You can live larger than life... just not death.

- Denny Crane to Allan Shore, Boston Legal

Lostify

If you are an educator trying to build a media library, a frustrating task can be batch changing the tags of a large number of videos that you have ripped from your DVD collection (for example, setting the information for title, video kind, genre, season, etc.). DougScripts has an AppleScript solution, currently called "Set Video Kind of Selected (v3.1)" or the more complete "Make Video Tags" (URLs may change). While these can work well, if painfully slowly, they periodically start timing out with a error messages. This may be function of a huge iTunes library, or some other issue with your Mac configuration, or user error, or... Just be warned: your mileage may vary.

The interface is simple and access is iTunes integrated in the Scripts menu item. Given its great price-point - namely free with donations accepted - it's definitely worth the first shot.

If this solution fails, another option is "Lostify" - as suggested by Doug Adams (of Dougsripts.com, not of Hitchhiker's fame) - written by Lowell Stewart. This option has yet to hang on an error message, and is highly recommended. It is also free.

Tags able to be modified:

Options for modifying the file, and adding to iTunes:

Simply launch Lostify, go to the File menu, and open the file(s) you need to modify.

One day, Apple will likely "adopt" these great ideas into iTunes itself. Until then, many thanks to Doug Adams and Lowell Stewart, who deserve many a round on the house from grateful iTunes users.

SoundSoap is an indispensable piece of software for the podcaster.

As brilliant, simple, and intuitive an interface as it is, save yourself frustration and take a little time to watch the video tutorial.

Spielberg, it may not be, but how many times has "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" really helped in post on your podcast?

It could be worse: I could be telling you to read the "Read Me", but, don't worry, even I have limits.

Scholastic has just released the 2008 Kids & Family Reading Report, and as much as the clear self-interests of Scholastic in funding this research have to be taken into account, the report makes some interesting findings with implications for teachers interested in technology integration:

• a majority of children think it is important to read for pleasure (68%)
• pleasure reading of books drops off steadily after the age of 8
• 2/3 prefer to read a physical book than read on a digital screen
• high frequency internet users are more likely to read books for fun every day
• 2/3 of children went online to find out more information regarding physical books they were reading
• parents who read frequently are 6 times more likely to have children that read often
• mothers read more, and recommend books more effectively, for their children than fathers

While these findings should be taken with a grain of salt, it seems that a big take-away for educators is that digital technology and book technology can work in synergy for a coordinated approach to developing children's literacy, and that the older a child gets, the more important digital information skills become.

"Advanced iPhone" will be a course coming to a high school near you.

Notice anything familiar about this disc?

The Zoopraxiscope was invented by Eadweard Muybridge around 1879. Like the much beloved, and oft-fogotten, thaumatrope, it was one of the forerunners of today's film and video industry - it has, in fact, been considered the first movie projector. Interestingly, however, a Zoopraxiscope disc itself would not look too much out of place on your DVD or CD shelf today.

Played, the disc would give you a film of a couple of seconds' length. Each and every film made was an epic, no doubt. Although, in all fairness, it would be reasonable to admit that character development may not be a strength of the Zoopraxiscope.

Unlike so many pundits discussing the proposed bill C-61 in Canada, who are all philistines and short-sightedly and small-mindedly scathing in their criticism of the bill, I am proposing taking this unquestionably brilliant piece of legislation further.

Bill C-61 should be extended. We need to ban all media and communications technology... other than the Zoopraxiscope!

Think of the benefits of this strengthened legislation:

1) Saving the Zoopraxiscope industry. Speaking plainly, Zoopraxiscopes have been losing market share for about 130 years. Why force a distribution model to change once it has has already been invented?
2) A renaissance of the record store. To watch a film of an hour and a half, you'd have to purchase approximately 2,700 Zoopraxiscope discs. Yes, it is slightly more convenient to download a movie, but this is not about convenience. It's clearly about something else.
3) With no internet(s), computers, video cameras, or any other digital technology, DRM would be redundant. We could put razor-wire, armed guards, attack dogs and mined fields around the Zoopraxiscope plants to make sure no one broke in and printed 2,700 disc pirated bootlegs late at night, and we could reinstate the death penalty, applying it to teenagers caught sharing the discs among themselves.

It's a win, win, win situation!

Unlike the current version of C-61, the Zoopraxiscope modification of this legislation would truly be, in the words of Industry Minister Jim Prentice, "a made-in-Canada approach that balances the needs of Canadian consumers and copyright owners, promoting culture, innovation and competition in the digital age."

(*Zoopraxiscope images from WIkipedia, under Creative Commons License.)

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

--Elvis Costello