Software

In a recent article on the status of the could music battle between Amazon, Google and Apple, I tendered my opinion that victory wouldn’t be based on chronological order, but on a litany of factors. I also touched on the fact that Apple has a storied history of entering the market later than competitors with [...]

In a recent article on the status of the could music battle between Amazon, Google and Apple, I tendered my opinion that victory wouldn’t be based on chronological order, but on a litany of factors. I also touched on the fact that Apple has a storied history of entering the market later than competitors with [...]

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.

Years of and millions of dollars in R&D have resulted in digital cameras finally having picture quality truly equal to their high end conventional counterparts. And while the first camera phones were laughable novelties that provided you with ‘images’ not fit to be displayed on a Commodore computer, an iPhone capture would have to be [...]

Do you see music?

It’s a question I’ve always asked my musically inclined friends. Where does their sound come from, and how do they render it? Apparently, I’m not the only person who wondered.

To help ensure kids’ Internet safety, parents need to know how to educate their children about staying safe online and manage their kids’ Internet experiences. And although the task may sound challenging, there are some websites that offer some simple solutions or tips that every family can use to help make their kids’ online experiences safe ones.

At long last, there is a program out there for the many that worry about their image on the Web. Researchers in Germany have developed X-Pire, a program that will delete at a future time any pictures you are wary about.

Social Media has already proven itself to be a viable platform for traditional advertising. Now, a number of companies are attempting to track and successfully manipulate the elusive viral world – and there’s no shortage of prospective clients.

Programmers worldwide are chomping at the bit for their chance at glory in the first ever Facebook ‘Hacker Cup’. In between bit-chomps, however, they’re taking the time to chuckle at the fear the word ‘hacker’ strikes into the hearts of a public that still is very confused about its true meaning.

Evernote has released a significant upgrade to their Windows application, and if you use Evernote go over to their web site now and get this version. The new version of Evernote for Windows has been rewritten and the result is much faster performance and a cleaner user interface. Evernote has also improved clipping, for example, when you clip from within Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Outlook you now see a pop-up that allows you to assign tags and designate in which notebook you want the clip stored.

If you are not familiar with Evernote, it is a web based note taking and storage application. The Evernote service is free or you can pay a yearly fee for additional services such as secure transmission between client apps and their servers. Perhaps the biggest selling point of Evernote is that they provide client applications for just about every platform known to man. There are apps for the iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, webOs, and Windows Mobile smartphones as well as Windows and OS X.

I love it when my productivity tools work well with each other, and thanks to an update today from Livescribe, it is now easier to import notes I write with the Livescribe Echo pen into Evernote. If you are not familiar with Livescribe, they sell a couple of pens, the Echo and Pulse, that record handwriting and audio.

To record handwriting you must write on special paper that is covered with thousands of little dots so small that you barely see them, but the camera in the pen sees the movement through the dots and records the movement as your handwriting. The pen also has a microphone to record audio and the software synchronizes what you are writing to the audio so that when you play it back you hear what was spoken at exactly the same time as when you were writing. Combining audio and handwriting is great for taking notes during presentations or lectures, which is why the Livescribe pens are popular amongst college students and business people.

All of your handwritten and audio notes are stored in the Livescribe Desktop software and you can share notes by exporting them into PDF and image files, which you could then e-mail or store in Evernote. The latest version of the Livescribe Desktop software for Windows (there is also a version for OS X) now includes Evernote as a sharing option. When you click Share and select With Evernote, you have options to share the entire notebook or just the page. I was confused the first time that I tried sharing with Evernote because the Pencast dialog appears with the Share button grayed out. Before you can send the page to Evernote you need to enter a title for the page in the Pencast Name field. I think Livescribe ought to create a specific dialog for sharing with Evernote to make it obvious what you are supposed to do.

Pages that you select to share with Evernote are exported into PNG image files and then automatically uploaded to your Evernote web account. You then synchronize the Evernote desktop software with your account to get the note into your Evernote notebook on your computer. Evernote does character recognition and indexing of handwriting in images so that you can search for what you write. As an example of how Livescribe stores notes in Evernote, I have posted my notes from the Windows Phone 7 launch into my public notebook. You can see how well Evernote’s character recognition works by entering “wonderfully” without the quotes in the search box.

If you are interested in getting your own Livescribe pen, you can find them online and at Best Buy starting at $129, and you can purchase notebooks in a variety of sizes.

Mediabistro.com, which is the parent of this web site, has a new article for media professionals titled “11 Must-Have Smartphone Apps For Media Pros On The Move.” In this article you will find a list of apps to help you stay organized, track money and contacts, research, write, and collaborate.

The article is one of the benefits of AvantGuild membership, which costs $55 per year. Membership in AvantGuild provides you access to all sorts of content for media professionals such as discounted access to LexisNexis, how to pitch guides, and discounts on courses. Also included with the membership is a one year subscription to either New York, Wired, W, or The Atlantic magazines.

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How To Pitch for PR: Mashable