#Facebook RSS in #MediaWiki (#Wikieducator) #vmvwiki #vmvdlt

Following from the Twitter/Wordpress RSS into MediaWiki, I now have a Facebook page RSS feed working. Note that due to Privacy setting Facebook Groups do not RSS Feed.

• Sample Page: http://wikieducator.org/VirtualMV


• Experimental Page: http://wikieducator.org/User:Mverhaart/Wikieducator/TechTips

Christina Bergey has written a blog providing good instructions for this at  http://christinabergey.com/blog/2013/03/get-facebook-group-feed-via-rss/ (note she has "groups" in the URL but this only works  for Facebook pages.

The following code will insert a Panel into your MediaWiki Wiki ( replace YourID, and YourPage)

<div style="font-family: menu,Arial;border: 1px solid #808080; width: 250px; margin-right:auto;margin-left:auto;background-color: #F6F9ED;-webkit-box-shadow: 5px 5px 7px #999;">
{|
|[[File:Facebook.png|25px]] RSS from: https://www.facebook.com/YourPage<br /><hr width="248px"/>
|-
|
<rss>https://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?id=YourID&format=rss20|short|date|max=5</rss>
|}
</div>

Computing e-books for $5

Computing e-books for $5

https://app.packtpub.com/#

Make sure you go through the app store for the discounted books.

Free Programming

 

Codecademy is an easy way to learn how to code. It's interactive, fun, and you can do it with your friends for free

http://www.codecademy.com/

Application stacks for Open Source Software

http://bitnami.org

Run your favorite apps ...  Joomla!, Drupal, Redmine,Mediawiki, Wordpress,... on your favorite platform. BitNami Stacks include an open source application and all of the other software necessary to run it, such as Apache, MySQL, PHP or Ruby..

(Also from JJ)

Microsoft Tech Ed Online 2010

http://www.msteched.com/2010/NewZealand

Videos from the Microsoft Tech Ed - link from Paul Lo

Google is bringing Android software development to the masses.

The company will offer a software tool, starting Monday, that is intended to make it easy for people to write applications for its Android smartphones.

The free software, called Google App Inventor for Android (http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/), has been under development for a year. User testing has been done mainly in schools with groups that included sixth graders, high school girls, nursing students and university undergraduates who are not computer science majors.

Lohr, G (2010, July 11) Google’s Do-It-Yourself App Creation Software. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/technology/12google.html?_r=1

Google’s Do-It-Yourself App Creation Software

To Flash or not to Flash this is the question...

Looks like a tsunami of change again for Multimedia.

• Flash CS5


• Microsoft Visual studio/Silverlight


• HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript?

With Steve Jobs firing a major salvo across Adobes bows:

• Apple Didn’t Kill Flash, HTML5 Did -http://bit.ly/dzFV3V


• Steve Jobs: Adobe's Flash "has major technical drawbacks"http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=8179

(Thanks Steph)

I'm going to have to think about how we will deliver multimedia in the future.

Darn!!!!

Using JavaScript to increase browser text size

When I display my wiki on an overhead in class it is useful to increase the text size. At present I have to use page>Text Size> Larger. Using my "friend" Dr. Google (he/she?) who knows much more than me, came up with a solution by David Walsh ( a Sun Developer)  http://davidwalsh.name/change-text-size-onclick-with-javascript. There are lots of very tricky solutions out there including those that restyle every individual tag on the page. Note however the resize is only active on the current page (as its JavaScript) so if you go to another page you will have to resize again, unlike the Browser setting which persists.

Am looking to implement this in http://www.virtualmv.com/wiki soon.

QR-Code reader for mobile devices

A Quick Response (QR) Code is a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code . You can use a QR -Code to store a web URL and use a mobile phone to photograph the QR-Code then using the software below display the actual site.

• iPod or iPhone
  
  
  
  • http://www.i-nigma.com/Downloadi-nigmaReader.html
  
  
  
  


• Windows mobile:
  
  
  
  • http://www.quickmark.com.tw/En/basic/download.asp
  
  
  
  

Blender - 3D Image Manipulation

Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite

http://www.blender.org/

From another blog

http://www.teach2thefuture.net/home/2010/2/2/blender-3d-image-manipulation.html

Just cause I want to remember this if I find I need it in the future :)

FusionCharts (n.d.)[1] - http://www.fusioncharts.com/free/download/?_doPostback=561369948

	
FusionCharts Free helps you create free flash charts in your web applications.
	
It supports a variety of chart types including bar, column, line, area, pie, doughnut
	
 (donut), combination, funnel, Gantt etc

Internet Explorer 8 - html editing (view source)

Probably the dumbist thing I have seen in a while is the cobbling of IE 8s view source. IE8 has an amazing developer tools feature (press F12 in the browser or Tools > Developer Tools), however with all its magic it is unable to do a simple edit. 

However all is not lost, to change the View Source from the Default viewer, to either notepad or some other editor (I like pspad (http://www.pspad.com/en/) as its as quick as notepad but has better context editing).

1. Open the Developer Tools (press F12 in the browser or Tools > Developer Tools)


2. Select File > Customise IE View Source


3. either select notepad or browse to where your editor exe file is stored (my pspad was in C:\Program Files\PSPad editor\PSPad.exe)

Makes you wonder why you get a glitzy viewer but no way to do simple editing. Would it be so hard to have a check box in the developer options to "enable web page editing" if they are worried about people accidentaly changing pages?? (And yes I know chrome suffers the same fate - but I am sure there would be a plugin for editing like in Firefox!!)

Thanks to Ramesh Srinivasan (2009) from Winhelponline for pointing me in the right direction.

Srinivasan, R. (2009)"The default View Source Editor has changed in Internet Explorer 8 - The Winhelponline Blog" Retrieved June 22, 2009 from http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/default-view-source-editor-changed-in-ie8/

virtualBox - to test Development software

An issue I have is trying to test different software packages which can be like octopus's in my operating system (like .net development or WAMP). I used to have them all installed and inevitably my computer would run slower and slower.

Now I use virtualBox to create a virtual machine in which I only install the software relevant to the development environmment. It means the actual developmet environment runs faster and it doesnt handicap my working PC.

I have put some instructions on my wiki at http://www.virtualmv.com/wiki/index.php?title=VirtualBox

If you want to make modifications to the wiki entry you will need to create a userid and login. Apologies for this as I know this is not a "true" wiki thingy.

Another big advantage is that I can run virtualBox on another computer (e.g. my Vista one) and can use the virtualBox image without change and it includes all the set up stuff as well - which is brilliant. I found this particularly useful when my work PC was upgraded. My virtual machines were up and running with all their weird configurations once I'd installed virtalBox, copied over the virtualMachines and connected them up.

Mootools - a compact, modular, Object-Oriented JavaScript framework

From JJ. 

MooTools is a compact, modular, Object-Oriented JavaScript framework designed for the intermediate to advanced JavaScript developer. It allows you to write powerful, flexible, and cross-browser code with its elegant, well documented, and coherent API.

• Home page: http://mootools.net/


• Demos: http://demos.mootools.net/


• Ajax example downloads: http://speckyboy.com/2008/04/09/41-of-the-best-mootools-ajax-example-downloads/

icons - some links

• Background to what is an ico file
  
  
  
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICO_(icon_image_file_format)
  
  
  
  


• A post with a plugin to photoshop
  
  
  
  • http://www.ozzu.com/website-design-forum/making-ico-files-such-favicon-ico-with-adobe-photoshop-t255.html
  
  
  
  


• A list of downloadable icon editors
  
  
  
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icon_editor
  
  
  
  

Firefox extensions xpi error

Have been toying with developing an extension for firefox and uploaded the file to my brinkster account.

Trying to create a web based install using the Javascript code http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Installing_Extensions_and_Themes_From_Web_Pages I created a xpi file and the JavaScript. (The xpi file is just a zip file renamed). Trying to install into my firefox gave a -223 error (I think that was it).

so...trying to isolate the error....

When I upload as a .zip I can download via my web page, but when I either upload as a zip or upload as a zip and rename the file it will not download correctly.

Download the xpi file then rename as zip. Then opening gives a file corrupt error.

One possible suggestion  ( http://support.on2.com/flixpublisher/faq/) was
You are using Microsoft IIS as your webserver, but the MIME type (also called "Content-type", or "Internet Media type") for XPI files has not been added to your IIS configuration.

To fix this problem, add the following to your IIS MIME types configuration:

Extension:      .xpi
Mime Type:      application/x-xpinstall

Brinkster added this to their IIS server and all is sweet now.

So, now onto adding some JavaScript to my extension :)

Apostrophes in Names

Apostrophes in Names Stir Lot o' Trouble
Associated Press (02/21/08) Odriscoll, Sean

Despite their sophistication, computers are still often confused when an apostrophe appears in a name, which can cause problems for users when they to vote, schedule appointments, rent a car, book a flight, or take a college exam. In addition to names with apostrophes, names with hyphens and names with surnames such as "van" can also cause problems.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hQAYklloUDZA7NSxt3Jlbmm_jY3wD8UUV0LG0

EIT 4:05 /1.30pm