Zoom H2 microphone

I have been in the business of producing calculus podcasts for a while. Now we experimented reproducing a mathematical talk as a podcast. Together with Emil Volcheck and Tony Shaska I organized a special session at the Joint Meeting of the AMS and MAA that took place in Washington, DC this January. Emil had a Zoom H2 portable audiorecorder that we used to record Peter Buser’s talk. Together with Buser we then recreated the slideshow, and matched that with the recorded audio. The result is available at http://gallery.me.com/mika.seppala#100437.

The Apple delivery center in Shanghai sent to me an iPod Touch -- proudly designed in California, manufactured in China.

This is a great device. Podcasting of lectures works like a charm. You may easily scroll the materials in the vertical mode. Turn the device 90 degrees to a horizontal setting and you can view the slides with great clarity. The fonts that I am using are very clear. Zooming in is easy if needed: just place two fingers on the screen and pull them apart.

If I see that there is technology which may substantially help me in my work, I go to all sort of extremes to use it. Now this is about podcasting. After having spent couple of days trying to create podcasts of my calculus lectures using a Windows computer, I finally gave up and bought myself a Mac couple of hours ago. This is the first piece of text that I am writing with my Mac.

As a result of my daughter insisting on getting an iPod, I also got one for myself. The 80 GB video iPod is an incredible device(http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic/). So far I have used it to follow great podcasts like the one by David Pogue (http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/) or the News from Lake Wobegon (http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/) both of which are conveniently available through iTunes.