a quick video demonstrating why someone would want to combine live video and screencasting. Filming live classes makes the video more engaging, since you benefit from the unscripted student/teacher interaction; however, if the instructor makes use of Powerpoint or whiteboards, filming the instructors’ visual aids is difficult at best and a complete disaster at worst. Combining the live recording with screencasts displays visuals in a clear format without suffering from a less interesting simple voice-over.

I cut this video quickly, in preparation for a workshop, so it’s pretty rough. One interesting thing – I really dig Adobe Premiere CS3. I haven’t installed the latest version of Final Cut yet, but I’m hoping it shares some of the more innovative features, like selecting which property to modify directly on the clip (opacity, motion, etc). I don’t, however, miss video editing on the PC – as a recent Mac convert, and briefly returning to the PC and suffering two video-related crashes, there is a definite benefit to video editing on the Mac – it just works.

Anyway, enjoy the film. This would also be a demonstration on why I didn’t go into math.

Click to Watch!

If you watched the video I put together, you’ll know I’m a little inherently cynical when it comes to PowerPoint presentations. Too often, I find myself subjected to a “I used PowerPoint because I had to” presentation – regurgitated themes, bullet-point summaries and outlines, and forcing too much information onto each slide. Sound familiar?

I recognize, however, there are times when PowerPoint presentations are useful, and there is such a thing as a “good” PowerPoint. I’m in the process of putting together a list of guidelines and suggestions for creating successful PowerPoint presentations for our faculty, which may find their way here as well. As a teaser, here’s 4 tips and examples on how to make your slides visually appealing without too much effort.

1. Mix it up with contrast.
Visual elements in PowerPoint presentations are useful, primarily by giving visual learners an anchor for your ideas. Sometimes, however, visual elements drag audience members’ focus away from ideas you intended to emphasize. Using short phrases and simple high-contrast layouts can help emphasize your idea without disrupting your audience’s focus. For example, the first slide here uses a short phrase for punch, but lacks visual impact. By using a simple high-contrast layout, you can keep the short phrase and short attention lapse as viewers look at the slide, while adding visual impact.

2. Combine your image and text elements.
Used effectively, white space can be a powerful design element. The first slide below demonstrates a common misuse of white space frequently appearing in PowerPoint slides – placing a photo on a slide leaving large amounts of background border, then placing a text element outside the image. The second slide, without skewing the photograph much, combines the photograph and text elements to present a more pleasing, less jarring slide. The more “pleasing” your slide, the less inclined viewers are to focus on the slide instead of your content.

3. Use a visually appealing layout.
Take a page from web site layout design. Studies like this one reveal a trend – people tend to read web site content in a F-shaped pattern. According to the study, accompanied by a heatmap illustration I modified:

In our new eyetracking study, we recorded how 232 users looked at thousands of Web pages. We found that users’ main reading behavior was fairly consistent across many different sites and tasks. This dominant reading pattern looks somewhat like an F and has the following three components:

• Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F’s top bar.
• Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F’s lower bar.
• Finally, users scan the content’s left side in a vertical movement… This last element forms the F’s stem.

F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

Although this study dealt specifically with how viewers read web pages, at least these two broader principles apply to almost any text-based digital medium:

a. Viewers don’t tend to read your page or slide in entirety.
Make your text elements as concise as possible for maximum punch and impact.

b. Viewers tend to scan digital text in a particular pattern.
By placing your text elements somewhere on the F-shaped path, readers may subconsciously find your slides to be more readable, and thus be less inclined to split their focus between reading your slides and listening to your lecture.

As an example, the first slide below uses short points, but follows a common PowerPoint readability mistake: placing an image on the left and text elements on the right. The second slide allows readers to scan text left-to-right uninterrupted by other elements, and places the text elements on the top-bar and bottom-bar primary paths of the F-shape scan pattern.

4. Make creative use of your backgrounds.
Backgrounds and image elements should enhance a slide. Often, however, presenters select generic themes with generic backgrounds and insert clipart or images that, while perhaps related to the slide content, don’t complement the slide content. As an example, the slides below use a photograph of a classroom to promote professional development and customized seminars related to classroom instruction. The first slide follows a common layout placing the photograph on top of bullet-point text elements, creating a generic, non-memorable slide. By moving one of the bullet points to appear as written on the white board in the photograph, the second slide combines the text and photo elements in a creative way, presenting a unique, more memorable slide.

Have any tips for creating memorable, visually appealing slides? Share them in the comments below.

Recently I designed a custom brochure for a construction company. The client wanted mostly images with very little text and a professional layout. Clearly, a template-based tri-fold brochure cranked out in Microsoft Publisher was not going to get the job done.

As a side note: I plan on using this and similar techniques to create custom PowerPoint slide backgrounds and theme elements. A PowerPoint presentation’s design should use little text and combine with lecture material to provide visual cues that help students remember key points. The overall look of a PowerPoint presentation can affect a lecture’s success – the more professional and targeted a presentation’s theme and graphical elements are, the more likely students will be engaged and pay attention to the visual cues.

For the client’s brochure, I decided to start with a custom, watermarked background – by choosing the right construction-looking picture and creating a background from it, I could bring the images on each page together for a cohesive presentation. Once I designed a custom background for the images, the rest of the brochure practically created itself.

Before I begin: while I used Photoshop to create these brochure pages, I’m sure other programs like Gimp can be used to reach the same results. Since I work with faculty and students, I’m always on the lookout for open-source (or at least freeware) that can replicate what I do in pay programs; if I find a way to replicate these results in Gimp, I’ll write an addendum.

First, here are the images I used to create one of the brochure pages:

And the final result:

Since the client is a construction company specializing in building natural rock walls, I wanted a background that depicted boulders but lacked a lot of detail – too much detail would draw focus away from the project photos. I liked the look of the pile of boulders above – it’s very rough and chaotic and has a lot of character and edges, but I couldn’t use the photo itself. I started by cropping the image down to just the pile of boulders and copied the result into a new image in its own layer.

For the watermark, I envisioned somehow dropping the detail in the photo, making it black-and-white, then finding a suitable background color. I found the Graphic Pen filter accomplished much of what I wanted – I made sure my active foreground color was black, then applied the filter with the following result (before and after comparison):

Next, I used the eyedropper tool to select a neutral rock color from the original boulder photo – in this case, I selected #d0b08a. I used the Paint Bucket tool to fill the background with the selected color, then used the Layers palette to drop the opacity of the watermark layer to 30% so the background color shows through (you can also modify layer transparency by using the menus – Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options):

The resulting watermark is a great backdrop to the client’s construction photos – relevant to the brochure material and stark enough to show necessary detail while soft enough to not draw too much attention:

Have any favorite watermark and PowerPoint tips? I’d love to hear them – leave me a comment below.

This is a video I put together for a faculty update meeting to get people excited about using technology in classes, like podcasting. With some help from Todd Washburn of Weedkiller fame, I filmed 30 minutes of footage in front of chroma green fabric, added audio and video effects and cut it down to almost 2 minutes. Using a Max Headroom-esque video style made things easier – no need to worry about jumpcuts.

By the way, as a test, I’m hosting this video from my server using FlowPlayer. Our institution uses a hosted version of Blackboard which charges for disk space and bandwidth, so I am exploring ways of embedding hosted video, audio and PowerPoint resources into courses without using our host’s space and bandwidth. So far, I’m pleased with FlowPlayer, and am investigating other alternatives.