“While I encourage you to experiment with your own sketches, the preloaded MintySynth software can provide many hours of fun with no need for programming or a music background. It’s a 4-voice, 16-step wavetable sequencer (8 bit, 20 Khz) based on the “Illutron” Synth library by DZl of Evil Genius Lair. You can set the voice for four different instruments and program 16-note loops (“songs”) using all four instruments. There’s control of tempo and “swing”, and you can select any key and choose from several different scales (modes). Once you’ve created a song you can enter “Live Mode”, where you can change the pitch and voice of one of the instruments in real time so you can “jam” along with the other three instruments. You can save up to four 16-note songs and then reload them individually or loop them consecutively, creating songs of up to 64 notes.” – MintySynth.com, http://goo.gl/GYKMqr
Open source and free do not mean the same thing at all cc-by lemasney
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A Primer: 11 Questions about Open Source (answered)
I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Rich Kazimir on Technology Today on WDVR on the topic of open source. He asked me variations on the following questions.
What exactly is ‘open source’? What criteria applies ?
Let’s focus first on software. What is open source software? What are some examples?
What are some pros and cons of the philosophy?
What is Mozilla?
How did the movement get started?
Who contributes to open source products? How do they continue to exist if they resulting products are free?
What are some other open source products?
Do you have any idea how many open source software products are out there?
Is ‘shareware’ the same as ‘open source’? Is ‘freemium’ the same as ‘open source’?
What other industry areas have embraced an ‘open source’ approach, or at least started to?
What is the future of ‘open source’ as you see it?
Here is the audio from that broadcast.
Some background on WDVR
“WDVR FM hit the air waves on February 19, 1990 as a newly established, Non-Commercial Station. It is licensed to Penn-Jersey Educational Radio, a New Jersey, 501 (c) (3), Non-Profit Corporation. Its mission is to provide high quality, Non-Commercial Educational Radio service to the Delaware and Lehigh Valley area of Western New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania. WDVR provides a uniquely diversified format of music and talk, utilizing a staff of over 50 unpaid volunteers, each with his or her own specialized expertise in music and/or talk–“50 colorful gems creating a beautiful audio mosaic”. WDVR is a full-service FM station operating 24 hours a day at 89.7 Mhz from Delaware Township, NJ and at 90.5 WPNJ in Easton, PA. It also utilizes a translator on 96.9 Mhz in Trenton, NJ, serving the Lawrenceville, Princeton, Trenton area and points south. On the internet WDVR can be heard streaming live on www.wdvrfm.org . WDVR is a listener supported community oriented station, offering radio programming which is always suitable for the entire family.” – WDVR FM 89.7 91.9,
The revised Google motto by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #Inkscape #Google
The revised Google motto by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #Inkscape #Google
Summary of On Recording the senses.
Go Pro vs Glass, and the importance of us recording senses that we can’t normally, such as the ability to taste, such as the ability to spell, such as the ability to touch.
We already have the very clear record of what we see and we have the ability to hear and record what we hear. We are just beginning to understand how to record how we touch with haptics, like in remote robot gloves.
But we don’t really understand yet how to record smells, although perfume begins to speak to it, and we also have no idea how to record tastes. Recipes are really important because the combination of flavors and ingredients in a food lead to that particular taste but there may be other things that we are missing; if we do perfectly it may not have exactly the right taste, and we may not know why, because we haven’t done a very good job of recording why something tastes the way it does.
The recording of the senses.
Other senses are rather difficult to record. If you ever wanted to record a touch, for instance, you’d find how few tools exist for the task. Poetry and great literature begins to do it, because something that is well written and explains something leads to a sense of touch in the mind, but it’s not exactly the same as a GoPro recording a bike ride. It’s not exactly the same as recording something with a microphone, where you have a much clearer idea of what was heard or what was seen.
Why GoPro as a head-mounted camera gets a different response than Google glass with its head-mounted camera.
If the concern is only about the camera, then why are GoPros not encountering the same kinds of issues that Google Glass has? That’s a concern for me because, honestly, a phone is capable of everything that Google Glass is, but people just don’t like the idea of Glass right there on your face; They feel like their privacy is being compromised in the presence of Glass, but they certainly don’t feel like their privacy is being compromised in the presence of a GoPro. This is odd, in my opinion.
It seems like, maybe socially, we are not ready yet for Google Glass, unfortunately. I think that it is the next step in the way that we begin to think about recording our whole experience, including geolocation, video, pictures, voice, and anything else we opt into. Anything that can be digitized can be shared, can be apps, can be searched. There used to be arguments against laptops in the classroom, but of course if we look at the benefits of a computer over a sheet of paper, and all the pros and cons of each, there is no question that the laptop is superior. The same is true of Glass over glass.
We have to begin to realize that there are superior ways to record our consciousness. There are better ways of taking a picture than with a camera, or than recording a voice with a microphone. Combinations of these two sensors (cameras, microphones), along with many other signals, like temperature in the room, or heartrate while messaging, or tweets that were going on with me, or other streams that only become clear if they are being paired in ways like Glass would pair them. We might solve mysteries of the kind that only a combination of these streams might answer. If we saw the heartrate of a group of people simultaneously, you might be able to predict a riot, for instance. Without these streams, we’d have to guess. As Fitbit has taught me personally, it’s better to know.
But, we are scared of Glass. Despite its potential for ethereal, visible, recordable good.
Lib20: Media Specialist Symposium at Stockton University
I am very excited to have been asked to present the keynote and other presentations at Lib2.0 2015: A Media Specialist Symposium, in October 2015 at Stockton University (http://www.ettc.net/lib20/). At the event, I have been asked to talk about the following topics. Details for each session are below. If you are interested in having these topics delivered at your staff day training, conference, ot other speaking opportunity, please contact me at 609 553 9498 or john@lemasney.com
The aim of organizational branding efforts is to make these three ideas merge:
We are presenting a brand of some kind now (active or passive, intended or unintended) that we hope creates a positive, accurate perception by our stakeholders.
We have stakeholders that perceive our brand in some way, and we must discover what that perception is, even if it is not positive or correct.
We can do actions, enforce policies, and check stakeholder perceptions to align our brand with our intended perceptions, the very intent of branding. We are doing these things to underline and reinforce what we are, and our patrons and other stakeholders understand and agree.
Come and learn about your library’s brand, and what can be done to improve or maintain it.
Social Media For Librarians and Media Specialists
We’re in what is referred to as the third wave of Social Media: The first wave was one in which people got Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google Plus, Hoot suite, and other social media accounts to connect with others socially and casually. The second wave was one in which organizations discovered that everyone was on these services and that they should probably be there too to take part in the conversation, without necessarily knowing what that might look like, what their intent was, or what to expect about outcomes. Now, organizations are starting to make sense of how those social media accounts can help them to engage stakeholders differently than they do in person, track and make sense of visits, interactions, and connections and how that affects the rest of their work, and develop plans for success in social media in similar ways to the way that they developed their strategic plans. Come and learn how to make the most out of your social media efforts, how to decide if what you are doing is what you should be doing, and to discover what success looks like in social media outcomes.
Infographics and Visual Literacy for School Libraries
There is a trend in social media towards the visual. Images, videos and graphics get the most attention and lead more people to your other content. Social media platforms like Pinterest have grown powerful in a short period and reflect and strengthen the trend. The issue: while many of us are visual learners, not everyone considers themselves a visual creator, and so participation in the trend often is limited to simply sharing others’ images. In this session, we discover new tools that will help you to develop a beautiful visual representation of your ideas without having to become a certified graphic designer, photographer or visual communicator (even though you are likely doing those things already without much help or guidance). Learn how to create and find great images that support your ideas.
Creating Sharable Content for Libraries
In this session, John LeMasney will share 10 key ideas to consider when creating sharable content. What makes an article, image, idea, quote or other media particularly sharable? What technologies and methods can help you to give an interesting idea the best chance of being shared? How can copyright be honored and original sources be found? Why is there such emphasis now about sharing visual media over other forms? Join us for this session to help us find the answers!
Google Cloud-Based Services for Libraries
Learn how libraries can use Google’s free suite of office, productivity, organization, and life tools to improve communications and increase visibility in your community. We’ll discuss what can happen when library staff, administrators, and patrons use Google Drive, Hangouts, Maps, Calendar, Gmail, and Google Plus to advertise, communicate, and share information more effectively.
Top Ten Transliteracies for School Libraries
Transliteracy is the ability for a communicator to flexibly use a variety of methods to communicate their ideas more fully. This skill is an increasingly important one. Communicators who embrace photography, audio editing, coding, graphic design, video editing, can speak to a broader audience more easily. Let’s look at ways in which libraries can embrace, learn and take advantage of these literacies to communicate more effectively with their communities of service and practice.
