Happy New Year!

2011 was a particularly busy (but good) year for me. I finished a WordPress ebook (and then wrote a second edition this month), started and registered an online training company called Novo Learning LLC, and started a new video tutorial project that should be complete sometime in 2012. And through all of this, I managed to juggle 23 websites.

Since most of my work in 2011 was around website development and video production, I thought I’d share my Top 5 Tools of 2011. Here they are in no particular order:

1. WordPress

My inclusion of WordPress will not come as any surprise to those of you who have been coming here for any amount of time. I have moved all of my web development to the WordPress platform. As a result, I have not only streamlined my design and development process, but I have also delivered some great SEO and autonomy to my clients.

I am so impressed with the added features and improvements that come to WordPress with each new update. WordPress 3.3 is better than ever. And no commercial alternative can beat the development and support of the WordPress community.

2. Coda

I’ve been using Coda now for almost 3 years. I don’t know how I ever did website development without it!

The folks at Panic software call Coda “One-window web development”. This is a great way to describe what this software does. If you do any kind of web development work, you need to take a look at this software. In one tool you have a code editor, file transfer utility, source control system, terminal (SSH), website preview, and a resource library for HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP.

Check out this post for a complete review of Coda.

3. Firebug

Firebug is a Firefox browser add-on that allows you to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and Javascript live in any web page, right from your Firefox browser. This is really a must-have tool for any web developer.

Although Firebug is designed for the Firefox browser, they also make Firebug Lite for other browsers.

4. Kodak Zi8

This compact little video camera shoots 1080p video with a 16:9 aspect ratio. It can hold up to 32GB of memory (SD/SDHC), has an external microphone jack that records in stereo, and takes 5 MP still pictures. It also has a built in USB arm that lets you upload and charge without a USB cable.

This little camera is a gem, especially if you plan to incorporate video into your online marketing, promotional or educational strategy. I recommend purchasing an additional battery, and two 8GB SD/SDHC memory cards.

5. ScreenFlow

I love this software! Although I do my high-end video editing in FinalCut Pro, most of my online video is edited with ScreenFlow.

Screenflow has an intuitive interface and supports several QuickTime formats and Flash, and also allows for direct publishing to YouTube and Vimeo. In addition to being great video editing software, Screenflow also allows you to create screencasts.

I should also mention Camtasia, which is an excellent video editing and creation software, and has versions for both the Mac and PC platform. Read this review on Camtasia.

SEO Focus in 2012

I will continue using these tools in 2012 and will write about any additional tools I come across in the future. The world of SEO is one area that I will be giving more attention. I just recently came across Google’s Correlate Tool and find it fascinating. I’m still playing with it, but will surely write about it when I understand it better.

In the meantime, have a great new year!

One of Apple’s great improvements of the iPad2 was the ability to project almost everything done on it, including browsing. This went a long way to making the iPad2 more of an instructional tool. If only there was a way to make annotations during instruction and then maybe record that so students could review later…

Well, I’m glad you asked. You can do this now in a relatively inexpensive way.

There are a few approaches to getting this done, but for this posting, I’ll go over the easiest and least expensive way. An iPad app called Air Sketch allows you create a wireless whiteboard using your iPad, computer, and projection system. And, if you combine this with the latest (free) QuickTime player’s ability to record the Mac screen and audio, then you can record a movie of your demonstration for playback at another time.

Air Sketch comes in a free version (black and white annotation only), and a $9 version which adds multiple colors, pens, access to photo library for overlays, and zoom/pan capability. The setup couldn’t be easier.

The Wireless Whiteboard

Once you’ve installed Air Sketch, open it, and click on the icon in the lower left of the screen to see the IP address it has created on your network for connection. By default, it uses the 8080 port (so not to interfere with any existing web server that may be running on port 80). This port can be changed if necessary.

Air Sketch assigns an IP for connection.

Next, open a browser on your computer and enter the IP address with port number assigned by Air Sketch. (In the example below: http://192.168.1.67:8081) This will produce a blank webpage with the Air Sketch logo in the lower right. (I’ve already written “Hello!” in the example below.)

This is what you'll see on your connected browser.

Now, as you write on your iPad, your sketching will be duplicated in realtime on the browser of your computer. If your computer is connected to a projector, then you may roam the classroom freely with iPad in hand and adding annotations to your instruction.

New Screen Recording in QuickTime

Recording The Session

Should you want to record the session for playback in the future, QuickTime (OS X 10.6 or later) has you covered. Open QuickTime and select New Screen Recording under the File menu.

This brings up a window that allows you to make microphone input and quality settings.

Recording Settings

 
Once these settings are made, you’re ready to click on the red record button and begin your session.

The following video is a quick session I made using this same setup:

While you can use your finger to make these annotations, I recommend purchasing a stylus (about $10) to give you finer control.

Here’s a quick promo video I’ve created for the ebook guide I’ve written on building and managing a WordPress website. The guide is geared towards small businesses, but is useful for anyone considering building or redesigning a website.

In Part 1, I detailed the process of creating an eBook (in the ePub format) using Apple’s Pages application.

In this Part 2, I will quickly go over some considerations when inserting audio and video files into your eBook.

The large majority of eBook platforms read the EPub format, which is an open standard announced by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) in 2007. (It should be noted that Amazon’s Kindle reader does not read the EPub format.) Apple’s Pages application can create eBooks in the EPub format quite easily (see Part 1 of this series.)

While the EPub format does not currently have a mandatory support for audio or video file formats in EPub, it does appear that the IDPF is headed in that direction. In the meantime, Apple supports both audio and video file insertion into the EPub format for their devices. And this can be done in Pages.

Inserting an audio file.

Inserting Audio Files
The most important thing to know about inserting audio files into an eBook in Pages is that the audio file formats must be in either the .mp3 or .m4a formats. Then, it’s just a matter of inserting the file into the text using Pages’ Insert menu.

When the file is inserted, it looks like this.

This is how the file appears in Pages.

Once the document is exported into the EPub format and opened in an eBook reader, the audio file is embedded into the text and looks like this:

Audio in eBook.

To hear the audio, the eBook user simply clicks on the arrow in the black bar and the audio begins playing.

Inserting Video Files
The most important thing to know about embedding a video file is this: Video files MUST be in the .m4v format.

Otherwise, the embedding process is the same as it is for embedding audio files. I’ve also found that it helps to put a return before and after the position where the video file is embedded. This helps to create proper spacing, and it allows you to left, center, or right justify the position of the video window by applying this justification to the paragraphs before and after the video.

The video is embedded into the eBook and looks like this to the eBook reader:

The video in an eBook

EBook Production
The tools to create and self publish eBooks are now available on our desktops. This relatively recent trend makes it much easier for us to become both author and publisher. When you’re ready to distribute your eBook, check out Apple’s iBookstore.

Ebooks are now a common part of our digital landscape. This year promises to bring a significant increase in the number of choices of tablet-like mobile devices. This is likely to only add to the astonishing growth in ebook consumption. But ebook consumption isn’t the only area that is likely to experience tremendous growth this year. It appears that ebook production has arrived for the common man/woman.

There are many advantages of this type of self-publishing for both business and educational folk alike:

• relatively low barrier to entry
• establish expertise in subject area
• increasing number of distribution channels
• multimedia potential of the ebook (epub) format
• low overhead
• great marketing/promotional medium
• great educational medium

When you see just how easy it is to create an ebook with Apple’s Pages software, you may decide to become an author yourself.

Pages has had the ability to export to the ePub format since the release of iWork 9.0.4 in August of 2010. At that time, Pages had some rough edges when it came producing a well formatted ebook. When Apple released Pages 4.0.5 in January, 2011, it greatly improved the semantics of their ePub export. Today, with some careful attention to a few details and methods, you can create an ePub-formatted ebook.

It’s important to point out that while the ePub format works on most ebook readers (including Apple’s iBook reader) and is opensource, it is not the format used by Amazon’s Kindle reader (which uses the MOBI format). There are software tools, like Calibre, available to convert from ePub to MOBI. (I may do a post in the future going over these conversion tools and options.)

Getting Started
The best way to get started with creating an ebook in Pages is to download a template that Apple has created for making ebooks. Download it here: eBook Template

When you open this file in Pages, you’ll notice styles in the Styles Drawer that are specific to tagging an ebook. These styles are applied to the elements of your book to properly format the document for the ePub export. The pages in this document have examples of these styles applied to text and a brief description of how they should be used.

eBook Styles

(Click on illustrations to enlarge.)

Examples of styles

Dealing With Images
There are a few things to keep in mind as you create your book. If you will be inserting images into your book, you must make sure that you set them to be “inline” images. That is, the images flow with the text rather than independent of the text. To do that, click on the image, and in the Inspector click on the Wrap Inspector tab, then click on the Inline (moves with text) radio button. This assures that the images in your ebook stay with the appropriate text even when the ebook reader adjusts the font sizes.

Inspector

Images can wrap in 6 different ways. You’ll need to check the Object causes wrap checkbox on the Inspector pane. Then click on one of the six illustrations below this checkbox to indicate how the image will behave in the text. The illustrations provide an efficient way of explaining how each work.

image wrap

Dealing With Font Sizes
I found the font sizes in this template to be too large (especially if your Titles or Heads are lengthy). This caused many of my titles in the ebook to overwhelm the page. You can test this with your own ebook, but generally I found that bumping the Title, Head, and SubHead font sizes down 10-15 pts worked well.

Testing Your eBook Along The Way
The best way to perfect the look and feel of your ebook is to export your Pages document to the ePub format and test on an ebook reader. This process is simple. I find myself going through this process several times in the creation of an ebook.

First, save your Pages document. Then, under the Share menu choose Export… This brings up a window indicating the export options.

Export options

Click on the ePub tab at the top and then click on the Next… button. Save the epub to your computer’s desktop.

Getting The Ebook to Your Reader
There are several ways to get the ePub file to your ebook reader, but I will go over the two easiest ways.

The first is simply to email the ePub file to yourself as an attachment. Then open the email on your ebook reader device and send it to your eReader. On an iPad or iPhone, clicking on the ePub file attachment brings up a dialogue box asking if you’d like to send it to iBooks. It then sends it to iBook and opens your book for you to begin reading.

The second way is open iTunes on your computer and then drag the ePub file into iTunes. This places the file into the Books area in iTunes. Then you simply sync your iPad/iPhone to your computer and the book appears in your iBooks library.

In part 2 of this series, I will go over the specific methods for adding sound files and video files to your ebook. Stay tuned!