Mac

Apple attempts to change education, one “i” at a time

On Thursday, Jan. 19, techies, fan boys and the like gathered at the Guggenheim Museum in New York for an education event hosted by Apple. There, Phillip Schiller, Apple’s vice president of worldwide marketing, unveiled some great new innovations for the education community. A new version of their e-reader app, updates to their university Web portal and an e-book creation tool.

Let’s start with that last one… iBooks Author. It is a new desktop app available only on Mac OSX Lion. It allows anyone to create an e-book. Anyone. For free. Users can then publish their book to the iBookstore or iTunes U (more on those in a minute). But the really great thing here isn’t that anyone can create and publish a book. The exciting part about this is that Apple is pioneering a relatively new format. It isn’t just a book. It’s more than words on a page. Apple gives users access to a wealth of multi-touch widgets. Interactivity. Additionally, users can add videos, keynote presentations and interactive 3-D objects.
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get::ting answers: an interview with Flash Developer Ben

For this edition of get::ting answers, Art Director Dave chats with Flash Developer Ben.

Dave: Describe your typical day at thunder::tech using only words that start with D or rhyme with awesome. You can have unlimited "the's" and "and's."

Ben:
Depart the dwelling and during dash down the drive;
Dialog the dodgy designer Dave dealing the draft;
Down delicious drinks;
Devise the device dialect and derive the deliverable;
Doctor the dire domain designation disaster,
Disappear,
Directly drop possum dead.

D: You have a unique opportunity w/yr position where you work on both a Mac and a PC...so, think different or is yours really here?

B: Actually... I miss MS-DOS. Macs and PCs, despite the advertisement wars, have about the same amounts and types of problems. These days, they're both too glittery.

D: If a flash banner got in a fight with an animated gif (but not any normal animated gif...one of those beveled and embossed spinning ones that has flames shooting out of it, and maybe an asteroid rotating around), who would win?

B: Like everything else, it depends on the circumstances. Normally I'd say the gif, but you have to account for the possibility that someone with taste could always come along and delete it before the banner got beaten up too badly.

D: A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. What do you gotta do, Ben?
B: According to the Rally's commercials, I gotta eat. I simply cannot argue with that logic.

D: Finish this joke: "A designer and a developer walk into a bar..."
B: They both ordered drinks and were served. The designer was under 21, however. The bar has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. Would you like to tell Microsoft about this problem?

The designer and developer shortly after they walked into the bar.