Sky’s Blog

In my quest to find better ways to deliver training and learning around the world, a suggestion from a colleague has turned into a unique distance-learning solution.

We’ve put about 6 hours of video recordings from our teacher training session onto an iPod Nano in MPEG4 format, and the Nanos are being carried to teachers in countries where Internet connectivity is thin or doesn’t exist.

And we’ve added a couple hundred photos, and videos produced by our first year participating schools.

In a subdirectory on the Nano, accessible from a computer, are copies of various documents that may also be useful to teachers and Project Happiness leaders.

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I was fiddling around trying to find a good position (on a desk) for my iPhone yesterday in order to get good reception for a phone call, and it reminded me of the “old days” when I was first an amateur radio (“ham”) operator.

Can’t tell you how many hundreds of hours I spent fiddling around with antenna positions in order to get good reception. In those days they were mostly long wires strung from buildings or trees, but the principle is the same for a mobile phone antenna. It all depends on the direction the antenna’s pointing, the distance from “ground” (actual earth or metal objects below the radio’s antenna) and other factors that are just too hard to predict. And so we “fiddle” until we get it right.

In the case of a mobile phone, which is also a radio transmitter and receiver, the variables are pretty much the same. They include whether you’re holding the phone in your hand or not, whether it’s near metal objects, whether you’re inside a steel or concrete/brick building, and your orientation with respect to the cell you are currently connected to. So when you hear “can you hear me now?” what’s going on is that you and your callee are each adjusting or moving your radio and antenna to get better reception. We have all become amateur radio operators!

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The Cool Globes are about to wrap up their appearance in San Francisco and move to San Diego (CA). Three-dimensional embodiments of good ideas about how to live in more harmony with our environment.

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Looks like there’ll be a Blackberry with a touchscreen interface soon. Maybe they’re just trying to cash in on the popularity of the iPhone, with its touchscreen interface (meaning that you type on a touch-screen rather than on a real keyboard), but I think there’s something more somatically fundamental in the appeal of touchscreen typing. The tiny Blackberry keyboards, which are like toys as I see it, still keep you one-level-removed from what you’re typing – there is this clunky bunch of electro-mechanical keys between you and your words. The touchscreen, on the other hand (“hand”, LOL!) means “your hand is a component of the keyboard.” You aren’t just poking at little mechanical devices, your fleshy round finger becomes a part of the “keyboard” on the touchscreen. And the way Apple has implemented the keyboard, if you touch and then roll the tip of your finger around, you can actually roll from one key to another until you get the one you intended to press, then lift your finger and your choice is made. Think about that, your hand IS the keyboard on a touchscreen!

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