This is truly the sign of reaching geek / nerd status!

CORDS PLUGGED IN:

• MacBook Pro – power
• Canon XH A1 HDV – power / firewire to MacBook Pro
• Belkin 4 port USB expander – power / USB to MacBook Pro
• Maxtor 500 GB external hard drive – power / USB to Belkin USB Expander
• iPod – USB to Belkin USB Expander
• Flash card reader – USB to Belkin USB Expander

CORDS I COULDN’T PLUG IN BECAUSE HAD NO SPACE:

• Plantronic Bluetooth headset – power
• BlackBerry 8100 (Pearl) – power [I'll just unplug the Flash card reader and use USB -- thanks RIM for engineering a "multi-use" cord into the design or your device]

It was cool to hang with the early west-coast podcasting experts at Podcamp West in San Francisco. There was a lot of media and entertainment representation at the event (music, movies, reviews, etc.). Interesting for me was the age of the audience. It was filled with more 30-40 somethings than the younger hipset. I got the impression that the people with content ideas and artists were the driving the west coast podcasting movement.Victor Podcast, the lead organizer and podcaster behind Hot from Silicon Valley, and his recruits did a lot of work to pull off this UnConference. Thanks for all your work.

It was fun to connect with Doug Kaye, the original IT Conversations podcaster, one of the first podcast subscriptions. It was even more cool to hear that he had listened to my Podango podcast that was syndicated on PodTech. Doug and I spoke with Michael Geoghegan, CEO or GigaVox and co-author of “Podcast Solutions,” about working with Phil Windley, the current Executive Producer of IT Conversations, to pull off a Podcast Academy event at BYU.

I hooked up with a few of the PodTech team that attended. Robert Scoble arrived with video camera in tow.

Also connected with Steve Sloan from San Jose State University who teaches a course on new media. Steve was an early podcaster (circ 2004). We discussed educational use of podcasts and course management systems like Blackboard and WebCT.

I would have like to spend time on Sunday listening to more of the experiences of others. It’s still a new frontier. Tech challenges like RSS feed management are common concerns. Pretty much everyone uses a different production model (some record directly in GarageBand–others use Audacity–still others use some “other” recording equipment). However, I made some good contacts with whom I can share best practices.

Until next time.

Technorati Tags: Podcasting, PodCamp

It’s finished. Blackboard Backpack 2.5 has been completed. Another project wrapped up. If you’re a student using Blackboard, you got to try out Backpack. It’s cool. Let’s you take your Blackboard courses and put them on your laptop so you can use them without a web connection.

I’m back at work. Working on releasing the update to Blackboard Backpack. The new product is Backpack 2.5. This version is so much better that the previous version. We’ve simplified the UI, enhanced peformance as much as 100x, added Blackboard course download wizards, included a Flash overview, enhanced with attractive HTML pages, improved searching, and much more. Should be better for students.

We posted a Preview build that can be downloaded from the Backpack site. Give it a try if you get a minute.

Dan Cane has always said that he’s “the biggest fan of Backpack.” It only seemed fitting that Dan would be the one that attended and picked up the 2006 Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) CODiE Award. Blackboard Backpack won the category for Best Education Technology Solution for Productivity/Creativity.

As I’ve written before, Agilix has partnered with Blackboard to develop Backpack. Backpack is a personal learning and student productivity software application that extends the Blackboard Academic Suite into “offline” study settings.

Students use Backpack help students to:

• Download courses for anytime, anywhere use
• Organize their life
• Personalize their study with digital annotation, note taking, and search.

Another picture of Dan…

Tonight I configured Parallels so I can launch and run Windows on my Mac. Have I said “amazing” yet?

It was super cool to watch the install process in a “window” on my Mac. And then when I heard the famous Windows first-launch start up sound on my MacBook speakers, I was grins from ear to shining ear.

Amazing…it’s all I can say. Who would want to “boot” into Windows when you can run it side-by-side with Mac OS X?

I’m sharing screenshots like crazy tonight. Sorry for the space, but please do enjoy!

Funny to see “DOS-like” stuff on OS X.

Windows XP install promoting “Hardware” support
Click to see larger image

To steal the words from Mick Jagger and the theme song
for the Windows XP launch: “Start Me Up”
Click to see larger image

VPNed into network at work, downloading files off the
network, all from my MacBook running OS X,
Parallels, and Windows XP

Installing Blackboard Backpack on my Mac…
a Window XP-only application.

Taking Notes with Blackboard Backpack — on a
document created with the special Pickler printer
that converts PDF, Office, web pages, and
more to what looks like “digital paper.”

Last week at BbWorld, Sahar Javadi and I spent time talking about and demonstrating a new product called Blackboard Backpack. Agilix, my employer, has worked closely with Blackboard to develop the Backpack application.

Backpack works on a student’s laptop computer and helps them download and manage all the information professors add to the Blackboard online system, stay organized with a calendar of assignments and due dates, and take searchable, digital notes on their computer. If you think about how iTunes works, Backpack is very similar. Backpack connects to the student’s account at their school’s Blackboard account. All the course information posted to the web is downloaded and stays in sync when new items are posted or if things change.

Dan Cane, a Blackboard Founder and current VP of R&D, joined in on the fun. Dan’s the “executive sponsor” of Backpack inside Blackboard. He uses Backpack for courses he’s taking at George Washington University in DC.

Two of the highlights for me at the event included:

• a keynote presentation given by Chris S. Thomas, Chief Strategist, from Intel. He spoke on the benefits of a Personal Learning System like Backpack on the student’s mobile computer that can work at the “speed of the student” rather than the speed of the Internet or web-based systems. The mobile application will take advantage of the local processor so things work faster than waiting for web pages to load.
• a presentation from a student from Seton Hall University, Danielle Calcado. Danielle talked about how she uses Blackboard Backpack as a replacement for her paper binder. She also uses Backpack as a planner to stay organized. Danielle is busy as a student, an employee on campus in the instructional technology center, and the president of a sorority at Seton Hall.

I will be working in the Blackboard booth and roaming around with a Tablet PC showing off the Blackboard Backpack product. If you’re there, look me up.