MMMmmm you probably noticed I have stopped posting

 I haven't stopped posting because of the COVID19 restrictions. Well not entirely. It's been more to do with frustrations of things changing and either not working or requiring a lot of time to negotiate. The changes in Blogger where kind of the last straw, Ok the new interface is cleaner but....

I happen to have become a lot more interested in streaming, and zoom in prticular. Firstly through setting up a series of Zoom meeting. However it didn't take long to get more interested in how to use the medium (of reliable home streaming and personnal interaction) in a more creative way.

Well there is plenty of good and bad in the wide spread popularity of zoom (and similar video conferencing tools). First the BAD (and ugly) aspect are the one to many sessions where one or two people take over and often show detailed hard to read powerpoints. Its not only "death by powerpoint" its boring and stressfully hard going, its "zoom fatigue". we are all experiencing. I guess you can amuse yourself by looking around the room and seeing all the other bored faces looking back.

There is a GOOD side. It can be one to many but presented as one on one, but here it feels like it is being presented just to you. A very good example of this is Nora Jones Mini concerts live from home on YouTube
.

This YouTube link is an example of my frustration with blogger, the new interface no longer has an edit the html link feature, or I can't find it, but share from Youtube connects to the old blogger interface. so I shared from there as a draft. open the draft up the new interface just shows the clip greyed out ....Ahhhh

There is also the possibility of EVEN BETTER and this lies in the possibility of many to many connections where everyone gets to connect. However conversation on video conferencing can sometimes be a challenge if everyone tries to talk at once, because the technology is set up to only let one participant speak at a time. What is require is some old fashion etiquette, specifically look & listen. Don't keep talking over people take a breath and see if they are listening and want to say something. With this little bit of magic suddenly your opportunity to get together is much more likely to be enjoyable.

Discovering the simple elegance in chromecast-ing

I must admit I had been ignoring Apple TV, streaming, chrome casting and such. Unlike the supposed typical Australian net user I don’t use such technology to download pirate videos of the lastest TV show from the USA. So I am late coming to the wonderful little chromecast dongle. Rather than playing with streaming video, I came across the wonders of the chrome cast as a way to avoid cables and incompatibilities when giving a presentation (or training session) directly from my computer. What it can do is allow you to throw your screen onto any modern TV and most data projectors without a cable. Thus avoiding resetting screen resolution, cables not long enough or other such hassles. The TV, Big screen or projector just needs a HDMI input and most recent equipment will come with this. You just plug in the chromecast dongle into the HDMI socket (it generally needs to be connected to separate power supply, a charger is supplied with the dongle but any powered USB port is fine).

There is a downside, you need to have WiFi, both to set up the the chrome cast at a new location and carry the stream from your screen during the presentation. Most venues these days do have internet & WiFi but if they don’t and If you have a smartphone that can create a local hotspot that will be fine for running a powerpoint or a live demo of software. Perfect for a travelling trainer. However it could be a very expensive way to stream cast a full movie from somewhere else on the internet, depending on your phones data package.

You can broadcast from your phone or tablet via special apps, and you probably already have some of these. For example the You Tube app on android will direct the YouTube clip to your chromecast, no need to download it first. Google Slides, can make a slide show presentation located on google drive directly controlled from your from your phone (and yes it can read powerpoint files). The real power lies in the ability to send the contents of any chrome browser tab, to the chromecast, and thus big screen it is connected to. The current version also has the ability to send an application output or your entire screen (these later options are in beta release and can be a little laggy at times). So as long as you have a chrome browser you can send anything you can get on your PC screen onto a larger presentation stage. All without any fuss.

I also like the backdrop (aka screen wallpaper) settings on the unit which lets you use your own pictures from Google Photos, Flickr (or facebook if you must) or just stick with the google selected photo as a slideshow screen saver.