And so it goes…

Hard to believe another publication season of the TR Times is over, and with it the tenure of managing editor Marilyn Collins is ending. Marilyn has been a joy to work for, and I will miss her. I wish her and Jerry fair winds as they embark on their next adventure.

Earlier in the season I promised to write about online video chats, and I never quite got around to it. The idea of seeing a video of the person on the other end of a phone was promised, and teased, for decades, but it is only recently been fulfilled.

I remember seeing demonstrations of futuristic video phones, also known as teleconferencing, when I was a child. By the late 1980's video conferencing systems finally reached the consumer market place. For the system to work, both parties needed  the same device, which if I remember cost around $700, and the pictures were actually slow-scan video — still pictures taken every couple of seconds, giving the images a jerky quality. At the time I was taking part in an educational project between my school district and a school in what was then the Soviet Union, and holding periodic videoconferences were part of our grant. 

Telephone to telephone video conferencing never really made it to the mainstream, but today we have something much better. With a video enabled computer and dedicated software, a computer can be used to make video calls (known as video chat) to other computers, anywhere in the world, and see realtime video of the party on the other end.

Almost all laptop computers purchased today come with built-in webcams and microphones. A webcam is a small, wide-angle camera, located above the screen in the center of the computer. When activated the camera captures either still images or video, depending on the software being used. What you will see on your computer screen when video chat software is running is a video image captured by the computer at the other end of the chat. Since the computer camera are wide-angle in nature, the image area can be fairly large. If someone sits close to the computer you will see just their face, but if they move away from the computer you can see the room behind them — perfect for seeing young grandchildren at play. 

The most well known of the video chat services is Skype, which since 2011 has been owned by Microsoft. All you need to use Skype is for both parties to have Skype software installed on their computers and to register for a free Skype account. Yahoo also has a video chat service, Video Messenger, that, while not as well known, is very intuitive to use. As with Skype, you need to install the free software on your computer and sign up for a Yahoo account. Both Skype and Yahoo have apps for Apple and Android mobile devices, which can video chat with other mobile devices or with computers running the corresponding software. To be compatible with video chatting mobile devices must have a front facing camera.

FaceTime is a pre-installed, video chat application made exclusively for Apple computers, iPads, and iPhone 4 and 4s models. An added feature on the iPhone is the ability to activate FaceTime at the press of a button during a cell phone call with another iPhone. Similar features are available to users of Android devices with the Google Voice app.

For information about Skype, visit www.spype.com, and for Yahoo Messsenger visit messenger.yahoo.com. 

Thank-you to everyone with a hand in editing OnMouseClick, especially my husband, Eddie, who every week reads, and edits, the column before I e-mail it to the TR Times. Safe travels to all our readers — see you next season!

  

iPad Presentation Information

Links cited in iPad presentation — 3/20/2012

• iCloud — www.icloud.com
• Dropbox — www.dropbox.com
•  AirPrint Activator — netputing.com

Multitouch Gestures

• Use 4 or 5 fingers
• Pinch together to go to home screen
• Swipe up to reveal multitasking bar
• Swipe left or right to move between apps

My Three Cameras…

A common theme to this season's OnMouseClick columns has been the evolution of technology, computers and the related devices that all of us use on a regular basis, and one of the most ubiquitous of these devices is the digital camera. Just about everybody has at least one digital camera, and many of us have more than one. I have three, at least three that I use on a regular basis.

I have been an avid photographer since my late teens, even working in the photo department of a magazine after college. Back then I used a 35 mm, single lens reflex camera, shooting primarily in black and white and printing on high contrast, matte paper. Once I began teaching I drifted away from serious photography, for years using a point-and-shoot film camera for family photos. It wasn't until the advent of digital photography in the 1990's that I rediscovered photography as an art form. Today the three cameras that I use are a Nikon D90 DSLR (digital single lens reflex camera), a Panasonic Lumix point-and-shoot, and an iPhone 4. I love shooting with my DSLR and its interchangeable lenses, but when I do not want to carry around a large, heavy camera, I have my smaller cameras to fall back on. Both fit comfortably in a pocket or small purse, and even if I leave the Panasonic at home, I always have my iPhone with me.

One of the main advantages of digital over film photography is the instant feedback. Polaroid cameras were popular because they produced finished photographic prints in a matter of minutes, even if the quality of the prints was less than stellar. With digital photography we don't have instant prints, but we can view our images on the camera's LCD screen, and if we don't like what we see, we can delete.

Another advantage of digital photography is the ease in editing. Instead of using an
enlarger, chemicals, and a darkroom to process photographs, today's photographer uses a computer and photo editing software. In fact, today's photographer doesn't even need to use a traditional computer, but can edit images on smart phones and tablets. As I wrote last week, Adobe had introduced a tablet version of its flagship Photoshop program, Photoshop Touch, for use on the iPad and Android tablets. Last week another popular graphics program made the move from the traditional computer to mobile devices. On March 7, in addition to announcing the newest version of the iPad and a upgrade to the iOS operating system (from 5.01 to 5.1), Apple unveiled a version of iPhoto for both the iPhone and iPad.

Anyone who uses a Mac is familiar with iPhoto, as it comes pre-installed on all Apple computers (a similar application, Picasa, runs on Windows computers). Both programs are image editors, but they also provide a vehicle for cataloging and displaying photos.
With the mobile version of iPhoto, you can edit photos, sort them into albums, and group them by events, locations and themes. Another feature of the app is the ability to "beam" images directly between an iPhone and iPad running on the same WiFi network.

This is a feature I am really going to appreciate, since I like to use my iPhone for picture taking, and my iPad for image editing. Two weeks ago I wrote about DropBox, a cloud computing service, to implement the transfer of photos from iPhone to iPad. While not complicated, it involved uploading an image to DropBox from the iPhone and saving it on the iPad to the built in photo app. Now, with iPhoto, I can make the transfer in one easy step.

The mobile version of iPhoto requires iOS 5.1, the newest version of the iPhone and iPad operating system, and is compatible with the iPhone 4 and 4S, and all iPads except the original iPad 1. It can be purchased from the iTunes Store for $4.99, and once downloaded, it can be installed on both the iPhone and iPad. Click this link for more information.

Cool Stuff…

I listen to a bi-weekly podcast, The MacGeek Gab, and one of the regular features is a segment called Cool Stuff Found. This week I thought I would follow their lead and devote the column to some cool stuff that might be of interest to some of you, especially those of you with iPads, iPhones, and Android devices.

I find myself taking more and more photos with my iPhone. To quote the photographer Chase Jarvis, "The best camera is the one that is with you." While my main camera is a digital single lens reflex camera, a Nikon D90, I almost always have my phone with me, and its 5 megapixel camera takes excellent images. If an iPhone photo is a keeper, I run it through some basic image enhancement before saving it or posting it to Facebook or my photo blog. I prefer to do my editing on the iPad, transferring my photos between the iPhone and iPad with Dropbox, a cloud computing service I wrote about in OnMouseClick on February 24.

Which brings me to the first cool thing, a photo editing app that runs on both the iPad 2 and Android tablets. The app, Adobe Photoshop Touch, brings a host of Photoshop style editing features to tablet computers for $9.99. I installed it on my iPad last week, and the more I use it, the more I like it. It doesn't take the place of the photo editing applications I use on my computer, but when I want to do a quick edit of a photo I took with my iPhone, the app offers robust editing capabilities. With it I can do just about everything I can do with Photoshop Elements and it is not far behind Adobe's flagship program, Photoshop.

If you have a smart phone you can connect to the internet through a G3 (or in some cases G4) cellular connection supplied by your mobile broadband carrier — AT&T, Verizon or Sprint. A cool thing that you may not know is that with most smart phones you can share the internet connection with other devices by turning the smart phone into a Personal WiFi Hotspot. In order to do so you need a compatible smart phone (if you don't know if your particular phone is compatible, call your carrier to find out) and an enhanced data plan with your wireless company. Once your data plan is setup, all you have to do is go to the settings on your phone and turn on the hotspot feature. Once turned on, the network can be joined by other smart phones, tablets, and computers, which will access the Internet wirelessly through the phone.

Each carrier charges a different rate for using a device as a Personal Hotspot, and the allowable data allowance varies. Verizon charges $20 on top of the basic cost of a data plan, and hotspot users are limited to 2 gigabytes of data. AT&T requires a 5 gigabyte data to enable a mobile hotspot, and the cost ranges from $50 to $60 a month, depending on the phone. Sprint charges $29.99 a month to add a 5 gigabyte mobile hotspot to an existing data plan.

Finally, a start-up company, OnLive, has introduced an app that lets users run a cloud based version of Windows 7 desktop and Microsoft Office on their iPads and Android tablets through a WiFi connection to OnLIve servers. The app is free, as is the service with a 2 gigabytes of cloud storage, and additional storage is available for a monthly fee. While initially Office is the only software available, the company has announced that a pro version of OnLive will be available soon that will allow users to customize the service with additional software.

Click on these links for more information about the products mentioned in this column:
Photoshop Touch
AT&T
Verizon
Sprint
OnLive

The Future is now…

In 1987 John Sculley, who was then CEO of Apple Computer, commissioned a mockup of a device he envisioned the company designing in the future. The device was named the Knowledge Navigator and it was envisioned as an artificial intelligence based, magazine sized tablet, capable of anticipating and acting on the user's needs. To showcase the idea, Mr. Sculley commissioned a fictional video, set sometime in the future, using the device to prepare a lecture in collaboration with a colleague in a remote location. While the product John Sculley imagined never came to fruition, it has much in common with the smartphones and tablets we use today — minus the ability to anticipate our every need. In the late 1980s I often used a copy of the video in presentations at educational conferences.

This past week I became aware of a series of new videos, this time produced by Corning Glass. The videos are titled A Day Made of Glass, A Day Made of Glass 2, and A Day Made of Glass 2: Unpacked. The videos feature a family of the future as they go through a day using computer devices that are totally integrated into their environments; environments made of glass and based on Gorilla Glass, which is used in most of the smartphones and tablets computers we use today.

As the narrator of A Day Made of Glass 2: Unpacked says at the culmination of the video "the story is about the way we will use technology and communicate in the future. A story about ubiquitous displays, open operating systems, shared applications, cloud media storage, and unlimited bandwidth." The emphasis on cloud media storage is mine, and brings us back to the topic of my last OnMouseClick, cloud computing.

Cloud computing is here today, and will become more and more prevalent in the future. Last week I mentioned DropBox, a easy to use, free cloud computing solution. There are hundreds of other such systems available for use and you are probably already using some of these systems, even if you are not aware of it. As mentioned in last weeks column, if you upload your photographs to photo sharing services you are using cloud computing. If you use Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo! Mail you are storing and accessing your email in the cloud. Anyone who uses Google Docs is cloud computing. Google Docs users upload documents such as word processor files, spreadsheets and presentations, which are then stored on Google servers and available for online editing from any computer.

Apple recently unveiled a new cloud based service, appropriately named iCloud, which allows users to backup iPhones and iPads online, and share documents across devices. The service offers a free 5 GB of storage to anyone with an Apple ID, and additional storage space is available for a fee.

Services exclusively offering cloud storage for hard drive drive backup are becoming increasing popular with both individuals and businesses. Theoretically, if you backup the data on your computer hard drive to a cloud storage service, you never have to worry about a hard drive crash, a power surge frying your computer, losing your laptop, or a disaster that destroys external backup drives. Companies that provide cloud backup generally store your computer files on multiple remote servers so that client files are available 24/7, even if one of the host servers is down for maintenance.

I say theoretically, because you have to be a smart consumer if you chose to backup your precious data to the cloud. A good place to start your research is an online article published by PC Magazine last August, Disaster-Proof Your Data with Online Backup. The article provides a good overview of cloud data storage, and reviews several of the popular services.

Links to use when posted:

Knowledge Navigator

A Day Made of Glass

A Day Made of Glass 2

A Day Made of Glass 2: Unpacked

PC Magazine Article - Disaster-Proof Your Data with Online Backup