G1 to iPhone is What Linux is to Mac OS

There's a nice quick comparison between the iPhone and the new Google Android powered G1 at Mashable:

G1 to iPhone is What Linux is to Mac OS: "

MLearning Case Studies

The MLearning trials at Unitec this year have mostly been going really well, particularly the Bachelor of Product Design trials. Here's a few resources overviewing these trials:




MLearning Slideshow:



MLearning Overview Workshop Notes:

http://ctliwiki.unitec.ac.nz/index.php/MlearningWorkshops

BDesign student presents Vox blogging to Certificate students

Well done Noel on a great presentation on the benefits of blogging for Product Design to the Certificate students - give that man a chocolate fish ;-)

Captured using N95 & uploaded to YouTube:

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A snippet captured via Flixwagon & forwarded to YouTube:

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Media Streaming on the iPhone

While the iPhone works great with YouTube, using the YouTube application, it does not play friendly with other Flash video sites (at least without 'jailbreaking' it!).

The iPhone dosen't support Flash video - which the main browser video versions of most web - based video sites, such as www.ted.com videos are formatted as, HOWEVER, the iphone happily plays and streams .mp4 video! So finding the .mp4 video link from sites such as www.ted.com videos actually do stream nicely OTA (Over The Air) directly to the iPhone. See screenshots below ;-)

To do this:
Browse to the video site on Safari on the iPhone. Select the 'RSS' feed links on the iPhone, you can then stream OTA .mp4 video or audio directly from sites like www.ted.com. The iPhone uses an online feed reader to do the conversion for it: http://reader.mac.com, which then displays a Quicktime plugin icon, selecting this icon will then stream the audio or video directly OTA to the iPhone YAY!

Be aware that streaming media does not store it on the iPhone - if you want to watch/listen more than once, it's best to use the iTunes links on your PC to download the video/audio to iTunes on your PC, then sync the downloaded files to your iPhone for offline viewing!

The "Myth" of the cost of Mobile Web2

We had an interesting interjection in our Mobile Web2 presentation at eFest - claiming SMS is cheaper and does 90% of what we can achieve via Mobile Web2!

Sadly this miss-information is rife! Lets bury that myth right now!

1. SMS is NOT a media rich, collaborative, user content creation tool! Mobile Web2 is!

2. Costing 20c($0.2NZ) per 160 character message, it is the equivalent of the minimum 3G data, which is charged per kilobyte or part thereof.

Casual 3G data now costs $1NZ for a 10MB per day 'data cap' ($1 per MB thereafter) - soooo, for the same price of 5 x SMS messages (approx 5kb) you get 10MB of rich media using casual web2!!!
OR, to get the equivalent data in SMS messages, it would cost 10000 x $0.2 = $2000NZ. HHhmmmm - who's being more cost effective now!

New iPods and 2.1 iPhone update

iPod receives speaker and headset with microphone and voice recording application - so now you can create multimedia content with the iPod. However I'm disappointed the iPod didn't get updated with a camera as well!

There's also some cool wireless MIDI controller apps available for iPod Touch & iPhone from Silicon Studios - MIDI Controller apps.

IPhone 2.1 solves looong sync times - YAY!

also discovered some NZ developed iPod/iPhone apps by ORSOME.

Check them out at the app store.

Thom

Flixwagon

Quite impressed with how easy it is to get Flixwagon video streaming going on the N95.
Flixwagon allows you to broadcast live video from your cameraphone to the Internet, and saves it for later editing and sharing. WHY? you may ask - particularly as the N95 takes such great video on the device itself, that can then be uploaded in a multitude of ways to the Internet later?
Reasons I see are:

1. Save memory space on your memory card - video is streamed directly to the Internet, and not permanently stored on your memory card (This is also a downside if you want the higher quality original version later!).

2. Flixwagon provides a direct upload link to YouTube - so you don't need to send your video to YouTube later - it will go there automatically (note - this only works for 'public' video streams).

3. If you have a 'jailbroken' iPhone you can record and save/share video!!!

My first example:

Live mobile broadcasting by Flixwagon. First try using Flixwagon on N95 and 3G streaming, with direct upload to YouTube as well. Obviously some practice needed - including turning camera on first!



YouTube Version