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As you may have noticed, the market is crazy right now, and knowing what to do can be a challenge.  Today we give a couple of quick tips on how you can make the most out of the current state of the real estate environment.  --- Transcription Michael: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by my co hosts,   Tom: Tom Schneider,   Emil: And Emil Shour   Michael: And today we're gonna be tackling what should you be doing right now given the current state of the market with interest rates, where they are and values doing what they're doing.   Alright guys, before we get into it, I just want to give a call out to all of our listeners, all of our watchers, we just launched our YouTube channel, we would love, love, love. If you came over and liked and subscribed to the channel, we've got tons of new content coming out regularly, I want to make sure everyone stays up to date. So that's a big help for us.   And as always, if there are content ideas that you want to hear an episode about, let us know drop us a line in the comment section. Wherever it is listen to your podcast. Alright guys, before we jump in today's episode, where are we at? How are things coming? Tom, you got your insurance all squared away, right?   Tom: Yes, yeah. So what I did recently was a long story short, I guess short story long. My insurance is a bit of a mess on my rental properties. I was using this third party company and they kind of dropped the ball where I paid to renew but they like sent me a refund. I mean, this I'm probably it's probably my fault. But anyways, short story long, I ended up getting lender placed insurance for like a few months. And wouldn't lender place insurance. It's not necessarily what you want, you're maybe not getting the coverage you want, you're probably paying way more than you should. So what I did through the the prodding and poking of a meal and Michael to keep me going is I did some bundling, I went to my home insurance, the company that does my house and my cars. And I added my rental properties all on on one gigantic policy, I would say you know, when it's all said and done, my costs on my insurance are probably pretty comparable to what they were but the coverages was way more expansive, with a little bit lower deductibles and just a little more, those blankets at night are a little bit warmer, the pillows a little bit softer of comfortable.   So did that finishing up refining, seeing a couple of rentals, getting them all refinance, actually under the same lender that ended up buying a bunch of my other loans. So it's there's some convenience there of having it all through the same lender first a bunch of the rentals that I have. So that's my…   Michael: Nice, Emil, what's good in your world? Emil: Tom, I just want to first say how proud I am of you that you did it, man. like six months, but you did it to there.   Tom: Yeah. There are things in this world that you know, like wouldn't take a lot of effort. But for whatever reason, it was in this like rebellious little part of you, like just doesn't want to do it. And like the moment you do it, it's like, gosh, why did I do that like a long time ago. And that kind of stuff like pops up all over the place? You just need to get through the fog and just, you know, just do I don't know. But thank you. No, thank you that positive reinforcement has me geared up to continue to do things that I for whatever reason, like the rebelliously like have a hard time finishing through on so thanks, man.   Michael: Yeah, Tom. I'm also proud of you. Nice work, man.   Tom: Michael, that sounds fake. Thanks, Emil.   Michael: Just kidding.   Emil: I'm actually proud of you. Michael is patronizing you.   Michael: I'm just frustrated how long it took. But I'm one of those people, you know, you can only take the horse to water not calling you a horse by any means.   Tom: It's about the journey, Michael. It's not about the station. Enjoy. That's true. It's very true. Yeah, that's true. Alright, Emil, what's what's going on with you?   Emil: For me? I told Mike about this earlier. So I bought a triplex last November. And when I got all the seller documents when we're doing due diligence, I noticed that the property tax was super low on the property. And I actually knew the seller of the property. And I contacted and I was like, hey, how come your tax property taxes were so low on this property? He said he had no idea why but obviously he wasn't going to complain or anything. And I figured, okay, property is going to be sold, changing hands, the city is going to reassess and it's going to bring my my property tax level much higher.   So when I when I underwrote the property did all the performance stuff. I wrote it at a much higher tax level. And so about a month ago, I got this statement from the city of St. Louis, saying, hey, it's a reassessment year, I think St. Louis reassessed his property values every other year and changes property tax accordingly. He said, it's a reassessment year, we're reassessing your property and we'll let you know of any property tax changes soon. And so I'm like, okay, here it comes. And I get I get the reassessment letter about a week ago expecting the bill to come in higher, it ended up going Up by $10. And I had underwrote it for it going up like price. 16 1700 bucks. So that was a huge win. And I'm so stoked. And I don't know why they're doing this, but I'm obviously not gonna complain. And thank you city of St. Louis. I hope you're not listening and know my property address. But thank you.   Michael: Massive win.   Emil: Yeah, yeah, I'll take it. I'll take anyone I can get right now.   Michael: Yeah, it's it's you being lucky. But also, like, the cool thing is that you underwrote and assume that it was gonna be worse, and the property still worked. So now the fact that you got this is just a total cherry on top. And granted, it's a pretty massive cherry. But it's, it's something extra, it's I mean, you weren't expecting. And so you know, good for you, man. That's awesome.   Emil: Here's the other thing, though, I find it's rebalancing everything else because I have properties and in other places where they also reassess, and they're doing it correctly. So my property tax bill has been missing all year. So I needed a break elsewhere. So happy about that.   Michael: Good. That the universe giveth and the universe taketh.   Emil: Michael, what's, what's going on? I'm sure nothing for you.   Michael: My backgrounds a little bit different today, I'm actually in my van that we had converted. So it's my wife, my dog, and I. So we're up in Lassen National Forest for a couple days hanging out up here and driving around, we're going up to Idaho, Montana, Wyoming. So doing the whole remote real estate investing from from a van is is interesting, for sure. So I've got 16 under contract to sell, which is exciting. It's getting inspected today. So I'll be curious to see what the buyer has, in terms of feedback. I have the the IRA flip is currently underway, which is exciting.   So construction started last week, hopefully three to four week time for construction, and then getting at least up and then sold as an investment property. And then looking to get a another flip as well under contract out in the Midwest, but just on the personal side of things, my wife and I want to kind of team up and do something there. So that'll be kind of an experiment for us to see what that process looks like and how, how well she can, she can tackle that. So we're really excited.     Tom: Have you guys done deals together before or you know, it, or she kind of over into the space or   Michael: She's newer into the space. But she's been involved from, from pretty early on since we started dating. And I told her kind of what my portfolio look like as we're getting closer to marriage. And I was a little ambivalent on how I wanted to have that conversation and broach the subject. So for anybody listening out there that's in a similar situation, you know, take my advice, or don't I think, you know, I easier into it and explain kind of what my situation look like. And she was very excited about that. And has always been a big proponent, and a great ideas person throughout the whole process.   Because for me, I get so in my head and I get so tunnel visioned, especially with regard to problems. And so I remember she asked me one time like, Oh, well, I was in a money crunch. I'm like, I don't know, where I'm gonna find the funds to do this. She's like, what about the HELOC you have over here, I was like, holy crap, you're a genius. So when you give people the full picture, they can better they can better assist. So it's been really great. But so this will be kind of her first deal that she's going to be partnering on and really looking to drive the ship, so to speak, because she's talking about leaving her job to do this full time. So we're gonna make sure get a proof of concept going and then see if we can make that happen.   Tom: That's awesome. I think in a future episode, that's it, I think it'd be a good thing to kind of drill in because with a lot of people in doing this type of investment, like it's, you know, you have a you have a life partner you have, you know, whatever, a wife, girlfriend, husband, you know, boyfriend, whatever, who, you know, those kind of you need to get a little bit of mindshare before moving forward. And it'd be interesting to talk to you guys about your experiences with that and Michael, you're you've fully crossed the cause the chasm and in bringing her in, you know, full, full hug. That's, that's very cool.   Michael: So we're excited to start that and see what that looks like. But we didn't come here to talk about ourselves. We came here to talk about what people should be doing right now given the market conditions with values and interest rates. And Tom you kind of touched on it nicely, I think ever so innocently in that you are finishing up your refinances. So talk to us about why you're doing that right now.   Tom: Yeah. So for you know, fortunate enough to have properties in areas that is appreciated quite a bit. And right now the rent is appreciated along with the value so what I'm doing right now with three different properties is doing a cash out refi they've you know, from the time that I bought them to where they're at now it's they're up roughly, probably close to 50% five zero.   So you know, getting my original downpayment back into my pocket to redeploy how however I see fit, and right now working on the side with Michael On on talking about, you know, the right ways to think about that either continuing to build into SF SFR, or possibly some multifamily.   So yeah, really excited about that hopefully I can close within this month and have the funds there. And man with just interest rates where they're at, it's, you know, if you have the built in equity, there's there is not a reason not to take advantage of it, it's probably cumulatively maybe five to 10 hours worth of time of getting your documents sending them over, if you don't have a lender vetting the different lenders. But I think of it this way, either the rates are either going to go up, or they're going to go down and by refinancing. Now, if they go down, I could always just refinance later, but by refinancing now, if they go up, great, I've taken advantage of that, you know, where I see right now, the bottom of the trough of where interest rates are at so highly recommended, you know, you have that the ability to do that, to take advantage of that for the refinance. So that's what I'm doing right now.   Michael: Love it. Love it. You said something that I want to dig a little bit deeper on, you said that both the actually said a couple things I want to dig deeper on. But first, you said that the properties have appreciated, and that also that the rent has gone up over time. But throughout that whole conversation, you didn't say anything about the rent. So why is that important to you?   Tom: That's important for me, because, you know, another another way to say like, I want to dig deeper that I don't know, I just thought of it. Let's double click on that. Okay, so   Michael:  I like that a lot.   Tom: What's it like office speak? You know, like synergy? Yes.   Michael: Tech tech office speak. That's good, man. Yeah, let's, let's double click on this. Let's expand the window.   Tom: Let's expand the window. Yeah. So with rent increasing, so this is important. So within a rental property, when you refinance, you're getting a bigger loan, so you're having bigger monthly debt obligation to pay that loan. So what you could do, and this is something our friend Michael Zuber would would highly advise against, you could create an alligator, an alligator is when the rent, the value of the rent that you're collecting is less than your monthly costs. So it's cash flowing negative. And alligator is just a term that Michael Zuber came up with, like it's it's eating up cash flow, the importance of the rent staying up is if I go and refinance this property, I want to make sure that it's cash flowing, that it's not like going negative.   Michael Zuber admitted, you know, early in his career, he created a couple of alligators, just to get the capital to move faster. And that's something that I think you just need to be really cautious about. But my point is that Michael double clicked on is, since the rent was able to kind of pace up a little bit, I could comfortably refinance a larger loan, take that cash out, and still with the rent that's coming in, be able to pay off that larger loan.   Michael: Awesome. Awesome. And so did you take a hit in terms of your cash flow on that property, barring the cash on cash return metric, but let's say you were bringing home 200 bucks a month, or whatever the number was, are you did you take a hit there?   Tom: Yeah, I expect to take home, you know, pro forma. And it should be pretty accurate. Just because it's been operating for a while, is my monthly cash flow is going to go from roughly 300 bucks down to 200 bucks. But I'm, I'm okay, I'm okay with that drop, just with the capital that I'm taking off. Now, I think the right way to think about this, Michael is, you know, think about it cumulatively as a portfolio. So, you know, with this capital that I'm taking out, it's going to create new cash flows, it will probably also create new new debt, because I'll get a loan with this new property, but the net cumulative cash flow, should I expect it to be a little bit higher, if not equal? more cash flow?   Michael: So would you then disagree with Michael's Zuber's alligator warning?   Tom: If we were in like a like a coaching session right now with rich Academy, I would say it's pretty dependent on where you are, and when you're trying to like access those funds. So a common investing philosophy is the later the closer you are to retirement, the more conservative you should be with those returns.   So I plan to work for a while I enjoy working, you know, so I'll have you know, cash flow coming in from, you know, a day to day job, so I'm okay being a little bit riskier, on leverage, you know, I still want to be really cognizant that I can cover my bills for whatever. But if you are in a position where you were looking to retire really soon, I would say you know, that alligator is pretty is risky. Just because over time, sure, there's, there's there there might be ups and downs with the economy but generally speaking, it's it tends to go up into the right, Especially over longer periods of time. So with that said, creating a property that is looking a little bit alligator ish, maybe like a capybara or like a crocodile. Cadbury's like a big guinea pig.   Michael: I think it's like a big guinea pig.   Tom: If we're younger, you should be okay taking a little bit more risk. But that doesn't mean like go nuts. You should still be really intentional about your about the risk profile and your ability to manage it. But we can work closer to crocodile. Well, I really just expanded that longer than it needs to be my today's   Michael: You double click the crap out of that.   Yom: I right clicked, clicked on Get Info. And then I like looked at how many bits it was so. Yeah.   Michael: That's great. All right. That's awesome. Tom, thanks. Thanks for sharing that man. A meal. Anything to add on to what Tom said in terms of what people should be doing right now. I know you just went through a cash out refi as well. Can you talk to us about why that made sense for you. Given the current conditions.   Emil: I am trying to save up a little bit more money right now I'm I'm in cash conservation mode to God and buy something a little bit bigger. But I don't want to hold all my activity, right, right now, some awesome things are happening. If you own real estate, right? It sucks. If you don't, because prices are going up. It's a very competitive market. But if you own real estate, it's awesome. Right now, values are going up rates are super low.   And so I think we did it on a past episode. But I'll go through the numbers, I have a situation very similar to Tom. So I bought a single family home back in 2017. The purchase price is 115k. My down payment and closing costs were just shy of 25k. And the rate back then was 4.625. And so I noticed that, you know, like everywhere in the country prices were going up homes in the area, were selling for about 140 to 160k. So I did the math, and I reached out to a lender and rates were 3.125. So drop a point and a half.   So I had two options. I was like okay, I can just refi and lower my monthly payment. Or I can do a cash out refi pull out all my equity. And because the rate is dropping by a point and a half, my monthly cash flow shouldn't be affected too bad. And so all said and done went through the process. We refied out that 3.125%, the home appraised at 157. So 40k more than we bought it. So I was able to pull out 26k, which is actually 1000 bucks more than what we put into it. So pull all the cash out a little bit on top as well. And my monthly payment only went up $29 a month. And this property cash flows decently. So I knew that $29 wasn't going to affect it wasn't going to turn into an alligator.   I am on the Michael Zuber side of that one I will I rather be more conservative, even if you say oh, I can go negative on this one house by $100. But I can increase my cash flow $200 by buying another property. I am very reluctant to to have a property where I'm just shelling out money every month that just pains me and I I'd rather not have that. I'm a little more conservative on that end.   But yeah, this one was like a no brainer. It's like okay, I'm still gonna be cashflow positive. rents have been going up in that area. Why not pull all the cash out and refight a low rate. So yeah, pretty awesome environment. If you own property, like Don't, don't let this amazing time, go to waste, go refi some properties, if even if you're buying, whether you're not buying whatever, just like it's such an amazing time to go make some moves right now on your existing portfolio.   Tom: We'll also add in it's like it's it's not impossible to buy right now. Like, you know, we had this in another episode, I think it might take a little bit more offers and a little bit more time and a little more diligence, but it's not impossible to buy right now. Just   Emil: Yeah, I hope I wasn't making it sound like impossible. I just mean, you know, it's it's a tougher environment, you could be a little frustrated. But for me personally, I'm just trying to save up some money to go. If I had the cash that I need to go buy something I'd be going out and making offers right now I'm just trying to save up a little more. Just saying you know, there's there's other things you can be doing, even if you're not buying right now, like you talked about, like with your insurance and your refiling properties pulling cash out. So just keep it moving, you know,   Tom: Awesome Emil. Great, great points. And man, what a good run of luck with your property taxes and for rates doing that refi and only just having that marginal increase. Awesome.   Alright, this is a good spot to end it. Thank you guys for listening. We encourage you again to check out our YouTube channel. Lots of good stuff going in there. encourage you to check out, subscribe to the podcast, give us a rating wherever you listen to podcast and also check out RoofstockAcademy.com that's where you can sync with us talk about your profile or show me your strategy, all that good stuff. So, as always happy investing.   Emil: Happy investing.

Today is January 26, 2021, and for this Tuesday Tips episode we're covering How to Setup Your M1 MacBook for Web Development Let's dive in! ---- The worst part (or perhaps the most fun for some) of getting a new laptop is setting up everything you need as a web developer. Adding programs and tools that you had installed over the many years of ownership of your previous laptop can seem daunting. With the release of the new Macbook M1 laptops, there are some interesting new considerations as well that you may not be aware of. So, let's jump in and get the basics set up so you can hit the ground running developing your next project. ---- The first thing you should install is Rosetta 2, which allows you to run Intel-based software on the new ARM chip. Because Apple has created their own chips they needed a way to provide backward compatibility with programs that do not yet support ARM and Rosetta 2 is that solution. ---- Homebrew will be the best way to add the other software and tools on our computer, so we want to install that next. A quick tip that is good to know is when you go to open the built-in Terminal in the Applications folder: right-click, select Get Info, and check the Open with Rosetta box. ---- There are a lot of tools to consider when setting up your Macbook from scratch, so one of the quickest ways to add a lot of the important ones is to use a script. I recommend the script created by the author of the original post that this is based on, but feel free to use a different one or modify this one for yourself. Opening the download script folder in your terminal you can choose to run the install script or modify what will be installed from the brew-installs.sh file. Once you're satisfied, run the script. Some of the tools and applications included in the script are: MongoDB node git zsh Firefox Chrome VSCode Zoom Slack Discord Notion and more... ---- Something that is not included in the script is nvm because there have been difficulties installing this with the ARM chip. To get around this you will have to use a curl command and make a couple of modifications afterward. ---- Git was installed with the brew install script so make sure to configure the settings and use a personal access token to authenticate GitHub. ---- Make sure to use the Settings Sync plugin to keep all of your VSCode settings in sync with a stored GitHub gist. ---- You should now be all set to start developing! Thanks to the script many tools and applications were installed for us, minimizing the manual install process. ---- Today's Tuesday Tips was adapted from a post on the Logrocket blog. ---- Want to know more? Head to fewdaily.com for more of today's topics and other front-end web content! If you liked what you heard be sure to rate, review, and subscribe on your platform of choice. That's all for today, tune in tomorrow! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Sick of paying for Ringtones? You can make any song a ringtone for free on your Mac! Here's how: Open Apple Music, or iTunes on older Macs.Open Music -> Preferences click Files, click Import Settings and choose AAC Encoder, High-Quality 128kSelect a track to use as the source.On the Get Info > Options tab set start and stop times to 40 seconds or lessUse File > Convert > Create AAC version.Right-click on the new copy and click Show in Windows Explorer or Finder.Change the file extension from .m4a to .m4r. (You may need to adjust folder options to see the extensions.)Now connect your phone and drag the m4r file to it.Leo Laporte gives you helpful tips to get the most from your Mac every week on Hands-On Mac! Host: Leo Laporte Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-mac Discuss episodes in the TWiT Community. Sponsor: GetRoman.com/HOM

Happy Friday folks! The  2019 DC Black Film Festival took place already, but I’ve got a stack of interviews you need to hear! Today I have director Emily Harold of “While I Breathe I hope”, director Jennifer Sharp of “Una Great Movie”, and director producer duo Tony Scott and Jean Su of “Together” on the show! This was a fun episode and a lot longer than the radio episode that aired. So pull those dishes out, get on the treadmill, or let this ride for your trip. Check out While I Breathe, I Hope here: https://www.bakarisellersdocumentary.com/ Find Una Great Movie here: http://www.unagreatmovie.com/ Check out Together here: https://www.facebook.com/Broadvision-Pictures-869826609696474/ Get Info for DC Black Film Festival here: http://dcbff.org/ Picture Lock Links: Get my new book “Army of One: PR & Marketing For The Indie Filmmaker”: https://www.amazon.com/dp/057844139X Take my PR For The Indie Filmmaker online course here: https://indiefilmpr.thinkific.com/ Get a partner as passionate as you in your film or film event's publicity: www.picturelockpr.com Subscribe to this podcast in iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/kevin-sampsons-picture-lock/id639359584?mt=2 Be sure to visit www.picturelockshow.com for everything Picture Lock! Please give us a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. Thanks so much for your continued support. Drop a line a picturelockshow@gmail.com to say hi and let us know what you think of the show. FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/picturelockshow SNAPCHAT: https://www.snapchat.com/add/picturelockshow YouTube CHANNEL:http://www.youtube.com/picturelockshowTWITTER:https://twitter.com/picturelockshowINSTAGRAM:http://instagram.com/picturelockshowPINTEREST:http://pinterest.com/picturelockshow

Happy Friday folks! The  2019 DC Black Film Festival takes place next week, August 15th-17th at the Miracle Theatre and The Mayflower Hotel in Washington DC. I can’t believe it’s around the corner, but it is! So I have some more great interviews with filmmakers in the fest. Today you’ll hear from director Nyasha Hatendi of the film Moving On, Diem Gbogou of the film Doll, and director Justin Fairweather of the film Dog Person. Check out Moving On here: https://filmfreeway.com/MovingOn360 DM Diem here: https://www.instagram.com/diemcamille/ Be a fairweather friend: https://www.justinfairweatherfilm.com/ Get Info for DC Black Film Festival here: http://dcbff.org/ Picture Lock Links: Get my new book “Army of One: PR & Marketing For The Indie Filmmaker”: https://www.amazon.com/dp/057844139X Take my PR For The Indie Filmmaker online course here: https://indiefilmpr.thinkific.com/ Get a partner as passionate as you in your film or film event's publicity: www.picturelockpr.com Subscribe to this podcast in iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/kevin-sampsons-picture-lock/id639359584?mt=2 Be sure to visit www.picturelockshow.com for everything Picture Lock! Please give us a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. Thanks so much for your continued support. Drop a line a picturelockshow@gmail.com to say hi and let us know what you think of the show. FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/picturelockshow SNAPCHAT: https://www.snapchat.com/add/picturelockshow YouTube CHANNEL:http://www.youtube.com/picturelockshowTWITTER:https://twitter.com/picturelockshowINSTAGRAM:http://instagram.com/picturelockshowPINTEREST:http://pinterest.com/picturelockshow

Episode #10: Artwork & Lyrics by Tony Vincent This is Learning in Hand: iPods. My name is Tony Vincent and this is the podcast where I share tips, how-tos, and ideas for iPods in teaching and learning. Episode 11, "Artwork & Lyrics," recorded March 2008, happens now! I'm going to tell you about two things you can add to audio files that make them more useful on an iPod. While almost all references you’ll find to artwork and lyrics deal with music, the audio files do not have to be songs. They can be recordings from a voice recorder, ripped from a CD, podcasts, files from Audacity or GarageBand, or downloaded from the Internet. Wherever you got the audio, let's explore adding customized artwork and accompanying text to these files! Artwork First, if you are listening on an iPod, you can see that this episode has artwork. Look at your iPod's screen and you can see that this podcast has a square graphic I made that says Learning in Hand: iPods with blue and orange lettering. That's the artwork, also called cover art or album art. You might notice that most podcasts and all music downloaded from iTunes has artwork. Newer iPods even have Cover Flow where you can browse an iPod's contents by the artwork. If a file has no artwork, then a gray generic graphic with a musical note on it is used. You can use iTunes to easily add or change an audio file's artwork. Artwork appears in iTunes in the artwork viewer in the lower left corner of the iTunes window. If the viewer isn't showing you can click View > Show Artwork. You can drag an image into the artwork viewer to add cover art. But, let’s do it using the File menu. Choose File > Get Info. Then click the Artwork tab. You can click in the box and paste a copied image. Or, click add and browse for a saved image file. Click OK. Sync or copy the file to an iPod. Then play the file on the iPod. The artwork will appear on the screen. It is possible to add multiple images as artwork in iTunes. However, only the first one will be displayed on an iPod. You can click through multiple pieces of artwork in iTunes’ artwork viewer using the arrows that appear when more than one image is available for artwork. But since iPods only display the first one, I just give my files one image as artwork. Images that are square look best on an iPod and in iTunes. The images can be JPEGs, PNGs, GIFs, or TIFFs. The images could be scanned, digital photos, or created with a graphics program. Or, the image could be copied from a web page. I've found that images with a resolution of 300 x 300 pixels or larger look best. If you'd like to add the same image as artwork for multiple files, just select multiple files in iTunes and click File > Get Info. iTunes will warn you, "Are you sure you want to edit information for multiple items?" Click yes and you’ll see the Artwork box. Just drag an image into that box or paste an image and click OK. Now each of those files you selected has that image as it's artwork. Ok, so why would you want to add artwork? Well, first it gives a visual cue about what you are listening to. Also, newer iPods and iTunes use Cover Flow where you can browse for a file by its artwork. iPod touch displays artwork as the entire background when playing audio--so having the generic gray artwork looks boring and isn't memorable. If you have iPods loaded with files for students, the artwork can help organize or add to the content. The artwork could have large text on it that gives students a reason for listening. For example, while listening to audio from NASA about Mars, the artwork could say, "How is Mars like Earth?" Text-oriented artwork could be made in PowerPoint and exported as a JPEG and then added in iTunes. But text works best on an iPod touch because of its large screen. Too much text on a little graphic can be difficult or impossible to read. Another educational use of artwork is for illustration. Students could make short recordings about an endangered animal. A photo of the animal used in the recording would make useful cover art. Teachers could use artwork as a way to manage differentiated content. Perhaps recording are color-coded depending on vocabulary level or content. Then the teacher could glance at an iPod's screen to see what is being listened to by glancing at the artwork on the screen. There are lots of ways artwork can be useful in classrooms. But, don't confuse artwork with an Enhanced Podcast. GarageBand can make Enhanced Podcasts, where it's like a narrated slide show where the image on the screen changes to match the audio. The artwork I've been talking about does not change--you can only have one image displayed on the iPod’s screen. Lyrics I wish lyrics was named something else because the text doesn't have to be the words to a song. Lyrics in iTunes and on iPods can be a transcript of a speech, podcast, or other recording. The lyrics could be guiding questions, objectives, or a glossary of terms. In fact, the audio file you are listening to now has lyrics with it. If you're listening on a click wheel iPod, press the Center button four times (older iPod models may only take 3 presses). Now you can read the script for this episode while you listen. If you’re an iPhone or iPod touch user, while on the Now Playing screen, just tap the middle of the screen and the Lyrics will appear. Swipe the screen to scroll through the text. How did I add this text to my audio file? Well, it was quite easy using iTunes and the process is very similar to adding artwork. In iTunes, select the audio file. From the File menu, choose Get Info. Click the Lyrics tab and enter the words in the text box. You are more than welcome to copy and paste the text into the box instead of typing it all out. Sorry, lyrics can only be text--that means no formatting like centering, bold, fonts, or colors. Click OK and then sync or copy the file to iPod. On the iPod, start playing the audio file you added the lyrics to. On an iPod with a click wheel press the Center button to cycle through the playback scrubber, ratings, shuffle, and lyrics. My iPod seems to pause a few moments before displaying lyrics. So be patient. If you’re like me, you’ll press that Center button too many times and end up having to cycle through again to display the lyrics. Newer iPods with click wheels have a nice touch of showing the artwork in the upper-left corner of the screen when displaying lyrics. And of course, you use the click wheel to scroll through the text on the lyrics screen. Like I've said, there are lots of uses for lyrics. Here's how I’ve used the lyrics feature. I found an MP3 of Dr. Martin Luther King’s "I Have a Dream Speech." I then find the transcript of the speech online. I copy the text and paste it as the lyrics in iTunes. Then students can listen and read at the same time. Lyrics could also be objectives for listening. Or, I like the idea of a glossary. Perhaps the recording from NASA has some hefty vocabulary words. They could be defined and available in lyrics so students can pause the recording and easily look up the meaning of a confusing word. For younger students, they could listen to a recording of their favorite story as they read the words on the iPod's screen. Anyhow, there are plenty of great uses when you can have accompanying text just a couple button presses away. You should note that iPods will only display the first 10,000 or so characters of lyrics. Anything longer will be cut off. So, if you have added the complete text of the U.S. Constitution to a recording of it, an iPod won’t display the entire text, just the first 10,000 characters, which turns out to be about one-third of the Constitution. I'd suggest breaking down a longer audio file into smaller chunks. So with the Constitution, divide the audio by Articles and then you’ll have enough room for the transcript of each section in the lyrics. Also note that WAV and QuickTime files do not support artwork or lyrics. But, MP3, AAC, m4a, and m4b do. You can use iTunes to convert a WAV or QuickTime file to MP3 or AAC and then you can add that beautiful artwork and text to the lyrics. Everything you edit in the File > Get Info are called ID3 tags--for Identify MP3. Other software and players besides iTunes and iPods can can use this information. Artwork and lyrics are actually stored in the audio file itself. So if you transfer or email the audio file and use it on another computer, guess what? The artwork and lyrics will show up on the new computer! You can add lyrics and cover art to your podcasts. Just bring the audio file into iTunes, add lyrics and cover art. Then drag and drop the file onto your desktop and upload to your podcast server. That’s all for Episode 11. Thanks for listening. If you like this podcast, please give it a good review on iTunes. Don’t forget you can go to learninginghand.com where you can read more about educational iPod uses. Stay special everyone!

Because it was my birthday this week I sat around the house and did nothing and loved it! So no new park audio this week, and that means that the 3D audio film festival is "paused" for a week. It'll return for next week's show because I'm heading out to play on Wednesday. So this week I'm continuing my St. Augustine Ripley's Trip with some more messed up goodness. After that I pop back into the wayback machine and head to Episode 9 where I took in ET at Universal Studios. As quick reminder, I've included my ToV language policy that I laid down while wandering towards the Children's and ET area at USF. ;) Congrats to DPN forum listener sbabs for winning the first ever Trapped on Vacation contest that no one even knew was happening! Back in the January 8th show I hid a message in the ID3 tags of the show that said "The first one to read this wins 5 Disney Dollars." It took 6 months, but someone found it! So you might want to read the tags because you never know if you'll find something cool! (Get Info under the File Menu in iTunes) I assure that the ducking and ending at perfect moments in my closing segment was unintentional. I just happened to pause and finish at exact the right times in the song to make it funny, so I left it in as is! (I always pop in the music into GarageBand after I rant so I never know how it's going to sound...) I was going to play the entire song over like I usually do w/o me talking, but the timing was just right so I didn't!