Lately I’ve been looking at new ways to webcast video with presentations.  We (ISU Extension) do this today using Windows Media Encoder – which seems to work just fine… but I would like to encode at a bit rate of about 300 Kbps at a resolution of about 600X800 and with sharper quality for digital materials such as PowerPoint slides. 

Long story short… I’ve come across a nice little device that converts VGA or DVI video into digital video via USB.  And it works surprisingly well. 

http://www.epiphan.com/ see Frame Grabbers.

The potential is …

1.  To integrate with a digital video switch which can be used in a studio for much higher quality presentation broadcasts.

2.  Use within Windows Media Encoder as a separate video source for screencasting… takes the load off the CPU and allows for the potential of switching video sources… speaker and presentation.

3.  Use with an application like Adobe Connect to get a good quality picture in picture with presentation for webcasting (works pretty well).

If you attend ACE/NETC 2007, I have a presentation “Web Conferencing by Example” and I’ll try to demonstration some examples.

Another fun mash-up… Two Minute World.

Spin the world and see videos and news from that area.  Nice video of Victoria Falls in Zambia.

OK, here is a fun mash-up.  Lord of the Rings Maps.

Yep, my son plays the online LOTR game and thought this mash-up of Google Earth was “ridiculous” – which I believe means “cool”.

Pretty geeky but fun.  This would have been fun and helpful when I read the books years ago.

I read Kevin Gamble’s blog entry, Pew: the other 41% about the new PEW/Internet report. 

I don’t agree that everyone saw the value and future of the web in 1993.  My experience was many who would be most impacted failed to see the opportunities and would cling to old technologies and methods for the next few years.

Of course, there are many new Web 2.0 applications I’ve not yet adopted for my own use… and/or communities I’ve yet to join.

So, what does drive adoption of technology?  A few things comes to my mind…

1. Exposure – with repetition, so more than the occasional demonstration or training opportunity.  The web took off when you couldn’t get around it.
2. Access – available, affordable and effortless.
3. Understanding – what’s in it for me?
4. Community – facilitates exposure, access and understanding.

That said, I think strategies for speeding adoption need to consider these four components.

“Got a second?”

“Have a seat.”

I want a high speed camera too.

Check out this video from the dailymotion.

This is an interesting post on Pronet Advertising about what you can learn from a Tag Cloud.  I find this very interesting… guess I need to start adding tags to my posts…

Check it out Silverlight.  Looks pretty cool.  I think this is a good direction for Microsoft, although I’m sure some will think it is yet another plugin (yap?).  I’ll be interested to see new applications.