iTunesU: More than a podcast? Unfortunately, less.

iTunes now has the iTunesU section where universities can post content, typically class lectures. It allows universities to have a more organized and branded presence in iTunes than just a collection of podcasts.

But let’s be clear. These are still, at heart, podcasts.

That’s not bad; in fact, it’s good. Because the capabilities provided by the podcast mechanism fits perfectly with what a lecture series needs.

Listeners need a way to subscribe so that they automatically receive new lectures in the series. They need a way to listen to a long lecture that allows interruptions and remembers their place so they can return to it. And they need a way to remember which lectures they’ve listened to and which they haven’t yet heard. Exactly what a traditional podcast accomplishes.

Why then do hardly any iTunesU downloads avail themselves of any of these featuers?!

(Insert expletives between every other word in the preceding sentence.)

I.e. why can’t all iTunesU offerings do the following?

• Offer downloads through regular podcast subscription.
• Check the Remember playback position option.
• Check the Skip when shuffling option.
• Have them show up in the Podcast list until they’ve been completely listened to. Then have them disappear.

I am soooo frustrated every time I download from iTunesU and forget to manually check Remember playback position and Skip when shuffling. I seem to repeat this scenario endlessly: I listen to half of a 90 minute lecture on the bus going to work. At work I listen to music (occasionally shuffling from songs into another 90 minute lecture – oops). Then on the bus home, I discover that I’ve lost my place in the morning lecture. (But universities must think that a fit punishment for not enjoying the lecture in a single sitting.)

Some will be quick to point out that, because the universities assume I wont want their downloaded lectures automatically deleted from my iPod or iTunes after I listen to it, I must not want a traditional podcast. While this might be typically true for an enrolled student taking the class for credit, I believe it is typically not true for the rest of the world.

My point is to give us a choice. Why not make the lectures available both as a traditional podcast and a new pseudo-podcast? (Will you at least enable the Remember playback position and Skip when shuffling options? Who would not want that??)

My understanding is that this is not a limitation of iTunesU, but a choice made by the particular iTunesU author. And that even though none of the universities I listen to enable these features, there are some who do. I.e, it is the choice or inexperience of the university which causes this.

If it’s inexperience, I’m surprised Apple doesn’t do a better job of giving guidance. Ditto if it’s choice, actually.

Clipboard Text Scrubber

A cool Windows tool is Clipboard Text Scrubber.

Do you copy/paste only to discover that waaaay too much font/size/formatting was carried with it? When all you really wanted was just the text? (Copying from web pages or Word docs to email is when it most happens to me.)

This tool transmogrifies the clipboard contents to remove any formatting, leaving just the text. It can be configured to happen automatically or on-demand.

It has some problems. When automatic scrubbing is enabled it can get into an infinite loop when remote desktop is involved. That’s why I leave it configured for on-demand.

It’s free, but donations are welcome.

http://www.binaryfortress.com/clipboard-text-scrubber/

So You Want to be a Wizard by Diane Duane

As a Harry Potter fan, I’ve been going through withdrawal since J.K. Rowling completed her book series.

Many are searching for other books to give them that quick fix. Here’s one I found that I like.

Present day. Large metropolitan area. Picked on kid discovers wizards are real and living among us. They have their own culture existing within our own. Then kid discovers she is a wizard too. She is joined by another budding young wizard and together they fight to save the wizarding world from the most evil wizard there is. Someone so terrible, they don’t even speak his name.

Sound like a Harry Potter rip-off? It did to me. Until I noticed that Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is copyright 1997 and this book, So You Want to be a Wizard, is copyright 1983.

And, like Harry Potter, thankfully this is a series. The ninth book will be published in 2008! And you can subscribe to early chapters of the new book.

Learn more at the official site or Wikipedia or the podcast, WizCast.

DoS Attacks against Toasters

The canonical example of why we need IPv6 is so that every toaster can have its own IP address, thus enabling ubiquitous internet-controlled toasters. (See also examples using Windows and NetBSD.)

We here at Flaming Toasters thoroughly support this concept.

However, as a friend recently pointed out to me, when That Glorious Day arrives, we will face the potential of denial-of-service attacks against toasters.

In addition to heralding The Apocalypse, this will have other negative consequences. Imagine a toaster so overloaded with incoming packets that it can’t pop up the toast when its done. The toast would eventually catch fire, causing flames to leap from the toaster, resulting in an effect something like this.

We here at Flaming Toasters thoroughly support this concept.