Vidify is a neat, fully featured app that one of our writers found out about recently at the LA AppShow.

What Vidify does is simply the task of creating high quality video from your iDevice.

Vidify automatically edits music videos and montage videos on the fly using the footage from your camera roll and a soundtrack from your iPod/iPhone library.

“When we share personal videos, we’re sharing a story, and music can play a big role in communicating that narrative. When we developed Vidify, it was important that people had the option to tell their story to their favorite music, or to music that was deeply imbedded in the app,” states Ian Noe, co-founder of Nice Labs. “Users will be blown away with how a touch of a button results in creating a story that seamlessly blends from moment to moment as the music plays. It literally looks just like you spent hours editing it.”

What’s awesome – there’s NO editing required. Simply select your videos and your song and Vidify does the rest.

Specifics:

• Use any video on your camera roll from any source
• Use any track from your iPod library as a soundtrack
• Fully licensed Featured Music Library with music by independent artists
• Instantly share videos with your friends using Facebook, Youtube and email
• Play wirelessly on your Apple TV
• Fast processing times using the iPhone’s built in hardware
• Create sharp hi-res videos (HD 720p)

Note: You’ll obviously want to be aware that using commercial music in your video will get rejected by YouTube. I hear that Facebook is also sending notices to people for using copyrighted, commercial audio in video montages – just be aware !!

Here’s video showing exactly how easy Vidify is to use.

Now the fun – we at THE Tech Scoop are running a little giveaway for your very own copy of Vidify. Enter the contest by following the instructions below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good Luck !

James Hicks

James is the Founder and Chief Technologist of HicksNewMedia, a technology consulting and digital publishing firm providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to utilize all things on the interweb. Follow him on Twitter | about.me | Facebook | Google+

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The challenge lies in getting everyone online for team collaborative meetings and planning sessions.

There are a number of high dollar tools and services that many of the large enterprise companies use, but keep in mind – we’re the definitive stealth startup headquartered here in little old Roseville, California !!!

That being said, it was necessary to find tools and resources that were not only scalable and reliable, but also cost-effective.

As a framework, we’ve standardized on Google Apps which allows us to install various applications within the Google Apps Marketplace for everything from calendar sharing, task management, and collaborative audio and video meeting tools.

One such tool that we’re currently evaluating is AnyMeeting.

Out-the-box, AnyMeeting allows you to have 6-way video conferencing, screen sharing, and up to 200 audio conference call attendees.

What’s really sweet about AnyMeeting is that they are cross-platform. So we Mac folk can easily collaborate with Windows folk. That’s a big thing for me since AnyMeeting realizes that it’s a diverse world of computing out there and not everyone uses the same OS platform.

The ability to plan meetings, send invites, create registrations and sell tickets to your meetings is also awesome. This is going to great when we start holding specialized “closed door” type sessions and want to charge for attendance.

There is also social media integration allowing you to take advantage of both Facebook and Twitter to promote and link to your meetings.

The other very cool thing about AnyMeeting is that you can record and archive you meetings. Don’t take that for granted. Having the ability to re-purpose audio and video content online is incredibly valuable.

If there is one thing that I don’t like as much is the fact that AnyMeeting is ad supported, so there are Google AdSense type ads that display across your window as you’re hosting a meeting. You can get rid of the ads by stepping up and purchasing one of their upgrade options – so for as little as $18 per month you can get zero ads BUT only 25 attendees (instead of the 200 with the ad supported version???) See the graphic below for the various pricing options:

As I mentioned, we’re continuing to evaluate AnyMeeting and it’s usability across the team, but thus far I’m liking the functionality and the ease of use. Even though we utilize AnyMeeting within Google Apps, that’s not a requirement. You should check them out here.

James Hicks

James is the Founder and Chief Technologist of HicksNewMedia, a technology consulting and digital publishing firm providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to utilize all things on the interweb. Follow him on Twitter | about.me | Facebook | Google+

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I feel that the iPad is the perfect platform for textbooks. Let’s look at this from a financial standpoint, and from the standpoint of having the most up to date information.  Schools will no longer have to purchase physical text books that tend to cost more than their digital counterparts. So the school districts will be saving money in the long run. In addition, Steve Jobs mentioned in his biography that the textbooks would be free with the iPads. Now that might, or might not come to fruition, only time will tell.

If you remember back to when you where in K-12 you generally had textbooks that were out of date when it came to certain subjects. Think of how convenient it would be to simply download an update to your textbook, and not feel like your learning something that is five to ten years old. This is something that happens now with eBooks. If a correction needs to be made; you receive a notification and then an update is performed.

One other key point I didn’t mention was that now kids will only need to carry an iPad instead of three to four heavy books. My daughter is in the fifth grade and she carries at least five to eight pounds of books in her backpack. With textbooks on an iPad she would no longer need to haul around that extra weight.

What do you think Apple will announce?  An update to iTunes U? Textbooks for the iPad?  Let us know what you thinks Apple will be announcing in the comments below.

Gerard Lagana

I'm a husband, dad of two great kids, and I have a passion for Apple products. I got my first Mac in 2005, and I haven't looked back. I like the simplicity of the Mac, and how does the motto go, oh yeah, It just works. I think that's the great thing about Macs how the hardware and software work harmoniously together. I've also been in the IT industry for over fourteen years. I've worked with everything from Windows computers to Mac computers. I can say I thoroughly enjoy working with Macs. I can also be found on Twitter, where I continue to geek out on Apple products.

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Skitch makes it very easy to take a photo or a screen shot and add arrows, text, or lines right on the top.

The interface is intuitive – right after the launch, you can see your options for importing images.  You can choose from your camera roll, your photos, and your photo stream which is a very handy option for editing screen shots taken on your iphone.  The editing tools are simple and easy to understand and the export options range from an interface to your TV (using additional hardware), sending to Evernote, tweeting, emailing and exporting to your camera roll.

Read below for additional information and check out the video link.

Business Value/productivity value – 5/5

This app is perfect for me.  It allows me to edit photos and screen shots very easily and will save me a lot of time.

Ease of use – 4/5

All the tools are simple, but not being able to resize text boxes without inserting hard returns in the text is a detriment.

Likelihood of usage 5/5

I plan to use often.  Many future reviews will feature screen shots annotated by Skitch.  The app has only been out for a few days and I’ve already found a few handy uses.

Graphics and Sound 4/5

There is no sound that I could hear.  It would be nice to have some simple sounds that give you an auditory confirmation of your actions though I hardly find this to be a problem.  The graphics are simple and easy to understand.

Overall 4.5/5 –

A great and FREE application from Evernote.

Where to get it

The Appstore

How much is it

Free as of this writing.

In the comments below, please let me know what is your favorite tool for annotating photos?

Lance

If the computer breaks, the network won’t connect or a cell phone is acting funny, the family calls me. I’ve worked in and around technology development for nearly 20 years. I’m a tech, information and football fanatic with a short attention span who is always trying out new things and sharing information about them with others. In my “free” time, I enjoy drawing, photography, writing, watching anime and spending time with my family. Follow me on Twitter | Facebook

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But wait, is that built in iOS functionality?  Nope.  If you had your laptop you could have controlled it with Remote (through iTunes) but you wanted to carry only the minimum stuff.  What to do now?

Enter Tango Remote.

The version I found and used this year is 5.0.23 and it’s a universal app (meaning you buy it once and it’ll run on iPhone, iPod touch and iPad).  I hadn’t read anything about it previously but I took the plunge and made the purchase.  In this instance, I depended on the iTunes rating system to help me make the choice.  Out of 27 reviews on the current version, it rated 4 stars so it seemed legit.  I bought it on the iPhone and the iPad, waited for them to load.  I made sure I was on the same wi-fi network with both devices.  Then I plugged the iPad to the stereo and launched Tango Remote.  I found my playlist and fired up the app on the iPhone.  It recognized the iPad immediately.  I selected the same playlist and started playing the media.  No issues. As the night went on, I was able to stop, start, skip and change the music at will.

Ratings

Productivity value – 4.5/5

I was able to perform nearly all needed functions without a hitch.  I would have liked to have seen the ability to switch between video playback, if showing a music video and showing a cover when playing a song.  Otherwise, top notch.  AND, not only does it look at your music play lists, it allows you to play all your media on your device including any movies, TV shows,  iTunes University, videos from your camera roll – amazing.

Ease of use 4/5

Extremely easy to use – no issue just downloading on the 2 devices, making sure they were on the same network and running it.  I read that Bluetooth was also an option but did not try it.  I would like it if there was an option to have videos remember their playback position, or at least make it optional.

Likelihood of usage 5/5

This was great – I had no issues and will certainly use it again.  This app will be granted a permanent home on my already cramped 32 GB iPad and my iPhone.

Graphics and Sound 4/5

Graphics are simple and effective.  I’m not rating this high because of the artistic value – I’m rating it this high because I could easily find everything I needed without a bunch of distracting colors or blinking lights.  Everything seemed to “just work” for me.  This includes different layouts for the iPad and the iPhone.  They used the larger screen space on the iPad effectively and made the iPhone version more compact as one would expect.

Overall  – 4.4/5

Great application – the price is more than what I normally want to pay for an app but I have NO regrets on this one.

Where to get it

The App Store 

How much is it

I paid 4.99 but it looks like it goes on sale pretty often.  Again, even at this price, I’m happy.

tap playlist to see the playlists on your device (iPad screen shot)

select individual songs from playlist (iPad screen shot)

different menu options let you select from all the playable content (iPad screen shot)

set a password if needed (iPad screen shot)

iPad playlist control from the iPhone (iPhone screen shot)

you can view all the iPad media from the iPhone (iPhone screen shot)

Lance

If the computer breaks, the network won’t connect or a cell phone is acting funny, the family calls me. I’ve worked in and around technology development for nearly 20 years. I’m a tech, information and football fanatic with a short attention span who is always trying out new things and sharing information about them with others. In my “free” time, I enjoy drawing, photography, writing, watching anime and spending time with my family. Follow me on Twitter | Facebook

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Compared to other, similar apps

all screen shots from iPhone 4S

To be fair, I took a look at some of the other contenders in this space and added some quick commentary on my feelings.

AppMiner is not graphically appealing to me but the actual functionality is acceptable  – I think the use of gray and dark gray are just too dark for me.  AppShopper, on the far left is brighter and even though there is not as much room on the screen, it feels right.

app4today has limited selection and some the menu choices are in French.  I’d prefer to have them in English which seems like an easy fix their developers could quickly handle.    I don’t actually mind the look of the app but I’m turned off by the lack of English menus and limited choices.

FreeAppADay looks ok but on my 3GS it took way too long to load.  They seemed to go overboard on the graphics and frankly app felt a little awkward to use.  Look at the screen shot – everything said ‘Chat’ today.  What’s up with that?

App Functions

AppShopper allows you to select from a set of menu choices that include Popular, What’s New, Wish List, My Apps, Top 200, and ‘search’ -within each of those you have various filter criteria that you can apply to narrow down your results.

For example, under Popular, I often look for “Price Drops” for all devices (iPad and iPhone) for both Paid and Free apps.  – I can choose to look at just the free items or just paid if I like.  Either that or I can look for New or Updated items with a combination of those other filters.

I can also search for apps and look at their price change history – some apps that I’m interested in purchasing often go on sale for $.99 or are dropped down to Free.  If that is the case I can add them to AppShopper’s wishlist, after creation of an appshopper id, and be notified of price drops when they come.  The notifications come in the shape of push notifications so if you have a lot of apps on your wish list, you could be getting a lot of notifications every day.  On the flip side – if an app never changes price, I can be pretty sure that it won’t change in the future so I can just make the purchase right then.

What’s New tells me new apps that are detected by AppShopper but I typically don’t use this function often.  The My Apps menu choice lets you select the apps you actually own and allows you to get push notifications when there is an update or price drop on apps you already own.  I started to use this but found that with the number of apps I own i was seeing too many notifications.  I only have a handful of apps listed here now due to the volume.

The app also includes search capabilities and a top 200 list.  Search seems to allow for text searches.  The search function seems to prioritize the app titles, they appear first in the list,  but also hits the descriptive text which appear later in the results.  The Top 200 can be filtered by biggest grossing, free, paid apps – and sorted by their app store rank, ones with the biggest rise or drop, peak rating, rating and price.  Again, there are a lot of options.  I’ve only used this function a little bit since by the time I started using the app, I had most of the top apps in my inventory.  If you want to base your purchases on what others are buying, this may be an option for you.

If all this seems like too much, just pick the defaults, it’s pretty easy.  After you get used to it, play around, you won’t break it.

Popular screen - on iPad

What's New screen - on iPad

WebAccess

screen shot from appshopper.com

One of my favorite features is the ability to see your account, with your wishlist items and the price drops right on the web site.  If you’re in front of your computer and have iTunes fired up, you can make some selections download them and sync to your devices.  No rocket science here but I like the ease of use and the integration with what I have on the iPad and iPhone.

It “Just works” which is great thing to achieve.

The app is free but displays ads – you can disable on the iPhone for $0.99 and another $0.99 on the iPad.

On a 4 out of 5 scale -

Business Value/productivity value – 4

Ease of use – 4

Likelihood of usage – 5

Graphics and Sound – 3*

Overall – 4+

* Sounds don’t really matter on this one

How do you find new apps?  I’m interested to see in the comments.

Lance

If the computer breaks, the network won’t connect or a cell phone is acting funny, the family calls me. I’ve worked in and around technology development for nearly 20 years. I’m a tech, information and football fanatic with a short attention span who is always trying out new things and sharing information about them with others. In my “free” time, I enjoy drawing, photography, writing, watching anime and spending time with my family. Follow me on Twitter | Facebook

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The company has released technology that allows anyone to create a remotely controlled micro-site of any product website in under two minutes.

Sound too good to be true or want to know more? Keep reading…

Eric Benson, CEO, says, “…the Patent Pending technology creates a widget of any website without downloading or storing any of the website’s content. Instead, as patent professionals have verbalized it, the technology is more like a portable, embeddable, browser which focuses on only one specific website. It arranges links to the assets of the website such as images, videos, and text, then displays them to the viewer through a portal creating a new age, ‘picture in picture’ viewing experience for the web.”

When shared virally to social networks such as facebook, for example, the widget lives within the facebook Wall and provides consumers with the convenience of never having to leave their page to interact with their favorite websites or to purchase products.

This initial launch of the technology is in association with internet marketers who find the technology very compelling because of its ability to continuously track their virally spread affiliate links within their own created WallWidget to ensure proper payment of commissions.

Currently available through ClickBank WallWidget for eCommerce is initially accessible by more than 100,000 internet marketers for a nominal monthly usage fee.

WallWidget also has a free component which allows consumers to create their own free WallWidget for Music, Videos, etc., such as YouTube. YouTube users can now create a WallWidget of their favorite video collections, share to their facebook Walls for continuous play of all videos saved in the collection. For those familiar with the Amazon Affiliate Network – think very similar to that with the ability to embed flash-enabled content.

I had to include the following line from the official press release:

With its sights set on other industries such as Real Estate, Medical, Banking, Politics, Travel, Entertainment, etc., WallWidget(TM) has projected revenues into the Billions of Dollars in the years to come.

That’s right – they said Billions !!

James Hicks

James is the Founder and Chief Technologist of HicksNewMedia, a technology consulting and digital publishing firm providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to utilize all things on the interweb. Follow him on Twitter | about.me | Facebook | Google+

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We’ve always heard the phrase that there is strength in numbers right? Well, the folks from AVG Anti-Virus decided to go to the extreme and test that phrase out.

It takes millions of toothpicks to keep a tiger at bay, just like it takes millions of users to link together, stop digital threats and create strength in numbers with AVG Anit-Virus. The software is available for free download at www.weprotectus.com.

James Hicks

James is the Founder and Chief Technologist of HicksNewMedia, a technology consulting and digital publishing firm providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to utilize all things on the interweb. Follow him on Twitter | about.me | Facebook | Google+

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If you work in a corporate environment the word “Exchange” may be familiar to you. Exchange is one of the top internal email servers on the market today. It’s owned and maintained by Microsoft.

There are many things to consider when looking for an email solution. The first is almost always price. What product can I choose to accomplish what I need for the best price. Many people stick with free, but companies have policies in place that preclude them from using a free service for corporate email. This may be due to regulatory requirements, like Sarbanes-Oxley and the requirement for archival of email or it could just be a corporate policy that requires that communications be internal.

Once one lays out all of the requirements for their email they have to begin looking at what options are available, that meet the specific requirements. How does one choose a hosted email solution depends upon needs. Assuming that a company already runs an Active Directory domain, the basic requirements of an Exchange server are a 64-bit server with 4GB of RAM, 1.2GB of storage for the server, and Windows Server 2008 R2. With these specs you are looking at a $4000 server, plus $1299 for the copy of Exchange Server. Therefore, a minimum of $5299 for the hardware and software. This does not include purchasing a copy of Outlook to allow employees to connect to the Exchange Server. Microsoft Outlook, on it’s own, is $139.99 per copy, at retail. Let us assume you have 50 users, you are looking at a cost of $6,999.50 just for Outlook.

Let us not forget about the Exchange Client Access Licenses as well. These run approximately $88 each. Therefore, for 50 users, that is another $4,400. Just to get started with an Exchange Server a company must shell out $16,698.50. This does not include the personnel to keep the server up and running.

Contrast this the cost of Microsoft’s hosted Exchange Server solution. Prices start at $10 per user, per month, or $120 per user, per year. For 50 users this could be as little as $6,000 per year for 50 employees. A significant savings over the $16,698.50 which is just to get everybody up and running.

The real question becomes at what point does it make more sense to host your own Exchange server over having somebody else host the server. Does it start at 100 users, 200 users, 500 users? At 500 users, just at the $10 rate, comes out to $60,000 per year. Less than the cost of hiring one Exchange server administrator.

There are many business factors that come into play when it comes to an email solution. Do you want each user to have access to a copy of Microsoft Office? If you were going to be choosing to run one version of Office and Exchange and not upgrade for 10 years, then it may be to your benefit to put down the expense of setting up your own server and maintaining it. However, if you want to have your users be able to use the latest version of Office it may cost a bit more.

The real key to the optimal solution comes from the types of users you have. If you have power users who could truly benefit from a full copy of Microsoft Office on their personal desktop computer it may work best to get a Microsoft Select license to keep all of your users up to date. Combine this with an Exchange server that is hosted and maintained internally, you could provide the optimal solution for you users.

Conversely, if you have a bunch of novice users who do not need all of the advanced functions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, then potentially a solution with Office 365 and a hosted Exchange server may be the best fit for your company. I did not lay out every single possible solution, I did not take into account the option of a Microsoft Select Agreement, nor the Academic discounts offered. Any, or all, of these can affect the total cost of a solution.

Ultimately, it comes down to what works best for your environment, you users, and where you want to dedicated resources. If you do not mind having a dedicated person to manage your Exchange server then go with that. If you find yourself not wanting to deal with the hardware, software, and power costs, not to mention bandwidth, your best solution may be to hand that responsibility off to a third-party Exchange host. Unfortunately, there is no one size fits all answer. Unless, that is, you don’t have any real policies, you just need a bunch of storage, and you don’t want to pay much (if anything) then Gmail works quite well.

[image via]

Wayne Dixon

I'm into anything technology related. I do some HTML/CSS/PHP development. I like to follow things that most people would find annoying or not worthwhile. I follow Apple, Microsoft, Google, The Cloud, cell phones and even programming. By Day I'm a Systems Administrator for a Library, which has it's own set of issues. Follow me on Twitter.

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Well, today marks 20 years since Linus Torvalds announced on a Web bulletin board that he’d begun working on a free computer operating system. In that message, Torvalds described Linux as “just a hobby, won’t be big and professional.”

Check out the infographic below showing the relative adoption of Linux and tell us what you think about it’s future.

Created by: MBA Online

James Hicks

James is the Founder and Chief Technologist of HicksNewMedia, a technology consulting and digital publishing firm providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to utilize all things on the interweb. Follow him on Twitter | about.me | Facebook | Google+

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