The Colorado Rockies are using video iPods to improve their hitters’ swing, an unusual application for the popular devices.
“It’s the wave of the future,” Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd said. “I was blown away by it.”

The ability to hold 150 hours of video and display it on a portable screen has made the iPod a perfect tool for helping hitters understand their swings.

“It has everything right there for you. It’s great, especially on the road,” said Rockies outfielder Matt Holliday. “You can look at your swings when you were going good. And it only takes a couple of minutes.”

via Seattle PI

Desperate Housewives take note: This summer, kids have an alternative to getting sunburned, dehydrated, bitten by chiggers and generally humiliated by the other kids at camp.

Apple Camp promises to let kids geek out, making music, movies, podcasts or websites on a Mac.

Workshops are geared towards kids with intermediate computer skills. The “Camps” are free, but require registration.

(more…)

An article at the Wired site takes a look at director Deborah Scranton, and how she used footage shot by GIs for her new war documentary, War Tapes:

Shot by soldiers on consumer-grade digital video cameras, the documentary offers an immersive, sobering and often shocking slice of life (and death) in Iraq. It premieres this week at the Tribeca Film Festival and opens in select cities this summer.

Director Deborah Scranton described War Tapes as the result of a “virtual embed.” She gave cameras to 10 Iraq-bound soldiers, and then used e-mail and instant messaging to provide them with advice on technique and technical issues.

By the end of their yearlong tour of duty, the soldiers, all from New Hampshire’s National Guard, had sent Scranton 800 hours of what she considered thoughtful, often beautifully shot, footage.

“They became journalists,” Scranton said. “This isn’t like soldiers making home movies. This was a process, a conscious effort for us to together tell the experience of what it means to go to war.”

No. You can subscribe to a video podcast on any major computer platform, including Mac, Windows and Linux.

While audio podcasts are most commonly in the standard MP3 format, video podcasts come in several formats. Because of this, some sites, such as RocketBoom, will publish several feeds, each with a different format of digital video.

You may need to download and install a player to use some types of digital video. For example, Windows users may have to install QuickTime in order to use some video podcasts.