Designing your digital legacy

Security

We lead rich virtual lives on social networking sites like Google+, Facebook, and Twitter. So what happens when real life catches up, and our flesh-and-blood bodies succumb to mortality? For our virtual selves, at least, some concrete answers are available—ways to settle our digital affairs after death, while minimizing hassle and heartache for loved ones.

Google sets the standard by building a dead man’s switch (one with a gentler name) into your Google account features. Facebook and Twitter also have processes in place for handling accounts of the recently deceased, though they’re somewhat more cumbersome. A few good Web services can help for all other online cases, passing along login information based on triggers you can set yourself.

Google’s dead man switch

Google’s new Inactive Account Manager system is simple to understand and set up. Accessible from your Google account settings page, it helps you set up a time-out period for your account—the length of time you can go without logging in before Google assumes that you’re never coming back. The default is three months, but you can dial it up in increments of 90 days until it tops out at a year and a half. I recommend setting it to at least six months, though you could vary this period based on how often you log in.

Google makes preparing for your death quick and painless.

A fail-safe is built into the service: One month before the timeout period, Google will send you an e-mail reminder (and an optional SMS message, if you give them a phone number) to make sure you’re not coming back. Once your account is inactive long enough to trigger the Inactive Account Manager, Google will send a message to up to ten people notifying them that your account is now inactive.

You’ll need to provide a working phone number for every contact. Google will send each of them a unique verification code so they can download any data you’d like them to have.

The Inactive Account Manager lets you selectively share your Google data postmortem with up to ten people via email.

You can choose which pieces of your Google data to share with each person. For example, you can arrange for close friends to get links to download Picasa photo albums, while you entrust a family member to have access to your mail, Google Voice messages, and everything else. They’ll have a three-month window for doing so—after that, they’ll be locked out for good.

Finally, you can configure your Google account to eradicate every trace of itself from the Google servers. That includes all of your public data, from YouTube videos to blog posts and the like.

Twitter and Facebook involve more hassle

Both Twitter and Facebook have systems in place to help you close out your accounts after you die, but neither is as thorough, nor as intuitive, as Google’s new tool. You’ll have to do a little legwork and assign someone to settle matters on your behalf.

Twitter will allow a designated party to deactivate your account without needing your password, but it requires a heck of a lot of paperwork. The full article on contacting Twitter about deceased users is worth a read, but in brief: Twitter needs your username and a copy of your death certificate, along with a signed statement from your loved one explaining who they are, how they know you, proof that the Twitter account belonged to you (if your username doesn’t match your real name), and a copy of a government-issued ID (such as a driver’s license) that proves their identity. They then have to fax or mail all of that to Twitter—the appropriate address and fax number are both on the page for the Twitter Help Center.

One more form that needs to be filled out in the digital age.

Facebook requires a similar amount of information, but it at least provides an online form to help your friend or family member submit the information quickly. Facebook also goes one step above and beyond deactivating or deleting your account: Your loved ones can convert your Facebook page into a memorial page that has higher security and allows friends and family to post memories about you on your timeline.

Entrust a loved one with your digital estate

Facebook’s neat/creepy memorial account feature aside, in most cases, it’s much faster and easier to provide your login information to a trusted friend or family member, along with instructions to delete your accounts after you’ve passed away. Asking a loved one to delete your Facebook account after you die is way more efficient than having to verify your death with Facebook, which can often take several days. Deleting your Twitter account is even easier—just head to “Deactivate my Account” at the bottom of your account settings page, follow a few instructions, and you’re done.

Deleting your information isn’t the only reason you should keep a record of your passwords on hand for loved ones. Because most online stores like iTunes are actually selling you a license and not the media itself, you can’t count on retailers like Apple to help your loved ones get into your account. If you download or stream a lot of media, your passwords may be the only things that keep your music and movies in the family.

Build your own dead man switch

If you feel uncomfortable giving out your account passwords while you’re still alive and kicking, you could always set up a dead man switch of your own to send out that information. I recommend using free services like the appropriately named Dead Man’s Switch or Deadman. Both will securely provide the previously mentioned password and other personal information to your loved ones after your death.

Deadman is fast and easy to use, and it could save your friends and family a lot of hassle down the road.

Just like Google’s Inactive Account Manager, these services have variable time delays that you can configure to be days, months, or even years after your last login. Most will send you an e-mail a few days before the deadline. If they don’t hear back by the time your deadline rolls around, they’ll automatically send a prewritten message to your loved ones. Both of the services recommended here are free but also have premium options, such as the ability to add more recipients and encrypt your message until it’s sent.

Of course, if you’re not concerned with that extra security and you plan on setting up Google’s Inactive Account features anyway, you can use Google to disseminate your passwords and instructions for downloading all your media and shutting down your accounts. Since you can customize the message that Google sends on a user-by-user basis, you can include any relevant passwords and instructions for other services in your post-mortem email blast.

Exiting gracefully from virtual life

It’s a grim subject, but the process of preparing your digital estate can take as little as an hour once you’ve gathered your passwords and decided what to do with all your data. More important, it can save your loved ones weeks or even months of frustration and trouble.

Lab-quality microscope now mounts onto most Apple iOS devices

April 29, 2013 | Elizabeth Armstrong Moore

The ProScope Micro Mobile by handheld digital microscope manufacturer Bodelin starts shipping on May 1 for $149.

The microscope mounts to devices via a nylon/ABS sleeve.

Bodelin

To my fellow geeks who’ve long dreamed of having a lab-quality digital microscope that mounts to your phone, the time has come.

Oregon-based optics manufacturer Bodelin will begin shipping its brand-new ProScope Micro Mobile on May 1. One version fits the iPhone 4, 4s, 5, and iPod Touch; another the iPad; and another the iPad Mini. Whatever size, it will set you back $149.

The microscope mounts to the devices via a nylon/ABS sleeve, which positions the lens over the device’s camera lens. Surrounded by a dozen adjustable-brightness LEDs to illuminate the object of choice and reduce surface reflection, the lens provides 20-80x magnification. The scope’s lithium-ion battery charges via USB in two hours and powers for five.

The folks at Bodelin recognized the shift from laptops to phones and tablets, but they also remembered to include a desk stand so the devices can be propped up and used hands-free. Check it out in action in the video below.

And if it’s important to you, they say the ProScope Micro Mobile is made entirely in Oregon, without any additional parts sourced outside the U.S.

Elizabeth Armstrong Moore

Elizabeth Armstrong Moore is based in Portland, Ore., and has written for Wired, The Christian Science Monitor, and public radio. Her semi-obscure hobbies include climbing, billiards, board games that take up a lot of space, and piano.

Mr.V

http://mgleeson.edublogs.org/2013/04/28/ipurpose-before-ipad/

iPurpose before iPad

The two above images are good examples of purposeful thinking about iPad usage in schools.

One, a screenshot of an oft-used tool known as iPad As.. by edtechteacher.org, focuses on what the iPad can be used for and provides links to various apps that can be utilised for those functions. It goes without saying that it is a very useful website for schools thinking about iPads. It provides nutshell explanations of a number of apps that relate to each iPad as… category as well as pricing. It’s a good introduction into the functionality of the iPad that counteracts the misconception of iPad as consumption NOt creation tool.

The other, The Padagogy Wheel, is one of many variations on applying Bloom’s Taxonomy of skills to iPad apps. It develops from the general learning action verbs/skills we want our students to acquire to technology based activities that relate to these skills and finally to a selection of apps that can support this development.

Both tools have supported my reflection on iPad use in school and are worth checking out in detail. Having said that, though, I feel they both fall short in what is needed as a resource for implementing iPads in education. iPad as… does a good job at presenting uses for iPads in school – what they can be used for – but doesn’t really provide depth about the skill development that can arise from their use. It’s still action/activity emphasis rather than pedagogical/learning emphasis. It’s great to know that you can create videos, and it describes what the app can do, but how will this improve learning and what learning will it improve is also a priority iPad schools need to address. I think it also pigeon-holes apps as one trick ponies – I’d like to emphasise the apps that can be used to develop many skills.

The Padagogy Wheel provides many links between skills and tech activities but doesn’t really address what iPad apps address which skills and activities specifically other than lumping them into a particular category. It too, tends to classify the apps as one trick pony options rather than seeing them as multiple category options.

Don’t get me wrong, I think both are great tools but there is room for improvement in creating a tool for support time poor iPads in Schools implementers in planning, selecting, justifying and integrating iPad apps in education.

Which leads me to attempt a herculean task… I’m going to try to blend the best of both of these resources and address the short falls I have mentioned by creating my own resource. But it’s going to be a work in progress for a while and I hope to get support from Mr G Online followers, subscribers, users and casual visitors.

I’ve started creating a table of important skills, some derived from the Padagogy Wheel, and actions, some derived from iPad As… What I am planning to highlight is that there are many apps that can be use for many purposes and for developing many skills. For example, I have already added “Explain Everything” to 9 categories as I see it as a multifunctional app and one worth its price because of the educational benefits it provides. Over the coming months I plan to add text descriptions to each category to explain how the apps listed address the skill or action they have been linked to and may also link them to other online sources that show them in action. I’ll also provide direct links to the App Store, as I always do on this blog when I mention apps so you can check them out yourself if you want.

Now this sounds like a big task and it is. So I do need some help. What do I want from you? Anything you can give. Just add them to the comments of this post.

Examples of apps that help to develop specific skills
Additional skills I haven’t listed here
Examples of apps that are multifunctional.
Explanations of good pedagogical practice with apps. Don’t worry, all credit will go to you when I include your suggestions.
Links to blog posts, websites, Youtube tutorials, open wikis, nings etc that promote good practice that I can link to from here.
Examples on add ons like bookmarklets for curation sites, websites that work well with iPads ( Flash-free) that can still be categorised under these headings for iPad use.
Spread the word regularly through Twitter, Facebook, Curation sites like Pinterest and Scoop-It to keep educators coming back.
This post will look messy for a while as new ideas get added. A blog may not be the best storage place for it in the long run. If I actually get the support – and it’s likely I won’t – and it grows I will probably move it to a separate website for better functionality. It may well be better as a wiki but I didn’t want to move away from Mr G Online unless I needed. For easy access in the meantime, I will add this post to my main menu at the top of the blog so you can come back to check revisions. I will be planning weekly updates at least, more if I get regular contributions I can just copy and paste in from the comments.

I really hope I can get this off the ground. From reading so many blog articles, I can see there is a huge need for clarity in using tech like iPads. If you have been a regular reader of Mr G Online, you would know I am a big proponent of Pedagogy before Techology. That’s why I want iPurpose before iPad. Hope to hear from some of you soon.

The Massive Digital Library of the Future Just Opened Its ‘Doors’

future

By Mario Aguilar, Apr 19, 2013 1:29 PM

After two and a half years of development, the Digital Public Library of America finally flipped the switch on and opened its website at DP.LA. Collecting items from institutions cross the country, the library has already collected more than two million items in its searchable database. And that’s just the beginning.

In addition to regular searches of the kinds you’re probably used to, you can view DPLA results as a timeline or a map. The DPLA also has an API so developers can dbuild their own tools for browsing the huge collection.

The DPLA is still very much a beta, and as it adds more partner institutions and builds out its technology the potential for the utopian project is huge. But beyond the impressive use of technology, we should note that this work is important. Information portals like the DP.LA will be an essential public service as people increasingly consume images and text digitally and online. Godspeed. [DP.LA via PetaPixel]

Next story »

Mr.V

What’s the Difference Between the National Archives and the Library of Congress?

Today’s post was co-written by Stephanie Greenhut at the National Archives and Stephen Wesson at the Library of Congress. It is also posted on the Education Updates blog from the National Archives.

In 10 words or less, it’s what we’ve got and how we got it.

But we’ll go on. Because we get asked this question a lot. Both of us do. And because both the National Archives and the Library of Congress provide excellent resources for teaching history, civics and government, the humanities, and more!

The “original Rough draught” of the Declaration of
Independence. From the Library of Congress.

Let’s start with what we have in common: Making historical documents available to the public. The Library of Congress and the National Archives exist to preserve pieces of history and culture. As part of its mission to serve the U.S. Congress and the American people, a top priority of the Library is to “acquire, organize, preserve, secure and sustain for the present and future use of Congress and the nation a comprehensive record of American history.” The mission of the National Archives is to safeguard and preserve “the records of our Government, ensuring that the people can discover, use, and learn from this documentary heritage.” So we both store and protect documents, photographs, posters, moving images, audio, and more. And what’s really great is that we both make these accessible to the public. So you, your students, or anyone else can study what we have to understand the past.

But let’s get back to that key difference. What we have in our collections and holdings differs because of how it arrived through our doors. The National Archives, established in 1934, is the nation’s record keeper. By law, “permanently valuable” records of the federal government must come to the National Archives for safekeeping. So any record—be it a handwritten document, map, film reel, or email—created in the course of doing federal business, that falls into a category predetermined to be kept and preserved, is transferred to the National Archives when the agency or department that created it doesn’t need to refer to it any longer. Keeping only 1-3% of records the government produces still amounts to over ten billion records!

This print of the Declaration of Independence comes from an
1823 engraving and is the most frequently reproduced version of
the document. From the National Archives.

Meanwhile, the Library of Congress, established in 1800, is the world’s largest collection of knowledge and creativity, with treasures in 460 different languages that range from the Bay Psalm Book and European explorers’ maps to Thomas Edison’s films and the rough drafts of Langston Hughes. The Library takes in more than 10,000 objects a day, and they arrive in its in-box via a number of means. As the nation’s copyright repository, the Library receives two copies of every item registered for U.S. copyright. It also operates offices around the world to bring in and distribute materials from other countries. And many of the Library’s landmark objects and collections—such as the first map with the word “America,” and the papers of Abraham Lincoln—have been donated by individuals or groups, or purchased using donated funds. The Library is part of the legislative branch of our government, and the Archives is an independent federal agency within the executive branch.

Despite (and because of!) our differences, the Library and the National Archives are both great places to locate free primary sources in a wide variety of media for your classroom. Primary sources have a unique power to engage students, build their critical thinking skills, and help them create new understanding. You can find federal records like the Declaration of Independence, Voting Record of the Constitutional Convention, the Homestead Act, a letter from a soldier to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt asking her to be his son’s godmother, or the Pentagon Papers online from the National Archives. And at the Library of Congress website you can find Thomas Jefferson’s rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, powerful photos from the Dust Bowl, and oral histories from survivors of slavery.

Both institutions make it easy to find the primary sources you need. The search engine at loc.gov and the online catalog at archives.gov let you search millions of online primary sources and narrow your search to find just the object you and your students need.

The education staffs at the National Archives and the Library both create education materials and teacher resources to help teachers unlock the potential of primary sources. The Teachers page on the Library of Congress website provides lesson plans and primary source sets, all searchable by content and Common Core State Standards, as well as online professional development and tools to help your students start analyzing primary sources right away.

The Teachers Resources page on the National Archives website includes information about visits and professional development, as well as a link to DocsTeach.org, the online tool for teaching with documents from the National Archives. On DocsTeach, you can locate primary sources, as well as find and create online learning activities using seven interactive tools in combination with documents, images, maps, charts, audio and video.

Do you already use primary sources and teaching resources from the Library of Congress or the National Archives? We hope the answer is both!

Mr.V

Mountain Lion Dictation versus Dragon Dictate | Macworld

Productivity software

Dragon Dictate for Mac 3

Dictating to your computer and having the words typed for you seems like a great way to work, doesn’t it? You could just sit back, put your feet up, and blab away, instead of hunching over your keyboard and typing. If you’re a fast typist, dictation could be more relaxing; if you use the hunt and peck method, you’d save a lot of time and energy.

There are two powerful dictation solutions for OS X: The dictation tools built right into OS X Mountain Lion and Nuance’s Dragon Dictate. There’s a big difference between the two in price: Mountain Lion’s dictation feature is free with the OS, while Dragon Dictate will set you back $200. But that isn’t the only difference.

The Mountain Lion method

Dictating in OS X Mountain Lion is simple: Open System Preferences, open the Dictation & Speech pane and the Dictation tab, then click On. That done, you can start dictating by pressing the Fn (function) key twice; you can change that shortcut if you wish from the Shortcut menu of the Dictation pane.

The Dictation preference pane

To insert dictated words, you click wherever you want them to appear, then press the keyboard shortcut and start talking. When you’ve finished, you either click on Done or press the Return key. Mountain Lion then sends your speech to a remote server, which transcribes it and sends it back to your Mac to be entered as text. (It’s important to note that you need Internet access for dictation to work, and that sometimes the servers just don’t respond. I use iOS’s dictation often to reply to emails, and I’ve had transcription fail enough times to not count on it always being available.)

There are some limitations to OS X’s dictation tool. First, if you use your Mac’s internal microphone, the sound quality of your voice won’t be great. Since speech recognition depends on picking up on some subtle vocal distinctions, you might find that your results are not ideal. Second, you can only speak for up to 30 seconds at a time using Mountain Lion’s dictation feature. Finally, the OS X dictation feature doesn’t learn from your corrections: If the text it returns is incorrect, you can manually edit it, but these edits won’t help it avoid those mistakes in the future.

If you have a noise-canceling microphone, you can use that with the OS X dictation feature, and your results will be much better. The more you dictate, the more useful it is to have a good microphone.

The Dragon Dictate method

Dragon Dictate has a number of advantages compared to the OS X dictation feature. First, you “train” the program by reading about five minutes of text the first time you create a voice “profile.” This helps the program understand the way you say words.

Dragon Dictate lets you choose among alternatives so you get the text you want.

When you dictate using Dragon Dictate, all of the processing occurs on your Mac, and, if the program makes a mistake—misinterpreting one or more words that you say—you can not only correct this mistake, but Dragon Dictate will learn from this so future recognition will improve. Over time, working with Dragon Dictate, your voice profile will refine and you will have fewer and fewer mistakes.

There is no limit as to how long you can speak with Dragon Dictate. While it’s helpful to pause from time to time—I generally pause after clauses, or after sentences—you can speak continuously, and your natural pauses will give Dragon Dictate the time it needs to process your speech.

While Dragon Dictate can work with your Mac’s internal microphone, Nuance recommends that you use a standalone mic. You can buy Dragon Dictate with a USB microphone which offers noise reduction to greatly improve recognition, or you can buy any number of microphones, both wired and wireless, that work well with speech recognition.

What they have in common

With both methods, you need to speak certain words to indicate punctuation and other special characters. Apple’s Mac 101: Dictation document shows you how this works. You say “cap” before a word to capitalize it, you say “comma” and “period” to have those characters typed, and so on.

So what about accuracy?

Depending on your needs, and how you use dictation, you may or may not be satisfied with the results of Mountain Lion’s dictation feature. If accuracy is too bad, you’ll be spending more time correcting mistakes than you would have spent typing your text.

The problem with Mountain Lion’s dictation feature, as I mentioned above, is that it doesn’t learn from your speech. In general, in a quiet environment, with a good microphone, both types of dictation give decent results. However, start talking into your Mac’s internal microphone, and the results can be different.

Dragon Dictate learns not only the way you speak but also the words you use. You can, for example, have the program examine some of your files to see the type of language you use in the documents you write. This helps Dragon Dictate figure out what you mean when you speak by seeing which words you use in which contexts.

I did a test, using a text that is fairly technical (the Wikipedia article about diabetes) , to see how each of the solutions worked. I tried Mountain Lion’s dictation feature twice, once with the internal microphone of my Thunderbolt display and once with a microphone that is very good for speech recognition. I then read the same text with Dragon Dictate, using just the microphone.

The original: Diabetes mellitus, or simply diabetes, is a group of metabolic diseases in which a person has high blood sugar, either because the pancreas does not produce enough insulin, or because cells do not respond to the insulin that is produced.[2] This high blood sugar produces the classical symptoms of polyuria (frequent urination), polydipsia (increased thirst) and polyphagia (increased hunger).

Mountain Lion with internal microphone on Thunderbolt display: You know, simply diabetes, is a group of metabolic diseases in which a person has high blood sugar, either because the body does not produce enough insulin, or because sales did not respond to the insulin that is produced. This high blood Sugar produces the classical symptoms of polyurea (frequent urination), polydipsia (increased thirst) at polyphagia (increased hunger).

(Note that, several times Mountain Lion’s dictation tool just plain failed. When that happens, the dictation icon moves from side to side as if shaking its head, then goes away. I had to re-read a couple of these sentences several times.)

Mountain Lion with Plantronics Savi 400 microphone: Diabetes mellitus, or simply diabetes, is a group of metabolic diseases in which a person has high blood sugar, either because the body does not produce enough insulin, or because sales do not respond to the insulin that is produced. This high blood Sugar produces a classical symptoms of polyurea (frequent urination), polydipsia (increased thirst) and polyphagia (increased hunger).

Dragon Dictate with Plantronics Savi 400 microphone: Diabetes mellitus, or simply diabetes, is a group of metabolic diseases in which a person has high blood sugar, either because the body does not produce enough insulin, or because cells do not respond to the insulin that is produced. This high blood sugar produces the classical symptoms of polyuria (frequent urination), polydipsia (increased thirst), and Polly Fangio (increased hunger).

You’ll note that, while both do a pretty a good job, that last Dragon Dictate sample has fewer errors than the two before it. It’s worth pointing out that the single mistake Dragon Dictate made wouldn’t (in theory) recur, because I would correct it, and Dragon Dictate would observe and learn from that correction.

The last word

Mountain Lion’s dictation feature can be very useful if you to dictate occasionally. It’s great for dictating emails, instant messages, tweets, Facebook posts and the like. If you don’t mind editing your texts frequently, you can do a lot with this feature, and save time. However, a good microphone will deliver far more accurate results.

If, however, you want to dictate regularly, for more than short, occasional texts, Dragon Dictate is the way to go. The program learns from what you say and from your corrections, improving its accuracy over time, and also allows you to edit text using your voice, to control applications and much more.

Nevertheless, using Mountain Lion’s dictation feature may give you a first taste of speech recognition and show you what the future could be like. Once you’re convinced that dictating could be better than typing, then you could move up to Dragon Dictate.

Mr.V

http://qz.com/74937/how-to-become-internet-famous-without-ever-existing/

Mr.V

Aperture, iPhoto lead parade of Apple software updates | Macworld

Macs

Apple was busy on Tuesday, releasing more than a half-dozen software updates for the Mac enhancing and improving the performance of photo-editing apps, printers, Safari, and more.

Leading the list—at least alphabetically—is the release of Aperture 3.4.4, which addresses an unspecified issue that caused the program to quit during image imports, and another bug that caused the app to quit when uploading images to Photo Stream. Among other stability and performance fixes, Aperture also now correctly displays raw images from the Nikon P7700 camera correctly in the import window; it now also correctly displays thumbnails with names longer than 250 characters.

Also on the photo software front, iPhoto 9.4.3 was released with upgrades for compatibility with Mountain Lion. Users can now delete photos from Photo Stream by dragging them to the trash, or export them using the Export command in the File menu. The update also fixes problems with the rotation of photos shared to Photo Stream and a crashing issue that occurred when syncing images to Facebook, as well as issues creating calendars and books within the app.

Tuesday’s releases also include Java for OS X 2013-002, which replaces Java SE 6 with a more secure and reliable version and Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 15, which performs a similar upgrade—though clicking on the link, as of Tuesday afternoon, takes you to a previous update from March. In addition, Safari 6.0.4 for Lion and Mountain Lion and Safari 5.1.9 for Snow Leopard allow users to enable the Java plug-in on a website-by-website basis, as a security precaution.

Finally, Apple released printer software updates for Epson, Canon, and HP printers.

The updated software can be found either through the Mac App Store on your Mac, or through the Downloads page at Apple’s support website.

Mr.V

http://www.macworld.com/article/2034731/report-apple-replacing-some-third-gen-apple-tv-units-with-wi-fi-issues.html

Report: Apple replacing some third-gen Apple TV units with Wi-Fi issues | Macworld

Networked players

The third-generation Apple TV wasn’t a huge update from the generation prior: Its major addition was support for 1080p video. But reports suggest the one other significant add-on included in that third-gen Apple TV is the introduction of Wi-Fi networking issues—at least for a small subset of the set-top boxes sold.

9to5 Mac published what it says is official Apple retail correspondence, indicating that “a very small number of Apple TV (3rd generation) products might experience one of these Wi-Fi related connectivity issues,” which include an inability to see networks, connect to them, or stay connected to them.

The screenshot provided by 9to5Mac also states that Apple will replace affected Apple TV units for up to two years from the original date of purchase, free of charge.

According to the document, affected units will have a serial number ending in DRHN, and the third and fourth characters of the serial number must contain one of these pairs: H9, HC, HD, HF, HG, HH, HJ, HK, HL, HM, HN, HP, HQ, HR, HT, HV, HW, HX, J1, J2, J3, J4, J5, J6, J7, J8, J9.

Apple hasn’t yet responded to Macworld’s request for comment. That said, when we contacted two Apple Stores in New Jersey inquiring about issues with Apple TV Wi-Fi, representatives from each store indicated that if a third-generation Apple TV failed specific in-store tests, the boxes would be replaced for free.

Mr.V

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/04/16/videonotes-a-really-simple-way-to-make-store-and-share-notes-about-online-videos-as-you-watch-them/

VideoNotes: A simple way to make, store and share notes about online videos as you watch them

If you watch a lot of online videos for education or research, you’ll find VideoNotes a really useful tool.

It’s as simple as this: sign in with a Google account (VideoNotes uses Google Drive for storage) and then paste in the URL for a YouTube or Coursera video. Then as it plays you can start making notes on the right-hand side of the screen. The clever bit is that as you click on previous notes you’ve made, the video will jump to that point, making this a really useful tool for navigating documentaries, study guides and other long, involved videos.

The Web app comes from France-based, education-focused startup UniShared which offers collaborative note-taking for documents. VideoNotes doesn’t have to be a solo pursuit. Because it’s based around Google Drive, you can set sharing permissions for any notes you’ve made, making it easy for, say, a teacher to share notes on course video with a whole class.

VideoNotes is free and available now.

➤ VideoNotes

Image credit: Medioimages / Photodisc / Thinkstock

Mr.V