The Professor's Notes

I just posted this morning about the Kodak Zi8 HD Pocket Video Camera and the fact that you cannot buy one anywhere, nationwide.  Oh, and Best Buy has chosen to increase the price to $209 per unit, even when Kodak is still offering it at $179.

I decided you might be interested in a review of the device as well.

Based on the use from my friend and colleague, the choice of the Kodak was an overwhelming success.  Starting with the bottom line from a very personal assessment, his daughter, who has used both the Flip cameras and now the zi8, has asked to take his camera when she goes places.  Her opinion is that it is superior.

Now, on to the features.

My friend liked that it has a flip-out USB connector, and that it can charge both with a charger and through the computer via the USB connector.  He also liked the HD resolution (1080p) and the quality of the audio.  The built in audio isn’t “the best” but it was “good enough” for most personal use.  As I mentioned before, he then combined it with the Zoom H2 Handy Portable Stereo Recorder combining outstanding video with high quality stereo audio.

Other features that were “cool” included the image stabilization built in, and the face tracking, although the face tracking feature wasn’t tested very heavily (yet.)

Now the device isn’t without flaws.  The zoom on the camera is digital, and the quality falls off rather quickly.  In addition the memory that comes with the camera is paltry at best.  His recommendation? Get the SD card with it at the time of purchase.  Get a large enough SD card, and you can record up to 10 hours of video.

The low light image quality was “okay” and sufficient for family videos.

I hope to get my hands on one myself, sometime in the near future (did you check my Wishlist on the right side of the blog? Anyone want to order me one?)  When I get my hands on one, I promise to put it through its paces testing all the features.  With my love of outdoor photography, and constant video work in swim meets and water polo matches I hope to get lots of opportunities to test.

UPDATED: 11 Jun 2009.  They have actually added a “view all on one page” feature. Go Amazon!

A couple posts back I noted an email where Amazon announced they are giving web access to the clippings and notes that you make in your Kindle when reading.  And as you will recall, I believe the highlighting/notes feature is the best “game changing” feature of the Kindle so I was anxious to see what they have done.  I have since logged on to the site, and given it a test drive.

I must say I am not all that impressed.

When you first log on you get a listing of the books you have purchased, called a “reading list.”  (See graphic below) Read the rest of this entry »

As I  mentioned in the previous post, my favorite feature of the Kindle is the ability to highlight sections of the text, add notations, and then use those clippings.  I wrote then:

With the Kindle I can highlight sections of the text, for later searching or referencing, and I can add my own personal notations to that text.  Think of it as “digital margin writing.”

What makes this remarkable for me is that it has actual made highlighting accessible–even more than with paper books.  Have you ever highlighted text, and perhaps written some thoughts in the margin, only to not be able to find it later?  Or at least not find it without considerable searching?  This set of features actually makes the marking, and retrieval, of text easy, and quick–and with the myclippings.txt file, quoting and citing texts are made simpler.

I thought I would write a little bit about how that works, and share a few screen captures to show just how convenient it can be. Read the rest of this entry »

Today I had to take one of my cars to the dealer for the state inspection.  As usual, I took my Kindle
to read while I waited, and as usual, I also found good conversation among my compatriots.  While I was twittering awayI was asked how I liked that.  Which that I asked (I  had the iPhone and the Kindle out!)  Admittedly the answer is the same regardless–I love ‘em!  “The Kindle” she said.

Well, I do love the Kindle.  In fact, I have it linked on the right here in the “recommended” widget for people to find, and buy.  I decided perhaps it was time for me to share my thoughts on the Kindle, now that has been out for a year. Read the rest of this entry »

My eldest daughter gave me the book “Fooled by Randomness” Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and I have enjoyed reading it “so far.”

The premise of the book is that life is “random” or at least in large partt driven by likelihoods and probabilities.  Those of you that actually know me, know that I appreciate the random nature of life, and that I believe no outcome is “certain.”  Even knowing that, intellectually, I find myself reflecting on the various lessons in this book, particularly after my recent automobile accident.  In that accident, I started second guessing my decisions.  What if I had gone to Home Depot first?  What if I had decided to go back to the main road to get between stores?  What if I had waited a few seconds before leaving Lowe’s?  What if I hadn’t asked for help, and had left Lowe’s 2 minutes earlier?

The timing of receiving the book (and reading it) helped my put all this in perspective.  All those decision points, and actions arising from those points, are what quatum physicists would call “alternative realities” (and some would tell you they all occured, in parallel universes!)  But there is little one can do to control the outcome.

According to this book (at least, up to my current point in reading it) we see patterns in most things, after the fact.  We play an elaborate game of connect the dots, to make “sense” out of what happened.  We ignore the role of chance, the importance of sheer “randomness” in the events.  The author writes:

Past events will always look less random than they  were (it is called the hindsight bias). I would listen to  someone’s discussion of his own past realizing that  much of what he was saying was just backfit  explanations concocted ex post by his deluded mind.

I realize that, in some way, (perhaps some warped way) I am taking solice in the fact that the accident was just a statistical probability that for some reason, on Thursday, decided to “realize” itself on the side of my car. BAM!

Now, that said, the book also plays a role in explaining the importance of “managing” randomness.  In the book, the author discusses a man, Nero who, as a trader in Chicago, learned early on to play the “game” of moderation.  Nero (being a statistician by education) understood the role of probability even in the market, and understood even better the impact of the “statistically rare event” or what the author calls “The Black Swan.” (He then later writes a longer book on this topic “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable — This one is on my shelf and will be next in my reading queue).

According to Taleb, Nero chose to limit his gains by not seeking the high rewards, because those carry with them the greatest risk, in the event of the “statistically unlikely” black swan. In my accident, Honda helped moderate the risks by providing side curtain and seat-embedded airbags.  We were t-boned, but my wife (sitting on the side that got hit) doesn’t have a single scratch and given the extent of the damage to the door, we believe the airbags protected her.

These are the sorts of things that we teach our students in decision analysis.  Assess the probable outcomes, and the likelihood of the event.  Understand the possible gains and losses.  Then make your decisions based not on the certainty of your ability (flawed) but on your knowledge of the impact of randomness.

This book arrives at just the right time to console me, to remind me that sometimes “stuff happens” and it’s just random.  Accept it, acknowledge it, and plan as best you can.  It’s a great read, and I highly recommend it to all.  But it leaves me with this question:  If it’s arrival was truly at “just the right time” –

Was it’s arrival… Random?

Here is the screenshot taken (using that new, cool iPhone feature.)  As you can see the charging feature of my accessory is not supported.  In this case, the accessory is an Altec-Lansing InMotion portable player.

You can get a quick look at my other apps downloaded, including my son’s favorite, PhoneSabre.

I would like to take a second and point out just how “Cool” Jott is.  On the iPhone (top left app) it turns your voice into typed text for notes or a todo list.  But it is “so much more.”  Once you create a free account on their site, you can call their phone number, and when you leave your short voice messages it converts them to text, and emails and text messages your note to whatever number/person you have put on the system.  It sends text only in the txt message but the email actually includes your voice recording.

Way Cool

UPDATE, 13 Dec 2009: I have found a couple adapters that will enable the newer iPhones to work with the older accessories.  Go check out http://theprofessornotes.com/archives/770

Okay, I did it. I bought a 3G iPhone.  And I like it.  I really do.  But it would be nice it if would also charge using the existing iPod/iPhone accessories.  I have several, including a car charger that works with all my previous versions of iPod/iPhones, but find that when I connect the 3G phone to them I am presented with a message that the new phone will not charge with that accessory.  (The players will still play music, however.)

It seems odd to me.  The connector still fits.  Old USB cables still work with the computer for data and power.  The older accessories can still play the music.  It’s just this darned power problem.

I will have more reviews later, especially of my favorite free apps, including Apple’s “Remote.”  Until then, I anxiously await ideas for chargers.

Thanks go to the folks at the applephoneshow.com for a great find! I have been asked if I know of a program that would convert text files, or better yet PDF files, to speech. Unfortunately, my answer was always “no.”

Until today.

While perusing the latest musings of the iPhone Fanboys/girls, I came across this post. It provided the link that I had been waiting for! At nextup.com you can download “TextAloud,” a windows program that will not only read text files to you, but can also save them as either wav files or mp3 files. Just think–you can now take your articles with you and listen to them while doing those other routine parts of life that take so much time away.

I have already downloaded the demo version, and tested it out. I find it to be a rather quick conversion (but not instantaneous–hey, this is tough work!) and there are several options that allow the user to configure the playback in a way that fits how they would want to listen. For instance, you can configure the time for the program to pause between sentences, and paragraphs. You can select from two voices (male and female) in the demo version, and once purchased, have the option for other (apparently “better”) voices.

So how do I envision using this?

• Listen to academic articles during my long drives
• Provide audio versions of my own articles for students, available as podcasts
• convert quotes from documents for reference during my podcasts so listeners don’t have to listen to my voice

So, dear readers, how do you think YOU might use this?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

As many of you know, I have had my run-ins with US Airways. The stories continue to pour in from friends and family about the evils of USAirways and the way they handle customers. Fortunately I had an experience that led me to conclude all is not lost in the airline industry.

I flew last week on American Airlines, to St Louis. As you may recall, St Louis was the hub for TWA, which was acquired by American. Despite that, I had a connecting flight out, and back, through Chicago. Every connection is an opportunity for an airline to have problems, and rise, or fall, on the opportunities to deliver customer service.

American Airlines rose.

On the outbound leg, I arrived in Chicago 20 minutes early, and the jovial command pilot asked that we bank it–so next time they run late we can “give it back.” Good humor. Ultimately I arrived on time in St Louis and when I talked to the staff about seating arrangements they were ever congenial.

The return leg was  a bit more problematic.  I arrived at the airport several hours in advance, but unfortunately the airplanes weren’t cooperative.  The flights to Chicago were being shifted back by one flgith schedule each.  My 6:30 departure had turned into a 7:45 departure with an arrival at the same time as my connecting flight.  The customer service line was quite long, but everyone in line was fairly positive.  When I got to the ticket counter the gentleman asked me what I needed.  I responded with “I need to be at [destination] by midnight.”

Guess what? He did it.  He moved me on to the earlier flight, and ensured that my connection wasn’t going to be a “miss.” He even looked, and was able to accommodate my desire to have an aisle seat.  Being 6′2″ I need the legroom.

Of course, problems tend to pile up.  I arrived at Chicago and found that not only was my final flight delayed,  but there were extended delays on the ramp.  Every step of the way the entire American Airlines team made sure that every passenger felt special, and that they knew that each passenger had requirements that they needed to meet as a service provider.  My final arrival was 1 am, later than I had hoped given a two hour drive that followed, but I arrived safely, and well cared for.

I had a choice, and I chose American.  I chose to not fly with US Airways.  I will make the same decision again.

It’s time for a techno-geek update.  As you know, I record not only podcasts for this site, but also several other podcasts.  One aspect of my podcasting is recording my lectures so that the students can go and review the material again at their own pace, in their own time.  I had originally started with the Griffin iTalk (no longer available) and my 60 gig Photo iPod (also no longer available).  I had issues with sound quality and a “skipping” and “repeating” when it recorded.  So, I moved on.

The university graciously provided me with a 30 gb iPod video, and the XTreme Mac MicroMemo. The quality was quite good, but unfortunately the iPod dock connector is not designed for rigorous use riding in my shirt pocket, while bouncing around the front of a classroom lecturing.  In addition, the battery would last only for about 2 hours between charges, so it was not a good solution for back to back lectures.  So another solution was required.

My brother had recently purchase, on the advice of Scott Bourne (of applephoneshow.com fame among others) a SamsonTech ZOOM H4 Handy Recorder.  After listening to him talk about the features, I made the plunge, and purchased one for myself, along with an Audio-Technica lapel microphone.  So far, I have decided this is “the best” solution, and I would recommend this to most anyone, with only a few reservations and caveats.

The H4 is quite powerful and I encourage all of you interested in such things to go read the specs.  While it’s appearance (see below) can lead one to suspect a tazer and not a recorder, it is quite useful as a standalone recorder, or with  microphones.  The two built-in microphones are quite good to this layman’s hearing, and have that angle to them so as to record true stereo sound.  I used the standalone feature to record audioscapes during my recent trip to Monterey CA, and perhaps will post an “audio adventure” podcast, for those interested.  At the bottom of the recorder the astute observer will notice two black round “circles” that are actually inputs for microphones.  This ingenious design will allow for both Phono jack connectors and the XLR connectors for microphones.  One can record up to four tracks, overlaying one track while listening to the others.  Not useful for lectures, but I can see how musicians can fall in love with this portable mixer!  On top of all these cool features it runs on 2 AA batteries and they last over 4 hours–more than enough for the stresses of my lectures!  Oh–and did I mention it stores your recordings on removable SD cards, so that you can choose the size storage you want, and can easily swap it out for additional storage.

So how did I get all this to work?  Well, first the lavalier microphone has a powerbox that clips to the belt, and the XLR cable connects into that box.  The XLR cable then will plug in to the H4 and I am off and running!  Sort of.  The shortest XLR cable I have found was 3 feet, which meant I had an audio cable belt, so I cut it in half, and created my own, shorter cable.  Once I worked that out, I was off!  I recorded initially as “track 1″ and found that it quite easily recorded my lectures.  The only drawback here is when recording as tracks one is not given the option to trade quality for recording time.  That is, I could only record as a .wav file, and not as an mp3 file.   Easily fixed.  I record as one channel of stereo, and when I bring it in to my audio editor, I just restore it to Mono.

Drawbacks?  Well, some are little inconveniences and nothing is a real showstopper.   The H4 isn’t designed to be worn, so unfortunately it doesn’t come with a belt clip.  I would love to see that as an optional accessory.  For now, I shove it into my pants pocket.  That’s not a real “flaw” as much as a merchandising opportunity.  Also, I haven’t been able to figure out if I can set the date/time stamp for the files.  I am not sure that one can, but this leads to another problem–the menu.  There are several different context sensitive menus which are fairly easy to navigate, but you have to work a combination of the joystick style button on the front, and the selection wheel on the side of the unit.  This can get confusing, especially when the joystick also can be used to serve other functions as well.  Finally, as I mentioned, I would like to be able to select .mp3 format when recording tracks.  I suspect that the designers assumed users of that mode would want the highest quality possible, but they shouldn’t overlook other possible reasons to record a mono track.  Obviously the CODEC is there, so this should be an easily modified feature.

Overall, it is a great product, and an absolute joy to have when travelling.  I will be conducing my first formal interview using it in a few weeks, so hopefully I can have more thoughts on this product in the near future.

The Prof

PS:  I should be receiving a Zoom H2 soon, and will be posting my review of the unit soon thereafter.  It looks like a great unit, and apparently others agree.   I am told there is a backorder in the 10’s of thousands for this unit.  So, go check out the specs.