For a view of the type of wearble technology that is just around the corner the following TED talk is thought provoking.
If you were in a school thinking about investing heavily in SmartBoard technology you would have to seriously question the value for money you were going to get from it with this sort of thing just around the corner.
Imagine if every student in your class had one of these units!
I have just been having a play with a Kodak Zi6 HD (720p at 60 fps) Video camera. It is a small unit similar to the flip mino, with a usb connector that flips out the side.
It has two advantages over the Flip Mino that I can see:
It takes removable NiMH AA batteries, so you can have spare batteries on hand if you are out in the field doing a lot of recording
It has a memory card expansion slot so you can easily expand the amount of on-board storage
It produces an h.264 mov file so no special software is need to convert the codec for use in other programmes – they can be sucked straight into iMovie
It has very little onboard memory though so you really need to buy a card upfront to get started – it would be good if they included a 1gb card out of the box.
I haven’t had time to do extensive testing but the video quality is pretty good, but seems a little jumpy in HD mode – not sure if this is related to the speed of the SD card I am using or not – will have to try and get a high speed card and see if there is any difference. In lower light the image did get a little grainy, which is normal for this type of camera, but outside in sunlight it produced a clear image. It has a good close up mode which would enable some great closeup shots of insects, etc.
On a single charge I was able to record approx 1.5 hours of HD video, which produced a 1gb file. These are available in New Zealand from Edsoft for approx $400NZ.
We have been evaluating a couple of iPhones with the view to wider use of this technology within our organisation. Here are some of the pros and cons to-date:
Pros:
Provides quick and easy access to email. While many other cheaper phone handsets also give email access, the iphone provides almost usable two way email, ie. you can read and send email. On a standard phone handset sending emails is painful on a number keypad – with the iphone it is much easier, but still slow compared to a proper keyboard.
Calender, contacts, etc. are all easily accessible, but probably not much different to a standard phone handset.
Excellent device for collection and listening/watching of material for professional development, podcasts, videos, etc. The screen size is more than adequate for watching video whilst on bus/train/plane – so a great way to make use of downtime to catch up on those TED Talks you have always been meaning to watch.
Reasonable camera and good application for storing/viewing/sharing photos
Almost usable web browser – for quick access to small amounts of information the web browser is usable. For large amounts of web surfing the screen size makes it painful with lots of scrolling and zooming required – maybe that is a Con – you decide
Excellent and easy to use map tool for finding your way around
Provides a single device for phone, ipod, camera (providing you don’t have a need for high quality photos), so no need to carry multiple devices around.
Cons
For heavy phone use the battery life is limited. If you are making a lot of phone calls battery life can come down to less than 8 hours. If you are watching a lot of videos it can come down to 4 hours. With no backup battery this means that you can’t afford to leave home without your charger.
The text input is not brilliant. The iphone is a great device for consuming information, but sharing info is still clumsy with 1 or 2 finger at the most typing on a slightly too small keyboard.
The need to have a compulsory data plan. For a lot of people you could mostly get away with using it on wifi networks only, so could get away with only casual data useage plan if it was available
The inability to use it as a modem for your computer
No inbuilt video recording – but you can get an add-on app for this
On our corporate plan the cost is an extra $400 for each device above a standard phone, plus at least $30 extra per month for data plan – so with 50 staff you do the figures – rolling out to all staff would be a reasonable investment.
