Tom Hapgood

United Way Negative Results

First time a banner has been made thanking people for a negative outcome on a funding drive… hehe

Elements of Animation 3D Projects

Finally posted a few of the final projects from the Elements of Animation class of Fall 2007. These projects use the Carrara 3D Basics 2 and iMovie software and some use GarageBand for the audio. They’re very impressive pieces of animation for the very short amount of time (~3 weeks) and this being a beginner class. Congratulations on some great work!
PS – Click the little book icon below, then click Episodes to see the others

Word Processing: an update

A few months ago I created a post about how, when I purchased my new MacBook Pro, I didn’t have a need for Microsoft Office. I had always had Office (Word, Powerpoint, Excel) running on a computer for standard document-creation tasks. As you can imagine, as a university faculty member and even a modern human being, I still needed the functionality of writing and sharing documents, creating presentations and calculating budgets. The alternatives to Microsoft Office, as I saw it waaaaay back in March of this year, included basically four non-Microsoft options: Writeboard, by 37 Signals, Google Docs, NeoOffice and Apple’s Pages. Two of those apps are Web-based/online and two are traditional desktop apps.

Buzzword, the lastest and Flash-based online application from Adobe, which could easily take over all the other forms, seems to combine the benefits of the online functionality with the benefits of the desktop app. It solves the interface and workflow problems and limitations of the Ajax-based online word processors like Google Docs and Writeboard, and provides the functionality of the desktop-based document-creation apps like Pages, Word and NeoOffice. In fact, it provides a much better functionality in many ways than the traditional-style desktop apps in the way it allows document sorting and viewing, the way it facilitates handling of those pesky nested lists, table creation and some other cool features. At the same time it offers extremely intuitive and powerful methods for sharing and collaborating of documents in real time, keeping track of versions and changes, an inline commenting feature, assigning roles and level of access to other people, etc.

As a creative person, this type of application really stands out as something that can enhance and foster creativity, as I’m not forced to struggle with the word processor and be inundated with functionality that gets in the way. Here’s a so-so little video demo: