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IPEVO Point 2 View USB Document Camera

Last week I was reading my feeds in Google Reader, and I came across a post by Steve Dembo (@Teach42) titled: Accessorizing the iPad. I don’t own an iPad but I wanted to see what new accessories people were using with it. In his post, Steve writes about different methods for displaying the content on your iPad. Of course, Apple doesn’t have a simple way to hook up the iPad to a projector and display everything on it. The VGA Dock Connector only works with certain apps on the iPad. If you want to display the other stuff, you’ll need the IPEVO Point 2 View document camera.

So on Steve’s recommendation, I got on Amazon and ordered me a IPEVO Point 2 View document camera for $65. I ended up paying $75 total because I had to choose expedited shipping. I wanted to make sure I got it in time to try it out before we leave for San Jose, CA next Tuesday for our mobile learning workshop. So although I don’t have an iPad, I do have lots of mobile devices that we will be demonstrating in the workshop, and my co-presenter Lisa Young will have several iPads with her. My IPEVO arrived yesterday, but I waited until this morning to open it and try it out. I literally had the thing out of the box, installed and working in 5 minutes.

We’ll be using Lisa’s MacBook Pro for our presentation computer next week, so I chose to test the camera out on my Mac Mini. I put the CD in the drive, chose Intel Mac over PowerPC Mac, and then clicked the icon once the software loaded. The program opened up and nothing was there. So I plugged the camera into a USB drive and a picture displayed in the program on my screen. It was that easy. The hardest part about the whole thing was sticking the camera onto the bendable display base. I was afraid I might break it since it is plastic.

I made this video to show you how well the camera works. The image is as clear as any image displayed on the ELMO document cameras we have a school, and those cameras cost over $700. The IPEVO is a steal. The displayed image looked great at all resolution settings. Resolution is adjustable to up to 1600 x 1200. It also has a vertical mirror setting so your image doesn’t appear upside down on the screen, and it has an auto focus button the camera and on the screen in the program. That was all I needed. I’ll try Zoom and Exposure later when I need it.

Breakfast in bed at the Pointe.

Posted via email from Coop’s Wild World of Who Knows What

Thanks to Sun Cyclery on 7th St & Bethany Home for installing my new front shocks. There was really nothing wrong with the old ones besides having the claws ripped off in a freak brain freeze mishap last year. I forgot the bike was on the roof of my suv, and I ran into the carport. I know. Silly me. Anyway I needed brand new ones so I got some Spinners. I have no idea if they are any good. They were inexpensive so Im not hoping for the best. I just need adequate. I’m too old to be romping through the desert anymore. lol

Posted via email from Coop’s Wild World of Who Knows What

I’m trying to eat. etter so i can lose a little weight. Gained 10lbs since last year and my body isn’t holding it well. Plus I need energy. so this morning I’m having strawberries, canteloupe, and apples with Naked Juice Blue Machine. Plenty of fiber in this meal.

Posted via email from Coop’s Wild World of Who Knows What

I use my phone everyday, so my picks here a based on that usage. There are many awesome apps available, but I don’t use them every day, so they are not on this list. First, let’s throw out the obvious. Yes, I’m addicted to social media, so Twitter, Foursquare, and Facebook are a given. I use the native apps for all three. I use these three apps more than any of the others aside from Gmail. Another set of obvious picks are Gmail, Google Talk & Google Voice. Come on. It’s not called a Google phone for nothing. Okay it’s not really the Google phone, but close enough.

With the obvious out the way, here are my top 10 Android apps by daily usage.

Soul4real’s Top 10 Android Apps

9 total, 9 free (100%), 0 paid (0%), 7MB total size, $0 total price

• Aldiko Book Reader : Great app for reading ebooks in the epub format. Organizes the books and has lots of features to make reading easier on the small device.
• Barcode Scanner : Handy app for getting more information about something on the web. Just scan the bar code and the web page pops up. Great for downloading new apps.
• Dolphin Browser : Great alternative to the native browser. Allows for pinch and zoom, bookmarking and more.
• PdaNet free edition : Need to connect your laptop to the internet? This is the app for that. Works great. Connect via usb or bluetooth. Pretty fast speeds once connected. This is a must have app.
• RunKeeper Free : Great app for tracking your athletic activities. Uses the GPS to track your every move and then creates a great map to review. Very accurate and keeps track of pace, distance, altitude, speed. Integrates with Google Earth too.
• Pixelpipe Post & Upload Pro : Awesome app for posting to multiple social networking sites. Take a photo and send it to Twitter, Flickr and Facebook at once. Easy to set up pipes and easy to use. Integrates will with all services on the phone.
• PRO Paint Camera : This camera app is far superior than the standard camera app. You can really tell the difference in quality, especially in bright areas. The picture viewer is really cool too once you figure out where it is.
• Dropbox : If you need files from your computer on your phone, this is the app for you. It works great. Let’s you view just about anything you can put in your Dropbox. Must have app.
• YouMail Visual Voicemail Plus : Replaced my Verizon voicemail years ago in favor of YouMail. The Android app works great. Records voicemails and then transcribes them (fee)and sends a notification and an email with the transcript. Excellent visual voicemail.
• Car Home: This app comes standard on your Android phone (except for AT&T), so you won’t find it in the Android Market. It is very cool. Use Voice Search to tell it to navigate to McDonald’s and it uses the GPS to locate you and then finds the closest McDonald’s and gives you turn by turn navigation. When you arrive at your destination it shows a Google image of the front of the location so you know you’re in the right spot. Totally awesome. It does more, but that’s the coolest part for me.

View this app list on AppBrain

San Diego 2010

Originally uploaded by dr.coop

Well, I haven’t blogged in a while, so I’m just going to try and see if I can still do it. I went to the SITE (Society for Information Technology and Teacher Ed) conference last week. C was able to tag along since she can work from anywhere, and what better place to work from than San Diego in spring. So we hung out in the late afternoon and evenings, and I attended the conference sessions during the morning and afternoon.

There wasn’t much special about this conference. It was interesting, however, just a bit different from the usual conferences I attend. This one focused on teacher education and the use of technology in those programs. I’m not in teacher education, but most of the topics the sessions covered were relevant to regular education as well. I can say that I learned a few new things, but this was a bit of a stressful trip.

The biggest thing that stressed me out was being away from school for so long and not having internet access. Sure the conference had wifi and the hotel did as well, but my school doesn’t pay for internet access when on trips likes this. So basically that means as an online instructor, I have to cancel class for the week or pay out of my own pocket. $15 x 4 days = $60. On principle I refused to do that. If my college feels that not being in contact with the students and work for a whole week is the best solution, why not give it a shot.

Let me just say not answering an email (I get them on my phone) from a student is akin to just walking by someone in a grocery store who has just dropped a bunch of oranges. You just have to stop and help pick them up. Normally if I’m busy, I will just hold those emails until I get in front of a computer, but I had to answer on the phone or while I was at the conference since that is when I had wifi on my netbook. It was a pain in the butt. I couldn’t really concentrate on the sessions because I had a constant stream of email. I tried to ignore them, but I couldn’t. So much for me proving a point. I ended up losing all around on that deal. Stressed the whole first day and night I was there, and then eventually broke down and spent my own money on wifi access to work for two days. Skipped half a day of the conference to work the fourth day. Seems so pointless for the school to pays hundreds of dollars for me to attend a conference, but not pay for something as essential as wifi and parking.

Yeah, don’t get me started on parking. I spent $60 on shuttles and cabs, which the school will reimburse, instead of just parking at the airport for $24. That extra $36 could have paid for 2 days of internet in San Diego. Come on GCC. It’s 2010. We teach online and hybrid classes now. You pay for subs for regular teachers, but you make me pay to teach while I’m away? That’s so not fair.

The story of Asila is an interesting one. She’s the rainbow bear in the picture. I bought her at a gay pride celebration in Las Vegas many years ago. I want to say about 11 years, but I can’t really be certain. I was dating someone who lived there at the time, and I traveled there often. Asila became my travel companion. She’s been to many different places in the US including Provincetown, Denver, San Diego, Seattle, Albuquerque, Fort Lauderdale, San Francisco, and New York City.

Initially the plan was to keep a travel blog of Asila’s adventures, but 10 years ago mobile blogging wasn’t as big or as easy to do. I managed to take tons of pictures of Asila in all these great cities, but getting the photos into digital format and posted on a blog was time consuming. I never followed through with it.

Every so often I come across a stack of photos and as I flip through them, often a picture of Asila will pop up. She’d be sitting on a bar next to an iced cold one with a bar sign in the background indicated where we were visiting. If only I could find all those old photos now; I’m sure it would tell a great tale. Like the time I took Asila camping and it turned into a “where’s Asila” game. Every picture we took that weekend had her in it somewhere, hanging from a tree, propped on a shoulder, holding the keg pump, etc. 100+ campers and everyone knew Asila. It makes me wish she could tell her own story. Boy would she have a story to tell.

That’s unlikely to happen, so I’m just going to have to continue to tell it for her because naturally her story is my own. It should be a lot easier now with the advent of better mobile phone cameras and Posterous, where I post my mobile stuff. You can visit: http://soul4real.posterous.com or click the mobile web tab on my website. Check in an see our next adventure. St. Patty’s Day is right around the corner and rumor has it that Asila will be doing a dive bar tour on her bicycle.

Music Players

Originally uploaded by dr.coop

There’s always room for more. That’s my moto. Actually it’s not. There’s a story behind each mp3 player purchase, and each player has it’s own specific use. Yes, of course, one could probably do it all, but at the time of purchase, that one just might not have been available. That’s the true story behind why I own 5 ipods and two other players. Now that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.