Ah but MS sells the Xbox at a loss and makes it up on sales of expensive games - I believe an Xbox owner has to buy 7 or so games for MS to break even on their console purchase.
MS can't do the same with music as at 99c there is very little margin left after the music companies take their pound of flesh from each purchase.
We automatically record around 70 lectures per week using the Lectopia System http://lectopia.uwa.edu.au/ and haven't noticed any major drops in attendance in any of those lectures. One of our departments, the School of Computing, did a study of the use of Lectopia across a number of units and found there was no discernable drop in attendance at all compared to the control classes that hadn't used the system.
What we find is that although any recording is only second-best to a good-quality live interactive lecture, it is great for reviewing lectures before exams, for English-as-a-second-language students, those with disabilities and distance and part-time students, as well as regular students who have time-table clashes or who just slept in. We also notice some students putting down their pens and instead listening and participating in class and then later at home or in a computer lab with headphones on and the web browser in the background, writing notes on the lecture in Word as they pause and rewind the recording.
For some lecturers this system is the easiest and simplest way for them to get their lecture content "webified" and it's also great to be able to enable last year's version of a lecture when the lecturer is sick or the lecture has to be cancelled for some reason.
We use the Lectopia system (originally called iLectures) which is an enterprise-class system that enables lecturers to book their lectures at the start of semester and then on the day of each lecture just walk in, turn on the microphone (which triggers the recording) and deliver their lecture as they would normally. 15 minutes or so after they finish their lecture, streaming and podcast versions of the lecture appear on the web in their unit web pages all without any human intervention.
The system automatically captures whatever gets shown on the data projector as a high resolution, high quality XGA stream synchronised to the audio from the lecture theatre sound system so students can see the mouse moving around as the lecturer talks. It also means that no matter whether the lecturer is browsing the web, running a program or just showing powerpoint slides, it all gets recorded at a high enough quality for the users to read the small text better than if they were actually in the lecture theatre.
The system automatically compresses multiple versions for different bandwidths from 14k up to 1Mbps or more in Windows Media, Quicktime, MPEG-4, MP3, iPod audio book and 3GP formats for mobile phones etc in streaming as well as multiple downloadable formats. It also automatically publishes podcast versions to iTunes U.
Duke University in Durham NC uses Lectopia http://www.duke.edu/ddi/projects/capture.html to automatically record their lectures to fill all those iPods they give out to their students. A third of the universities here in Australia and New Zealand also use the system. The University of Western Australia (the original developer of Lectopia) records over 400 lectures per week across over 40 lecture theatres while at least one other university in Australia is planning to install automated Lectopia digitisers in 150 classrooms across their campuses.
We see podcasting/streaming lectures as a very valuable enhancement of existing lectures, something which turns them into a resource available 24/7/365 anywhere in the world. Not a silver bullet to replace lectures, but rather something to expand their usage and capture their value making something that used to last for one hour once a year in one room on campus into something available anytime, anywhere.
-Mart
Martin Hill, Digital Media Specialist
Information Management Services, Curtin University of Technology
Western Australia
web: http://ilectures.curtin.edu.au/
My wife owns an iPod Shuffle and a 40GB 4G iPod and the comparison between those and my O2 XDA IIs PocketPC highlights why Apple is walking away with the market. The expense and add-on nature of the tiny 1GB card on my Aus$1200 PocketPC compared to the 40GB hard disk in the Aus$400 iPod is shameful. However, that is the least of the issues. Add in the following Windows Mobile PDA problems and the picture becomes much clearer.
- Windows Mobile 2003 SE is not as good a phone OS as Symbian UiQ running on my P900. Accessing contacts to phone someone is not as intuitive and takes a lot more fiddling.
- Windows Mobile is also not as good a PDA GUI as the Palm OS. Putting a "Start Menu" on the PDA in a vain attempt to emulate Windows XP results in a GUI that is much more awkward than the simple icon based Palm interface that my previous Palm III PDA used.
- Slow downs and freezes. My PocketPC froze often enough for me to need to pull the battery off the back to restart (the power or reset buttons wouldn't work) about twice a week, before I updated the firmware. It seems to have improved somewhat though it still suffers slow-downs requiring me to quit all running applications.
- One occurrence that I think might have been caused by ActiveSynch, but could have been an Exchange problem was the case where I lost almost all of my Outlook calendar entries from Exchange (on my desktop PC and my Mac) over a weekend while my IIs still had all the entries - once I synched the PDA all the entries on the PDA were also wiped. It was very frustrating.
- Volatile local storage. MS should be shot for designing these devices to erase all local storage (including user data AND all settings requiring a complete re-install of apps, personal settings etc) if the battery goes flat! Neither my Newton PDA nor my Palm ever suffered from such a poor design.
- Firmware updates. Again who ever heard of a PDA needing to be completely set up from scratch again if you update the firmware. Pathetic.
- Forced lesson in how to use the pen every time you re-initialise the device. You should not be forced to "click and drag" on simulated diary entries every time you re-install because your battery went flat! - it should be optional. I want to strangle the MS team who designed this "feature".
- Forced hardware upgrades. Being able to upgrade the version of the OS on the device isn't necessarily guaranteed - I understand a lot of Windows Mobile 2003 devices can't be upgraded to Second Edition.
- It's another play by Microsoft for world domination.;-)
Now if Apple had only continued developing the original Newton which coined the name PDA and whose OS is *still* amazingly in advance of most current contenders in many ways - well the story might be a bit different....:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Ah but MS sells the Xbox at a loss and makes it up on sales of expensive games - I believe an Xbox owner has to buy 7 or so games for MS to break even on their console purchase.
MS can't do the same with music as at 99c there is very little margin left after the music companies take their pound of flesh from each purchase.
-Mart
We automatically record around 70 lectures per week using the Lectopia System http://lectopia.uwa.edu.au/ and haven't noticed any major drops in attendance in any of those lectures. One of our departments, the School of Computing, did a study of the use of Lectopia across a number of units and found there was no discernable drop in attendance at all compared to the control classes that hadn't used the system.
What we find is that although any recording is only second-best to a good-quality live interactive lecture, it is great for reviewing lectures before exams, for English-as-a-second-language students, those with disabilities and distance and part-time students, as well as regular students who have time-table clashes or who just slept in. We also notice some students putting down their pens and instead listening and participating in class and then later at home or in a computer lab with headphones on and the web browser in the background, writing notes on the lecture in Word as they pause and rewind the recording.
For some lecturers this system is the easiest and simplest way for them to get their lecture content "webified" and it's also great to be able to enable last year's version of a lecture when the lecturer is sick or the lecture has to be cancelled for some reason.
We use the Lectopia system (originally called iLectures) which is an enterprise-class system that enables lecturers to book their lectures at the start of semester and then on the day of each lecture just walk in, turn on the microphone (which triggers the recording) and deliver their lecture as they would normally. 15 minutes or so after they finish their lecture, streaming and podcast versions of the lecture appear on the web in their unit web pages all without any human intervention.
The system automatically captures whatever gets shown on the data projector as a high resolution, high quality XGA stream synchronised to the audio from the lecture theatre sound system so students can see the mouse moving around as the lecturer talks. It also means that no matter whether the lecturer is browsing the web, running a program or just showing powerpoint slides, it all gets recorded at a high enough quality for the users to read the small text better than if they were actually in the lecture theatre.
The system automatically compresses multiple versions for different bandwidths from 14k up to 1Mbps or more in Windows Media, Quicktime, MPEG-4, MP3, iPod audio book and 3GP formats for mobile phones etc in streaming as well as multiple downloadable formats. It also automatically publishes podcast versions to iTunes U.
Duke University in Durham NC uses Lectopia http://www.duke.edu/ddi/projects/capture.html to automatically record their lectures to fill all those iPods they give out to their students. A third of the universities here in Australia and New Zealand also use the system. The University of Western Australia (the original developer of Lectopia) records over 400 lectures per week across over 40 lecture theatres while at least one other university in Australia is planning to install automated Lectopia digitisers in 150 classrooms across their campuses.
We see podcasting/streaming lectures as a very valuable enhancement of existing lectures, something which turns them into a resource available 24/7/365 anywhere in the world. Not a silver bullet to replace lectures, but rather something to expand their usage and capture their value making something that used to last for one hour once a year in one room on campus into something available anytime, anywhere.
-Mart
Martin Hill, Digital Media Specialist
Information Management Services, Curtin University of Technology
Western Australia
web: http://ilectures.curtin.edu.au/
My wife owns an iPod Shuffle and a 40GB 4G iPod and the comparison between those and my O2 XDA IIs PocketPC highlights why Apple is walking away with the market. The expense and add-on nature of the tiny 1GB card on my Aus$1200 PocketPC compared to the 40GB hard disk in the Aus$400 iPod is shameful. However, that is the least of the issues. Add in the following Windows Mobile PDA problems and the picture becomes much clearer.
;-)
:-)
- Windows Mobile 2003 SE is not as good a phone OS as Symbian UiQ running on my P900. Accessing contacts to phone someone is not as intuitive and takes a lot more fiddling.
- Windows Mobile is also not as good a PDA GUI as the Palm OS. Putting a "Start Menu" on the PDA in a vain attempt to emulate Windows XP results in a GUI that is much more awkward than the simple icon based Palm interface that my previous Palm III PDA used.
- Slow downs and freezes. My PocketPC froze often enough for me to need to pull the battery off the back to restart (the power or reset buttons wouldn't work) about twice a week, before I updated the firmware. It seems to have improved somewhat though it still suffers slow-downs requiring me to quit all running applications.
- One occurrence that I think might have been caused by ActiveSynch, but could have been an Exchange problem was the case where I lost almost all of my Outlook calendar entries from Exchange (on my desktop PC and my Mac) over a weekend while my IIs still had all the entries - once I synched the PDA all the entries on the PDA were also wiped. It was very frustrating.
- Volatile local storage. MS should be shot for designing these devices to erase all local storage (including user data AND all settings requiring a complete re-install of apps, personal settings etc) if the battery goes flat! Neither my Newton PDA nor my Palm ever suffered from such a poor design.
- Firmware updates. Again who ever heard of a PDA needing to be completely set up from scratch again if you update the firmware. Pathetic.
- Forced lesson in how to use the pen every time you re-initialise the device. You should not be forced to "click and drag" on simulated diary entries every time you re-install because your battery went flat! - it should be optional. I want to strangle the MS team who designed this "feature".
- Forced hardware upgrades. Being able to upgrade the version of the OS on the device isn't necessarily guaranteed - I understand a lot of Windows Mobile 2003 devices can't be upgraded to Second Edition.
- It's another play by Microsoft for world domination.
Now if Apple had only continued developing the original Newton which coined the name PDA and whose OS is *still* amazingly in advance of most current contenders in many ways - well the story might be a bit different....
-Mart