Privacy online and social sites that don’t actually delete your accounts when asked!

Well that is very interesting indeed! A month or so ago I deleted/deactivated a few of my social accounts. It had seemed that I had reached overload of daily input into my brain and I also did not agree with everything that was happening around me online.

It’s been a good break. Now I have re-opened a few of those accounts again. I miss the input and interaction with the online world of music education! I have made an interesting observation though about two of these services and I would like to pass on the warning that I am sure many of you have heard before. Once things are online it is pretty difficult to get rid of it! In fact my Twitter account and FourSquare account never actually got deleted! Now you must understand something about this situation….. When I deleted these accounts I was very diligent, or so I thought, about making sure that I actually was DELETING these accounts! Deleting, as in I did not want to ever re-activate them again! Deleting as in I wanted them GONE! So some place I missed something when doing that! At least with FourSquare and Twitter. Every single bit of my previous account were still there! All my followers, tweets and check-ins!

One other thing that made a few of my 8th grade students turn pale (and no I’m not kidding!). I showed the students how Google tracks you! If you sign into your Gmail account in a web browser, check your email and then simply close the web page then Google is tracking you! Google had info on me going back many years! Want to see what they have on you? Sign into your Google account, then go to this web site – http://google.com/history

At least Google let’s you “suspend” this tracking of your online activities.

Are there web services that you have found did not “delete” your account? Leave a comment below.

PDF Music Workflow with PDF Music Readers and DropBox

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted anything but these past few weeks have been full of preparation for Fine Arts Week. Through that preparation though I’ve started using a specific workflow that seems to be working pretty well.

When I digitize music at the school one purpose is for archival and the main purpose is so that I can access that PDF music on my iPad. Here is how I’ve been doing it….

Step 1)Digitize the music using our school copier which scans and emails me a file. I make one file for the parts and a second file for the score.
Step 2)On my iPad, I open my email app. Then I find the email in my inbox. I then use the Open In menu…. This is where a problem arises…. The file is sent to me with a very cryptic name AND UnRealBook (one of my two main PDF Music Reader Apps is NEVER in the Open In Menu! DropBox is not included in the Open In Menu either.
Step 3)The solution is to use that Open In Menu to open the PDF file in ForScore.
Step 4)Use ForScores metadata tools to rename the file, input a composer, type in the genre and keywords.
Step 5)Use ForScore to upload that file to DropBox.
Step 6)Then I can open whatever app I wish to load that PDF music in and access the file in my DropBox.

This fits in with one of my primary rules about using technology. HAVE A BACKUP PLAN!

By following those simple 6 steps I have my PDF Music files in both ForScore and UnRealBook. I also almost always create set lists for both apps. Each set list pertains to either a class or a concert.

Reflection on the ReflectionApp and the AirServerApp and Apple TV

I have been very excited because every year when I get my tax refund back I usually convince my wife to let me buy a new toy. Like my iPad’s or a new kayak. This year I’ve known for a long time that I was going to be buying an Apple TV with the converter from HDMI to VGA with audio. I’ve been using my iPad for two years now every day in class and I wanted to take things to the next level. I want the students to be able to see many of the tools that I have at my finger tips.

I’ve been using the AirServerApp, running on my classroom computer for a year now. That app was the previous version 3. I used it to AirPlay music to my classroom sound system. Of course it has worked flawlessly, with the one exception that there was no security on it. That meant that frequently some kid working out down in the weight room would discover a pretty new icon on his iPod Screen (you know, that one for AirPlay that is never there until you can actually use it!) and in the middle of rehearsal I would suddenly have some pumping jams in the middle of a Michael Sweeney festival piece! Now during a high school rehearsal we would simply enjoy the commercial break. I would dance a bit for the class and then flip the mute switch then back to work we would go. BUT I REALLY tried to leave the mute switch on during middle school class because the rest of rehearsal after an episode like that was usually useless! It was worth it though to be able to wirelessly stream music, at will from anywhere I had my phone, iPod Touch or iPad!

You are probably wondering why in the world I didn’t just buy an AirPort Express and use that. Those have pass codes on them! Well I did! The only thing was that my PC tech guys freaked out! Plus I could not for the life of me get that darned thing to work at the school, on the school network! I even talked to the “big guys”, the ones doing the install on the new wireless servers going into our school to see if they had an answer for making it work, These are tech guys not form our school but instead with a big company whose only job was to install these wireless servers. Their answer was – don’t bring in home network devices, our devices will simply block them! I was in fact afraid I would have similar trouble with an Apple TV. I was hoping though that it would work.

Turns out I might not even try though! This last week of February was a great week! Especially for those of us school teachers in situations like this!

First, the ReflectionApp came out! This is from the same company that makes AirParrot – which puts your mac screen on your AppleTV. ReflectionApp is meant to mirror your iOS device onto your Computer! Of course your iOS device has to be capable of this, the iPad2 and iPhone4s both are. Not only does the mirroring include the picture but it streams the audio as well! So in other words, instead of having to but an AppleTV ($99), a convertor ($45 or more), and get it to work with my school network, I simply bought a $15 app and installed it on a computer I already have hooked up to my classroom projector and I am in business.

Second great thing was that the same day I bought and installed the ReflectionApp an error message showed up on my computer. Getting excited about error message is not normal I know, but this error came from an app called AirServer that I have been running for a year now! The message said that I needed to purchase an upgrade from AirServer in order to mirror my iPad! This startled me! I had not heard, and still haven’t, anything about AirServerApp adding the capability to mirror from an iOS device! So I headed over to their website - http://www.airserverapp.com/ and found it plastered all over the front page of the website! I quickly bought the $3.99 update. I had some issues with the update because when I originally bought the AirServerApp I used an old email that I never use any more. I bought the update with a new email. This really ticked off the AirServerApp and for a day I was in a limbo with the update screen from the app freezing up when it tried to authorize the update. The tech support took a day but considering that it was Friday night that’s probably not bad. They updated their databases of paid people and I was in business. I like their tech support.

So now, the good stuff! I’ve been playing with both apps for all of today and it’s been great fun. Of course I am at home with my MacBookPro and no projector hooked up. My kids walk by and I’ve had one of them do a double take and say – Whoa! Your iPad is on your computer! Then one of the other boys said, Why are you doing that?

Here’s what I’ve discovered. With the ReflectionApp there are more options for you to configure. At first boot the iPad (or iPhone) pops up with a border around it. This looks cool at first but in my case I want the image as big as possible so the students can see it better. It’s easy to take the border off. Another option that helps get the image bigger is to have the app go fullscreen. Now I have not really liked using the full screen mode in Lion. But I like it in this app because it is more what I expected – when using my iPad everything is full screen all the time. Plus I want no other distractions when projecting that image to the students. A quick shortcut (command F) and the app pops out of full screen mode. There are different optimizations for what image size you want mirrored, iPad, standard iPhone, Retina iPhone, or High resolution. This has been one of three issues I have found when using ReflectionApp. When I switched to High Resolution I really messed things up. I had to quite Reflection and reboot my iPad both to get things mirroring again. The second issue I found with ReflectionApp is when switching from portrait to landscape mode. If I am in landscape mode when I start the mirroring the image on the computer is filling the full screen, top to bottom – right to left. Then I can switch to landscape and the image is still top to bottom (not right to left of course) BUT when I switch back to landscape the image is no longer filling the entire screen top to bottom. It is smaller. A quick flick of the command F shortcut pops it back but I am not going to want to do that in the middle of class. The image when it is not filling the screen still is large and acceptable though.

Mirroring with both apps have gone very well – I will mention one exception at the end of this post about trying to mirror instrument apps though. In face with the ReflectionApp I found that I can end up mirroring both my iPad2 AND my iPhone4s! OK – I take that back I can mirror both devices with both apps! If you really want to do this though you should not have the automatic full screen mode on though because it is kind of a pain to get it to look like my screen shot. One of the amazing things I’ve found is that I can be running both the ReflecitonApp and AirServerApp at the same time. They are working very well together and they are not fighting each other at all! I even have been running audio from iPad through ReflectionApp and mirroring it too while mirroring my iPhone with AirServerApp! The audio plugged away and the video behaved as it had all day long with just one of these apps running at a time. I have been running the mirroring all day when I have been at my computer (my daughter did become a teen though so my time has been limited with her party and bowling and shopping though!). Every thing runs smooth as I would expect for all normal apps. I even tried photoBooth. There is a bit of a time delay in PhotoBooth as well as FaceTime with the video. At times I do get a stutter in the audio too. You should understand though that I am running an old AirPort Express with only 802.11b and I know that two of my boys have been running iTunes, FaceBook, Web Surfing and the like through their iPodTouches too.

My only complaint is when I have tried my musical instrument apps. For instance a piano app, MorphWiz or something like this. The lag is not going to work at this time for live performance! There is not way I could mirror this at at a concert and play a song on my iPad so the audience could see what was going on. Now I’m not sure what the problem is though because the PR on both web-sites show gaming apps running and they say that people could be using this for mirroring games! I am not a gamer but I do have a few games loaded on my iPad and I tried BugDom and it worked pretty well on both apps. Cro-Mag Rally crashed the ReflectionApp but worked in AirServer. So for gaming and musical instruments…. I wouldn’t hold my breath too much. These apps are not rock solidly performing in either mirroring app yet!

In wrapping this post up… there are two more points I need to make. The ReflectionApp tech support is really super and really super fast! I sent an email requesting and asking about a passcode (because the first version I downloaded didn’t have a passcode in it) Within minutes they had responded back to me. The next day there was an update to the program! Now don’t get me wrong – I know the update was not because of me but these guys are working hard on their app and want to interact with their users.

The AirServerApp has been rock solidly streaming music in my band room for a year now. This app is a bit more polished. For instance, there aren’t very many settings that we can adjust, the app just does it for you. When you select a song on your iPad in the Music app and push play there is a little notification (very Growl like, if you know what Growl is) on your Mac that tells you what song is playing. When you play videos, like YouTube, and take the video full screen, AirServer uses it’s own built-in movie player. AirServer has some more info about this sort of thing on their web site.

Both apps are great. ReflectionApp requires OS 10.6 or higher. AirServer will work somewhat with Tiger, Snow Leopard, Leopard and Lion as well as working some with Android devices (I think just for audio though) they are both $14.99 (the upgrade for AirServer from v3 was $3.99)

Reflection App, Apple TV for $15?

Buying an Apple TV is on my list of soon to buy items. Of course at this point I am waiting until next weeks announcements from Apple on March 7. I have ideas about what will be announced, go read the rumor blogs if you have no idea. I an assure you it is not the iPhone 5 though, like one of my 8th graders pronounced today in class. Of course I don’t have any REAL knowledge, just educated guessing.

The problem with the Apple TV is that my classroom projector does not have HDMI. This means I also need an adaptor. No problem, just need more money.

Now, today though I saw all sorts of information about the Reflection app for Mac. This app allows you to mirror what is on your iPad2 or iPhone 4s to your computer. It works too! Go check out the website and watch the videos.

My question to those of you who have an Apple TV already is how does it compare in real life? $99 vs $15

 

 

Yikes! The evil side of Google!

I consider myself a pretty savvy tech user. I know I’m by no means a guru but I’m way more knowledgable than many others!

So how in the world did this go under my radar?

Google has been storing a ton of my web searches since 2007! How in world would this be possible, especially when I know for a FACT that most of the time I am not even signed into my account when I am performing searches! I’ve read these stories, I know that what ever you do online leaves digital footprints but good grief! If I am not signed in and I do a search that is still being tracked? I guess I should clear my cookies out more often!

Do you want to see what is in your web search history?

1)Sign into your google account

2)Go to http://www.ggogle.com/history

THEN

3)Tap on REMOVE ALL WEB HISTORY!

Unless of course you don’t mind people tracking you! If I wanted what I was searching saved then I would simply look through my computers web browser history.

iPad Apps used on a daily basis in teaching Music

 

What apps do you use on a daily basis while teaching music? I teach Band every day to five different groups from 5th grade through High School. We also have one experimental group that is exploring the Pop, Rock, Electronic side of music creation and arranging.

I use a group of apps everyday in almost every class. Then I use another set of apps when not in class but still doing teaching related activities. There is of course a group of apps I use when I am creating and exploring music as well and one more group of apps that I use when I am not doing musical activities.

Here is my list of apps I use constantly while teaching;

unRealBook, ForScore, Avid Scorch, Tempo, ClearTune, Fingerings, SL-Remote, Filemaker Go, DropBox, AirSketch, PlanBook, YouTube, Music (the app) and of course YouTube and Safari. I wish our school had an instant messenger app for GroupWise. Why we are still using archaic technology like GroupWise I will never know! If we had an Instant Messenger app all teachers could use I would have WAY fewer phone interruptions!

My list of other apps I use for my job but not while I am teaching… (in addition to those listed above – because some of those listed above I still use while NOT teaching);

PlanBook, Pages, Keynote, MagicalPad, SmartMusic Inbox, AnyTune, Capo, Hokusai, Mail, Contacts, PDF Expert, Calendar, WunderList, Notability, NoteShelf, Skitch, Evernote, Hello, GMusic, AirSharing, SilverWiz, Photos, Videos, Camera, iMovie and PhotoSender. My newest find is iCam.

My list of Apps I love to use while creating, exploring, and playing music are;

MorphWiz, Mugician, GeoSynth, Seline, ThumbJam, Sunrizer, SampleWiz, CrystalSynthXT, GarageBand, Magic Fiddle and Piano, PianistPro, ProKeys, and my latest SampleTank and MelodyMaker.

The list of Apps I use when I am not making music, working on music classes or enjoying music…. in other words the rest of my free time;

ByLine (RSS News Feeds), Pulse News, Flud News, River of News (I can’t decide which I like the best but I did list these in the order I use them the most), Twitter, Flipboard, Showyou, Music, GMusic, WeatherBug or AccuWeather, Alarm Clock HD by the Alarm Clock Company, PackTheBag, AirVideo, Screens, Fandango, Flixster, What’s On?HD, Launch Points and Maps, and of course Safari, Mail, Contacts and Calendar.

What apps do you use constantly? I would love to discover new ideas and find out who else is using the same apps as I do on a constant basis. Leave a comment below.

Go to Target NOW! USB mic and Keyboard on clearance!

Tonight, my wife asked if I would like to go with her to Target. I of course said yes, like any great husband should when asked this question!

My Target visits always start in the Bose Headphone’s section as I listen to the headphones I will some day buy. Then on to the iPad section a look through the headphones they have on sale. Then I headed over to the First Act Music section – I know, I know…. I go there because this is where the clearance section is as well! Tonight though I found two very exciting bargains for any music person! You too should be on your way to Target tonight or tomorrow because these deals are not going to last!

The first deal I found was a First Act USB Keyboard Controller. 54 keys, 128 Instrument Sounds, 100 play-Along Rhythms and then I saw it…..!  FULL USB-MIDI SUPPORT! At full normal price, $68, I would have looked but not been interested. But this is on sale right now for $20!

The second deal I found was the Q2U Recording Pak. This contains a USB/XLR Microphone with HP20 Headphones as well as CakeWalk Music Creator LE software, plus a XLR mic cable, USB cable and desktop mic stand! This set usually goes for $71.99. I had actually thought about buying this in the past – I mean this time we are talking about Samson not First Act! Tonight it was on sale for $21.99!  I grabbed it! In fact I think I am going to go to a couple of other Targets and see if I can one more!

Now the only issue that I was worried about was if these two items would work with my iPad. I knew they would work with my laptop. I wanted the keyboard so I could have something smallish to use for input into Sibelius. I have plenty of real full sized keyboards that I can use as well but I’ve been considering a smaller, usb powered keyboard for a year or so now. Quick and easy and smaller!

I got home, of course I had to sit and eat Taco Bell with the girls and Wife but that was fine, I mean I was hungry too you know! Found my camera connector kit that my wife had borrowed last weekend so she could load photo’s onto her iPad while at her Dad’s. In my office I unpacked the keyboard first. My first impression was – “Whoa! This feels VERY light and kind of cheap.” I kind of expected that though. Then I tried plugging it in, nothing. I had to go find 4 AA batteries. I finally persuaded my son to loan me 4 from their Wii controllers. I had hoped for USB powered but no such luck. After putting batteries in and hooking the USB cord up to the computer, I started up GarageBand. It Worked!!! Sweet. I then tried it with the iPad, GarageBand and the Camera Connector Kit. That worked as well!

Next, the microphone. My first impression of the mic was opposite of the keyboard. The mic felt pretty good, much better construction. The USB cord went into the iPad Camera Kit, and the headphones (that came with the mic – remember?) then got plugged into the bottom of the mic. As soon as the mic was plugged into the iPad the green light came on, I smiled! Even without the GarageBand App running I could immediately hear myself talking into the mic. There are little volume buttons on the bottom of the mic  - those only adjust the volume of the iPad though – not how much mic you hear in the headphones, unless GarageBand running. Then GarageBand takes over and those buttons on the mic change mic level as well.

In short everything worked as I had hoped it would. The First Act Keyboard had a few notes hang on it…. but hey 20 bucks! The mic sounds really pretty good, the headphones work but they are not going to replace my regular headphones (even though my regular headphones are not Bose)

For the price – you can not loose. Here is a sample recording of just my voice using this mic. (I had to upload the sample to SoundCloud. I guess WordPress doesn’t allow for us free WordPress users to upload mp3′s – oh well. If you are not familiar with SoundCloud this will give you a chance to see a little of that.)

Oh yeah… One more thing… the software that came with the mic (actually both the mic and keyboard had free software) is I’m sure nothing even close to GarageBand but it has to be better than nothing! I’ve been using my band room computers to record 8th graders re-telling fairy tales. I have 3 macs – they all used GarageBand. We used my iPad and iPhone running GarageBand as well. I have one Dell computer though that I had no audio recording software on. I’m going to give this CakeWalk to the Tech Department and get them to load it up so we try using it the next time around. I have 4 or 5 students in that class who I think I’ve convinced to purchase iMovie so they can use their iPod Touches when we do the next round of story telling. The next round will be acting out a fairy tale as well as composing some music to put in their movies. It should be fun! I think I will use my new microphone too!

Now – go to Target and spend a few dollars – I don’t think you can go wrong on this mic – I’m pretty sure there is nothing else even close to this quality for $21.99!

Working with photo’s and Video’s and iOS devices

This past couple of months I have started looking for a different way to handle my photo’s and video’s that I capture with my iPad and iPhone. I used to not have that many to deal with so I simply hooked that cable up to my laptop, plugged in my iOS device and imported it all into iPhoto. Then I would hit the delete option after importing. This would keep my camera roll cleared out and keep me from importing duplicates the next time around. Now that I have my iPhone it has become as bit more complicated because I am capturing many more photo’s and video with the phone. So let me fill you in on how I am dealing with this issue.

First thing to keep clear is the difference between the camera roll and your photo library. The camera roll is where a picture will go when you shoot it with your camera. That picture will sit in the camera roll until you delete it. The camera roll is also where screen shots are stored, any pictures you save from the Safari app and any other app.

Your Photos app is where you put photo’s when you are syncing from your computer.

Apple’s Photo Stream makes these two apps a bit more confusing. If you have Photo Stream turned on then your last 1,000 photo’s will be streamed out to the cloud. (This time I do NOT mean videos by the way. Photo Stream does not do video as of right now.) So you will be able to see the photo’s that are in your Camera Roll, inside of your Photo’s App under the Photo Stream button. Those photo’s are not actually in your Photo’s app though. You are simply looking at your pictures that are out there in the cloud. Now remember that your Photo Stream are the last 1.000 pictures from ALL your devices, your iPhone, iPad, iPodTouch, Computer or whatever else you have hooked up to your stream.

Obviously you would probably want to save the pictures from your camera roll and cherish those precious moments forever. Photo Stream makes this an easy process! Take a look in iPhoto at the options under Photo Stream. Those settings allow you to automatically import the photo’s (not videos) from your iPhone or iPad camera roll and iPhoto will import those into your permanent iPhoto database.

This is an easy way to take ALL of your camera roll pictures (not videos) and get them into your computer for further manipulation. The videos you need to find another way to deal with those – which is easily done by hooking that cable up between the computer and the iOS device.

There is one huge issue though with this process. If you let Photo Stream and iPhoto do all the work of importing your photo’s (not videos) into your computer iPhoto database, you will be left with the original photo’s on your iOS device. This gets confusing after awhile though. I’m constantly forgetting what I have imported and what still needs to be imported. The answer is to delete the photo’s from the camera roll once you know that iPhoto has imported them form your Photo Stream. Of course you can do this one at a time on the iOS device but this gets tedious, especially if you have 400+ pictures like i did tonight. You cannot delete them using iPhoto either – in the old days before Photo Stream did the improving of the photo’s for us, we would click the import button and then click the delete button after the import was done.

There is a quick solution. A very unused app, Image Capture, sits in your applications folder. It comes with every Mac and most of us never use it. If you hook your iOS device up and start that app you will find a very easy way to delete your photo’s (JUST REMEMBER – those videos were never imported by Photo Stream!) In fact you will see that using this app you can import pictures (and those videos), rotate them, and delete them. Plus you can select all or some. Another bonus is that Image Capture is really fast! Take a look at the screen shot below to see what your options look like. There are even other options available. Things like having Image Capture open automatically when you hook up your iPhone or iPad, you can import the media to a folder or even directly into iPhoto or a different app. Image Capture will even let you make a web page of the media and email pictures as well. This app is capable of many things. Dig around and enjoy.

I will be taking a look at several other apps I have found to deal with getting that media off your iOS device and into your computer in the next couple of days. So stay tuned.

PS…. sorry if you are looking for information about using your iOS device with a PC – I am a user of Macs.

iTunes Match

iTunes Match is done. It took 32 hours for 15,609 songs. 

Much of the process has been smooth sailing. I say much, because I am running into one issue.

My songs are in the Cloud – I know this because I can access them all from my iPad or iPhone. No issues connecting and listening to these either. They load fast. It seems that if I am accessing the Cloud from an iOS device the song I am playing is stored on my iOS device. This is a benefit because later if I do not have a network connection, as in on a bike ride with my iPodTouch, I can still listen to music. I can also select songs, albums or artists to download at my choosing. In other words I would not have to push play on each individual track to get them all downloaded and stored on my device. The problem now is that I can not delete songs that I had previously loaded onto my iPad. My thought is that if I can download individual songs as I need them why store as much for those “just in case I want that song” moments. My previous method of hooking the iPad up to my laptop, selecting the songs in iTunes and deleting are not working. In fact when I did that my iPad then showed that it was 3.3 GB over capacity! I had 6.2 GB of music stored on my iPad. If I can just simply access any song or album at will then I don’t need to actually store all that music on there. When I have the desire to listen to something I will access it through the cloud at that time, it will then download to my iPad as it plays.  The problem, as mentioned, is that I can not get the music to delete!

So my solution…. go to my iPad, turn off iTunes Match and then delta the music. Boom – all gone – as expected! Now I’ve got tons more free space on my iPad.

Now I re-sync one more time and go turn iTunes Match back on.

Using SIRI and voice dicatation in the classroom

So for those of you with a nifty new iPhone 4s i read a great article from TUAW today. I have had Mobile Mouse installed on my iPod touch and now on my iPhone for some time now. It is a very nice way to interact with the computer that is hooked up to my projector in the front of the band room. I never once thought about this possibility though. When using Mobile Mouse if you are have the mouse in a text input situation othe computer, like trying to run a Google searthen a web browser, yu can simply tap the mic and dictate through mobile mouse to the computer. This is going to be WAY faster than trying to type from my iPhone!

By the way, I’m on an iPad typing this in the web interface on WordPress. Seems as though there is a bit of a bug. I lost the ability to see my cursor until I hid the keyboard and tapped back into the typing area.

Anyways, here is the link to the original article,

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/11/19/how-to-use-siri-for-voice-dictation-on-a-mac/

If you have never used Mobile Mouse it is a wonderful remote to your computer. There are all sorts of bells and whistles to it! I use it to control SmartMusic for one! This let’s mestand back ithe percussion section and still run the computer.