SCOtutor on App Chat

Thanks to Karl over on "App Chat" on the British Tech Network for inviting me onto his podcast.

Karl is one of the new hosts over on the BTN and I've had chance to meet up with him several times at the London MUG.

His new show is an interview show with various developers introducing their iOS apps and giving some background on the development of their apps. I do own up on the interview to not being a proper developer and give due props to Simon Wolf (the actual developer) as well as Jamie Peak (the graphic designer).

So thanks again to Karl for the invite and I hope you enjoy the interview.

You can find the interview over at App Chat - British Tech Network

SCOtutor on MacVoices.TV

My good friend Chuck Joiner invited me onto MacVoices.TV to discuss my foray into the world of Apps.

Instigated by the recent release of SCOtutor for iPhone on iOS, we discussed various topics including the reason for going down the App route and the impact on the weekly ScreenCastsOnline shows.

I also probably said to much about my future plans!

Hopefully Chuck has been able to work wonders on the editing front, as I was still suffering a bit from my recent cough, but I'm sure he will have cut all that out.

Thanks to Chuck for extending the invitation and I hope you enjoy it.

You can find the video here, or the audio here.

Calling All Podcasters

As a fledgling industry, Podcasting initially had its own annual Expo.

Both inspirational and uplifting, it was great to be part of the community as the podcasting pioneers gathered each year to learn, teach and party, There was such optimism as the medium matured and barriers were broken down.

The democratisation of broadcasting. Transmitters? We didn't need no stinking transmitters...

The final year of the Podcast and New Media Expo, (or whatever it was called at the fourth name change), saw the Expo transplanted to Las Vegas and many agreed, it had lost its way a bit.

We didn't know it then, but that was to be the final separate Podcast Expo.

Following that final year, the Podcast and New Media Expo was bought out by BlogWorld.

Since the take over by BlogWorld, there has been a lot of disquiet and discontent in the Podcasting world.

The BlogWorld organisers have tried their best to integrate the Podcasting community into BlogWorld, but even they would agree, have never quite pulled it off. Despite the best of intentions, it's always seemed that the Podcasters played second fiddle to the Bloggers. Unintentional I know, but that's just how its always come across.

Whether it's due to the prominence of the name 'BlogWorld', or the fact that the Podcast tracks have never really been visible, or that the Podcast tracks have always been the last sessions to be publicised, BlogWorld has never really jelled with the Podcast community. Heck, we even called Podcasting "Digital Broadcasting" one year, no wonder it was invisible to Podcasters (and I take the blame for that!).

Despite many initiatives, some of which I've been personally involved with, the BlogWorld experience has never matched the previous experience Podcasters had with their own Expo.

However, I think this is all about to change.

Take a listen to the new Podcast Report linked below which gives a good indication of a sea change at BlogWorld. There are some significant and potentially ground breaking changes happening over the next few months leading up to a major announcement at BlogWorld NYC in June.

Firstly, Cliff Ravenscraft has grasped the mantle of pulling the Podcast track together for the next event in New York. Cliff is a passionate Podcaster with his own clear views on Podcasting and many contacts in the industry. After observing from a distance the effort Cliff was putting into the event, I tweeted some Kudos to Cliff and his efforts. Cliff reached out and we had a long Skype discussion on Podcast history, some of the mistakes of the past and what needs to happen moving forward.

It was obvious from our discussions, Cliff has a handle on what is needed and he's making it happen.

Following on from our discussion, I took a listen to the Podcast Report where Cliff is in discussion with Rick Calvert, CEO & Co-Founder of BlogWorld & New Media Expo. In the podcast Rick pre-announces a hugely significant change - BlogWorld is re-branding and giving equal importance to Bloggers, Podcasters and Web TV producers.

BlogWorld will no longer be BlogWorld after the next event.

We don't know what the name will be, but it is being renamed and the new name will be announced at the New York event in June. It will reflect the new focus on serving the Blogger, Podcaster and Web TV producer communities, all in equal measure and with equal importance.

This is huge, and not just because of the change in name.

It's something I've advocated for years but never thought would come to fruition due to the huge brand awareness that BlogWorld has gathered in the years it has been in operation. If they are taking the important (and some would say somewhat risky) step of changing the name, I feel confident that we'll see them follow through with the change in focus of the event.

In some respects, they have to make the change. The scene has changed considerably since BlogWorld was formed, and in reality, they probably should have made the change much sooner. Regardless of past history, they are now making the change and seem committed to restructuring the event and supporting infrastructure.

I really would recommend taking a listen to the new Podcast Report podcast below:

001 - Podcast Report

I'm excited to see what Cliff can do with the Podcast track and what Rick and the team have in store moving forward.

Looks like they might just turn it around.

SCOtutor Apps now Universal

It's been a bit quiet on the SCOtutor app front since releasing the iOS versions of the apps back in December.

There are currently three apps available, SCOtutor for Mac, SCOtutor for iPad and SCOtutor for Lion.

Already available on both the Mac and iPad, we were missing an iPhone/iPod touch version, to allow you to download the apps to your truly mobile device.

Well I'm delighted to announce that the Universal iOS versions of all three apps are now available for download via the iTunes App Store. The Universal apps are a free upgrade and include support for iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4/4S iPod touch (3rd and 4th Generation) and all iPads - basically, anything that can run iOS 5!

The great thing about being able to put the apps on the iPhone is that you can carry them around and either watch on the device, or watch on a big screen TV via Airplay.

Now that the SCOtutor framework app is complete and fully supports iOS and Mac, I'll be looking at publishing some additional titles via the App Store route in the near future.

Perhaps some iPhone specific titles would be good!

I'll include some links to the updated Apps in the Apps store but they should show up as updates if you've already purchased them. Please be aware that the video content has been reformatted so it will re-download the video. The apps also contain refreshed Retina graphics so they'll look very smart on your new iPad or iPhone 4/4S. The videos already look gorgeous on the new iPad!

SCOtutor for iPad (Universal App)

SCOtutor for Mac (Universal App)

SCOtutor for Lion (Universal App)

More ratings and reviews are always appreciated!

If you've not tried them out, go ahead! You can find more information about the individual apps on this page:

ScreenCastsOnline Mac & iOS Tutorial Apps

Or just search for SCOtutor in the iTunes or Mac App stores.

I can't finish off this post without extending a huge thanks to Simon Wolf (@sgaw) of Otter Software for his incredible efforts at bring the SCOtutor Apps together, along with Jamie Peak (@jamiepeak) for the fantastic graphics support.

Replacing My Mac Pro with a MacBook Air - Part 3

This is the third and final (for now!) update on my experiment of using my 11" MacBook Air as my main production machine, in place of my 2008 Mac Pro.

Since taking delivery of the 27" Thunderbolt display, the MacBook Air has been performing admirably as my main machine, and the experience has been surprisingly positive!

27" Thunderbolt Display

The display is a joy to use. Pinsharp with glorious colour.

The ability to connect all my desktop peripherals to my MacBook Air with a single cable is fantastic. I do feel Apple have been a bit stingy with the number of ports. Ideally, I'd have like more than three USB ports and just the single Thunderbolt port seems an oversight, two would be better!

Beware of the glossy screen, it really is very reflective, but I'm used to it now and hardly notice.

Mounting the Display

I have a custom built "Triple Boa" stand made by Monitors in Motion. This allows me to have three monitors, all hanging off an articulated cross member, raised off the desk by a single post. The 19" screen on the left is connected to a Mac mini running Mountain Lion, the central monitor is the 27" Thunderbolt display connected to the MacBook Air via the Thunderbolt connection, and the right 19" monitor is connected to the Mac Pro.

The "Triple Boa" utilises standard VESA mounts, so in order to attach the 27" Thunderbolt, I had to purchase an optional VESA adapter from Apple. To fit the VESA adapter to the Thunderbolt display, you have to remove the original one piece stand using the kit supplied with the Apple VESA mount. A fairly simple process, once I'd tracked down a YouTube video showing me how to do it. The VESA mount went on just fine, and I had no installation issues.

I decided initially to just temporarily install the cabling so it was all a bit of a mess. Now I'm happy that my experiment will work out, I'll dismantle all the monitors over the next week or so, and re-cable for neatness plus remove any unnecessary cables. Will post some photos when it's all nice and tidy.

Screencast Recording & Editing Configuration

With the 27" Thunderbolt connected to the MacBook Air, I have the perfect screencast recording configuration - recording the screen capture off the MacBook Air display, and having ScreenFlow running full screen on the main display. This way, I can record a segment, then immediately edit in ScreenFlow. The video capture files get saved straight to the LaCie so I've no worries about running out of disk space, or filling up my SSD.

I use a couple of peripherals when editing, namely a Contour Shuttle Pro and Wacom Intuos 5. The Contour Shuttle Pro is an editing jog wheel with programmable buttons, and the Wacom is a pen tablet, useful for precision editing. Both are USB, so can connect to the Thunderbolt display, or to the USB ports on the MacBook Air.

Interestingly, when I used a standalone keyboard previously for the Mac Pro, I used the Wacom as my mouse replacement. Now with the MacBook Air, I find I'm hardly using it, and relying on my MacBook Air trackpad more.

Storage and File Transfers

The performance of the LaCie is great, allowing me to boot easily from multiple builds, use as a separate RAID 0 partition for saving my project video capture files, and acting as a file store for encoding jobs when encoding on the MacBook Air. With the Gigabit ethernet permanently connected, if I need to transfer the large video files or Screenflow project files to the Mac Pro, file transfers are very speedy.

The only extra step I need to do when disconnecting the MacBook Air is to make sure I eject all the partitions on the LaCie first. I found a neat little script/application called "Undock" that allows me to do that with just a couple of keystrokes in "Alfred".

Portability

As an added benefit, with the MacBook Air, the LaCie and the Intensity Extreme, I very nearly have the ideal portable screencasting studio (once I get a solution for high quality audio recording on the go). The only downside is the size of the 11" screen. It's extremely portable, but perhaps a little on the small size for video editing, especially in vertical height. Perhaps an excuse to buy a new 13" or 15" new generation MacBook Pro if they follow the styling of the MacBook Air when released.

It's certainly a workable desktop solution in conjunction with the 27" Thunderbolt display, and one I'll continue to use instead of my existing Mac Pro.

New Mac Pro?

It's pretty much a given that Apple will release revised laptops soon, most likely restyled to match the MacBook Air. But what about the new Mac Pro?

The jury is out on whether Apple will produce a new Mac Pro at all.

The previous reasons for the existence of the Mac Pro included performance and expandability. The advent of Thunderbolt and the eventual release of more and more affordable Thunderbolt enabled peripherals may well remove the "expandability" justification.

Leaving performance as a justification for the new Mac Pro.

For pro video and graphics users, there will still be the requirement for a high power machine with lots of memory and many processors. The issue is, with the power and potential expandability of the latest consumer machines, the target audience for these monster machines must surely be shrinking.

Whether it's feasible for Apple to create a new Mac Pro to service this possibly shrinking market, it's difficult to say. If they do, it's most likely going to be hugely expensive and very much a niche product. My gut feeling is that we probably will see a new Mac Pro this year, probably in early summer.

Will I get one?

Probably not, but never say never!

For my purposes, I feel it would be more cost effective for me to stick with a high performance, Thunderbolt enabled laptop moving forward. The experience of moving to just one primary machine has been very refreshing. I'll be very interested to see how Apple update the MacBook Pro range in line with the current rumours of adopting some of the design principles of the MacBook Air.

I may be tempted to upgrade to a MacBook Pro/Air with a 256GB SSD, 8 or 16GB RAM, new Ivy Bridge processor and a 13" or 15" HiDPI Retina Display.

That would do nicely!