I’ve been waiting to hear some news on the success or lack thereof in Duke’s highly publicized “Freshman iPod Giveaway.” There are some contradicitory statements in this story. It opens with the statement: Brock Read reports that the project had limited instructional merit followed by: The university’s report revealed that 75 percent of the freshmen surveyed said they used their iPods for either in-class activities or independent work in at least one course. Almost 50 courses, with a total enrollment of 1,200 students, made some use of the technology. That sounds like a pretty resounding success to me for a…
iPod ownership is true bliss.
My wonderful musical collaborator (who must remain a mystery to all but my closest confidants) just sent a wonderful gift – the iPod I’ve always wanted, but always hesitated to get for myself. It’ll be a great companion for my trip to England in August, where I’ll be attending the International Council For Traditional Music conference. I put together about 20 hours worth of music and audio (such as the Pimsleur Beginning Irish course), and it still only filled up a bit over a gigabyte of the 20 gig hard drive. Wow. I need to get some Daily Source Code,…
I am now a happy former cell phone owner.
I signed up for Verizon Wireless a bit over two years ago in preparation for a trip to Oklahoma. My wife and I were going to attend our son’s graduation from Army boot camp, and against my better judgement, I gave it to the little voice that kept telling me “just do it!” I have to admit that there have been occasions that it came in handy, but more often than not it wasn’t worth the hassle. It barely worked at our home – I had to go outside and stand on our l?nai (porch) in order to use it.…
NahenaheNet Podcast #001!
I just did my first official podcast on Nahenahe. I’m so happy that Manila now automatically handles the RSS and enclosure elements, and it showed up on audio.weblogs.com. Sweet! Let’s see if I have the energy and can find enough content to keep up to my desired goal of making the podcast a weekly feature.
Instant Immersion Hawaiian wins an Audie from the Audio Publishers Association.
This audio course features the voices of my friends and colleagues Kaliko Beamer-Trapp and Kiele Akana-Gooch. Bill Clinton’s memoir, “My Life,” won the coveted Audiobook of the Year award, and was narrated by Clinton himself. “Instant Immersion Hawaiian” won a special Judges’ Award for language learning titles. It is available as an Audio CD format, and a Deluxe version.
Taking the plunge into podcasting.
I’ve always prided myself on being fairly quick to adopt new technologies on the web, but have lagged behind when it comes to podcasting. While I had some doubts regarding it’s popularity and future, my main fear was that it would simply become time and resource strain. After a long period of reflection and discussion with some friends, I’ve decided to start producing a podcast covering the music and music industry of Hawai’i. The first show should hit the podosphere this Sunday.
The Intel is coming!
As always, Scott offers his unique insight into the impending violation of the Macintosh motherboard by Intel chips. I actually chatted with a buddy via iChat as he was using one of the Intel-powered Macs running at WWDC, and he was blown away by the performance. Actually, Scott’s right – it’s just a chip. All the end user cares about is cost and performance. Developers who do machine code might get religious about the chipset choice, but most who program in higher-level languages probably won’t care much one way or the other.
WWDC: Freedom of architecture
Like many Macintosh afficionados, I’ve been following the developments at Apple’s World-Wide Developer Conference as reported in the blogosphere. It’s funny that the most talked about development is Apple’s impending move away from Motorola’s PowerPC chips to Intel’s x86 chips. The possibility has been discussed for years, and for that reason many did not believe the rumors until they were actually confirmed by Steve Jobs. He finally acknowledged what had also been rumored for years – that Apple had been secretly running OS X on an x86 chipset since Mac OS X 10.0 shipped. My favorite quote is from my…
Another year, another renewal.
I went through my annual ritual of debating whether or not to renew my Radio Userland license, and in the end opted to do so. I can’t remember the last time there was a major update or new feature that I had to have, but it’s still the coolest, geekiest blogging tool out there. It’s worth it just for the website hosting, comment and trackback features they provide – just a little over $3 a month. I just looked at the calendar and see how long it’s been since I’ve posted. Been really busy, end of the semester cleanup, and…
Happy Birthday, Dave!
I’d like to offer my best wishes for a Hau’oli L? Piha Makahiki Kanalima (Happy 50th Birthday) to Dave Winer. We’ve never met face-to-face but I can’t think of anyone who has been more influential in the work that I do from the technology standpoint. I’ve been using Frontier and its related tools for nearly 10 years now, and use them almost exclusively for all my websites, weblogs and related projects. One of these years I will make it to one of those geek/blogger dinners.