Record Presentations From Macintosh or Linux Machines

The Institute for Software Research (ISR) in the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science (SCS) is a center for education and research in software engineering and computation. The Insititute’s research areas in software engineering include software analysis, software architecture specification, and aspects of cybersecurity.

The team responsible for videography at the Institute for Software Research in Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science usually records presentations, small meetings, and lectures with the help of Panopto CourseCast. This software is broadly used for capturing multiple video data and its automatical streaming over the web. The remote audience can access the content as it becomes available in popular and easy-to-consume formats. CourseCast recorder installed on PC saves the lectures and other materials uploading them on the website. The target audience can watch the previously recorded content using NetID and password.

The Institute’s team that used this software to capture video stream from PC suddenly came across the following issue. Thomas Pope of the institute says, “Most of the time we were able to use the recorder itself on a presenter’s computer, on conditions that it was a Windows machine. However we deal with different tasks. Sometimes the educational content that is created must include some videos and images from computers running under Linux or Mac. That is why we were looking for a way to capture screens from these machines just like from a PC.”

The Panopto experts helped Pope to solve this problem. The Institute team was recommended to use the VGA2USB LR frame grabber. “Frame grabber has been used successfully with Panopto software.” Pope recalls. “We decided to take advantage of this product since Panopto software was compatible with frame grabbers. Now we are able to capture and broadcast lectures, presentations, and other instructional content using video streams either from PC, Mac or Linux machines. VGA2USB LR’s capability to be incorporated into the existing environment empowers us to capture data from multiple video sources while preparing diverse education materials”.

VGA to USB is an external video capture device allowing a user to capture video with resolution up to 1280×1024. Since it transfers video in original quality with high resolution from any equipment with VGA connectors, educational centers and other organizations can use it for capturing data. Recording meetings and other events, delivering presentations over the web, creating online educational programs – you can benefit from a high-performance frame-grabber in multiple ways.

Online Products – How to Convert Successfully

One of the difficulties in building an online business is learning how to convert your prospects into buyers. In this article I am going to discuss some ways that you can increase your conversion rates.

Market research

The first step to creating any product is to make sure that you have done some research so that you have eliminated as much risk as possible in terms of nobody actually wanting your product.

Have a look online at what is already selling and what people are demanding. If there are people willing to spend money and they are already spending money in a particular niche then that is an ideal place for you to start.

Think about the types of products that are doing well and how you can produce something similar but has additional value to the existing products.

Targeting customers

The next important thing is to make sure that you promote your product to those specific people who actually need it. You could have a brilliant product but if you promote it to people who have no interest in your particular topic and don’t actually need it then you won’t make many sales.

Therefore you need to find out where your ideal customer is likely to be hanging out online. Once you have discovered where your target customers are you will then need to form a relationship with them.

Building relationships

Building relationships with your targeted audience is really important if you are going to increase your sales conversions. If you think about it, promoting products online is a little bit like cold calling – you don’t know the people, they don’t know you and therefore it is unlikely they will do business with you. Therefore it is essential that you build a relationship so that your prospects begin to trust you and to see you as an expert in your particular niche.

An ideal way to build relationships is through email marketing. If your prospects become a subscriber then you are able to communicate with them regularly and over time develop strong trusting relationships.

Product Promotion

When you come to actually promote your product the best way to do this so that you see a good conversion rate is to make your subscribers aware of the benefit it will have to then if they purchase it. People buy because they want to see a specific result and having a result makes them feel good.

Therefore when you promote your product you need to know exactly what those results will be for your prospects and then you will be able to convey the benefits far more effectively.

Presenting Yourself With Confidence – How to Break Out of Your Shell

Imagine a royal court. You have the king, the dukes, the prince, the peasants and everyone in-between. Each of us has the equivalent to a royal court that resides in our heads. We populate the roles of the court with people we know and ourselves. Depending on our role and depending on the role of whomever it is we are interacting with, we act differently. Daily interactions always go through this thought process. If you’ve given yourself the role of peasant, you will always be expecting people to put you down. If, however, you’ve given yourself the role of a king, you don’t expect to ever be put down. The way one views oneself has been influenced by a myriad of factors, but most importantly by the people one surrounds oneself by. The trick to the whole game of life is figuring out which role you’ve given yourself and deciding if that’s the role you want to have. You can choose any role you want, but whatever role you choose becomes your reality.

When someone treats you in a way that isn’t congruent with your self-assigned role, your ego get’s shaken. You can physically feel the effects when that happens. That’s called “fight or flight.” I’m sure you’ve heard of it. I just find it amazing that the body reacts as if it is in physical danger when the ego is rattled.

The word “ego” has to be the most misused word in the English language. It’s been associated with “megalomania,” “vanity,” and a bunch of other negative concepts. According to Freud, it actually just represents the conscious, instead of the unconscious, mind. If a challenge to the conscious mind causes a physical reaction, it stands to reason that you can control the physical world through your conscious thoughts. I could take it a step further and posit that you must change your thoughts before you can change your physical reality. If we consider this as truth, then we aren’t reacting to our environments, we are creating them!

Once, I walked into a friend’s house that needed to be cleaned badly. His name is Charlie. I wouldn’t say he was up to hoarder status, but he definitely needed a hand. I realized that I could help change the situation in that house; and, without sounding condescending; I offered to hire Charlie a maid service. The thought of a maid service coming in to help clean up bothered Charlie to the point of physical agitation. Why would somebody with a dirty house be so against a paid maid service? I would have loved such a luxury.

The answer to that riddle lies in the internal role my friend has given himself… not exactly king. My offer to have a paid service come and clean things challenged his role, thereby challenging his ego, and causing him physical discomfort. Having a maid come in and clean would mean that the role he had given himself was false… that he wasn’t privileged enough to have a service like that. These are the types of life changing thought processes that need to be considered when attempting to unlock your inner swag. Have you given yourself the wrong role? Are you a peasant or are you upwardly mobile? If you’ve given yourself the wrong role, you need to change it and now.

If Charlie had already made the conscious decision to change the way he views himself in relation to his environment, he wouldn’t have resisted the notion of having a paid maid service come in and clean. He would have already been agitated at the sight of such a dirty house and would have been waiting for the opportunity to gather enough resources to get it fixed up. If he had done the internal work before the chance presented itself, he would have been able to benefit from it. If he previously visualized a clean house, it would have actualized at that moment. Daydreaming is, therefore, productive. Dream your reality into existence.

Some people just aren’t ready to view the world in a different way than they always have and they miss out on life because of it. Charlie could have challenged his own ego and upgraded his environment; but instead chose the lazy route and stayed in his comfort zone. It’s much better to step outside of the comfort zone, even if it means asking for help or thinking of oneself in a different light. To do it any other way is to cheat oneself. Do not wait around to be swallowed up by an environment you’ve created. That’s never a good look.

Ask yourself, “What role have I given myself?” You are not your role. You never were. You never will be. Your role is just a hat you wear, that’s all. Becoming the best person you can possibly be involves assessing your perspective. You can’t become the person you want to be if you don’t start with a basic understanding of who you are. Just like a general going to war against an enemy, you must assess the obstacles that stand in the way of you unlocking your personal potential. The first of those obstacles is your ego.

Everyone has doubts and insecurities about themselves… some are natural, but most are shaped by those around us. The art of finding yourself in all of that involves, oddly enough, finding yourself in those around you. People project their own insecurities onto you. You absorb those interactions and then they become a part of your personality. You really are the sum of the people around you. They help shape the way you view yourself and the way you view the world. You are the flesh and blood representation of all the thoughts, emotions, and views you have absorbed from those around you.

It’s important to be conscious about which notions you allow yourself to absorb and which you allow to “pass.” Once you allow a certain belief to enter your mind and become a fixture, you will begin to mirror that belief and your entire reality will bend in order to make room for it. Renovating your house of cards is just as time-consuming and uncomfortable as renovating your physical house. It hurts, but that’s the only way to truly grow.