Education
Apple posts new online seminars
One of the hidden gems of Apple.com is the collection of free web seminars available 24/7 that cover a wide range of topics and applications. A few weeks ago, Mat posted about the iWork for Business seminar, but a lot of other new seminars have been posted recently.
Some of the highlights:
- Mac for Computer Forensics and e-discovery
- New to the Mac for business users
- Podcast Producer
- News and Sports editing with Final Cut Pro
While a lot of the newest additions are aimed at OS X Leopard Server users or for business users, many of the tips and techniques can be applied for home users too. If none of the new seminars strike your fancy, the existing library of seminars offers some really nice introductions for creating podcasts, using Final Cut Studio or Aperture, and managing a Mac-based network.
Although the video seminars are free, registration is required. Thanks, Corey!
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It’s About Time!
At Macworld Expo in January, I talked to a guy at a booth who was demoing a hands-on iPhone training product. The developer, Saied Ghaffari, believes there are three types of people:
- Clickers — like most TUAW readers; people who take any application, click buttons and menus, and learn the app themselves
- Non-clickers — people who think they’ll break something if they click or tap a button
- Middle — people who need some assistance in getting started in learning an application
Saied’s company, It’s About Time Products, develops products for the middle and non-clicker markets. They’ve introduced a Flash-based iPhone training application called It’s About Time to learn iPhone that is available online ($24.95) now and at Apple Stores ($29.95) on June 23rd.
Rather than a typical “watch what I’m doing” screencast, It’s About Time to learn iPhone uses a click-to-learn approach. You watch Saied demonstrate how to use an iPhone function, and then use the virtual iPhone to practice what you’ve seen.
The app has online notes so you don’t have to write your own, and a full list of tips and tricks. Automatic updates are also part of the program, which works on Macs and PCs.
Note to self: buy this for Dad. Read
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Students: Get an iPod touch free with qualifying Mac purchase
Apple is launching its back-to-school promotion today, and according to MacRumors it’s expected to be its largest promotion ever.
Apple is offering “a free 8GB iPod touch ($299) to college students who buy a qualifying Mac (MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, Mac Pro).”
VentureBeat goes further, contending that putting Apple’s mobile platform in the hands of students practically ensures its dominance in the marketplace. “You can kiss the desktop computer goodbye,” MG Siegler writes. “It’s time to start training the young minds of today about the future of computing: mobile.”
Instead of an iPod touch, students can opt for an 8GB iPod nano, but it’s hard to see why anybody would want to do this with the soon-to-be-launched App Store.
The promotion ends September 15.
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WorldWide Telescope: Works great on a Mac (if you have Windows)
You might have heard that Microsoft Research has released WorldWide Telescope (WWT), it’s software to
The BBC mentioned that you can run WWT on your Mac … so long as you have Windows on your Mac. Sigh. VMWare helpfully gave the system a try, though, and found it worked great (and even posted a video about it.)
I fired up the ol’ Boot Camp and saw it wasn’t bad. It boasts high-resolution photography of many parts of the sky, and is reasonably easy to use (for a Microsoft product). There were some weird, annoying flicker problems, but I’ll chalk that up to the fact that it’s beta software on a MacBook with a pokey graphics card.
As an amateur astronomer with his own 10-inch Dob (that’s right, ladies), I tend to use astronomy software less as a casual browsing tool, but more to find interesting things in the sky on a particular night. And for that, WWT ain’t great. You won’t find any satellites (like Iridium flares) in WWT. Worst of all — there’s no horizon I could easily find. So good luck trying to find that fuzzy thing next to the blue thing when it’s under your feet.
The Mac, however, is blessed with a great variety of native astronomy tools, most of which are free. Stellarium is excellent, free planetarium software. It’s worth noting that Google Earth has a spiffy sky tool built-in, too. Last but not least, Starry Night Pro is the king of all astronomy software (and my favorite), but is a little spendy at $150.
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Itching to learn Esperanto?
Hot for Hindi? Up for learning Uyghur? Wild about Welsh? LifeClever tipped us off to the fact that there are 926 free language training podcasts currently available in the iTunes Store. A quick glance at the available podcasts shows that you can learn 39 languages from Arabic to Yiddish with the help of your iPod or iPhone.
To find this treasure trove of linguistic goodness, launch iTunes, pop into the iTunes Store, click on the Browse link, and navigate to Podcasts > Education > Language Courses.
What am I going to learn on my summer vacation? I’m waffling between Sexy Spanish and Latinum. This is a great way to get your kids to learn a language and keep them occupied during that long, hot road trip to Wally World this summer.
Thanks, Tipster Chanpory!
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