Another giant Leap (motion) for mankind...

I am waiting for Christmas on July 22nd. That's the day my Leap Motion device will ship.

What is a Leap Motion? It is a new way of interfacing with your technology. It is a very small box that will connect to either your Mac or PC, and give you the same user interface enjoyed by Chief John Anderton, Tom Cruise's character in The Minority Report. Grabbing and moving objects with your two hands flying through the air. But as they say, seeing is believing:

When I ordered the device back in February it was scheduled to ship in May, but alas as with many tech innovations the date has been pushed back. Had I been a Leap Motion developer I could have had my hands on (or over) the device sooner.

There are many apps being created for the July launch. Here is a screenshot of Leap Motion's Airspace, their online store:

On YouTube you can find demos of apps under development. You can also find geeks having fun, such as this programming jam with Leap Motion:

Here is an example of a music app with the Leap Motion:

A lot of these videos are very arm intensive. Looks a lot like Mickey in the Sorcerers' Apprentice, or an orchestra conductor. Two hours of playing a Halo-like game with the Leap Motion would be quite a workout. I hope my arms don't get too sore.

Then again, maybe I can operate the Leap Motion hands free, after all, I do have a large nose, and I can wiggle my ears..... a whole new world awaits.

Keeping track of your apples

I have an embarrassing number of Apple devices. There are times I feel personally responsible for Apple's success. How can I keep track of them should one wander away? Through Apple's "Find My iPhone."

You can use this service to find your device on a map. For example, I can see the 1st generation iPad attached to the front of my refrigerator.

If I saw it wandering away, I could lock it, or even reset it completely.

To get started you need to setup iCloud. It's free. You can use the same id you use with iTunes, or create a new id. All you need is an email address.

 On your Macintosh, go to system preferences and choose iCloud. You can either use an existing Apple ID (like your iTunes account) or create a new one.

Once you have successfully logged into iCloud, choose "Find My Mac" from the list. You will have to turn on location services which is located in the security and privacy preferences:

You should use this same Apple ID to setup iCloud on your iPhone, iPad and other Apple devices you might own. On the iOS device, go to Settings> iCloud>login and turn "Find My iPhone" on.

How do you find your device? On a computer (any computer), use a browser and login at iCloud.com. Click on "Find My iPhone." You'll see a list of the devices you have setup with iCloud. Click on a device to see it on a map, or you can even select the device if it is not online. If you login to iCloud.com with Safari on your iPhone or iPad, you will be prompted to install the "Find My iPhone" app.

Once everything is working, you will see a list of your devices when using this service on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad.

You can have iCloud inform you when the device is available. You can also remotely lock the machine, or you can erase the contents. 

If you can't find your Mac, make sure you do the following in System Preferences:

• Set the time zone automatically in the Date & Time preference
• Enable Location Services under Security and Privacy

Use with caution. Should anyone hijack your iCloud id and password, they can lock and/or erase all of the content on those devices.

What happens when you leave a Google Apps School? Part 3: Your Contacts

Keeping track of your contacts may or may not be important to you. But if you are like me, over the years you may have acquired a large number of them. Google apps organizes contacts into four groups:

• My Contacts, are entries you made. You either added the contact, modified one of the contacts from the other groups, or imported the contact from a list.
• Circles are contacts you added through Google+.
• Most contacted are just that, the people you normally correspond with. Their names pop to the top as you are typing in the address box.
• Other Contacts are all the other people you have sent an email to, including replies. 

That covers all the people you actually correspond with, however, if your Google Apps domain administrator has turned on "Directory Sharing", you see an additional listing called directory:

The Directory is a list of all of the contacts at your organization.

Exporting your Contacts....

First off, you can not export the directory of your organization. Workaround: Add the members of your organization to a group - a rather laborious task only for those who don't want to miss anyone from their contact list. But seriously if you haven't written to them by now (so they would appear in the "Other Contacts" list), you probably will not write them later.

Open your contact manager in Google by going to your email, then choosing Contacts under Mail:

Then choose Export under the "More" drop down menu:

You can make separate exports of "My Contacts" and "Most Contacted" under the group button, or you can import all of your contacts which would include those two, plus your "Circle" and "Other Contacts".

Save the contacts in the format you would like to preserve the information for future use. 

Get an iPad, not a Document Camera

There are several designs on the internet for stands that turn your iPad into a document camera. I have the privilege of working with the cleaver Luis Bolanos. He has morphed a couple of the designs into this model.

The document cameras we recently purchased were about the same cost as an entry level iPad, so this year we offered teachers' a choice: Either purchase a document camera or an iPad. While the stand for the iPad/document camera is not as flexible as a dedicated document camera, the iPad itself is a far more flexible device.

In addition buy airserver. Great software for using your computer as an airplay device. Attach your computer to an LCD projector, then find the computer with your iPad and display it over airplay.

What happens when you leave a Google Apps School? Part 2: Your Email

Google does not have a tool for moving all of your email from one Google Apps account to another Google account. You need to move your mail from your old Google mail to your computer and then back up to a new Google account.

old GMail → Computer mail app → new GMail

First go to the settings>Forwarding and POP/IMAP  of each gMail account and turn on IMAP access

Then open a computer mail app, for this example I will use the Macintosh Mail app, but you can do the same with Outlook and Mozilla’s Thunderbird. Create an account for each of the Google accounts (old and new). In my case it was bill@myoldemailaddress then password, and bill@mynewemailaddress then password. The email client will change your GMail labels into folders and then populate the folders with all of the email from your old account. This will take a while.

old GMail → Computer mail app → new GMail

Then you want to move the mail from your computer to your new Google account. There are a couple of options here. If you want to have the same label structure on the new account, you will have to create that on the new account. Personally, I only want to be able to search the old mail, so I created two labels/folders on the new GMail account: Old Mail and Old Sent Mail. Then in the computer’s app, I selected all of the items from the “All Mail” folder of the old GMail account (all 77k of them), and dragged them to the new account. I did the same with the the sent mail.

old GMail → Computer mail app → new GMail

Since you are moving files back up into the cloud, it could take some time.

What happens when you leave a Google Apps School? Part 1: Your Documents

What happens when you leave a Google Apps School?
Part 1: Your Documents

Recently a friend of mine was given one hour to clean his desk out and turn over his computer. Not an uncommon practice in business, but rarely will a school give you an hour’s notice. However when you leave your Google Apps School, your Google Account will eventually disappear.

What does that mean? No access to your GMail, calendars, documents, YouTube Videos, Blogger blogs, Picasa Albums, Google Voice messages, sites you created, group memberships, or anything associated with the “@yourGoogleAppsDomain”. This could also include banking, brokerage, college services, social media such as Facebook or Twitter, anything that you used your school’s email address as part of your profile. For the purposes of this document we will not cover the previous sentence, but seriously, you should not use your business account for your private affairs.

So as you pack your boxes and prepare to leave your Google Apps School, how do you transfer your digital life to a new location?

First find another employer who uses Google Apps, or become your own Google Apps domain. Google will sell you a domain like “lovinglifeinlajolla.com” for $10 a year. Then you can set up a Google Apps account with your new domain and add yourself as one of the users such as bill@lovinglifeinlajolla.com. As of December 7, 2012, Google no longer provides free Google Apps accounts. However a paid account only costs $5 per month per person.

Take it out with Google Takeout.

Google Takeout (https://www.google.com/takeout) allows you to make a digital archive (i.e. download) of your Google+, Contacts, Drive, Picasa Web Albums, Profile, Reader, Voice, and YouTube from any of your Google Apps Accounts. Note: Not GMail or Google Sites.

At Google Takeout, you can select all the services or just the one you want to save.

Takeout will create an archive that you can then download to your computer.

The only Google Docs you can save like this are ones that you own. If you want to save Google Docs that are owned by someone else, you need to download a copy of them too. Here is an easy how to:

Go to your Google Web Drive. Select documents that are “Shared with Me.” Go to the bottom of the list. Since you are looking at a list of items on the web, the page may still be loading. Once you are satisfied that you have the entire list, then select all of them.


Select download from the “More” menu.

This will create a zip file on your computer. You can now access all of the files from your Google Apps that were shared with you.

Another way for grabbing your Google Docs: Rather than using both the above method and Google TakeOut to get all of the Google Docs, go to your Google Docs page. Click on “More” on the left menu.

Then click on “All Items”

It will take awhile for the page to finish loading all of you documents. When it finishes select all the items and as before select all of the files.


Select download from the “More” on the top menu. This will download all of the files you own and are shared with you.


Why not use Google Drive on your computer?
You can use Google Drive for the Mac or PC to create synchronized copies of your Google Docs on the web and your laptop. Change a file on the web and it is automatically changed on all the other devices you want synced. However, if you no longer own the account, the files on your laptop (or mobile device) are useless. You will not be able to open them up.

Using the Google Dashboard
There is a link on the Google dashboard that is usually hidden for educational GApps users. It will allow you to directly move some of your files from one Google Apps account to another. Use the following URL:

https://www.google.com/dashboard/migration/?srcAccount=MyOriginalAccount@myoldhome.com&dstAccount=MyNewAccount@mynewhome.com

Subsitute the MyOriginalAccount@myoldhome.com and the MyNewAccount@mynewhome.com with the correct information.

Using this method you can move the files directly from one account to the other. It is very fast. This method works best if the destination account is empty. It is a good way to move all of your Picasa Web Albums and YouTube videos from one account to another, but it is a one way transfer.  This method moves all of the files out of your old account permanently. It will not work for Google Docs or Google GMail.

Next: Switching GMail Accounts

QR codes in school

QR (quick response) codes were developed in 1994 by the auto industry as an inventory tool. The adoption of QR Codes was slow to develop in popular culture until the recent increase in smart phones and similar devices with cameras and QR Code apps. Now most mobile iOS and Android devices with a camera can scan the codes.

So what?

A QR Code can be used to “link” to a website for more information. For example, why are there bookshelves in the Middle School art hallway? 

The art teacher, Matthew, has created an informative video explaining the purpose of the display at http://broadcast.acs.sch.ae/media/an-explanation-about-the-self-shelfm4a. 

Rather than typing the whole address into your iPad or iPhone, Matthew created a QR Code for the site. If you scan the code with your QR Code Reader app, the site will automatically load onto your device.


Matthew has another QR Code explaining the Graffiti Art exhibit. Check it out. 

To learn more about QR Codes in school, visit http://goo.gl/bOuia or
scan this: