First Generation Nerd

If anything, I hope that my follies can help other people not make the ridiculous mistakes that I do.

Allow me to explain.

I am a media specialist at a college, and my latest video is going to be taken halfway around the world to Korea for recruitment. In my typical fashion, I decided to go the “extra mile” and translate some key phrases into Korean using a couple of online translators. In an effort to double-check the translations, I even went the extra step to reverse translate what I got on the sites to see if they would come back to English unharmed. Well, everything checked out, so I went forward with the video.Imagine my surprise and embarrassment when I showed the video to a native Korean (a stoic man, at that), and he straight busted out laughing when he saw my first phrase! He said it was written as a two-year old would have said it.

In all fairness, three out of my four translations were okay, but they were mainly proper names (New York City and Washington, DC). Even so, the sting from my initial failure stuck with me, and I dare say I may not trust an online translator blindly ever again.

Beware of online translators! (On-line interpretation take care!)

Geesh.

If there’s one thing I can’t stand about using someone else’s computer, it’s that I never know how the mouse (or trackpad) is going to respond to my touch.  I don’t know what the settings are or if an eighth of an inch moves the cursor to New Brunswick; call it a pet peeve.  

The other thing that irks me is that I never know what software other people have on their computers.  I live in creative applications, but not everyone has Adobe’s Master Collection, neither do I always have my computer with me (a 17″ MacBook Pro doesn’t always travel well). 

Enter Aviary. 

Aviary  is a suite of creative applications that live online, allowing you to create content from whatever machine you happen to be on.  Flash-based, the tools load relatively quickly and appear fairly intuitive.  Aviary is in beta right now, so not all of the applications are available.  In fact, only two are currently active: Phoenix (the image editor), and Peacock (the pattern generator).  In the works are such tools as a 3D Modeler (Hummingbird), an audio editor (Myna), even a video editor (Starling).   

I played around with Phoenix, and although it’s slightly clumsy and has limited features, I would certainly prefer it over MS Paint or even the GIMP.  I’m looking forward to seeing what the folks over at Worth1000 will do with this suite of apps.  The apps are free, and they are still giving out beta invites, so check it out! http://a.viary.com