Welcome to my technology blog!
Wow! Thanks Brazil for a fantastic day. You guys rock and were definitely one of the most energetic crowds we've presented to to date. We're all pumped and can't wait to come back.
It was great to start the day with young 13 year old Breno on stage to kick things off with a Content Aware Fill demo.
Thanks again Brazil!
We look forward to seeing you all in Mexico City Tomorrow. Be sure to search/follow the #CS5Evolves hash tag on Twitter.
If you've attended any of our tour stops on the Adobe CS5 Evolution Tour or if you were at the Adobe Photoshop World Keynote in Orlando, then you may have seen us do a live poll of the audience. Rather than simply asking for a show of hands, audience members participated with their mobile devices. Polleverywhere.com is a web based service that allows you to setup and conduct Live Polls in real-time. The cool factor is that the poll results come in and can be displayed in real-time. This usually gets people a little more involved when they see that they can actually drive the results right in front of their eyes.
Another option is the ability to create a custom URL where your users will go on their devices and instead of keying in the onscreen codes, they'll actually see the poll questions on their own screens and the responses are then tappable. When you switch to the next question their browser will update on the fly.
Once you setup an account, you can then start to create your Polls ahead of time. During your event, class, seminar, etc. you can then bring up the site, go full screen and people can answer the questions by either using SMS texting (standard text messaging rates do apply) to a local/regional number for the area that you are conducting the poll in OR they can simply go to the mobile friendly poll4.com web page on their device and enter the codes there for free. You can even enable the Poll via Twitter so that people can Tweet their responses and lastly there is the option to have a Private Link like this one. The page uses Adobe Flash to update live and in real-time. As the votes come in the bars will move for all to see. The data is saved to your account and you can close the polls whenever you like to prevent further voting.
If you don't want to do it live there are several options for embedding the polls into your website, like I've done here (click on your answer):
The results can also optionally be embedded for all to see as either LIVE update via Flash:
Continue reading “Polleverywhere.com Powers My LIVE Audience Polls”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2vrZv93zZg
In this episode of the Adobe Creative Suite Video Podcast I'll show you how to take advantage of a NEW feature in Adobe Bridge CS5 that allows you to do a Batch Rename on a folder of images, but only changing part of the names to what you want while leaving the rest of the name intact. String Substitution baby!
See more of my Adobe Creative Suite Videos on my Adobe Creative Suite Podcast and get the App here. It features EXCLUSIVE CONTENT that no one else gets to see. This episode has a BONUS CLIP that is available only in the App:
I'm always on the look out for ways to reduce the number of chargers I travel with and while I have found some great 4 Port USB Chargers in the past the one thing they all seem to lack is the 5V 2 AMP (10W) power requirement for the iPad. Granted the iPad will still charge on the lesser current, but it will take longer. Recently I found a dual USB charger that has one port that operates at the higher voltage. The other USB port is a standard 5V 1 Amp port for your other USB devices such as your cellphone. This is GREAT! This means that I can charge my iPad 2 at full speed and still have a port to charge my phone. The other requirement I have is that any charger I buy has to also work on the higher powered International plugs and this one does (with an appropriate wall plug adapter).
I have replaced my standard iPad white chargers with these for on the road. Yes it comes with a sync cable too. The only annoyance is the bright blue LED that lets you know it's plugged in. You know how I feel about LEDs 🙂
You can get the Dual Port USB Charger here for about $12 or here on eBay for about $12.
A standard Apple iPad charger retails for $29 (granted it does come with a long cord too).
Order it here.
The second leg of our Adobe CS 5 Evolution Tour has ended and I'm getting geared up for South America next week. I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who has participated in the tour those far. We've had a blast presenting to over 9,000 fans/customers thus far in the various regions around the world. In some cities the events were webcasted to thousands more who couldn't be there in person. The tour has been a great success thus far and I'm really looking forward to continuing it next week. Here are some highlights:
Six stops in 18 days!
This leg of the tour started off in Warsaw Poland with an amazing sold out crowd! People were literally lining the walls and sitting on the floor off to the side of the stage.
Photoshop/Camera RAW never looked so BIG!
Continue reading “Thank You Warsaw, Amsterdam, Moscow, Istanbul, Sydney & Melbourne!”
I love my Nikon D7000 DSLR camera. I hate the built-in mic. While the camera takes both great stills and high def 1080p video, the built-in microphone…well um…yeah…sucks! It's barely adequate for an interview and the 11Hz mono audio is pretty much useless for anything else. While I've been happy with my Rode VideoMic and VideoMic Pro, I was intrigued by Nikon's announcement of the NEW ME-1 Mic because of its small size. The ME-1 is about half the size of my VideoMic Pro and that makes it much better for travel. Keep in mind that my D7000 is my travel DSLR. I use it more on the road than I do at home. That means that if I'm I recording a video I'm most likely recording it on the road too. On my last international tour I had no room for the VideoMic and of course as luck would have it I had to do an impromptu video recording in Australia. The video looked great, the audio was…"meh." The whole time I was kicking myself for not bringing the VideoMic Pro. The ME-1 had shipped, but hadn't arrived before I left home to go my trip.
Note: When you plug in an mic to the Nikon D7000 you get Stereo/Mono audio at 48kHz/16bit.
One of the main features of the iPad 2 that I use the most over the iPad 1 is the ability to mirror my desktop out to a projector when doing demos. I've been using this feature extensively on my latest Adobe CS5 Evolution Tour. You can use either the original Apple VGA Adapter or the NEW Apple Digital AV (HDMI) Adapter. While this works GREAT for live presentations I also wanted to take advantage of it when recording tutorial videos or App reviews. The problem was finding a solution that allowed me to take either the VGA out or HDMI out of the iPad 2 back into my computer.
Continue reading “BlackMagic Intensity Pro: Capturing an iPad 2 Demo via HDMI Out”
I have had both friends and family members lose data over the years due to crashed hard drives. In almost all those cases they didn't have a current backup or a backup of any kind. In the case of my sister we were able to at least get her music back using a 3rd party App that allowed me to recover it from her iPod. Although Apple has allowed us to freely re-download our iOS Apps as many times as needed, iTunes music content was always a one-time download. Of course in some cases pleading your case to Apple directly would get you a special one-time re-download of all your purchased content curtesy of a caring human being at AppleCare. If this has ever happened to you, you'll be happy to know that you can now get it all back!
Yesterday Apple turned on a few of the iCloud (beta) features that allow you to grab any of your purchased Apps, Music and iBooks on any of your iOS devices. If you grab the iTunes 10.3 beta you'll be able to do the same on your Mac or PC too. Since Apple keeps a history of all your purchased music, it should all be there and available for download.
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, iOS 5, iCloud and more…
A lot of things were shown off yesterday and it will take a little time to make sense of some of it. While iOS 5 doesn't give me all the things I wanted from my wishlist, here are the things that got my attention and that I'm most excited about.
Watch the entire Apple/Steve Jobs Keynote here.
I've been an iPhone (iOS) user since 2007. Yep, that's when the 1st iPhone hit the scene. While the iPhone back then was revolutionary I still had a running list of improvements that I wanted to see. I even went back to dig up my original "50 Ways To Make The iPhone Better" post to have a look to see what was still missing today in iOS 4?The good news is that the vast majority of my original list has either been addressed via iOS updates or 3rd party Apps. Four years later I'm asking myself what do I still want? Having looked at the current iOS 4, 3rd party Apps and the Android platform, there are still a few things I'd like to see:
Why not just switch to Android completely?
I actually have an Android based tablet (Motorola Xoom) and phone (Motorola Atrix 4G). Like comparing ANY two things, there are going to be things I like in one that aren't in the other. So it's no surprise that there are things I like in the Android OS that aren't in iOS and vice versa. I have the luxury of being able to use any device I want whenever I want. Overall though (at least for now), I find iOS to have MORE things I like about it than Android. Sure, Android OS answers the majority of my list above, but I could easily come up with a list of 10, 20 or 30 things that are missing from Android OS that are currently in iOS. Not to mention a huge existing investment that I have in iOS Apps that I'd be leaving behind. Even if I were willing to leave my Apps behind, Android Market doesn't have all the same Apps or equivalents for all the Apps I use. There is NO PERFECT! Just like there are things I like even in Windows 7 over Mac OS X. I use Mac OS X most of the time because it has more things I like over Windows, but Windows 7 is only a reboot away when needed.
Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference kicks off today with news around iOS 5 as well as iCloud and maybe even some hardware announcements. It will be interesting to see how much of my remaining wish list is addressed.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAhP-yLJJ9s
Hope you're enjoying your weekend!
