iMovie drop folder

I noticed the latest release of iMovie has a drop folder. At first I wasn't that excited but I wasn't quite sure what this was about so I did a bit of research. Turns out if you dump movie files in the right folder iMovie asks if you want to import them into your events next time it starts up. Wow.
So here's how it became more interesting for me.
I have a Panasonic HD video camera and all the stuff I capture on it imports to iMovie events onto my external media drive. I also have an iPhone 4 and this content is imported via iPhoto. Problem is as the iPhone camera improves I find I am using more and more to capture video and having all the footage in iPhoto is inconvenient to say the least when it comes time to edit. Sure, you can access our iPhoto library in iMovie but if it's an actual iMovie event it's easier to find and you get more control (tagging for one). So this is where the drop folder comes in. Instead of importing from the phone using iPhoto, fire up Image Capture instead (it's actually the app iPhoto leverages). I recommend you set it as the default application to launch for all your cameras in fact. In Image Capture you can sort files all sorts of ways to find the relevant stuff (file size is helpful to identify movies), select the files you wish to import, point the "Import to" menu to the iMovie Dropbox folder and you're away.

If you want to get fancy you can create an Image Capture plugin using Automator to streamline the process.

iOS 5

Of the however many hundred "updates" and changes that have been made in iOS 5 there is one that hasn't received much publicity and that's system wide proxy support. I have riffed on this before and in my opinion will have tremendous impact on Apple's bottom line. Think about it, all of the air has now been sucked out of the education room. If you wanted to run an "agnostic shop" your organisation could employ an annonymous proxy authentication process (like at a hotel or airport) but this appears rare in most individual schools and non-existent at a system level. You cannot in good faith recommend anything other than a device running iOS 5.
The openness of the Android platform gave other device manufacturers an opportunity (Samsung tried with the Galaxy but it was too difficult to manage) but they dropped the ball by not identifying schools as a significant market. Now Apple have it sewn up.
A couple of years ago the "halo effect" of the iPhone was attributed for a bump in Apple laptop sales. What will be the impact if over 50% of students start using iPads at school every day?

Facebook buys Push Pop Press

Pity. Unlikely Facebook will want to get into the publishing industry. It's what's called a talent buy. Shame is that a company who was doing some amazing stuff to refine the 'digital book experience' on iOS will no longer be doing it. If you haven't seen "Our Choice" the 'book' they produced for Al Gore go check it out. It will cost you a few $ on the iTunes store but I think it's a great example of what can be done in this space with a little imagination and effort.

Is the tide turning?

I haven't posted for a while (and there's reasons, mainly, you can't do everything at once) so the fact that this is getting written should be a good indication of how excited I am about my latest discovery.
I now have two, yes two non-native applications on my iPhone 4 that utilise iOS system proxy settings. You heard correctly. Two applications that go out to the world wide web through the proxy server (here at work) get information and bring it back.
The apps are Omnifocus by the Omni Group and PocketCast from Shifty Jelly.
Omnifocus I am particularly excited about because now I don't need to switch to 3G mode just to synchronise my task lists. It now round trips beautifully with the desktop.

Discussions for GDocs

The newly introduced "Discussions" feature for Google Docs brings a different look and hopefully improved functionality to the review and commenting system. Each comment is timestamped and will now feature a profile picture of the commenter. You can add (include) people to a discussion using and '@mention' ala Twitter and all comments have an email notification option. I'll be checking it out over the next few weeks.

See the Google Apps blog post for an introductory video and further information.