Which streaming media device is right for you? –– from CNET.com by John Falcone
There are more ways than ever to stream Netflix and other online services. But which device is best for you?
What’s the best iPad streaming music app? MOG’s new iPad app vs Rdio vs Spotify — from techcrunch.com by Josh Constine
Living on a stream: The rise of real-time video — from epicenter.com by Steven Levy
From DSC:
Arguably, Sal Kahn has become the most famous, influential educator on the planet today — his videos are watched millions of times a day now. The question — which Eric Schmidt answers in the piece — I couldn’t help but ask was, “Why didn’t this type of innovation come from someone who was working in education at the time of their innovation?”
My thanks to Dr. Kate Byerwalter and her colleagues for passing along this resource.
The tags/associated categories for this posting point out the relevant areas covered.
Also see:
From DSC:
A relevant graphic comes to mind with what Sal is trying to achieve with analytics:
i.e. Highly-effective diagnostic tools for the educators and trainers out there!
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Addendum on 3/16/12:
Apple announces iPad 3, upgrades to Apple TV, new software – March 7, 2012
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Also see:
Google to Launch TV Service — from Mashable.com by Todd Wasserman
100 million Americans watch online video every day — from sitetrail.com by Anthony West
How to build 50,000 new colleges — from Forbes.com by Michael Horn
Excerpt (with emphasis by DSC):
What this points to is disruption using the technology enabler of online learning. As the article says, “This means that India is not just trying to build thousands of American-style campuses with neat quads. Many of its new schools will be virtual, for-profit, and integrated closely with workplaces. It may, in fact, end up pushing the concept of online education further than any other country. As a result, what India comes up with will not only affect its economic competitiveness in the 21st century. It may become a petri dish for how to build an educational system in the Information Age.”
There is another dynamic pushing India to innovate in and improve online learning in some dramatic ways. According to the article, new schools face shortages of land and instructors. As a result of the first, constructing big campuses to fill the education gap is likely a non-starter. Online learning is critical. As for the second—the system is short roughly 1 million teachers the article says—this means that the country will almost certainly have to push the bounds of today’s online learning systems so that it can scale the impact of great teachers and built robust digital learning systems that embrace adaptive learning and other such advances. Given these pressures, the innovations that emerge from India could be stunning.
Per Benoît Morel:
We just launched a new release of Living Actor™ Presenter, a 100% online tool that generates video animations from an audio or text file, automatically animating a high quality 3D full body avatar. This new version is more powerful, offers more multimedia, and is faster to use.
New report on HTML video — from JISC
Excerpt:
The development of an open, universally adopted standard for web video has long been the holy grail for web developers and anyone interested in hosting and distributing video themselves – certainly since Apple dropped Flash support in 2010 for some of its products1. In this search the video element of HTML5 (the latest revision of HTML – currently under development) is seen by many as the answer together with the adoption of at least one video format that is playable on all browsers. However, a new report from LongTail Video, the people behind the popular web video player – JWPlayer – indicates that agreement on this standard remains some way off.
Also see:
Via: OnlineEducation.net
From DSC:
Some items that caught my eye (so far) from CES 2012:
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Dragon TV – Now at your service — from Nuance.com
Excerpt:
Finding ‘what’s on’ television – not the easiest experience with today’s expansive channel options and a non-intuitive means for searching for what you want. Click, click, click, click until you just give up!
Those days are now over thanks to Dragon TV! Just tell Dragon TV what you want to watch and it delivers it instantly! Really, it’s that simple.
Just say…
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Also see:
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A cloud-based video editing platform that allows you to create, collaborate and share video-based stories.
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Also see –> projeqt.com
Video on the web — from DiveIntoHTML5.com
Excerpt:
Anyone who has visited YouTube.com in the past four years knows that you can embed video in a web page. But prior to HTML5, there was no standards-based way to do this. Virtually all the video you’ve ever watched “on the web” has been funneled through a third-party plugin — maybe QuickTime, maybe RealPlayer, maybe Flash. (YouTube uses Flash.) These plugins integrate with your browser well enough that you may not even be aware that you’re using them. That is, until you try to watch a video on a platform that doesn’t support that plugin.
HTML5 defines a standard way to embed video in a web page, using a <video> element. Support for the <video> element is still evolving, which is a polite way of saying it doesn’t work yet. At least, it doesn’t work everywhere. But don’t despair! There are alternatives and fallbacks and options galore.
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Professor Markup Says
There is no single combination of containers and codecs that works in all HTML5 browsers. This is not likely to change in the near future. To make your video watchable across all of these devices and platforms, you’re going to need to encode your video more than once.
For maximum compatibility, here’s what your video workflow will look like:
- Make one version that uses WebM (VP8 + Vorbis).
- Make another version that uses H.264 baseline video and AAC “low complexity” audio in an MP4 container.
- Make another version that uses Theora video and Vorbis audio in an Ogg container.
- Link to all three video files from a single
<video>element, and fall back to a Flash-based video player.
