MacDirectory Magazine

ANY PROFILE COMP HUMBLE DAISY > BRINGING SIMPLE AND ELEGANT SOLUTIONS TO USERS WORDS BY STEPHANIE SHING ProfCast is great because it is powerful, but very simple to use, as it was designed specifically with the user in mind. This low cost solution is a wonderful tool for recording and distributing lectures, special events, and presentations as podcasts. The origins of Humble Daisy start with a statistics class and a 20 something year old Dave Chmura, who went on to co-found and become CEO of Humble Daisy. Dave always struggled with school, but his struggles became particularly apparent in his 20s when he took a statistics class and failed, not just once, but twice. It was after this class that Dave became really interested in why he had so much trouble learning. Three days of intensive testing later, Dave learned that he had Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) as well as a significant deficit in abstract conceptual mathematics. Having this knowledge, Dave used it to his advantage to help him handle his classes. While doing his Masters of Science in Information, Dave would look for different ways to leverage technology to learn. For example, Dave would always try to get professors to post or email lecture slides to him before the lecture so that he could take notes on the slides during class. During the time that Dave was doing his masters, the idea of recording lectures was beginning to take off. Dave saw its rough beginnings and noticed many problems that needed to be fixed – there was too much human intervention, files were too large, AV guys would have to sit through a class and point a camera at the presentation screen, professors would have to sit in recording booths and reenact lectures, etc. Creating, recording, and publishing – ProfCast makes sure to integrate all the important steps in making a podcast. The application provides live presentation recording, synchronization of slides with audio, Keynote and PowerPoint support, RSS generation, and publishing support. As you record ProfCast captures slide timings, bullet point builds, and voice narration. ProfCast gives professionals and educators flexible, rich, and easy to use media. Publish your recorded presentation as an enhanced podcast, complete with RSS. All you have to do is Launch, Load, and Lecture! Humble Daisy's second great application, SonicPics, is just as fabulous and user friendly as ProfCast. This fun iPhone/iPad app lets users narrate photos to create personal slideshows. This app is so versatile! Not only is it great for fun personal projects, but it is wonderful for classroom learning too. With this app students are able to create book reviews, book trailers, videos with drawings, audiobooks with illustrations from student writing, recorded student poetry, mini-documentaries, photo-essays, and podcasts. The options really are limitless. The best part is that SonicPics is extremely easy to use. You just select the photos you want from your camera roll and flip through them while narrating. As soon as you want to narrate a new photo all you have to do is swipe to the next photo. No extra effort is needed to synchronize the narration and photos. Creating and editing a personal slideshow has never been easier. The process is as easy as 1, 2, swipe! There was a lot of room for improvement. Dave waited around for someone to build the appropriate software, but as time passed no one ever did. Wanting lecture recording to improve, Dave decided to build the solution. In 2006, Humble Daisy launched ProfCast version 1.0. The ProfCast application is a tool for recording lectures that allows teachers to include PowerPoint and/or Keynote slides in podcasts. SonicPics is not only great for creating, but also great for sharing. The app has a direct upload link to YouTube. Another option for sharing is using the option to send to computer. With this option SonicPics generates an IP address that can be used in any browser to create a direct wifi link between the iPad and computer. Or if you prefer you can email your finished videos. Use SonicPics, a simple and elegant solution, to bring creativity and imagination to your videos. Visit humbledaisy.com for more information. MacDirectory 45

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