Thursday, April 18, 2024

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Outline: The Education Apple - episode 20


“The show that discusses Apple technology in the formal Classroom as well as in the classroom of our daily lives”


1. The Cast

  • Barrett Mosbacker, Superintendent of Briarwood Christian School, publisher Christian School Journal

  • Bill Brazeal, Technical Architect, Technology Specialist and Principal - ezNet Solutions


2. Technology Review

  • CEO Exit Sets Microsoft on New Path

    • Surprise Announcement

    • When announced stock jumped 7%

    • He has been there for 30 years

    • Windows powers 305 million pcs and servers

    • But just 15% of all computing devices (pcs, smartphones, tablets etc)

    • Big competition from Apple and Google among others

    • Average pace of sales equals $150,000 of sales every minute

    • Almost all of profit comes from Windows, Office, and related back-end server software

    • Xbox and Bing either unprofitable or only marginally so

    • Opportunity for someone to bring a fresh approach to leading the company

    • Some say only Bill Gates could turn the company around

    • Only 7% of Samsung's mobile customers moved across from using an iPhone

    • Samsung drew more first-time smartphone buyers upgrading from basic cell phones (37%) than Apple did (26%)

    • Among buyers who switched brands, Apple took three times as many from Samsung (33%) as Samsung took from Apple (11%)

    • Good news for Apple is that their brand loyalty continues to be pretty high

  • Nike FuelBand developer Jay Blahnik goes to Apple

    • Nike FuelBand - Fitness tracking band that you wear around your wrist; similar to a watch

    • It displays and keeps track of your activity throughout the day, and you earn “Fuel” points, It can also show the time, steps taken, and calories burned in a day.

    • The iWatch has been rumored for quite a while now

    • Some of the rumors include that it will have a 1.5″ display

    • Run some form of iOS (at this point, probably iOS 7.x)

    • Will be able to connect to your iPhone, most likely via Bluetooth

    • Samsung is also rumored to be working on a smartwatch dubbed the Galaxy Gear

    • Pebble already available

  • Flickr for iOS receives filters, pro editing tools

    • Flickr mobile app not only introduces new filters, but also live filters

    • Many of the app's new features were gleaned from its acquisition of GhostBird Software

    • You can customize your filters to get the exact effects you're looking for

    • New camera tools - Perfectly compose your shots with numerous grids, pinch to zoom and the ability to lock your focus and exposure points

    • Professional editing tools - The editing tools you usually pay for are now free - Enhance, crop, sharpen, adjust color, use levels, add vignettes and more

Follow-up Category

  • Indie no-go: only one in ten projects gets fully funded on Kickstarter's biggest rival

    • Shine wearable activity tracking device

    • Indiegogo was founded in 2007; Kickstarter didn’t come along until 2009

    • Indiegogo has hosted 1.3 times as many completed projects as Kickstarter

    • Biggest blockbuster crowdfunding hits — the Pebble smartwatch, the Veronica Mars movie, the Ouya gaming console — have all been on funded on Kickstarter

    • Out of 142,301 projects that have ended on Indiegogo, only 9.3 percent raised 100 percent of their goals or higher

    • Kickstarter - about 44 percent of projects meet their funding goals

    • Indegogo - underfunded projects still can come to fruition, and underfunded creators who choose to cash in are still supposed to fulfill the rewards promised to backers

    • Indiegogo does incentivize creators to hit their goals by adding a penalty for projects that fall short. If you reach your goal, Indiegogo takes a 4 percent cut; if you don’t, the fee jumps to 9 percent

    • 80 percent of Indiegogo projects fail to raise more than just a quarter of their goal

    • Indiegogo has very loose rules compared to Kickstarter and so it picks up a lot of poorly designed projects doomed from the start

    • In the crowdfunding world, Kickstarter has been compared to Apple: closed, curated, and high-quality

    • Kickstarter - strict guidelines, which include bans on raising money for charitable causes, nutritional supplements, beauty products, or social networking apps, among others. (The latest dictum says creators cannot offer genetically modified organisms as a reward.)


3. Briarwood School iPad Phase 2

  • Rolled out 300 iPads

  • Parents and students raving, no complaints

  • Helped a nearly blind students

  • Teachers discovering new uses and are becoming increasingly creative

  • Two snags initially:

    • VPN

    • Edmodo


4. Apps and Followings


  • Bill -

    • App pick (Editorial) - A plain text editor for the iPad with powerful automation tools and a beautiful inline preview for writing Markdown

      • Inline Markdown Preview – You can always swipe left to switch to a full HTML preview.

      • Extensible with Workflows – Almost 50 configurable actions can be combined into powerful workflows for extending Editorial's feature set

      • Scriptable with Python – You can also integrate scripts into your workflows for even more advanced automation

      • Sync with Dropbox – You can store your documents in a configurable Dropbox folder, and even view comparisons with older versions to see the progress you've made

      • Smart Keyboard – The extended keyboard was specifically designed for writing Markdown and includes all the special characters you need

      • In-App Browser – If you need to do some quick research while writing, you don't have to leave the app for that

    • Twitter pick (@applespotlight) - All things Apple, San Francisco

5. Wrap up and closing remarks...


Don’t forget to follow us on the Internet

Bill: Twitter - @billbrazeal         Web - http://billbrazeal.com


Barrett: Twitter - @BMosbacker

Blog:  Christian School Journal http://christianschooljournal.com/


Thanks for listening in, be sure to tell your friends, watch for our next episode coming in several weeks.