So here are my take-aways from the Woz’s talk tonight:

1. He wanted to be a teacher if he wasn’t an engineer, and even taught for 8 years…somewhere…he didn’t say where.
2. He didn’t want to quit HP to start Apple because he was too loyal to quit, but finally quit when a family member told him he would end up a manager and not an engineer.
3. He created the first universal remote for his personal convenience…he had too many remotes before most people even had one.
4. He’s a big fan of open-source because he likes to tinker with his gadgets. (Yet Apple is one of the most closed-source companies there is.)
5. Apple owes much of their simplistic design to his dislike of complicated interfaces.
6. He thinks books should be digital, although he still thinks they will sell books in airports.
7. He thinks schools should just let kids come and hang out and learn and the teachers should come by and talk with them every couple of days (what?).
8. His current favorite gadget is his iPhone, but his laptop is most useful. (What? No iPad?)
9. And last but not least, if he doesn’t understand the question he’s being asked, he’ll tell you that, then talk about some random piece of Apple history or why he wants an android (a robot, not a phone), or a computer that can recognize his face and read his thoughts, or something like that.

God love you, Steve. I respect your genius and your quirks.

Video

In a nutshell: MOV files do not work. They appear to work on a Mac, but take that file to a PC…FAIL. And a PC is what this presentation will ultimately be viewed on, so it has to function properly. My solution has been to export the movie as an AVI file and insert it into the PPT on a PC, not a Mac.

Audio

If there is audio in a PPT and you export it to QuickTime, chances are the audio is gone on the export. Not so…again…with Keynote. You have the option to include both embedded sound files and movie audio. And it works.

Slideshows

Today was my eureka moment on this problem. I have 2 slides with multiple slideshows on each, but each time I exported the file in Powerpoint, I only got the initial state of the slide, not the transitions and the additional images. I searched around on the web for tips and found some software, which used Java, and worked, but I didn’t think this was a solution I actually needed to pay for. One of the search pages mentioned Keynote, which I don’t use normally, and I thought, “Hmm. Wonder if I could import this PPT into Keynote and see if Keynote could export it properly?” It did. And perfectly. I was able to get a successful result with exporting both to QuickTime and to Flash. The Flash file was smaller, but the quality was less, too, so, since server space wasn’t an issue, I decided to use the QuickTime format.

Transitions

See Slideshows above.

Conclusion

I think it’s time for me to give Keynote another look. Just like any Apple product, it tricks you with its superficial simplicity, thinking that it couldn’t possibly do the kinds of things you need it to do. And again, just like my discovery of the power of iMovie, I’m proven wrong. Score yet another point in your quest for world domination, Apple. And even though I’m a converted PC user, this just reinforces my decision to go Mac and never go back.

I haven’t used my Wii in a little while, so when I popped in the disc, I had to wait through 2 consecutive software updates to use the disc.

Now that’s done, and I see the Netflix icon in the top left of the home screen.

Clicking on the icon, I can choose to Start or to go back to the Wii menu.

I have to activate my Wii so I can stream from Netflix. I do this by taking a code from the screen

and going to http://www.netflix.com/Wii and entering the code.

I do this, and now I’m told: “Your Netflix ready device is being activated. This may take up to 3 minutes. Once activation is complete you may add movies and TV episodes to your instant Queue and watch on your TV via your Netflix ready device. If you encounter any problems with activation, request a new activation code from your Netflix ready device, come back here, and try again”

In the time it took to write that paragraph, I’m ready. Much quicker than 3 minutes.

My TV screen now shows my Instant Queue in a Cover Flow-like interface. Kind of reminds me of boxee.

I can browse my instant queue by genre or I can flip through the DVD images on the horizontal scroll bar.

Clicking on an image takes me to details about the movie, again, looks a lot like boxee. From here I can play the movie or remove it from my queue. I can also rate the movie from here or go back to the prior screen.

Clicking Play goes online to retrieve the movie. I have cable internet and it took about 8 seconds to grab. The picture quality is amazing and it plays seamlessly. Can’t even tell it’s not on a disc in the DVD player or on TV. Awesome. I’m going to really enjoy this.

Update:

Accidental discovery: If you click the ‘trigger’ button on the Wii-mote, you can pause the show, then either resume, play from the beginning or remove from the queue.

You can buy me one if you want. My birthday is next week.

While sharing this article with a colleague, he tells me about a highly controversial act which just overwhelmingly passed the House – the PRO IP Act. Not bad enough that tax dollars may conceivably fund the ‘copyright police’, but how about hiring “a Cabinet-level “IP enforcement czar” that would report to the President and coordinate enforcement efforts across government”. Wha? Learn more, then call/write/email your congressman.

A new social network on Internet2: Muse was developed by student Web programmers at the University of Washington for Internet2, an advanced computing consortium of colleges and businesses. Visit Muse.

Linked to in a uWedD thread: “…the web is a conversation. Marketing, by contrast, is a monologue.” Well said, Zeldman. The article this was taken from is a interesting look at why web is not a department of its own, but housed in IT or Marketing. Read…

It’s being widely reported that a pair of Russian mathematicians say that a massive particle accelerator being built by CERN could be the first time machine. I’m particularly intrigued by this:

New Scientist says that if time travel ultimately proves possible, it could occur only as far back as the creation of the first time machine, making 2008 “Year Zero” (meaning there’s no need to contact your time-travel agent until at least 2009).

Kind of takes away the fantasy a bit, don’t you think? It also tends to nullify every piece of time-travel fiction ever written. I need to think about this a bit more.

New Scientist article via Positive Futurist

Ross: “The iCar is going to run on Steve Job’s ego.” < Best. quote. ever.
Pam: “No chance of that car ever running out of juice.”

Freshmen.

August 16, 2006
Small-Conference Football Hits the Computer Screen

Fans of the Oklahoma Sooners or the Auburn Tigers may never have to travel farther than a local sports bar to see their favorite college football teams in action. But supporters of the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks have no such luck: Small-conference teams virtually never show up on television.

So instead of trying, futilely, to negotiate TV contracts, the lesser conferences are taking their games straight to the Web. This season the Big Sky Conference, which features Northern Arizona, will broadcast all its football games (as well as its basketball and volleyball matches) online, according to the Associated Press. And the commissioner of the Ivy League predicts that almost all the league’s sporting events will air on the Web — for the benefit of alumni and proud parents — within seven years. –Brock Read

August 16, 2006
Campus News, on Your Cellphone

Pennsylvania State University will start using text messages to send news bulletins to cellphones and PDA’s, campus officials announced today. The text-messaging service, which starts Friday, is the latest high-tech expansion of Penn State Live, the university’s popular online news network.

Penn State Live already boasts 360,000 subscribers, and it recently added an RSS subscription service to its e-mail offerings. But more students are turning to text messaging, and university officials decided it was time to try out the technology.

Cellphone users can subscribe to receive information on three different topics, according to CNET News: campus emergencies, sports, and concerts. —Brock Read