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Next Week: Google Boot Camp in VT (+ 25% off!)
Time is running out! Our friends at “EpikOne”:http://www.epikone.com/summit will be hosting their third annual Seminar for Success Summit (formerly OM Boot Camp) next week in Burlington, Vermont from August 11 to August 14.
The first day, Advertising (8/11), is sold out, but slots for Days 2-4 as well as the Green/Social Marketing Workshop are still available! (Day 1 is not a prerequisite for the following workshops.)
The Seminar for Success Summit includes in-depth training on Google’s online marketing suite of tools (Analytics, AdWords, Optimizer and more) from highly acclaimed Google experts.
Request information “here.”:http://www.epikone.com/summit/request_info
Ready to go? Register online “here.”:http://s4s-summit-vt.eventbrite.com/*Get 25% off any day(s) or full summit by typing “smalldog” into the online discount field when registering!*
On the Prowl
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about “Growl, a notification system for OS X.”:http://blog.smalldog.com/kibbles/?c=kb629 While some of you may have mixed feelings about Growl (I hear you, Mac!), there’s a growing number of people who want to get more out of the push notification technology on their mobile devices.
“Prowl”:http://prowl.weks.net/ is a companion to Growl for the iPhone or iPod touch. Arguably, Prowl is more useful than Growl because people who really care about these notifications want them on the go!
An overview of Prowl’s features:
*Infinitely extensible*
Prowl is as expandable as Growl is.*Push notifications*
As soon as a Growl notification pops up on your computer, Prowl will forward it to your iPhone or iPod touch over the push notification service found in iPhone OS 3.0.*Simple, elegant list*
Prowl provides a clean list of all the Growl notifications sent to it from your computer.*Easily send links to your iPhone*
Whether you need to call a phone number or visit a website, Prowl will link the notifications it displays inside the Growl notifications.*Customized display of notifications*
Prowl’s Growl plugin can be configured to only send the most important notifications to your iPhone, or any level which you want.To make everything work, you’ll need to register on the Prowl server. Then, you’ll need to allow push notifications on your iPhone (if you haven’t already).
Some of the best things about Prowl are the preference settings. You have a lot of control over what messages you’ll see popping up on your phone, and one of the most useful features is that you’re able to set a priority for your notifications.
That way, you can avoid seeing messages any less important than “emergency” if you so choose (Prowl will only send notifications that have “at minimum the priority you’ve chosen”).
Prowl is free and works with Growl-compatible operating systems: Mac OS X (10.4+) and Windows (using Growl for Windows or Snarl).
“Read more about Prowl.”:http://prowl.weks.net/faq.php
“Install Prowl.”:http://prowl.weks.net/installation.php
“Download Growl.”:http://growl.info/index.php*Next week: Fluid, a way to bring your web apps to your desktop.*
Computer to TV: Can We Talk?
On Monday, the “Burlington Free Press”:http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20090803/BUSINESS/908030303/1003, Vermont’s largest-circulation newspaper ran an article I wrote entitled “Computer to TV: Can we talk?.” It’s a brief overview of a couple of ways to get media from your computer to your television and home entertainment system. “Click here to check it out.”:http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20090803/BUSINESS/908030303/1003
How do you get media from your computer to your home entertainment system? Apple TV? Video game console? Mac mini? Simply patch-cable connection? Or do you connect your iPod to your TV or home entertainment system with cables or a dock of some kind?
“Click here to let us know!”:http://blog.smalldog.com/article/recent-article-computer-to-tv-can-we-talk/
FOLLOW UP: iPhones Go Academic
We got some great responses to last week’s article, “iPhones Go Academic: One School’s Experiment.”:http://blog.smalldog.com/kibbles/?c=kb631
Marisa writes,
__”It’s so much easier to sit in large lectures with my iPhone recording. I end up taking notes, too, but I know that if there’s anything I missed, I’ll have it.”__
Kevin writes,
__”I’m always using it to document life on campus. Between the camera, video (I have a 3GS) and microphone, I have everything I need to remember what life was like in college! My friends who work on the school’s website often ask me for files they can put in the student life section.”__
Lu writes,
__”I’ve been teaching 1st grade for 31 years… love technology and LOVE Apple! Last year, one of my students was autistic, and difficult to motivate. None of my usual rewards would work and get him to complete his work or improve his behavior. That is, until I offered to let him use my iPhone as a reward!__
__Once I realized THAT using the iPhone was an ultimate reward for him, I added some games to the iPhone. He also LOVED music and was quite the singer, so I added an entire playlist on it for him, too. (Silly me–I added the bowling game app on it and it quickly became one of his favorite games to use–until my iPhone was sent flying across the room when he accidentally ‘let go’ of it while bowling.) It was then I realized I cold no longer let him use the iPhone and I wrote a grant for an iPod touch. He never knew the difference!__
__He was allowed to earn the reward 2x/day, and for the last 6 months of the school year, he worked hard on his school work and behavior in order to use the touch. After I added a few 2-player games on the touch, I allowed him to choose a friend to play with him during his reward time with the touch and I started to notice his social interactions with classmates improved tremendously, too!”__
Thanks for your feedback!
“If you have a comment about how you use your iPhone for academics, tell us here.”:http://blog.smalldog.com/article/one-school-s-experiment-free-iphones-for-students/#comment
It is truly the “dog days of summer”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_Days now with the county fair season heating up and sweet corn starting to be in season here in Vermont. There was sweet corn just about everywhere else as we were riding home on our trip, but when we got to Vermont, none could be found yet at the farm stands. The massive amount of rain and clouds in July have delayed a lot of crops.
On Tuesday, I just got tired of it and after work, hopped on my motorcycle and vowed to ride until I found some sweet corn. Fortunately, I didn’t have to go too far; corn was available in Montpelier, VT!
Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!
Your Kibbles & Bytes team,
_Don & Kali_MAC TREAT #95: Crush Those Pages File Sizes
Recently, I created a Pages document that grew to be unusually large in file size due to the images that I was using. The Pages file was roughly 140MB, so even exported to a PDF, it only shrunk to about 50MB–still too big for an email.
Rather than resize the images that I put in the document itself, there’s an easier way.
In Pages, select *File > Reduce File Size.* This will resize the images according to how large they actually appear in the document itself.
*140MB > 1.2MB?* Success!