A new class of assistive technologies are dramatically altering the way people with various disabilities are able to engage in their daily activities. The Pulse SmartPen, from Livescribe (), is one of these devices.

Lori Katz, a learning specialist at the Joseph Sharp Elementary School in Cherry Hill (photo), has found the Pulse SmartPen to be particularly useful for her work with special education students in two ways. First, it allows her to record the interactions between her students, to assist her in producing status reports and in conducting conferences with parents. Secondly, it assists Katz in coping with a disability that she’s had to wrestle with personally- the onset of early Parkinson’s disease.

To read the complete CompuSchmooze article, visit the Jewish Community Voice of Southern New Jersey website.

You can now watch a video podcast including an interview with Lori Katz and a demonstration of the PulsePen. Just click on the player below:

Subscribe to the RSS feed for the CompuSchmooze podcast series.

Apple iPod owners, subscribe to CompuSchmooze podcasts in the Apple iTunes Music Store.

Keywords: compuschmooze, lori katz, parkinson’s disease, livescribe, pulse pen, special education, disabilities, assistive technologies

Produced in the studios of Professional Podcasts LLC, Cherry Hill, NJ

Two exhibits at the opposite ends of the scientific spectrum are at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia through September. "Galileo, the Medici, and the Age of Discovery," brings one of Galileo's own telescopes to Philadelphia — the first time the instrument has traveled outside of Italy. Spanning other centuries yet to come, "Star Trek: The Exhibition," brings artifacts, costumes, and full-size mockups of many of the sets from the popular Star Trek series of TV shows and movies. It's at the Franklin until September 20. In this video podcast, CompuSchmooze columnist Steve Lubetkin takes a brief look at both exhibits, and makes a stop at the new media wall at the Comcast Center building.

Read the CompuSchmooze column associated with this video at http://www.jewishvoicesnj.org/news/2009/0715/columns/036.html

The Drexel University Chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) presents “Breaking Boundaries: The Revolution of Social Media,” a panel discussion held May 5, 2009 in the Bossone Auditorium at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Panelists

Gloria Bell, Red Stapler Consulting

Moderator

In October, Ipsos Insight, a Canadian market research company, learned in its market research that “the popularity of online video services has grown significantly with women and older consumers, helping close the age and gender gap within the burgeoning online video audience in the U.S.” (See the Ipsos news release here.)

Adam Wright, Senior Research Manager at Ipsos, who conducted the research, joins us to discuss what it means for online video content creators and marketers.

Read Adam’s bio here.

Then, we speak with Persephone Miel, a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at The Harvard Law School, about her groundbreaking study, Media Re:public: News and Information as Digital Media Come of Age, a series of papers exploring the potential and the challenges of the emerging networked digital media environment.

Download the podcast file here (52.2 mb stereo MP3 file, 00:38:01 length).

Keywords: compuschmooze, lubetkin, cherry hill, jewish, voice, harvard, miel, news media, ipsos, wright, online video, streaming video, video

Produced in the studios of Professional Podcasts LLC, Cherry Hill, NJ

On December 30, 2008, the Israeli Consulate General in New York hosted a “citizens’ press conference” and invited interested parties to send the Consulate questions about the recent Israeli military actions in the Gaza Strip, using the social media website Twitter.com. This is probably the first time a country’s diplomats have embraced the use of Twitter for outreach to audiences for their messaging.

For those not familiar with it, Twitter is a microblogging website where users communicate with their friends or “followers” in terse, 140-character messages designed to fit the text messaging function of cell phones in a way that makes the communications tool highly portable.

Social media initiatives embraced by the Israeli Consulate also include a Facebook page, a MySpace presence, a blog about Israeli life and culture, a blog about Israeli politics, and a YouTube channel. The transcript of the Twitter press conference is hosted on the political blog.

In this podcast, we talk with David Saranga, Consul for Media and Public Affairs at the Israeli Consulate General.

Before joining the consulate, David served as Deputy Spokesperson at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Israel, and was responsible for contact with the foreign media. He previously served in Israel’s embassies in Romania and Spain.

As Consul for Media and Public Affairs, David Saranga is responsible for having direct contact with America’s New York-based national media, and for public relations. One of his job’s main goals is to show the real face of Israel, that which lies beyond the news headlines. One of the innovative tools he uses to do this is the isRealli Blog.

Consul Saranga has both extensive academic and private sector experience.
He was a Manager of the Direct Marketing Department, Visa-Israel Credit Cards and worked as National Sales Executive at Kidum Ltd.

Consul Saranga has been engaged as an academic since 1989, when he worked as a Teaching Assistant at the Hebrew University. Subsequent work has included one year as Director of Studies and Lecturer in Marketing Management at the Open University in Israel.

Read the CompuSchmooze column in the Jewish Community Voice here.

Download the podcast file here (28.8 mb stereo MP3 file, 00:21:00 length).

Keywords: compuschmooze, lubetkin, cherry hill, jewish, voice, saranga, twitter, israel, consulate, social media, citizen press conference, public diplomacy

Produced in the studios of Professional Podcasts LLC, Cherry Hill, NJ

Backup for important business data now can benefit from additional protection from fires, with the FireKing MediaVault HD fire-hardened backup drive.

Underwriter’s Laboratories® has tested the MediaVaultHD container according to standard UL72 and approved the MediaVaultHD as a 1-hour Class 125 fire rated container. To pass this test, the container must not allow the internal temperature to rise above 125°F or relative humidy above 80% with an exterior temperature of 1700°F during the test. Only a Class 125 rated container will protect sensitive computer disks from a raging fire.

In this podcast, we have a conversation with MediaVault HD product manager Bill Rush about the features of this backup system. More information on the product is at http://www.mediavaulthd.com/Index.html.

Download the podcast file here (20.9 mb stereo MP3 file, 00:15:10 length).

Keywords: compuschmooze, lubetkin, cherry hill, jewish, voice,mediavault, backup, hard drive, fire protection, underwriters laboratories

Produced in the studios of Professional Podcasts LLC, Cherry Hill, NJ

In June, the International Association of Online Communicators (IAOC) held its international conference in Reykjavik, Iceland. In October, the Icelandic economy collapsed, the three largest banks were nationalized, and tens of thousands of Icelanders found themselves unable to withdraw money from their savings accounts to pay for ordinary expenses. Mortgages and car loans written in foreign currencies became impossibly expensive, and the country’s government went hat in hand to the International Monetary Fund and even to Russia for foreign aid.

In the Fall-Winter 2008 issue of Attitudes, the semi-annual color magazine of the Jewish Federation of Southern New Jersey (on newsstands in early November), I’ll have an article about Iceland as a travel destination.

Download a PDF of the article here: Attitudes-Iceland November 2008

In this podcast conversation with Hjörtur Smárason, we update the economic situation in Iceland and talk about how Icelanders are coping with their changed status. Hjortur is an Icelandic social media and marketing consultant who also authors several blogs in Icelandic, and one, Marketing Safari, in English. Recently, he’s focused some of his blogging on the emotional and economic impact of the credit crunch on Iceland.

Photo taken at Hotel Holt, Reykjavik. From left: Steve Lubetkin, Belgian blogger Luc Van Braekel, Hjörtur Smárason.

Download the podcast file here (19.3 mb stereo MP3 file, 00:14:02 length).

Keywords: compuschmooze, lubetkin, cherry hill, jewish, voice, iceland, iaoc, reykjavik, attitudes, smarason, hjortur

Produced in the studios of Professional Podcasts LLC, Cherry Hill, NJ