Tampa Bay "Geek" Calendar

I migrated my Tampa Bay "Geek" Calendar to a Google Calendar. Now it should be a little easier for me to keep updating it and much easier for people to subscribe to it.

Again, I can't catch every event in the area, but I'll try to add all the more unusual and non-recurring events I find. There will always be more Meetups and User Groups than I can cover.

Using Google Hangouts to Play Windows Media on the iPhone

Last weekend I was watching the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship through the NASA TV streams. I had to run out to baseball practice during final alliance selections and was going to miss it, unless I could get the stream working on a mobile device. The problem is that their streams use Windows Media. First I tried VLC and GPlayer on my iPhone but neither worked. Then I tried my Nokia Lumia 800 with Windows Phone 7.8. It's Microsoft, so it should work, right? Nope. Then I went through several Android media players on my Nexus 7 but none I tried could support the stream.

I was on the verge of just leaving something running to record the stream at home and watch it later when it hit me. I set up a webcam pointed at my laptop viewing the stream and started a Google Hangout. I could easily connect and reconnect to the Hangout with my iPhone or any of my devices (except the Windows Phone - still waiting on a Google+ app there). So I got to catch the alliance selections live, thanks to Google Hangouts.

Out With the Old

I resisted as long as I could, but I finally had to update this blog to use the "new" Blogger templates to take advantage of a number of newer Blogger features introduced in the past few years. I'd miss the old look less if the theme editor here had enough options so I didn't have to edit the template manually and add CSS to get what I want, but I already had to dig into it to fix page titles. Except for this blog, I've pretty much moved on to Wordpress where plugins can handle all the stuff I want without having to hack up Blogger templates. I'm still not happy with this background image, but it'll probably be here for years.

Makerspaces / Hackerspaces in the Tampa Bay Area

This past weekend was the second Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire. There were some great conversations there about finally getting a makerspace or hackerspace in the Tampa Bay area. We had a lot of these same talks last year, but this year I think we might finally have the critical mass of people to get things started.

There are two efforts to start one that I'm aware of. The first is the LI4E Makerspace. They are focused on starting one or more makerspaces at Pasco County libraries. They have also recently signed an agreement to take over a South Tampa house and re-fit it for public creative use.

The second is Makerspace Tampa Bay. That group had stalled out in recent months, but has now been renewed with new leadership and is making a good push to build a solid core group and get a facility open. They have a website, but if you are on Facebook, there is a lot more active discussion on their Facebook group, Makerspace Tampa Bay.
[Update May 2013: I have joined the board of directors for this group and will hopefully have some good updates throughout the rest of the year.]

There are three four alternatives in the Tampa area that approach what a makerspace is:

The biggest and closest to a makerspace is the MOSI IdeaZone. It's a fantastic space on the ground floor of MOSI and has a growing collection of equipment, including 3D printers and a laser cutter. They offer classes for both students and adults. 

The USF X-Labs has built a number of cool science demonstrations, including this massive Tesla coil. I don't know much about their physical space, but it's worth checking out if you're a USF student (and maybe even if you aren't). 

The Tampa Amateur Radio Club is a bit of a stretch to call a makerspace, but they do have a nice facility with a great ham radio shack. More importantly, 2-3 times a year they run TARCFest, a tailgate / flea market with a lot of radio and electronics equipment.

The Roosevelt 2.0 is a "creative urban renewal project" in Ybor City. It's an interesting mix of a cafe, meeting space, market, art studio, garden, and more. 

A little further outside of Tampa, there are two good maker spaces:

The FamiLab in Orlando has great family-friendly programs and has even hosted Eben Upton of Raspberry Pi fame. 

The Fab Lab at GWiz in Sarasota has fantastic gear, including a big CNC machine and a mill. Unfortunately, I believe they are still closed as GWiz continues to struggle financially and remains closed after many months "for renovations".

Finally, if you missed it, check out the White House Hangout: The Maker Movement, a Google+ Hangout with a number of prominent makers and makerspace founders / users.

Chromebooks for Education

I've been looking a bit more at Chromebooks for Education. Thinkamingo has been doing quite well building up a portfolio of educational mobile apps, but the rise of Chromebooks in schools is something that we can't ignore. So we'll continue to think what role we could take in an entirely web-based environment rather than a on-device tablet environment like iPads.

Chromebooks certainly make sense for a school, especially given the difficulty of managing iPads (or other devices) as a group. I really like the idea of schools being able to quickly swap out broken devices or even loan devices to students without needing to install or replicate anything.

One great point is that adopting an online-only environment, with or without Chromebooks, is really the best way to enable bring your own device (BYOD) because it opens up the environment to a wide range of devices. Right now, it's virtually impossible for an app-based curriculum to allow students to bring a mix of iPads, Kindle Fires, etc. because so many apps are only available on one platform. But as long as each device has a decent browser, all can use well-designed websites.

A couple Chromebook resources I've been looking at:

• A decent blog post about the different models of Chromebook available
• Google's own list of Chromebooks for Education
• This Google+ Hangout talking about a school's deployment of Chromebooks
• Some Google+ communities: Chromebook EDU, Google Apps for Education, and Google Apps in Education

I'll keep adding to this post if we go anywhere with Chromebooks. I played with booting ChromeOS in a VMWare instance but have had some problems. I'm really tempted to get one of the Samsung Chromebooks as a test device, but I think my desk and laptop bag are finally at their limit of devices.

Update: This isn't really for educators, but this is a good post on developing on the Chromebook.