#Bluetooth framework for teaching #vmvwiki #vmvhw

This post will be a record of things I discover while trying to set up a Bluetooth framework for teaching (so this post will actually be more like a wiki and change!)

1. Speakers.

• Purchased: HIFI X-6 MINI Sound Rugby Football Wireless Bluetooth Speaker AUX USB Portable Audio Player Music for phone Computer Subwoofer http://www.aliexpress.com/item/HI-FI-X-6-MINI-Football-Wireless-Bluetooth-Speaker-TF-AUX-USB-Portable-Audio-Player-Music/32309649617.html


• Unfortunately Bluetooth  does not work with Windows. Windows cannot locate a driver (it appears that the speaker has no description attached so Update cannot link a driver). Worked fine with iPad/iPhone. Buddy jack design actually not working (linking the speakers together) I think they need to add a din plug output to connect to aux in other speaker for this to work.

2. Mouse.

• Purchased: Adjustable DPI 1600 Brand New Wireless Mouse Bluetooth Rechargeable Optical Mice 3.0 For Notebook Computer Laptop PC BM01-K60 http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Adjustable-DPI-1600-Brand-New-Wireless-Mouse-Bluetooth-Rechargeable-Optical-Mice-3-0-For-Notebook-Computer/32236660866.html


• First issue was that after remaining idle the mouse would switch off. Seemed to be an issue with windows power management. See below for how this was fixed.


• Interesting the side buttons on this mouse - allow a browser back/forward (alt left-arrow/alt right-arrow or backspace/shift backspace-though shift backspace doesn't quite work) - which is not the same as PowerPoint's back button.

---

Configuration issues

Problem: Device disconnects

It appears that by default Windows power saving kills a USB device. The mouse connected would die and not reconnect. To disable this you need to

1. go to Start > type in "Device Manager" >


2. Expand Bluetooth Radios >


3. Right click on Generic Bluetooth Adaptor + Properties, and


4. uncheck "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power"

 

#Twitter & #WordPress RSS in #Mediawiki (#Wikieducator) #vmvwiki #vmvdlt

Using RSS to put a Wordpress or Twitter feed into Mediawiki (wikieducator)

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


• Instructions: http://wikieducator.org/User:Mverhaart/Wikieducator/TechTips

Thanks

I must thank my friend & colleague Steph Day for working behind the scenes into finding Amit  Agarwal's connection between Twitter and MediaWiki via Google Drive Developer, and proving it could be done.

WordPress

The RSS extension in MediaWiki allows you to feed from the WordPress RSS feed. Add the following to your MediaWiki page (but replace my WordPress blog with yours)

<rss>http://virtualmv.wordpress.com/feed/</rss>
<rss>http://virtualmv.wordpress.com/feed/|short|date|max=5</rss>

Instructions

The following parameters are supported:

• charset=… The charset used by the feed. iconv is used to convert this.


• short Do not show the description text for each news item.


• date Shows date/time stamp for each news item.


• max=x Shows x most recent headlines.


• highlight= term1 term2 The terms separated by a space are highlighted.


• filter= term1 term2 Show only RSS items containing at least one of the terms.


• filterout= term1 term2 Do not show any RSS items containing any terms


• reverse Display the RSS items in reverse order

See complete article at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:RSS

Twitter

This is much more complicated since  in 2013 Twitter changed the way it allowed developers to access the Twitter Stream. An RSS feed unfortunately is not available, instead a JSON file is generated. However, using a bit of "magic" by creating a Google App allows you to convert the JSON file into an RSS feed which can then be accessed in MediaWiki.

Instructions

Amit Agarwal from  Digital Inspiration created the bridging program that performs the magic and has generously shared the instructions at http://www.labnol.org/internet/twitter-rss-feeds/27931/

Examples of an RSS feed generated

• Twitter Timeline of user @labnol https://script.google.com/macros/s/AKfycbz-_qbLKf5lAUBkPlCpVYgVPess6-NV1GRL6TNaz-6YNLbvUCs/exec?action=timeline&q=labnol


• Twitter Favorites of user @labnol https://script.google.com/macros/s/AKfycbz-_qbLKf5lAUBkPlCpVYgVPess6-NV1GRL6TNaz-6YNLbvUCs/exec?action=favorites&q=labnol


• Twitter List labnol/friends-in-india https://script.google.com/macros/s/AKfycbz-_qbLKf5lAUBkPlCpVYgVPess6-NV1GRL6TNaz-6YNLbvUCs/exec?action=list&q=labnol/friends-in-india


• Twitter Search for New York https://script.google.com/macros/s/AKfycbz-_qbLKf5lAUBkPlCpVYgVPess6-NV1GRL6TNaz-6YNLbvUCs/exec?action=search&q=new+york

You should replace the value of 'q' parameter in the URLs as per requirement.

Following Amit's instructions I found one area that needed a little further explanation: For Step 2.  Configure your Google Script:

• Enter the google developer area using https://developers.google.com/google-apps/


• When you get to the pop-up Google Apps Script choose Script as a Web App

If you want to get a wrapper for your feed refer to the Sample page/instruction links at the start of this post.

Some Notes:

• Don't expect the RSS Feed to show older Tweets particularly for Search. After activating the gApp you may need to add a Tweet for it to appear in the panel.


• Twitter Search does not necessarily return all the relevant Tweets in the Search. So in my classes I have had a lot of students post with my #vmvwiki hashtag and they have not shown up in the panel.  Unfortunately this is what Twitter have done and in 2013 this killed the student use of Twitter as a viable communication tool for Social Media in the classroom.

.. now to see if I can create an RSS Feed for a Facebook Group :)

 

Microsoft Product keys

 

Track down lost Microsoft product keys with ProduKey

Find your lost key for any properly installed Microsoft product with the help of this free tool.

Instructions:

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/window-on-windows/quick-tip-track-down-lost-microsoft-product-keys-with-produkey/7579?tag=nl.e098&s_cid=e098&ttag=e098

Download

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html

PowerPoint - will not proceed to next slide

Found out today that if the PowerPoint is set to Kiosk mode (In Office 2010 buried in Slide Show > Set up slide show > Show slide type) then it will only display the first slide and clicking (or using arrows) to go to the next slide doesn't work

2013 Feb: YahooXtra's email hacking

YahooXtra: What actually happened? 

A Wordpress vulnerability caused this...

http://www.iitp.org.nz/newsletter/article/414?utm_source=email 

and another

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/01/how-yahoo-allowed-hackers-to-hijack-my-neighbors-e-mail-account/ 

 

 

.. and looks like my Backup blog has suffered a hack again too. Getting to the stage I'll switch it off and use a different Blog system.

Keep your Twitter Archive fresh on Google Drive using a bit of Google Apps Script

 

http://mashe.hawksey.info/2013/01/sync-twitter-archive-with-google-drive/?utm_source=jan13newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=jan13nl 

Google Drive Crop Drawing

While there is no actual cropping tool, this is achieved by

1. putting the image on the top left of the canvas then click and


2. drag the bottom right hand corner of the canvas until the canvas is the same size as the image.

Actually quite simple really !!!

Windows 8:shut down

To shut Windows 8 down, just move the mouse cursor to the bottom right corner of the screen, click the Settings icon - or just hold down the Windows key and press I - and you'll see a power button. Click this and choose 'Shut Down' or 'Restart'. Some of the tricks available in previous versions of Windows still apply. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del, for instance, click the power button in the bottom right-hand corner and you'll be presented with the same 'Shut Down' and 'Restart' options. And if you're on the desktop, press Alt+F4 and you'll be able to choose 'Shut Down', 'Restart', 'Sign Out' or 'Switch User' options. From Paradigm PCs

Handbrake DVD rip

Some Open Source software that (apparently) allows DVD ripping. As far as I know it is ok to burn a personal backup copy. I read somewhere that it works with VLC but haven't had time to play around with them yet.

http://www.winxdvd.com/resource/handbrake-windows-tutorial.htm

Domain Name cloaking using frames

Learn't something the other day. We have a wordpress web site on hostable.com and the Domain Name is with Freeparking.

We have been having trouble with the url displaying in the browser. So you get "http://mydomain.com/" no matter what page is displayed - this is pretty useless if you want to bookmark a page.

Lots of web searching revealed that Freeparking cloak your site in a 100% frame - which is VERY bad form as search engines tend to ignore any frame based sites (we couldn't figure out why the site rated so poorley).

So the actual page HTML looks like

<frameset rows="100%,*">

<frame name="top" src="http://xxxx.12345.a.hostable.me/wordpress/" noresize="noresize" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" />
<noframes> 
   <body>
   <p><i>This document uses a frameset.</i></p>    
   <p><a href="http://xxxx.12345.a.hostable.me/wordpress/">Click Here</a> to view the page.</p>
   </body>
</noframes>
</frameset>

Ok.. so off to Freeparking Help desk .. and their response

 

Subject: [WebFarm/Freeparking #1400011] URL Redirection - xxxx.co.nz

 Hi ,  There's no good answer to that unfortunately. Cloaked wont show much in the way of filenames, or anything else, as you mentioned. You can really only cloak it or not cloak it.  -- Regards, Chris

So the choice is either show xxxx.co.nz on all pages or  forget the domain and wind up with urls like http://xxxx.12345.a.hostable.me/wordpress/be-involved/ .. so whats the point of the domain name???

There does not appear to be away around this apart from:

1. Host the site with freeparking or


2. register the domain name with someone else (though check if they also do cloaking the same way - I have been told godaddy does the same)

Any ideas welcome....

13-Aug: Suggestion from Inga - does require certain conditions to be met before this will work.  http://www.thesitewizard.com/apache/frame-blocking-anti-clickjacking.shtml

 

Wordpress hacking: Bat Boy and Mr. DJh

Grr!@###$

What a damn nuisance  looks like there is a way to hack your WordPress web site. My research shows it as The Bat Boy or in my case Mr. DJh (see below)

It does 2 things

1. Changes your admin login & email account in the users table and (this means you can't log in as admin)


2. Changes index.php code for the theme (which is what shows on the page)

Anyway this is how to fix it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESp_rceZ_gw

UNFORTUNATELY, in my case the admin user was unchanged (but I still can't log in) but one of the index.php files in the template was changed (you can see by the edit date on the server) though cleverly in code: starts like

? echo(stripslashes(base64_decode('PGh0bWw+ ..... 

Renaming the folder killed the site so the hack is in there somewhere and this was the only program with a different date that I could find.

At this stage I can either find the index.php file (which is pretty old) or reinstall Wordpress and import the main blog (which I will probably do as it was only my backup anyway). 

I am guessing a flaw was found in one of the versions of WordPress and subsequently fixed by the WordPress people, however (as in my case) this was my backup blog and was quite old - so probably had the flaw still, and so wide open for the hack. My more recent one was left alone (so far) - this one. Can anyone confirm this???

So the Moral is "Keep up with updates" - yes I should know that!!!!

PC Mouse Bike

Bit of a hard case Bike Mouse that records your typing speed by making the mouse go faster. A while ago I bought a a USB PC Mouse Bike. Searched the web for some drivers, but eventually found them on an old Hard Disk Drive.

For others looking for the drivers here they are:  mouse bike installation.zip

And I have it working on a Windows 7 machine. This is what I did:

Don't plug in the mouse and run set-up.

Then plug in the bike mouse. The drivers will try to install through Windows Update (the USB Bridge one will fail) Had to go to Control Panel > Device Manager > then locate the device with the error (USB bridge I think) . Click on Driver > Update Driver > Browse my Computer and get Windows to search the Driver Folder in the Mouse Bike Installation folder.

Run "Launch Mouse Bike" from the desktop and all going well the mouse should fire up.

If you open up Notepad the counter will show the Words per minute...

Enjoy!!

Task manager in Windows 7/Vista now Ctrl+Shift+Esc

The old ctrl+Alt+Del has been changed to Ctrl+Shift+Esc (who knows why??)

 

You can also right click on the task bar and select task manager

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/

Backing up Twitter Posts

From Steph

http://mashe.hawksey.info/2011/11/twitter-how-to-archive-event-hashtags-and-visualize-conversation/

Black (Blank) screen on Laptop (Backlight Inverter)

Issue: Have a problem with a laptop when screen went blank.

Quick check: If you shine a strong torch at the screen is there an image?

Possible problem: Backlight inverter

Apparently a common problem is a faulty backlight inverter. One quick test is to shine a torch onto the screen to see if the image is actually still there. On ours we used a Big dolphin torch and the image was still there. So have sourced a backlight inverter from trademe ( bwl http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Listings.aspx?member=512606 ) will update blog to show progress.

For Compaq there is a fix-it video "Replacing the laptop backlight inverter" on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucaJA324hbg

Well that didnt work so back to Dr Google

Possible problem: CCFL lamp

Possible problem is the CCFL lamp. This is much trickier to repair... we may give this a go to.. who knows and we'll learn heaps as well.

http://www.laptoprepair101.com/laptop/2007/12/09/replace-laptop-backlight-ccfl-lamp/

Possible problem: Cables

Other resources:

• In DrGoogle type "?laptop name? service manual"


• Compaq repair manual (pdf)  http://www.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c00246219.pdf


• How to Upgrade, Repair, Disassemble a COMPAQ Laptop or Notebook http://repair4laptop.org/disassembly_compaq.html

XP Antivirus (Malware)

This is a real pain.. while surfing for content on a Security class XP Antivirus installed itself. If continuously nags to say you have virus's (which are false) and asks for money. It has a believable interface and looks like an actual Microsoft program.

To remove http://www.myantispyware.com/2010/11/11/how-to-remove-xp-antispyware-2011-virus/

This needs you to create a  registry patch file, then we ran

spybot http://download.cnet.com/Spybot-Search-amp-Destroy/3000-8022_4-10122137.html

Which finally removed the damn thing!

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)

PowerPoint Hyperlink error (comma in title)

I couldn't believe this until I read that it is a known issue. If you use hyperlinking in PowerPoint (linking from one slide to another) and you have a comma in the heading of the destination slide, the hyperlink won't work.

There's some documentation at (so they know about it!)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/818853

 

 

Bloated Word files .. why is my file so big????

One issue / problem  I have with students creating electronic storyboards where the scan/photograph/cut and paste images is that the Word documents can become very large. Often there are a couple of offending images that are magically very large. So how can we find them to see where the problem is.

Simple solution (use compress pictures)

1. Click on one of the images,


2. Click on the Picture Tools menu (Top right of Word), then


3. Select [Compress Pictures] in the Adjust group on the ribbon bar


4. Choose Apply to All pictures in the document, and [Ok]

Finding the problem images

If you have Word 2007 or 2010 they will save a Word document as a docx file (rather than doc). This is actually just a zip file with a docx extension.  So, to find out your problem images:

1. if your file is a doc file save as a docx, or make a copy of the file if it is a docx.


2. rename the new docx to zip


3. double click the zip file (or open the archive in your un-zipper program)


4. Look in the folder word/media, and you should see the images and their file sizes.


5. Double click on the images to see which ones they are,


6. Remove the images in the original document and resize.