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duber dot com: news archives

Here we keep the old news listings from our file cabinet.

See the files page for the latest news from duber dot com.

OLD NEWS

January to December, 2006: It's been another very busy year. Among our most interesting projects:

We completed the development of a five-year National Institute of Health funded PULSE (Practical Use of the Latest Standards in Electrocardiography) Study. In consultation with lead investigators Dr. Marge Funk, Yale University School of Nursing; and, Dr. Barbara Drew, University of California San Francisco School of Nursing, we developed a program which includes such features as a Pre-Test, 4 training modules, a Post-Test, an Evaluation module, along with complete user and data tracking services.

We continued working on customized communication applications for the University of Oregon's Yamada Language Center, and placement testing services for the University of California at Berkeley's Summer English Language Institute.

We designed Machashaifeh Guitars, an entirely Flash-based site featuring the work of a master luthier (i.e., a string instrument maker). We designed The Northern California Geriatric Education Center website, a simple yet effective site for communicating the NCGEC's goal of providing education and training in geriatrics to health professionals in Northern California.

We also provided extensive Flash design and programming updates to the MAVisual website, a site offering Architectural Visualization services.

January to December, 2005: It's been another very busy year with a lot of interesting projects. Our personal favorites include:

We built customized voice recording applications for the University of California at Berkeley's Summer English Language Institute, for AmEnglish.com, for LingualNet, and for the Portland Community College Adult Basic Skills Online Computer Lab (for whom we created a version of LetsTalk for their Moodle installation).

We also consulted on a variety of speech and online testing applications with Avant Assessment, formerly known as Language Learning Solutions.

We continued working on customized communication applications for the University of Oregon's Yamada Language Center, and placement testing services for the University of California at Berkeley's Summer English Language Institute.

We built a Continuing Education Certificate Course for the University of California at San Francisco's Aging and Geriatrice Resource Center (along with a tracking database). We also provided numerous content and media updates to the general UCSF AGRC Online Curriculum, which we originally built two years ago.

We also extended the capabilities of our mobile audio-video studio by purchasing a new Motu Traveler (for mobile High-Definition audio recording) and a Frontier Designs AlphaTrack control surface to help make our audio mixing processes more efficient.

January to November, 2004: It's been a very busy year. We are especially excited about all the new Flash Communication Server projects that we've been involved with over the past year.

In addition to the projects that we've developed in-house (LetsTalk, Project We Say Tomato, and others), we are honored to have had the opportunity to consult on and develop customized recording and playback applications for projects with UC Berkeley's College Writing Programs; the Yamada Language Center at the University of Oregon; The Center for Applied Second Language Studies (CASLS); AmEnglish.com; ProActive English, among others.

We also co-designed and co-taught (along with Maggie Sokolik) an online Speaking and Listening course for the Summer ESL Program at UC Berkeley's College Writing Programs. It's only November and we're already looking forward to next year!

October 29, 2004: We have launched our LetsTalk audio/video discussion forums. Stop by and listen to what others are saying and then voice your opinion in one or more of the current discussions.

April 13, 2003: We completed work on a WebCT-based course for a UC San Francisco staff training program offered through the Human Resources Department. The course is entitled UCSF Materiel Management/Purchasing Workshop.

October 29 , 2003: We have launched "Project We Say Tomato," a global language survey making use of the power of Flash Communication Server to record a diverse range of audio samples for an interactive linguistics presentation. Of course it all takes place over the web.

September 10, 2003: We have released first our public demonstration of a custom-built application that uses Macromedia's Flash Communication Server technology to record and playback voice messages over the web.

September 8, 2003: We completed work on a WebCT-based course for a UC San Francisco online course offered through the Nursing Department. The course is entitled Gerontological Nursing Practicum/Residency.

September 1, 2003: A first version of our work on UC San Francisco's Academic Geriatric Resource Center Online Curriculum has been released.

August 23, 2003: The directors of the Summer ESL Program at UC Berkeley hired us again this year to develop their online placement test. We added several key improvements to last year's version (in terms of content and performance) and the clients were extremely satisfied with the results. It looks like we're on again for next year!

October 22, 2002: We've just updated our portfolio section to by adding a new video portfolio. This features our work with Flash MX and highlights many of the powerful new features in the popular authoring system from Macromedia.

August 23, 2002 : The directors of the Summer ESL Program at UC Berkeley hired us to develop an online placement test for their use. The results are in, and it was deemed a huge success. See "Grow Your Own: Online Placement Testing" for some of the details on how we designed the entire project, from the Flash front-end for management of the authentication process and delivery of the test items, to the back-end data tracking system.

April 8, 2001 : We are the proud owners of a new state-of-the-art mobile digital audio-video studio. Hardware core: Apple Powerbook G4 Titanium, Sony TRV900 Digital Video Camera, MOTU 828 Firewire Audio Interface, Maxtor 80 GB Firewire Drive, Sony ECM-44B Lavalier Microphone, AKG C 1000 S Condenser Microphone. Software core: Final Cut Pro (Video Editing), Adobe Premiere (Video Editing), QuickTime Pro (Video Editing), Media Cleaner Pro (Video Compression), Sorensen Video Pro (Video Compression), Digital Performer (Audio Editing), Peak DV (Audio Editing). See the "about us" section for the reason why we're so excited!

December 27, 2000 : It's official. We've passed all the tests and are now recognized as "Certified WebCT Experts" in all versions of this most popular Course Managment Software. Of course, our clients have known this all along.

October 20, 2000 : Jim Duber presents "Making the Most of WebCT 3.x" as invited keynote speaker at Sonoma State University WebCT Day Conference.

May 15-19, 2000 : Jim Duber co-presents a poster session with Maggie Sokolik on "Building Communities of Teachers & Learners: The WebCT E-Learning Hub" at the 9th International World Wide Web Conference, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

May 12, 2000 : Jim Duber and Maggie Sokolik are invited plenary speakers on the use of "WebCT in Higher Education" during a national conference on WebCT at the University of Utrecht, in the Netherlands.

April 25, 2000 : We recently visited Tokyo, Japan to provide training at Z-Kai Publishing, Ltd. On our weekend off we shot some Travel Video, several rought cuts of which are provided here. UPDATE: We've been invited back to offer our training course to a new group of students at Z-Kai in March, 2001.

March 17, 2000 : Jim Duber presents "Developing Streaming Multimedia Course Modules for the WWW" at TESOL 2000 in Vancouver, BC. Interactive Presentation Notes are available online as a Flash 4 movie (external link--will open in a new browser window).

September 16, 1999: Jim Duber interviewed by David Wichner of The Arizona Daily Star for commentary on voice recognition in language learning software.