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.