by Ron Miller

ajaxWindows Takes the Desktop Online

We've all seen online applications from all sorts of companies from Google to Zoho, but today I discovered a site called ajax13 that at first glance appeared to be another set of online apps, that is, until I signed up and discovered that it's actually a whole online operating system. (In this sense it probably has more in common in with Transmedia Glide than Zoho or Google's online apps.)

As an online operating system of sorts, ajaxWindows includes its own media player, widgets and other tools you would expect to find in any standard OS whether it's Linux, Mac or Windows (in the Microsoft sense). Rather than try to explain to you what it is and what it does, I've decided to embed this video and let the developers do the talking.

ajaxWindows gives you access to free music, a way to synchronize the files on your computer with the ones in your online OS and free storage from Box.net. It works with Linux, Mac or MS Windows. I haven't given this the full treatment yet (I'm actually hoping to get a gig reviewing this and Glide), but on first glance it appears to be a full-featured OS, and because it's online, it's available wherever you go.

There's a lot to like there, but conceptually it's mind-boggling because if you can put the whole OS on the internet, it changes the whole way we interact with and use our computers. The likes of Microsoft (and its high prices) become, dare I say, irrelevant. Of course, there is the entire matter of a business model and it's not clear what that is. According to the About page on the ajax13 web site they are in fact a software development company, which would suggest they hope to make money from this venture. How they do that isn't completely clear to me

But for now, all economic issues aside, the idea of moving the OS off the computer and onto the internet intrigues me and leads me to wonder where this is going to go.

Project Playlist Lets You Search, Create and Share Music Playlists

My daughter turned me onto to a new site called Project Playlist. It's first and foremost a search engine focused solely on finding audio tracks around the web. Once you locate a track you like, you can add it to your personal playlist, which you can then tag and share in a social networking fashion.

So far so good, but I thought I could hear the sound of the copyright police sirens in the background as I accessed the page for the first time, so my first stop was the site's About page. As expected, the developers assure the reader that they are not violating anyone's copyright, and if an artist complains they will remove the artist from their search results, toute suite.

So with that concern at least moderately satisfied, but still nagging at the back of my mind, I decided to take this for a test drive. I searched for four songs by Plain White Ts, Bruce Springsteen, Jack Johnson and Aerosmith. I was able to find the tracks I wanted in short order. The search side is just a simple search, and I wouldn't mind seeing some more advanced options, so you could conduct boolean searches, but I found the tracks I wanted without difficulty and added them to my playlist.

I've embedded my playlist below (Note that I'm not sure this will show up for email subscribers). Just click a song and click Play. There is an option to have it autoplay, but I thought I would leave it up to you.

If you have a Facebook or MySpace account, they provide a single link to generate the code to share your playlist on your page. And the Project Playlist web site has a list of personal players on a separate page, so if you're interested, you can listen to the playlist of others.

I still can't help but feeling this company will run into a copyright issue at some point, but I have to say, that I like the concept of creating and sharing playlists. You can't download the music, only play it within the player, so in that sense it's protected, but whether that satisfies the anti-sharing lobby, only time will tell.

9/11/07 Update

I was pleased to see that when I updated my playlist with additional tracks today, the playlist updated in my blog as well. In addition, I found that email subscribers could see the embedded player. I would like to be able to make comments on individual tracks and it's worth noting that the Tagging feature is not working yet, but all in all, it's a very nice online service.

Using iDVD to Create an Impressive Slide Show DVD

This past weekend I spent part of my day on Saturday learning how to use iDVD to create a DVD of our recent vacation pictures to send to my in-laws. I began my day in iPhoto thinking this was the best place to create my slide show, but we had a vacation divided into several logical locations, and after messing with iPhoto, I found I could only create a single slide show to export to iDVD (there may be a way to break it up, but I couldn't find it). What's more, I seemed to run into some sort of bug where I couldn't select music. I accessed the music selection dialog, but I couldn't open any folders.

Consequently, when I created the DVD in iDVD, I had one long slide show with the default song, playing over and over throughout the show. I found it boring and overly long. I thought there had to be a better way and I was about to learn, there was.

I switched gears abandoning iPhoto and created a project in iDVD. I chose a travel theme, but again I ran into some trouble trying to create chapters. I got around this by creating a sub-menu where I could easily add chapters for each logical stop on the journey. I could simply add photos to a chapter by dragging and dropping, and I could configure the photos in a slideshow editor. So far so good.

My next challenge was adding music. I found I could add music at the menu level, by simply dragging and dropping it onto the menu page, but when I tried to add music to a slide show chapter, I ran into difficulties. The good news is, that unlike iPhoto, I was able to access all of my music in iDVD, but it wasn't clear to me how to add a song to a slide show. I first tried dragging and dropping it on the chapter name, but that didn't work. Next, I attempted to open the slide show editor and drag and drop it onto the slide collection, but that didn't work either.

At this point, I was a bit baffled, so I did the unthinkable. I resorted to reading the Online Help, but unfortunately it wasn't very helpful. It told me to drop the audio file into the audio well. Mmm...so what exactly is the audio well? I couldn't figure it out and there was no accompanying visual to help me out.

Finally, in desperation, I switched to layout view where you can see your project in a flow chart format. I dragged and dropped an audio file onto my slide show and lo and behold, it worked. So I switched back to slide show view and realized finally that the audio well was at the bottom of the slide show viewer. After some experimenting, I burned my DVD and it came out quite nice (in my humble opinion). Be forewarned that it took a good hour or more to burn the DVD. This included five chapters comprising 430 pictures along with the music and the transitions I chose. Each element has to be built and burned, so it's a pretty time-consuming process.

It took a while, but in a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, I learned the power of iDVD, and now that I have a comfort level, I might try a custom layout next time instead of the templates that come as part of the package. Either way, I was pleased the results and I'm sure it will wow the in-laws.

Where are the cheap Nanos?

With Apple's announcement of the new generation of iPod Nanos, I went looking for a bargain today on the second generation. Amazon had the 2GB for $129. With the new generation available in 4GB for $149, not much of deal, eh?  (Photo Courtesy of Apple.)

I checked the Apple store next. I could snag a 4GB iPhone for $299. but where are the old Nanos? C'mon, Apple drop those prices like you did with the iPhones and get 'em out the door. The only sniff of a bargain is the 4GB "refurbished" Nano for $129. Not bad, but again, I can get a new 4GB with video support for $149, so where's the motivation to buy?

On the other hand, I don't care much for watching video on a small screen, no matter how crisp Apple may claim it is. It's still too small for me. Give me an LG 42 inch Plasma and I'll watch iTunes video all the live long day, but a 2 inch screen? Uh, no thanks.

That's why I would be perfectly satisfied with those old-fashioned Nanos for cheap money--if I could only find one. My guess is they will start showing up on surplus sites like eCost fairly soon and then I'll jump. Of this, you can be sure.

Apple Introduces the iPod Touch

Apple introduced the IPod Touch this afternoon, basically it's an iPhone without the phone. Has the exact same look and feel, except according to reports it's a bit thinner. You can see some nice photos in this Gizmodo report. (Photo courtesy of Apple.)

Meanwhile,according to the Apple press release, the unit will come in 8GB and 16 GB models and sell for $299 and $399 respectively.

Gizmodo says the 4GB iPhone has been discontinued (it's now $299 in the deals section of the online Apple store while supplies last), which makes sense as it was anticipated that the next round of iPhones would sport larger hard drives.

The Apple web site now shows that the price of the 8 GB iPhone has dropped to $399. Wow! I'm sure those early adopters who waited in line to pay $500 for the 4 GB and $600 for the 8 GB phones are bumming now. Sometimes, it pays to wait. By the time, my contract runs out next year, I'm sure the price will be even more reasonable and the hard drives even larger.

The Touch will also have WiFi internet access, display photos, play video and music and do just about everything an iPhone does except make phone calls.

There are some other announcements as well including a new, smaller Nano with a 2 inch screen. Check out the Apple web site for the full line-up of iPods.

Revisiting LinkedIn

I have to admit that I've never been a big fan of social networking systems. Don't get me wrong,  I see the value in them, but as someone who is on the computer for much of the day, I just didn't want to get involved in something that requires too much of my attention.

Several years ago when LinkedIn first appeared on the scene, I joined, but my network floundered since I didn't give the proper care and feeding these things require. Over time, a few people invited me to join and I usually accepted. Last night, an old colleague appeared from out of the blue and invited to me to join and I accepted and wrote back to him to catch up. Social Networking software actually helped make a meaningful connection for me.

But what impressed me was the strange LinkedIn magic formula, which suggested the names of five people I might  know, and to my shock and surprise, I actually knew most of them and had heard of one whom I didn't know personally. And of course I invited the folks I knew to join my network. And so it grew.

Then I got curious and I decided to enter my college information. Having gone to a large school with 25,000 undergraduates, this produced a huge list of people who attended at the same time I did. I went through the list quickly, recognizing one or two names, but nobody I knew well or wanted to reconnect with. Not everything works.

I don't see myself necessarily feverishly checking my LinkedIn page to see recent activity among my network members, but it was interesting to check it out and see how far it has evolved since I last looked at it. Now if they could only use RSS to send me changes to my network so I didn't have to check it manually. That would change everything and make me much more likely to stay involved. It's all Web 2.0. I'm surprised they haven't made the connection.

Online Learning System Includes Blogging

Just this week I got an assignment from Streaming Media Magazine on using video in online education. At the same time, my wife began a doctoral program online and I got to see first-hand how one of these systems works.

Her program uses software from Blackboard and it's a very sophisticated, comprehensive learning Learning Management System (LMS). In fact, her first four week course is about learning how to use the system for the remainder of the program.

One feature that sticks out to me is the blog. The class uses a blog to communicate with one another. Students got their feet wet by creating a post about who they are and why they are taking the course. Comments give students a chance to have an online conversation. I think it's a great use of blogging technology. In fact, last year I hoped to introduce blogging to my son's fifth grade class and volunteered to help implement a program, but unfortunately, it never happened partly because of school system bureaucracy and partly because the teacher was jammed by standardized testing requirements.

So far, she has had an online chat with the professor, downloaded multimedia PowerPoint presentations and even watched one of those online videos I'll be writing about introducing the program. In addition to blogging tools, the system includes email, chat, assignment management, testing, grades management and much more.

I've been impressed with the system, but being online it does have some draw-backs. For instance, the servers are overloaded, so downloads are painfully slow and during the chat session last night, the system dropped the connection a couple of times, forcing me to interrupt important stuff like watching the ball game to reset the modem (I am after all in-house tech support on call 24/7), but for the most part it seems to work amazingly well and the blogging component should come in handy for class projects and as a means for students to communicate with one another about class business.

My wife may be taking the course, but being the resident geek, I can't wait to learn more about this technology.