Have you ever wanted to send a person one URL that shows everything you are up to in the web 2.0 world? Ever wanted to see what your friends were up to, but they had way too many subscriptions to services like blogs, YouTube, Twitter, del.icio.us, etc.? Well now you can do these things with FriendFeed. I just started using this service and I like the way it’s set up. It’s free to sign up and all you need to do is type in the URL’s of your own page with services you use or your username for those services. You can also subscribe (like you would with an RSS feed) to other peoples’ feeds and add them as a friend.
I know a big question I get from time to time is “I have signed up for way to many things and I am having a hard time advertising all the things I am signed up for, I want to be able to give one webpage to all my colleagues to show them my work in different web 2.0 mediums”. I believe this is the tool for you. Check it out, it’s easy to use and very powerful
Second Life is an Internet-based virtual world which was launched in 2003. It was developed by Linden Research, Inc. The goal of Linden Research, Inc is to create a world like the Metaverse described by Stephenson, a user-defined world in which people can interact, play, do business, and otherwise communicate.
The clients of Second Life program are called Residents. Second Life provides an advanced level of a social network service combined with general aspects of a metaverse. Residents can explore, meet other Residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, create and trade items and services from one another. Second Life’s virtual currency is the Linden Dollar and it can be exchanged for real world currencies. Now more than 20 million accounts have been registered.
Sometimes Second Life just likes an online game but actually it is not. It does not have points, scores, winners or losers, levels, or most of the other characteristics of games.
Here is the Second Life tutorial video about “What is Second Life”? by SusiSpicoli
Today, I started to search for places that offered a decent amount of free space where I could upload I wide range of file types. There are many free ones out there, all with different storage sizes and interfaces. My student workers usually use FileDen or Archive.org. These are great tools, but I was looking for more free space. The two storage and hosting sites that I really liked where MediaMax and Multiply. The two are different, but are very useful depending on how you want to store and share you media. Read the rest of this entry »
I was recently reading an article by Kate Greene titled: “Flash Memory Moves onto the Desktop: Flash memory is moving from iPods to desktops and laptops, providing a performance boost and the potential for instant boot-ups” about flash drives being used as a supplement to magnetic drives. If you have attended our CII sessions on USB keys, imagine having that same technology integrated into your desktop. In this article, Samsung, a big developer in flash memory and flash memory manufacturing, has begun shipping a hybrid drive, which integrates flash memory with the magnetic storage drive. What is the benefit of using flash memory? Flash memory is solid based, so you don’t have to worry about parts breaking off and jiggling around and damaging the hard drive. This makes it faster and more energy efficient. Manufacturers and developers say that this could make boot-up quicker and faster application start ups.
Imagine, a USB key being your whole hard in the near future, it’s something worth pondering. To read the whole article visit the Technology Review website or click on the link below to read more.
★★★★★ Don’t have enough time to manage a blog? Don’t have web space to host a blog? Well I have the perfect tool for you. It’s called Tumblr. What is Tumblr? Tumblr is a tumblelog. Read the rest of this entry »
ThinkFree Show Online Beta is an online, free, and crossplatform tool that allows you to create, collaborate, share, and publish slide shows on the internet.
ThinkFree Show runs on Java. The first time you load it, it can be a little sluggish. Once it’s loaded, I did not have a really big lag in between actions I was performing (but I had lag none the less). If you are familiar with the Microsoft layout of PowerPoint, then you’ll feel at home in ThinkFree Show. It has the same graphics and menus as PowerPoint. Here are Pros of ThinkFree:
-1 GB of storage space
-Insert popular image formats: .png, .jpeg, .gif, .jpeg, .tiff, and .bmp
-Insert images from Flickr
-Tag your presentations- You can tag your presentations in categories to help with organization
-Cross Platform- works on Mac OSX, Windows, and Linux
-Multi Language Support-Can view documents in 11 different languages
-Collaboration- Can collaborate and invite friends to just view your presentation or to edit with you (co-author). You can also add comments (keeps track of each comment you wrote) and keeps track of revisions (and retrieve them as new presentations in your folder).
-Publish your slide show on DOCEXCHANGE (share on ThinkFree server) webpages, the internet, or blogs. You can download the slide show to your hard drive.
-Slide Transitions- similar to the slide transition in PowerPoint.
-Save the slide as an image
-Slide Design themes
-Can read and edit a PowerPoint made in MS PowerPoint. Translated correctly and did not lose slides, images, clip art, text, or slide design layout.
-Clean User Interface- It’s interface reminds me of email and it’s pretty straight forward, not too cluttered or confusing.
-Search for documents, slide shows, and spreadsheets at the DOCEXCHANGE from other authors.
Cons:
-Lags-can be slow at some times and when viewing the slide show for the first time. I kept getting a warning box that told me I can only view the slide show in HTML and to try again in a few minutes
-Does Not save Automatically- unlike Google Docs and Spreadsheets, the slide show does not save automatically. A few times, I left the Power Edit mode to view the slide show, only to find out the changes I made were not saved. Every time you change something, you have to save it.
If you are looking for an online office suite that’s free and not Google Docs and Spreadsheets, check out ThinkFree today. ~Angel Brady
I am about to make a major push at Rider to try to make people aware of Open Source alternatives to Learning Management Systems like Blackboard. There are a lot of problems with Blackboard as an enterprise system, not the least of which is price, but also support issues, upgrade woes, questions of monopoly, and a real lack of innovation, despite the endless upgrades. Enter Moodle, an open source Learning Management System that is truly looking at what’s going on in the web 2.0 tools for inspiration of its features, like wikis, rss, flash video, and 3rd party service integration. I can, and will, go on about this, but in the meantime, take a look at what another instructor is saying about Moodle, because I couldn’t have said it better. Moodle is already installed at Rider – if you want to try it, just call me at x7145. As always, click the link for the whole story. – j.
One reason I recommend Moodle is because it provides a full variety content of activities that teachers can add to a course. Moodle has more than 100 gradable activity modules and plugins such as chats, forums, and tests. While other gradable modules, such as flashcards, podcasts, LAMS, and galleries, are not included in the standard package, they can be installed as modules later. Moodle also allows administrators to back up and restore courses. Once created by a teacher, a course can be reused in subsequent years with little effort.
Another reason to recommend Moodle is because of its philosophical foundations. Moodle is designed with a social constructionist philosophy, a belief that people actively construct new knowledge as they interact with their environment, and that learning is more effective when you’re constructing something that others experience. In other words, collaborative learning and discovery are at the foundation of this CMS application. You may not agree entirely with this philosophical foundation — I do not — but educators in the sciences and in the humanities can accept much of this philosophy since the social constructionist philosophy lies somewhere in between the strict qualitative and quantitative extremes.
I recently read an article by Laurie Armstrong, Dr. Marsha Berry, and Reese Lamshed titled “Blogs as Electronic Learning Journals”. It was interesting to read about blog technology on a pedagogical end. I know when I am faced with a new piece of technology, I ask myself “What will I use this for? How will I use this technology?” These are the same questions that faculty members ask themselves when they here the word blog. How can I use this tool in my classroom? I was recently approached by a faculty member that wanted to use blogs as a type of journal. The faculty member already had an idea in her head how she wanted to use the tool. Hopefully an article like this will help her take into consideration all the aspects she will need to address when introducing blogs into her classroom. I recommend this article to anybody who either has an idea of how they want to use blogs in their class (since this article breaks it down, from design, to student reactions, to setting guidelines so the blogs are being properly used) or have no clue but would like to entertain the idea in the near future.
I am a big fan of portable apps. I like that I can save my preferences to a software program and move from computer to computer. With portable apps, you do not need to worry about resetting software preferences or even installing drivers or having a registration code. This is what makes portable apps powerful. One downside to portable apps is that some apps are Platform specific. I work on Mac and Windows platforms. To launch a portable app., such as the popular web browser Firefox, I would have to download two packages, one that includes the Windows script to launch Firefox and the other package that includes the script to lauch Firefox in Mac OS X. I no longer have to face this predicament.
I recently downloaded the Mac and Win Cross-Platform portable Firefox. I can launch Firefox from either platform from my USB drive and all my preferences are intact. The only issue I came across was that I had to double click on the Mac OS X launcher twice to get the Firefox window to appear (a common bug commented on by the author). All the times I used it, it has not crashed yet. It is easy to install and you will need 42 mb of free space on your USB drive. If you are are interested in using this portable app, check out this link: http://www.theplaceforitall.com/portablefirefox/.
I recently had the benefit of working with a new service provided by Google, called Google Docs and Spreadsheets beta. I like the flexibility and ease with which you can create spreadsheets and text documents that are identical to those produced by other productivity software, like Microsoft’s Word and Excel.
I have documented my experiences and created a two part tutorial that you’re welcome to view. Part one is here, and part two is here.
One thing that you need to do before you can use this service is sign up for a Google account. After visiting the site and logging in, you’re presented with a similar interface to any spreadsheet or word processing software.
Some advantages of using Google Docs and Spreadsheets Beta include
having the ability to publish the documents live on the web
making them editable by other Google account holders whom you choose
chatting in real time with other collaborators about your work
inviting people to view your work in a protected format
You can also create an RSS feed for your documents to see if any collaborators made any changes at a glance.A new feature is the ability to write an e-mail and send it to an unique e-mail address that will create a document using the text of your e-mail. If you would to take a tour or sign up, check out the link here: http://docs.google.com
Posted by Angel 
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Posted by Angel 
