#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"

 

Active Learning with PowerPoint #vmvdlt

Active Learning with PowerPoint. A tutorial designed to help you capitalize on those aspects of PowerPoint that lend themselves best to engaging students' interests.

http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/teachlearn/tutorials/powerpoint/

#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>

#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 :)

 

Windows 8: Change default photo viewer ( #vmvwiki )

A problem in Windows 8 is when you click on an image in Windows explorer it annoyingly loads it into the Win 8 photo viewer app.

To fix this:

go to Control Panel > Programs > Default Programs and select  Set your default programs.
Scroll down and click Windows Photo Viewer in the Programs list.
Then, click 'Set this program as default' if you'd like the Viewer to open all the file types it can handle, or select the 'Choose default' options if you prefer to specify which file types it should open. Finish by clicking OK.

PC-iPad screen share: [1] Windows 7 starter, ad hoc network

According to Microsoft Win7 starter is unable to create an ad hoc network. Am trying to screen share an iPad with a laptop without 3G needed.

A quick search on Dr. Google reveals that the ad hoc network option is actually there in starter, but the link is missing. To set up an ad hoc network just click on start and in the box "Search programs and files" type "ad hoc".. this will bring up the wizard and away you go.

Will add to the post how well this goes with screen share with iPad

 

Ant killer

Haven't tried it but want to keep this for future reference

http://www.food.com/recipe/get-rid-of-ants-ants-ants-203233

Some notable free software #vmvwiki

1. Microsoft Expression Web 4 (HTML Web authoring tool)

• Microsoft has discontinued the support of this product (it is embedded in Visual Studio and Sharepoint) so have released this as freeware


• http://www.microsoft.com/en-nz/download/details.aspx?id=36179

2. Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional

• Version that can convert pdfs to Word files (doc not docx)


• http://www.techspot.com/downloads/4683-adobe-acrobat-8-free.html

3. Paint.net

• A freeware drawing and photo editing program, allows you to resize images


• http://www.getpaint.net/

4. Zoom-it

• Allows you to zoom your screen when doing presentations


• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx

5. CCleaner

• Will clean up your PC's registry and Hard Disk Drives


• http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner


• ( defraggler - a disk defragging tool is also useful http://www.piriform.com/defraggler/download )

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 

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!!!!

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

Backing up Twitter Posts

From Steph

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

Hidden text in Word 2007 and password protecting

Just a couple of Word things that I need when preparing examination papers!!

How do you remove Hidden Text from a Word Document?

Working with a copy of the document (just in case!!)

• Use Office button (or File) > Prepare > Inspect document > [Inspect]


• You will see the Hidden  Text option and a button [Remove All]

How do you add a password to your document?

• Use Office button (or File) > Prepare > Encrypt document and enter your password


• then re-enter it to make sure.

Warning - it is pretty well impossible to recover the document if you forget the password!!

How do you remove a password from a file?

• Use Office button (or File) > Prepare > Encrypt document and delete your password

 

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