Flickr public search problems

Having problems with Flickr finding my photos (not that there's many!!). A solution (so far) http://rcasjwa.blogspot.com/2008/04/flickr-public-search-problems.html indicates that need to click on "Flag this photo" bottom right , and make sure "Hide this photo from public search was unchecked". Search still not working, but sometimes engines take a while to catch up .. (here's hoping). Any better solutions?

Anyway the solution to my problem is a little embarrassing :( - Flickr requires at least 5 photos to be added before they become searchable ....

13 Enlightening Case Studies of Social Media in the Classroom

http://bestonlineuniversities.com/2009/13-enlightening-case-studies-of-social-media-in-the-classroom/

The Top 50 Web Development Icon Sets from 2009

From JS:

Lots of icons to give you ideas for your own ones.

http://speckyboy.com/2009/12/21/the-top-50-web-development-icon-sets-from-2009/

Electronic gizmos

For a peek into the latest electronic gizmos - Chinavision

http://www.chinavasion.com/index.php/cName/hot-products/

e.g.  Odyssey phone (like iPhone !)

http://www.chinavasion.com/product_info.php/pName/odyssey-wifi-quadband-dualsim-cellphone-w-3-inch-touchscreen/

Add a Newspaper clipping

From JS.

A neat way to show some text as a newspaper clipping...

http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp

Celtx - Video pre-production software

Celtx is the world's first all-in-one media pre-production system. It replaces 'paper & binder' pre-production with a digital approach that's more complete, simpler to work with, and easier to share.

I think the basic part is free and there is a "studio" addin.

http://www.celtx.com/overview.html

Free Technology Academy

The Free Technology Academy consists of an advanced virtual campus with course modules that can be followed entirely on-line.

http://ftacademy.org

Only just started (courses are "under construction")

Social Networking for cash!!

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) research group beat out about 4,300 other teams on Saturday in a Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) contest to test human social networking.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/technology/internet/07contest.html?_r=1

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

Zotero and APA 6

form Joyce

If you are using the Zotero addon for Firefox for your referencing, you can install the APA 6^th edition referencing style by clicking here

http://www.zotero.org/styles/apa/dev?install=1

Desktop utilities

A collection of downloadable utilities to enhance your desktop. Object dock - a zooming menu (like mac) and fences (if you have lots of desktop icons)
http://www.virtualmv.com/wiki/index.php?title=Operating_System:_Desktop_utilities

Firefox, zotero and COinS

Created COinS metadata in an HTML file, but had trouble getting zotero to recognise it. Actually its too simple, once zotero recognises there is COinS metadata it places a book icon next to the URL, click this and the metadata gets added to zotero!!
(Its real teckiee - but those who use zotero will understand)

Hard Disk Manager / Music maker (PC Authority Oct 09 Cover Disk)

A useful utility on the cover disk of Australian PC authority ( http://www.pcauthority.com.au/ ) is Paragon's Hard Disk Manager (9.5 SE)

I am often confronted with students who have trashed their Hard Drives (or the drive have magically trashed themselves). This utility allows you to create a complete backup of the drive. Additionally if you want to upgrade your HDD to a bigger one it has a wizard to do this.

Also included is Magix Music Maker Silver for those of you who want to create your own "original " music.

Hello world!

Welcome to Wordpress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

Directory of Utilities

JJ has just given me a link to a page that links to lots of free(?) utilities - nicely organised.

FileHippo.com (2009). Retireved August 4, 2009 from http://www.filehippo.com/

Plagerism Site

From Terry
Does File and Web comparisons (free online and doesn't store the documents)
About
http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20090717092232364

The site itself is at

http://www.doccop.com/index.html?nc=22822718

Wikipedia in Academia

A blog from Joyce : http://easegill.edublogs.org/2009/06/28/wikipedia-in-academia/

Connected teachers - Lots of eLearning stuff

A wiki Joyce uses in her Web 2.0 classes

http://connectedteacher.wetpaint.com/

Adding an RSS Feed to Facebook (connecting your blog)

If you are running a blog and have a facebook account how can you connect them together, so you only have to type stuff in once (in the blog) and it pops up in Facebook?

Ok, so this is got to ba an example of poor "User Interface Design". I worked this out a month ago, and thought I'd document it.. but couldn't recall the steps (in spite of just having completed it!)

Anyway, thought I'd have another go today.. and eurika I worked out what to do!!

So follow these steps!!

1. Click on your name (on the facebook bar at the top of the screen)


2. Click on the Options link (Just below the [Share] button on the "Whats on your mind window"


3. If "Stories Posted by You" > Available sites is not showing, click on the settings button (Just below the [Share] button)


4. On the Available Sites: Click on Blog/RSS


5. In the Public URL enter your blog site, then click [Import]

.. and thats all!!

This is also where you connect Flickr/Delicious/YouTube etc...

Microsoft: Malicious Software Removal Tool

Conflicker is doing the rounds so had a quick surf and found Microsoft has a Malicious Software Removal Tool for post infection (once you have a computer that is infected). Apparently it is part of Windows Update, so it should only be an issue if you have this turned off!!

Have added to my wiki

http://www.virtualmv.com/wiki/index.php?title=Virus/Anti-virus_software

PDF to Word Converters

Had a pdf that needed converting to doc. Found two options

1. Free Standalone converter that can be downloaded to your PC (http://www.hellopdf.com/download.php ) and

2. A Web based converter ( http://www.pdftoword.com/  )

Of the two the web converter (#2) did the best (though not perfect) job though I'm always suspicious about web converters when they ask to send things to my email address that they are not collecting them. Will be  monitoring my email for new spam.

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/

Freeware (donationware) Video Converter

JJ has found a video converter

Huang, S. (2009) MediaCoder - more than a universal audio/video transcoder. Retrieved June 17, 2009 from http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/

Interactive map of GNU/Linux OS and FOSS

A bit geeky but for those who enjoy alternative Operating Systems

Interactive map of GNU/Linux OS and FOSS (n.d.) Retrieved June 16, 2009 from http://www.makelinux.net/system/

Jun 2009: google wav and Microsoft Bing

Some new stuff for this month

• http://wave.google.com (email/IM) and


• http://www.bing.com (MS Search)

Wolfram Alpha - a new way of accessing data on the Internet

Something from Joyce :)

Rather than giving you a list of search results, Wolfram Alpha (what an awful name) will combine your terms to give you meaningful data. For example a search for Napier + Weather, results in:

http://www16.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=napier+temperature

 

You can access WA here: http://www.wolframalpha.com/ and to get started it gives you some suggestions for searches on the right hand side.

 

And you can read about other ways of using WA here:

5 Things that Wolfram Alpha does better (and vastly different) from Google which looks at complex queries, localisation, precision, calculation and comparison.

Moving/recovering/finding windows on multiple monitors

On the theme of multiple monitors something that can cause you problems ( grief) is if change monitor types (e.g. I have an external wide screen  at work and a square one at home). So what happens is that some applications remember what the position was when they closed and try to do this on the new monitor. Sometimes this means that the top of the window (including all the toolbars are off the screen and unaccessible).

If the applications have been well designed they should have a move option available if you right click on the button on the Windows status bar.  If this is so you can click move, now the sneaky bit - just tap one of the arrows on your keyboard - somehow this attaches the mouse to the mindow and by moving your mouse you can get your window onto your current screen.

Note: You may have to double click the button on the status basr as in order to move the window it has to be in the windows desktop.

PowerPoint 2007 - multiple monitors swap display

Had an issue when using multiple monitors. When using a monitor attached to my laptop the presentation displayed on the laptop not the external monitor.

Searching the we came up with lots of false hits... and the answer is actually quite simple in 2007.

Use the Slide Show tab and in the Monitor part of the ribbon change the "Show Presentation on" to "Monitor 2..."

No wonder there is no online help !!!

VirtualBox - Update 2.2 (Internet error)

Updated to 2.2 (Win 32bit). Lost my Internet connection inside the virtual machine.

Temporary solution found at http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/3655. There is a dll (in a zip) - post towards the end (2009-04-15 18:20:43 changed by frank) that fixed the issue. (though virtualBox lost the connection when I restarted the computer after I sent it into hibernation.

Indications that this will be repaired in a patch to 2.2 in the "near" future!

iCloud - a virtual online machine

Apr 7, iCloud was publically launched. Have included the "marketing email below...

First observations. Tried it on our institutions PC.. Connection too slow, tried in IE/Firefox came up but never got to a stage I could use it. Chrome had JavaScript issues...

Must try it at home :)

In the email it stated...

icloud, the online service that gives you the freedom of your friends, files and digital life on any computer. After 8 years of development icloud is today officially launched worldwide as the online PC for everyone without a PC 

Linkoping, Sweden - April 7th, 2009 - Xcerion today announce the launch of icloud, the world's first free online computer, giving everybody in the world their own online computer packed with free storage, applications, virtual desktop and backup accessible from any computer connected to the Internet. Starting today the icloud service is available in English, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Swedish and Filipino languages.

 The public launch of icloud builds on a closed beta testing program and the incorporation of user feedback from iclouder's worldwide. icloud is proud to announce free icloud accounts for everyone at http://icloud.com. 

Daniel Arthursson, the founder of icloud say, "With icloud, we put a virtual computer together with free storage and free applications in the hands of everybody in the world, it's the PC for everyone without a PC. Everybody can now access and share documents, photos, music and their complete digital life from any computer".

The public version includes:

• Access to your friends, files and digital life on any computer


• 3 GB free storage space to safely store documents, photos and music online


• 30 free applications such as Office, Mail, Music, Video, IM, Sharing, Games, Collaboration and Development tools


• 20 free widgets


• Free backup to provide secure storage, including WedDav


• Zero installation, icloud runs in your Internet Explorer or Firefox browser

Open Library

Open Library (n.d.) . Retrieved April 7, 2009 from http://openlibrary.org/

Apr 7, 2009: featuring 22,845,290 books (including 1,064,822 with full-text)

Beyond LMSs

Presentation by Terry Anderson at Moodlemoot

Anderson, T. (2009) Beyond LMS Keynote to Canada Moodlemoot 2009. Retrieved April 6, 2009 from http://www.slideshare.net/terrya/beyond-lms-keynote-to-canada-moodlemoot-2009

Windows Memory Diagnostic

Microsoft (2006). Crash Analysis. Retrieved March 27, 2009 from http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

The Windows Memory Diagnostic tests the Random Access Memory (RAM) on your computer for errors

This week whats happening 26 March 2009

1. 2009 April: Conficker Internet worm (http://www.virtualmv.com/wiki/index.php?title=Virus/Anti-virus_software )


2. IE8 Now released


3. Google Chrome Updates available (use Help About -- I think)


4. Google Chrome experiments (http://www.virtualmv.com/wiki/index.php?title=Internet:Web_Browsers)


5. Google Earth has been updated also (different navigation controls)


6. AVG 8.5 Update. Be very careful as it is easy to install the "free" trial version. Read the prompts carefully!


7. breathingnet.org (see earlier post)


8. Office Live Update (allows you to share/ store documents in MS-Office in the Internet Cloud on Microsoft Servers) - like googledocs

Breathing earth

This real-time simulation displays the CO2 emissions of every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates.

Found by DR

Belja, D (2008) CO2 emissions, birth rate & death rate simulation. Retrieved from http://breathingearth.net/

Browser tester (HTML/JavaScript)

• Chrome Experiments (Google, 2009)^[2] http://www.chromeexperiments.com/
  
  
  
  • Chrome Experiments showcases the applications that require significant data processing using multiple Web pages simultaneously
  
  
  • Darrin Fisher, one of the engineering leads for Google Chrome, notes that all of the experiments use just HTML and JavaScript, and are designed to demonstrate what is possible with basic Web technology
  
  
  
  

(Naone, 2009, March 18)^[3]

E, Naone (2009, March 18)Browser Coders Make Chrome Shine. Technology Review. Retrieved March 24, 2009 from http://www.technologyreview.com/web/22315/?a=f

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.

Speed up Vista with ReadyBoost

From a post by Paradigm PCs (http://www.pp.co.nz)

Adding system memory is often the best way to improve a PC’s performance. However, upgrading memory can be difficult and costly, and some systems have limited memory expansion capabilities, making it impossible to add RAM.
Windows Vista provides a way to add memory to your system using a USB Flash drive which is called ReadyBoost to improve performance without having to add additional memory to your system.
The flash memory device serves as an additional memory cache, which means that your computer can access the necessary data much quicker than it can access data on the hard drive. This is how you Speed Up Vista with Vista ReadyBoost.

Its best to use a USB flash drive that you can spare and then plug it in an empty USB slot, preferably at the backside of your system so that you won’t have it in sight.
Now you should see a pop-up with the option “Speed up my system, using Windows Ready Boost”.
If you are not prompted, just follow these steps.

• Go to start


• Select My Computer


• Right click your flash drive


• Choose Properties 


• Select the ReadyBoost tab


• Check “Use this device” and tweak the settings, click apply and you’re done.

The minimum requirement for the USB flash drive is at least 256mb.

Publish or Perish

A link from K.

Are you applying for tenure, promotion or a new job? Do you want to include evidence of the impact of your research? Is your work cited in journals which are not ISI listed? Then you might want to try Publish or Perish, designed to help individual academics to present their case for research impact to its best advantage.

Harzing, A-W (2009) Publish or Perish. Retrieved February 23, 2009 from http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm

Information revolution

Worth a look how old information management compares with current

Wesch, M. (2007) Information Revolution, YouTube. Retrieved February 12, 2009 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4CV05HyAbM

FTP Firefox (FireFTP) and FileZilla

Just added Fire FTP to firefox (normally use Filezilla)

Running History of IT stuff

Always regretted not recording IT changes as they happened. Eg. When I started computing (around 1980) I sold the original IBM PC (twin Floppy at $8,000, with a 10MB HDD around $16,000) So have started a history page in my wiki.

http://www.virtualmv.com/wiki/index.php?title=History#2008

Will troll over my old notes to see what I can add!

Death by PowerPoint (SlideShare)

Not that I agree with everything said (e.g. suits visual learners - of which I am one), but gives you something to think about/discuss.

[slideshare id=85551&doc=death-by-powerpoint4344]

SkyDrive (25GB free online storage)

Microsoft promised at the last presentation I went to lots of new stuff, particularly based on their "Cloud computing" framework.

So, here is another tool that will be useful, 25GB free online storage!

go to http://www.microsoft.com and if it doesn't show its called skydrive 

If you have a live account (msn or hotmail) go to http://home.live.com/ and look for skydrive or if you dont have a microsoft passport go to the same url and create one. As far as I can tell you dont need a microsoft email (hotmail) account. I using my work one fine.

It allows others to access your folder. I am having trouble receiving zip files via email so this may be a way to get them to me.

Change removable storage icon

Was just playing around with my new USB Drive and realised you can create your own icon for Windows explorer.

1. Create an icon (duh!) - use Google to find an icon creator if you dont have one (e.g. GIMP or Paint.net with an addin) , and place in the root folder of your removable drive.

2. Create a text file (using notepad) called Autorun.inf (if there is already one it is likely to have an ico file setting already so all you need to do is change the ico file name).

The Autorun file only needs

Autorun.inf--------------------

[autorun]
icon = .\NameofIconFile.ico

-----------------------------

Vista Lost Password

My daughter decided to add another user to her HP laptop and at the same time change her admin password. Somehow the computer decided that the new password would be randomly generated and the computer locked her out!! So after trying a zillion passwords (and fear that we would have to rebuild the computer, I logged into my top tech support Google and after the first few telling me I needed to buy a package came across a blog from Mike Kelly ( http://blogs.msdn.com/mikekelly/archive/2007/11/25/lost-vista-password.aspx )

Basically, Mikes solution involved using System Restore ( ...and we also did not know you can create a Password Recovery Disk in Vista)

Simply 

1. Reboot and press F11

2. Select Advanced Options > Microsoft System Restore (Make sure it is NOT the one that restores to the Factory setting or you will wipe out your computer!)

3. .. this leaves recovery manager and shows the latest restore points. Choose one before you changed the password (Luckily a Windows update had occurred a couple of days earlier and after about 10 minutes Vista was reset.) .. MAGIC

For a heavy weight password recovery check out.. 

Offline NT Password and Registry Editor

Note Bill Detwiler (2009) has a video demo of how to do this online. Note  Bills warning about quitting the program or the changes are not written to the computer.

Detwiler, B. (2009) Video: Reset Windows passwords with the Offline NT Password and Registry Editor. IT Dojo. Retrieved May 21, 2009 from http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/itdojo/?p=140

virtualMV and wiki: ICT Teaching content (http://www.virtualmv.com)

Hi everyone,

2009 has started and I have all but completed my PhD. As such it is time to have a look at my virtualMV web site and the many systems I have developed to support my research. The opening page of http://www.virtualMV.com has changed ( not very flash.. but that's for later) as I move content from my custom system to the wiki. Am in two minds as to wheter I will be building a new wiki based custom solution in PHP/MySQL or adding some extensions to MediaWiki. Upgrading myu current version of Media Wiki has not proved to be easy.

So, keep an eye out for changes..  

Michael