Honey Tech

It is really exciting to see how companies can work together to bring their technologies to the marketplace. XMind has been working closely with Context Discovery to bring summarization tools to their mind mapping application. I have to give credit to XMind for thinking outside of the box and giving prospective users the ability to quickly summarize information right from within XMind Pro. The integration is seamless and now this new feature gives users the opportunity to summarize key words as well as websites based on the URL. The Websummarizer plug-in is tightly integrated into XMind and delivers fast and efficient summaries of information sitting in Wikipedia. Websummarizer can be used with the following languages: English, French, German, and Spanish. I have created a short video to show you how XMind has integrated the Websummarizer into their mind mapping application. Your feedback and comments are welcome.

It has been a long and tough week since our power went out last week due to Hurricane Sandy. My wife and I have been staying with family members who have had their power restored which can be a little disorienting- especially when your routine has been drastically altered. The college where I teach will be closed through Tuesday and hopefully I will get back the power before that- but who knows. Sandy has been devastating to our New Jersey towns! Trees are down all of the place and power lines are mangled and  strewn about. Being displayed in the season of the general elections is a real problem for many people and recently our Governor announced that we would be able to vote via email or fax as long as we can get the Vote by Mail Ballot to the County Clerk's Office. With this in mind I set off to download the Vote by Mail Ballot from the website which I was able to save as a PDF file. Now how would I get a good looking signature on the ballot? Actually it was quite ...

This semester I have had the opportunity to teach an online class for one student that needed the course to graduate. Fortunately for me, I have had access to Adobe Presenter 8 and Moodle to teach and thought that it would be a great way for me to deliver the course to my student. We are now half way through the semester and using these tools has made it easy for me to deliver learning modules to my student that he is able to work through. The beauty of using Adobe Presenter 8 is that I have plenty of PowerPoint presentations that I have done over the years which I have been able to convert to learning modules. Having access to the features found in Adobe Presenter 8 has allowed me to add video, audio as well as quizzes to my modules which really has enhanced the learning experience for my student. Adobe Presenter 8 is great at wrapping up your PowerPoint presentation and delivering them as a stand alone eLearning asset. One of the features t...

Created with Livescribe SKY WiFi Smartpen

It has been a difficult couple of days since Hurricane Sandy came through New Jersey. Being without power, heat, and running water has been a challenge. We are spending some time with our cousins in Pennsylvania which has been really great. When I left my home I decided to take my iPad and Apple Wireless keyboard to help me do some work and keep in touch with family and friends. Having access to wifi and Facebook has really come in handy during this challenging time. One of the downfalls of the iPad is that there are still some sites that require the Flash plug-in which will not render on an iPad. In any case, I have been using iSwifter Browser which supports Flash which has really worked well. Using iSwifter I have been able to access a number of websites that still utilize the Flash which has worked really well. If you have need to access Flash based websites on your iPad then take a look at the free iSwifter Browser. Hopefully we will get our power back shortly so that life can get ...

On Monday, Livescribe will release a new and improved digital smartpen called Livescribe Sky WiFi which will forever change the way we take and access our notes. While I have been a big fan of the Livescribe Smartpen the one downfall was the synching which you needed to do with a USB cable. But that all changes with the introduction of the Livescribe Sky WiFi which lets you sync your notes directly to Evernote via WiFi. This truly is a huge paradigm shift- giving me access to my notes on just about any device that has a browser or the Evernote app installed. Similarly, I can now log into Evernote from any computer and instantly have access to my notes which is very powerful. This feature is a truly a game changer for taking notes, and will give students access to their notes from anywhere they are connected to the web. Getting started and setting up the Livescribe Sky WiFi to sync with Evernote was a cinch. I simply turned on the Livescribe Sky Wi...

I have been a long time fan and user of Snagit from TechSmith, Inc for many years now and I am always amazed at the features. One of the newer features is the ability to capture video from your screen which has really come in handy lately as I am developing some eLearning modules. While many of us will  initially think of using Snagit to capture screen images the latest version of Snagit can capture video along with audio and System audio making it indispensable tool for instructors and eLearning developers who are looking for a quick and easy way to capture video off of the screen. I recently created a short video using GoAnimate and wanted to save it in MP4 format to insert into an Adobe Presenter 8 module I was creating. Using Snagit's new ability to capture the GoAnimate video was a piece of cake and the quality of the video capture was outstanding. So take a look at Snagit and see how you might use it- it is one of the bes...