A recent project required us to create a website for Rochford District Council, Uttlesford District Council and Essex County Council where users would be able to access information relating to public consultations and best practice. Nothing particularly remarkable in that – this is the sort of project that we enjoy doing as it is for a very good purpose and allows a degree of creativity in the design and approach to creating the site.
Earlier this month I wrote in fairly scathing terms about the previous version of this software, which to all intents and purposes seemed prematurely released. It was slow, clunky, didn’t run well on a Mac (I understand Windows users were more satisfied) and generally wasn’t worth the money. I couldn’t then review version 2 as it didn’t even install for me, so as you can imagine I was less than positive about it all. Read the rest of this entry »
Having written in glowing terms about Scott Kelby, who recommended the use of Nikon’s Camera Control Pro software, I now find I am going to speak less favourably about it.
OK, first, it almost works well and certainly I was able to shoot images and see them on my laptop screen, writing direct to hard drive. I could control the camera settings from the laptop and generally not have to touch the camera at all – good if you want to keep things still, certainly.
However, I have some gripes. Chief amongst them is that this software costs money, and it really isn’t all that good as an application on a Mac. In fact, it probably works better on a PC, since the layout of it was pretty counter intuitive. For example, when you use mac software you generally get a very logical experience. So when you take a photo and send it to your computer you’d expect it to appear on screen right away (or as soon as it ‘lands’), right? Well, no… you have to set a preference so that the image can be viewed. This just isn’t right, in my opinion.
Then you get the issue with speed. Resizing the window takes an age, whether you are viewing a RAW file of 15Mb or a JPEG of around 4Mb. There are only two size options pre-set – 100% (way too big for a laptop screen) and 50% – usable, but not great. At 100% you get scroll bars, which do not move. Where is the ability to set the scale exactly as you want it? Or do we rely on the infinitely slow resize the window and click the button that fits to the size you create?
Moving back and forth between images… ? Be prepared for a wait. A long, long wait.
It was excruciatingly slow and I thought there must be an update. There was – I had downloaded and installed version 1.3, and there was a version 2 ‘Pro’ application as a trial, too. The change og didn’t look impressive – basically added some functions for the D300 and D3 cameras. Fair enough, but I wanted to try it all the same. I downloaded it and ran the installer, which kindly informed me that it had to remove the earlier version before it could continue.
And that’s where it all stopped.
Version 2 wouldn’t even install on my system (OSX 10.5 ‘Leopard’) and just sat there eating resources as it did very little of any use. OK – it could be that it isn’t keen on the current flavour of OSX, and to be fair there is a suggestion on Nikon’s web site that hints this might be the case, but again – if it doesn’t work on Leopard, don’t let it start the installer (there’s plenty of apps that check the system before they install)!
So I am left with a great urge to shoot ‘tethered’ and no ability to do so. And the price for this is around $70, so I shan’t be parting with that money just yet, then.
This software really ought to be free. I can’t imagine anyone using this and thinking it was a good experience, and yet the potential for it is simply massive. As a free download I might live with it (and wouldn’t use it much). As a paid download I would feel absolutely cheated. Its a good job there is a trial period!
So come on Nikon – get your act together on this one. Give us the right functionality, get it working in an intuitive way, and get ALL of the features running at the right speed, please! I’d be happy to help you do this if you need someone to act as part of a focus group of testers – but until then I won’t be giving you any more money (well, for software at least).
One of the tools I used yesterday in Reading was a rather nifty SMS tool, which allows me to receive SMS messages on a mobile phone and display them to the audience. All through the power of bluetooth and some technical wizardry!
As a tool when presenting it offers the audience a chance to interact directly – asking questions, making comments and so on. You need to be careful who you use it with though – there is no moderation, and although the sender’s phone number is captured, the messages appear without any names or identifying features… so all pretty anonymous.
The screen capture here shows what happened when it was used in Reading. As you can see from some of the comments… my mac fell over during the presentation!
If you are looking to do the same thing, drop me a line and we can talk about how we might work on it for you.
For the first time ever, Cleveratom became an exhibitor in their own right at the BETT show in Olympia during the week of 9th January 2008. This involved renting the space ( a shell scheme area 4m x 4m on the main hall gallery outside the organisers’ office), creating a stand and buying the graphics and frames needed, and renting the remainder of the equipment. It was a small fortune to do, but overall very worthwhile.
The event itself is huge. Now easily filling both the Grand hall and the National hall, plus both galleries, there are probably a thousand companies hawking their wares and services. In addition, the feature stand in the main hall showcases a number of different approaches to education – this year the message was ‘Learner Voice’. Headed up by Stephen Heppell, the feature stand involved a number of different consultants and practitioners giving talks and presentations, but also hosted some groups of children making use of hardware to do some tasks such as film making with a sony PSP (yep – a PSP.. just add a camera!), using interactive whiteboards and the fabulous Asus EeePC. I was delighted to be a presenter on that stand on each day of the show.
The Cleveratom stand had a large number of visitors despite not being in a particularly busy area. Friends from previous projects appeared over the four days and we were reminded of just how busy the company has been. Older friends from Ultralab days were welcomed, too and we hope more people are now aware of just what it is we can do to hep them integrate learning and ICT more effectively.
We were showcasing a single product on our stand – PLiP – in conjunction with Edison Schools. The PLiP tool (Personalised Learning in Practice) is the software we created to support the process which Edison professionals deliver in schools. We were delighted to have Kevin, Tim, Deborah, Sue and Julie supporting us on the stand and helping to promote the process.
My overriding memory of the week is that there is a lot still to do to encourage people to engage with personalisation of learning and not make it become a buzz phrase – learner voice is equally important and we have to guard against tokenistic approaches to this, too. many companies are developing virtual learning solutions but to many are still trying to build a walled garden for the learner, replicating the functionality of the social spaces that children gravitate towards and therefore introducing a layer of complexity that doesn’t necessarily need to be there. There are some chinks of light in the forest of VLE, though. Notable is Dan Sivak and his company ‘CDSM’ with the ‘My Learning Space’ product, and ‘LP+’ which appears to have risen from almost nowhere to prominence in a very short time.
As the coming weeks unfold, more reflection on the show will appear and perhaps more sense will be made of what was a very hectic time. On a more personal level I want to remember to use soft soles on my shoes in future, and add insoles to those, too! Also, a big thank you to Matt Eaves, Alex Blanc, Nick Platts and Hais Deakin for working so hard throughout the week. Additionally, I’d like to thank Jack and colleagues from Skyline Whitespace who helped us make sense of the frames we used for the stand, and to Skyline for helping us achieve a very special look and feel to the space.
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