Time Magazine: The Best Gadgets of 2018 ---
Click Here
Best and Worst Gadgets of the Past Decade ---
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/11/21/best-and-worst-gadgets-of-the-decade/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter&utm_content=NOV252019a
Insanely Cool Gadgets That Are Going To Sell Out Soon ---
https://mydailyflavor.com/bestgadgets/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMImKLLlaWl7AIVDebACh1ssQnVEAEYASAAEgLB-_D_BwE
Gadgets It Took Five Years to PerfectThis Transparent Eraser (that lets
you see what you're erasing with greater precision) ---
https://gizmodo.com/it-took-five-years-to-perfect-the-recipe-for-this-trans-1840066107
This innovation should've come before the age of computer writing and drawing
Phyorg: 19 Insanely Cool 2018 Gadgets ---
https://prime8.com/stocking18/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIv5vv3dTN3wIVNhfTCh2frA0dEAEYASAAEgKrPvD_BwE
Seven of the coolest gadgets announced at Europe's biggest tech show
of 2018 ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/ifa-2018-coolest-gadgets-announcements-2018-8
Time Magazine: The Top 10 Gadgets of 2017 ---
http://time.com/5029999/top-10-gadgets-2017/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=2017112112pm&xid=newsletter-brief
Cool Gadgets From the CES 2017 ---
http://time.com/4626654/ces-2017-best-gadgets/?xid=newsletter-brief
Nine Must-Have Gadgets for Under $100 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-tech-gadgets-under-100-dollars-2016-6
20 Tech Gifts for Under $100 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-tech-gifts-under-100-dollars-holiday-gift-guide-2016
More Holiday Gift Ideas
These are the tech gadgets you’ll want to have in an emergency ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-tech-for-emergencies-buying-guide-2016-2/#portable-usb-battery-1
The 50 Most Influential Gadgets of Our Time ---
http://time.com/4309573/most-influential-gadgets/?xid=newsletter-brief
The MileIQ Gadget from Microsoft Can Save Thousands of
Tax Dollars for a Business Traveler (or lead to greater reimbursements from
employers) ---
Try it for free ---
https://www.mileiq.com/
"Gadgets get smarter, friendlier at CES show," by Glenn Chapman and
Sophie Estienne, MSN News, January 3, 2016 ---
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/gadgets-get-smarter-friendlier-at-ces-show/ar-BBo9rFE?ocid=spartanntp
From drones, cars and robots to jewelry,
appliances and TVs, the new technology on display at the 2016 Consumer
Electronics Show promises to be smarter and friendlier than ever.
The annual tech extravaganza with more than
3,600 exhibitors set to formally start on Wednesday in Las Vegas is
likely to see innovation across a range of sectors, from health care to
autos, connected homes, virtual reality and gaming.
"There are always a couple of winners at CES,
and sometimes there are the sleepers that turn out to be the cool
thing," Gartner analyst Brian Blau told AFP.
But Blau said the innovations are "often
evolutionary, not revolutionary."
Televisions will play starring roles at the
show as usual, with giants such as Samsung, Sony, LG and Vizio among
contenders in a market rapidly shifting to ultra-high definition.
"We are in the sweetest of the sweet spot in
the TV market," NPD analyst Stephen Baker told AFP while discussing CES.
"Sales of 4K TVs are exploding right now," he
said, referring to the popular new high-definition format.
Drones are also expected to make a splash at
CES, where an Unmanned Systems Marketplace has doubled in size from a
year earlier to cover 25,000 square feet (2,300 square meters).
Blau expects the drones on display at the show
to be more sophisticated, with easy controls and even applications that
let them be operated using smartphones.
"If you want to make it popular with consumers
you have to make it relatively easy to use and foolproof," he said. "And
that is what a lot of drone manufacturers have been doing."
- Apple presence felt -
Electronics makers are also using building
smart technology into all manner of devices, allowing them to adapt to
how people use them, responding to voice or gesture, for example.
"A lot more of your devices are going to run
with less direction from you but a greater sense of how to help you
out," Blau said.
Continued in article
Time Magazine: Top 10 Gadgets of 2015 ---
http://time.com/4105591/top-10-gadgets/?xid=newsletter-brief
Time Magazine: The 25 Best Inventions of 2015 ---
http://time.com/4115398/best-inventions-2015/
Time Magazine's Choices for the 2014 Top 10 Apps ---
http://time.com/3582114/top-10-apps/?xid=newsletter-brief
Yahoo Tech's Choices for the 2014 Top 10 Gadgets ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/the-10-most-wanted-tech-c1417549586539/photo-iphone-6-photo-1417549459482.html
"Loop Payment Fob Lets You Swipe Your Phone Instead of a Credit Card,"
by David Pogue, Yahoo Tech, February 20, 2014 ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/loop-payment-fob-lets-you-swipe-your-phone-instead-of-a-77259827533.html
Maybe
you’ve heard: Big technology companies are frantically trying to get rid
of credit cards.
It’s a worthy goal, actually. Many people carry
around purses or wallets that are bloated and bursting with plastic
cards. And for what? Each sheet of hard plastic exists solely to bear a
magnetic strip that you can run through card readers at checkout.
The dream is to let you pay for things, quickly
and easily, with the swipe of your phone. Or, someday, your watch. Fast,
convenient, secure — and cardless.
It’s not going so well, though. The world’s
shops, gas stations and restaurants already have all the equipment they
care to install: standard credit-card readers. They’re not interested in
buying something new just to accommodate, for example, Android phones
that are compatible with Google’s Wallet payment system.
But now there’s something new called the Loop,
which began life as a successful Kickstarter project. It’s instantly
compatible with those hundreds of millions of existing credit-card
readers. But it still lets you pay for stuff without ever extracting any
plastic from your wallet or purse.
It does
that by sending out a magnetic signal that tricks the
credit-card reader into thinking that you’ve actually swiped a card
through it.
I’ll wait
here while you read that again.
This is the part that’s hard to believe. You
wave the Loop near the card-reader slot, up to a couple of inches away,
and — beep! — you’ve just paid. (Inside the Loop, there’s an
inductive magnetic loop of wire that generates an alternating current.
Hence the name.)
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology
"Samsung Has Two New Smart Watches Launching In April — Here's
Everything They Can Do," by Steve Kovach, Business Insider, February 22,
2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-galaxy-gear-2-2014-2
. . .
Here's a quick breakdown of the new features in
the Gear 2/Gear 2 Neo:
- The new
Gears will include a universal remote control app and built-in
infrared sensor that will let you control your TV from the watch.
- There's
a music player app that lets you listen to your songs, even if the
device isn't paired to a smartphone.
- The
watches double as fitness trackers, and can monitor your heart rate,
sleeping habits, and steps taken. The data syncs with Samsung's S
Health app, which comes preinstalled in Samsung phones like the
Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note 3.
- Both
models are slightly thinner and lighter than the original Galaxy
Gear, but the Gear 2 is a bit heftier than the Gear 2 neo.
- Both models
have a 1.63-inch color touchscreen and the wristbands and watch
faces come in a variety of color options.
Other than that,
the new Gears will mimic the functions of last year's model. The Gear
pairs with your Samsung Galaxy phone via Bluetooth using a special
Galaxy Gear app. After the pairing, you can use Gear to check incoming
texts, calls, emails, tweets, etc. without having to pull out your
phone. You can also make calls from the watch using a built-in speaker
and microphone.
The Gear also has an app store, which
includes some big-name apps like Evernote and the mobile social network
Path. However, other big names like Facebook and Twitter are still
missing.
"Pebble Steel: Best Smartwatch So Far," by David Pogue, Yahoo Tech,
February 13, 2014 ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/pebble-steel-best-smartwatch-so-far-76486495620.html
There’s nothing about the success of the new Pebble
Steel smartwatch that you couldn’t have predicted by studying tech history.
Over and over again, gadgets become insanely
successful when they do a few things very well. (See: PalmPilot, iPod, iPad.)
And over and over again, gadgets flop when they are freighted with the wrong
collection of features in a hopeless mass (Zune, ultramobile PCs and the
Nokia N-Gage — a combination game console/cellphone).
Which brings us to smartwatches. A smartwatch, of
course, is a wristwatch that connects wirelessly with the phone in your
pocket. It can display incoming text messages right on your wrist. It can
vibrate to let you know when a call comes in, even when you wouldn’t have
heard your phone. It can pass along alerts — new email, Facebook messages,
stock-market crashes — right to your wrist.
There are some advantages to having this
information close at hand. It’s a lot less tacky to glance at your wrist
during a meeting than to pull out your phone. When you’re riding a bike,
it’s safer to get your next-turn GPS instructions by glancing at your wrist
than it is to fumble for your phone. When your arms are full of packages or
groceries … well, you get the idea.
There are lots of smartwatches available, but you
probably have very few friends who own one. That’s because they’re all
pretty terrible (the watches, not your friends).
The best-known one, the Samsung Gear watch, costs
$300, works with only three Samsung phone models, has a camera on the
watchband, lets you make phone calls by holding the watch up to your head —
and looks like an HDTV strapped to your arm.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
As far as touch screen goes I give smart watches the big finger.
Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology
"The Future of Personal Entertainment, In Your Face: The Glyph
headset is weird-looking and expensive, but amazingly immersive," by Rachel
Metz, MIT's Technology Review, January 30, 2014 ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/523966/the-future-of-personal-entertainment-in-your-face/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20140130
I’m watching a jellyfish pump past me lazily,
its movement interrupting the twinkling of underwater particles, when a
sea turtle suddenly swims my way and starts munching on the jellyfish’s
tentacles.
I know that I’m actually watching this scene
unfold in 3-D on a prototype of an entertainment headset called the
Glyph,
which fits over my eyes like a giant, awkward pair
of electronics-filled glasses and projects images directly onto my
retinas, showing the equivalent to an 80-inch TV about eight feet away,
but the image in front of my face feels real enough that I cry out, “Oh,
no, don’t eat that! That’s not going to taste good!”
he world outside my undersea environment is
less dramatic: I’m sitting in the sparse office of
Avegant, the startup that began building the
Glyph a little more than a year ago. The device can be used to watch 3-D
and 2-D videos, play video games, and listen to music. Avegant also
plans to include head-tracking capabilities in future versions so that
the Glyph can be used for 360-degree immersive experiences.
Nearly 1,500 people have committed $499 or more
to buy the device through Avegant’s
Kickstarter campaign, which has raised over
three times its $250,000 goal. The company plans to deliver the gadget
to backers in December, and then start selling it generally.
So what makes the Glyph special? Avegant says
it’s the headset’s image projection method, which reflects light onto
each retina through a series of lenses and tiny mirrors and makes for
sharper, easier-to-watch images than using a screen, as many competing
products like
Oculus Rift do. Its ability to mimic depth
certainly makes it particularly good at showing natural-looking 3-D
content.
When I visit Avegant’s Mountain View,
California, office to try out the device, I expect to be unimpressed;
I’m skeptical of the Glyph’s utility and I’ve never seen a 3-D demo that
really wowed me. But this time was different. There are two headsets on
the table when I walk into Avegant’s conference room—an older prototype
with its guts exposed and no headphones, and a newer one that looks like
a giant pair of headphones and is a lot closer to what you’ll probably
see when the Glyph hits store shelves.
Avegant’s chief operating officer and chief
software officer, Yobie Benjamin, helps me put on and adjust the older
prototype, which has flimsy plastic arms and had to be held onto my
head. Both prototypes are plugged into a gray box about the size of a
toaster—a battery, I’m told, which in the next version of the Glyph will
be housed in the ear cans and frame and provide three hours of
video-watching or game-playing.
I first watch an action scene ripped from a 3-D
Blu-ray of the movie Avatar, which plays from a connected
laptop (the Glyph can connect to any media player with an HDMI input, so
you can use it with many smartphones, laptops, and tablets). With the
Glyph on, I see what appears to be a large, bright screen in front of my
face, with a black frame around it, and I can gaze above and below at
slivers of the outside world. The Na’vi appear to fly around in front of
my face, yet I don’t sense the delays, screwy coloring, or image
doubling that I’ve noticed when viewing 3-D content in the past. There
are some pixelated shots, but I’m told those are glitches in the
Avatar file, not the device.
The undersea video, which I watch next, is
similarly captivating, with clown fish swimming about and bright pink
coral reflecting light in different directions. The aforementioned
encounter between the turtle and jellyfish looks vivid and bright.
The Glyph enables this by emitting light from a
low-power LED, which is reflected by an array of two million tiny
mirrors onto a lens system and then projected to the back of your
retinas. This seems to make for a much more comfortable viewing
experience. I would happily watch a whole movie like this if time
permitted.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
The focus is on entertainment, but I predict that one day a gadget like this
will be used to immerse students in such things as mathematical models,
works of art, settings for great literature, living history, etc. The gadget
might even be used to immerse students in the Halls of Congress and other
horror shows.
How-To Geek’s 2013 Holiday Gift Guide 2013: The Best Gadgets and Gear ---
http://www.howtogeek.com/177064/how-to-geeks-holiday-gift-guide-2013-the-best-gadgets-and-gear/
Smart TVs Are Stupid: Why You Don’t Really Want a Smart TV ---
http://www.howtogeek.com/176392/smart-tvs-are-stupid-why-you-dont-really-want-a-smart-tv/
Wouldn’t it be great to have a smart TV? Well,
not really. If you do have a smart TV, you’d be better off combining it
with a cheap set-top box rather than actually using its smart features.
Smart TVs are actually a decent idea. The
problem isn’t that the idea of a smart TV is stupid, the problem is that
the smart TVs themselves are stupid — or, at least, not very smart.
Smart TVs in Theory
A smart TV may also be referred to as a
“connected TV.” Essentially, it’s a TV that’s connected to the Internet.
It has built-in apps to take advantage of this — for example, a smart TV
would likely have apps for playing videos from Netflix and YouTube.
Smart TVs generally also have other built-in apps — a web browser,
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Angry Birds, and so on.
In theory, having a smart TV would be great.
The TV would have a network connection and be able to connect to the
Internet to play videos from sources like Netflix and YouTube without
needing a separate box. You get a web browser and everything else you’d
want to use. It’s all integrated into the TV, saving you money and
eliminating the clutter of additional boxes and cables.
The Problem With Smart TVs
In practice, smart TVs just aren’t that great.
Smart TVs have software made by TV manufacturers like Samsung, Sony, LG.
Their software is generally not very good. Smart TVs usually have
confusing, often baffling interfaces. Controlling the smart TV’s
features will generally involve using a remote, probably using on-screen
buttons on the the TV. The menu interfaces usually feel old.
But don’t take our word for it.
A report from NPD last year indicated that
only 10% of smart TV owners has used the web browser on their smart TV
and about 15% had listened to music from online services. The majority
of them had used video apps, however — for example, to watch Netflix on
their TV without plugging in additional boxes.
Smart TVs will become dumber over time as they
don’t receive updates. New video services won’t work on old TVs, and
their operating systems may never receive updates from the manufacturer.
Some smart TVs may already lack services you’d want to use. For example,
Amazon notes that “Amazon Instant Video is available on select 2012 and
2013 LG Smart TVs.” Not all of them, in other words — just some of them.
You’d have to do your research before buying a smart TV to get the
services you want.
Even if you choose a smart TV with all the
services you want, you’ll likely have a bad interface for them and may
never get updates for existing services or new services.
Continued in article
"A New and Improved Nexus 7," by David A. Pogue, The New York
Times, August 8, 2013 ---
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/08/a-new-and-improved-nexus-7/
OK, we get it, Google — you want to be a
hardware company.
Well, guess what? You’re actually doing a
pretty good job of it!
One year ago, you offered a seven-inch tablet
called the Nexus 7. You priced it at a remarkably low $200. You admitted
that you didn’t make any money on it, in hopes of selling more books,
movies, music and TV shows
¶You priced the new Nexus 7 higher: $230 for
the 16GB model. The 16GB iPad Mini has a larger screen, but it’s also
$100 more. The value of the Nexus 7 looks even better next in the
configurations with 32 gigabytes of storage ($270, versus $430 on the
Mini) and, coming soon, LTE cellular Internet ($350, versus $560 on the
Mini).
¶Meanwhile, you’ve improved the tablet in
dozens of ways. You’ve added a (mediocre) camera on the back, although,
bizarrely, you’ve moved the front camera way off-center. You added
stereo speakers: they are fine, but not as strong or clear as the Kindle
Fire’s. You threw in (very slow) wireless charging, meaning that you can
set the thing down onto a compatible charging base without actually
plugging in a cable.
¶You’ve made the thing slightly slimmer,
slightly lighter (0.64 pounds) and slightly narrower — only 4.5 inches
wide, which means that a large hand can hold the entire thing edge to
edge and still have a free thumb to tap the screen.
¶And that screen — wowsers. It’s glorious,
bright and sharp. You maintain, Google, that at 323 dots per inch, it’s
the sharpest of any 7-inch tablet. I believe you’re right.
¶It’s too bad you made those design
compromises, though. That nice pleather back is gone — on the new model,
it’s just hard plastic with a slightly rubbery coating. The corners are
sharper. And you made the margins on the short ends much bigger than on
the long sides, making this long, skinny tablet look even longer and
skinnier.
¶I’m so glad you focused on speed, Google.
According to CNET’s benchmark testing, the new Nexus 7 was faster in
most tests against the Mini and rival tablets from Samsung and Sony.
Responses to touches on the screen are smooth and fluid. Battery life is
around a day and a half of typical on-and-off use.
¶The operating system, Android 4.3 (which you
still call Jelly Bean), has a few tiny tweaks and a couple of bigger
improvements. First, parents can set up a children’s account so that
children can access only apps that parents approve. (And it can restrict
access to in-app purchases). Weirdly, though, parents can’t make the
Settings app off-limits, so the truly rebellious offspring can still
wreak some havoc.
¶Second, you added Bluetooth 4.0, which lets
certain accessories — usually activity trackers like the Fitbit Flex —
communicate wirelessly without draining the battery much.
¶Continued in article
Chromecast ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromecast
Streaming Television = Google's Chromecast + a hardware Dongle
"Chromecast Review: Finally, an Easy Way to Watch the Web on TV," by
Rachel Meltz, MIT's Technology Review, July 30, 2013 ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517656/chromecast-review-finally-an-easy-way-to-watch-the-web-on-tv/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130731
Jensen Comment
I have pretty good experience with the HDMI connection on my high-end Dell
Laptop (called Studio) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI
My wireless connection to the HDMI plug is rather unreliable so I instead
take my laptop close to the television set and use a hard wire connection.
It works great.
The problem is that lower-end cheaper laptops do not have the HDMI port.
I think the Chromecast dongle only requires a USB port.
"Belkin Ultimate Keyboard Case for iPad: A Review," by Erin E.
Templeton, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 25, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/belkin-ultimate-keyboard-case-for-ipad-a-review/48851?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Internet Companies
Directory (A Partial Listing)
| COMPANY |
DESCRIPTION |
URL |
|
e-Retail
(consumer products and services) |
| 1-800
Contacts |
Contact
lenses |
http://www.1800contacts.com/ |
| Alloy
Online |
Goods
for teens |
http://www.alloy.com/ |
| Amazon.com |
Books,
music, electronics |
http://www.amazon.com |
| Autobytel.com |
New,
used car guide |
http://www.autobytel.com/ |
| Barnesandnoble.com |
Books,
music |
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ |
| Drugstore.com |
Medical
products |
http://www.drugstore.com/ |
| eBay |
Auctions |
http://www.ebay.com/ |
| Egghead.com |
Computer
products |
http://www.egghead.com/ |
| Expedia |
Travel
planning |
http://www.expedia.com/ |
| Hotel
Reservations Network |
Discounted
hotel rooms |
http://www.180096hotel.com/ |
| Priceline.com |
Travel
reservations |
http://www.priceline.com/ |
| Stamps.com |
Postage |
http://www.stamps.com/ |
| Ticketmaster |
Guides,
tickets |
http://www.ticketmaster.com/ |
| Travelocity.com |
Travel
reservations |
http://www.travelocity.com/ |
| e-Finance
(banks, brokerages and credit companies) |
| Ameritrade |
Securities
broker |
http://www.ameritrade.com/ |
| Charles
Schwab |
Securities
broker |
http://www.schwab.com/ |
| CSFBdirect |
Securities
broker |
http://www.csfbdirect.com/ |
| E-Trade |
Securities
broker |
http://www.etrade.com |
| IndyMac
Bancorp |
Mortgage
lender |
http://www.indymacbank.com/ |
| Intuit |
Personal
finance info |
http://www.intuit.com/ |
| NetBank |
Consumer
banking |
http://www.gefn-compubank.com/ |
| NextCard |
Consumer
credit |
http://www.nextcard.com |
| TD
Warehouse |
Securities
broker |
http://www.tdwaterhouse.com/ |
| Wit
SoundView |
Securities
broker |
http://www.witsoundview.com/ |
| e-New
Media (advertising/subscription-supported media) |
| AOL
Time Warner |
Consumer
content |
http://www.aoltimewarner.com/ |
| Ask
Jeeves |
Search
engine |
http://www.ask.com/ |
| Cnet
Networks |
Technology
content |
http://www.cnet.com/ |
| HomeStore.com |
Real
estate content |
http://www.homestore.com/ |
| HotJobs.com |
Career
content |
http://www.hotjobs.com/ |
| InfoSpace |
Wireless
content |
http://infospace.com/ |
| MarketWatch.com |
Financial
content |
http://cbs.marketwatch.com/ |
| McAfee.com |
Computer
protection |
http://mcafee.com/ |
| MP3.com |
Music
content |
http://www.mp3.com/ |
| Multex.com |
Financial
content |
http://www.multexusa.com/ |
| NBC
Internet |
Consumer
content |
http://www.nbci.com/ |
| SportsLine.com |
Sports
content |
http://sportsline.com/ |
| Terra
Lycos |
Consumer
content |
http://www.terralycos.com/ |
| TheStreet.com |
Financial
content |
http://www.thestreet.com/ |
| Apollo
Group U of Phoenix Online |
Education
content |
http://www.ipopros.com/histdeal_pla.asp?deal=2285 |
| Yahoo |
Web
guide |
http://www.yahoo.com/ |
| e-Access
providers (connections to the Internet) |
| Aether
Systems |
Wireless
Internet access |
http://www.aethersystems.com/ |
| Excite
At Home |
Internet
access |
http://www.excite.com/ |
| EarthLink |
Internet
access |
http://www.earthlink.net/ |
| Juno
Online Services |
Internet
access |
http://www.juno.com |
| Metricom |
Wireless
Internet access |
http://www.metricom.com/
IMPORTANT NOTICE:
Please be advised that Metricom has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection. |
| NetZero |
Internet
access |
http://www.netzero.net/ |
| Prodigy
Communications |
Internet
access |
http://www.prodigy.com/ |
| RCN |
Internet
access |
http://www.rcn.com/ |
| Research
in Motion |
Wireless
Internet access |
http://www.rim.net/ |
| WorldGate
Communications |
Internet
access |
http://www.wgate.com |
| e-Learning
providers (corporate) For more details go to http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm |
| Caliber |
Training and
executive dev. |
http://www.caliber.com/ |
| Pensare |
Executive development with plans for degree programs in
partnership with prestige universities |
http://www.pensare.com/ |
| UNext |
Executive development and for-credit programs through
UNext's Cardean
University and in partnership with prestige universities |
http://www.unext.com/ |
| Smart Force |
Executive development |
http://www.smartforce.com/ |
| Quisic |
Content development, executive development, and
for-credit courses |
http://www.quisic.com/
(Formerly called University Access) |
| Headlight (From
CyberU) |
Recreational learners and an online small business
training center |
http://www.cyberu.com/training/headlight/index.asp |
| OnlineLearning.net |
Training and executive development and for-credit
courses |
http://www.onlinelearning.net/ |
| University of Maryland University College |
Training and executive development and for-credit
courses |
http://www.umuc.edu/ |
| Fathom (headed by Columbia University in conjunction
with many prestigious partners) |
A huge knowledge portal that offers over 600 courses |
http://www.fathom.com/index.jhtml |
| New York University Online |
Training and executive development and for-credit
courses |
http://i5.nyu.edu/~jmm282/nyupage.html |
| University of Phoenix |
Training and executive development and for-credit
courses (The largest accredited private university in the world.) |
http://www.phoenix.edu/index_open.html |
| The Kaplan Colleges |
Training and executive development and for-credit
courses (including the online Concord School of Law) |
http://www.kaplancollege.com/ |
| Sylvan Learning Systems |
Training and executive development and for-credit
courses (and testing centers) |
http://www.sylvan.net/ |
| Intellnex from Ernst & Young (the first Big 5
accounting firm university) |
Training and executive development |
http://www.intellinex.com/flash/index.htm |
Many
other corporate providers are discussed in a book that can be
downloaded free:
The Business of Borderless Education, by S.C. Cunningham, et
al., (Australian Department of Education, Evaluations and
Investigations Programme of the Higher Education Division, 2000).
Hard Copy ISBN 0 642 44446 3 and Online Copy ISBN 0 642 44447 1 --- http://www.detya.gov.au/archive/highered/eippubs/eip00_3/bbe.pdf |
Bob Jensen's documents on e-Learning are available free at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
(Note that most prestige universities have already or are forming
private corporations for online delivery of training, executive development,
and for-credit courses)
How to find online training and education programs http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm
Bob Jensen's other bookmarks are
at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob.htm
"Project Video, Photos from a Phone PowerPoint decks in your pocket,"
Business Week Video, November 2008 ---
http://feedroom.businessweek.com/?fr_story=32c50be245fe235d42a0895cec076331c8bda821
The gadget comes from Microvision ---
http://www.microvision.com/
"Clever New Gadget Makes E-Mail Very Easy," By
Walter S. Mossberg, WSJ Personal Technology Column,
http://www.ptech.wsj.com/ptech.html
. Excerpts from Walter's article are shown below:
MY MOTHER has been sending me e-mail lately.
To some of you, that's no big deal. But my Mom is 75 years old and has never touched a
computer. She's a smart woman, a formidable woman, just not a woman who cares to spend her
golden years wrestling with a personal computer. So, Rhoda Mossberg wasn't on e-mail. But
that was before the MailStation people arrived in my office.
The MailStation is a new $99 e-mail machine,
small and friendly and intended for computer-averse people like my mother, and millions of
others even younger. It's from Cidco of Morgan Hill, Calif., a big maker of telephone gear
such as caller-ID boxes. The machine nominally goes for $149 and comes with built-in
e-mail service that costs $10 a month. But if you pay for a year of service up front, you
get the machine for $99 and the service for another $99 for the year, or $8.25 a month for
an unlimited number of e-mail messages.
The MailStation is the latest in a new class
of devices I've been advocating for years, called information appliances. Unlike a
general-purpose PC, which tries to do everything and winds up being way too complex, these
appliances are customized for performing only a handful of digital tasks very easily and
well. Examples of info appliances around today are the Palm handheld computers, WebTV
set-top boxes and Sony PlayStation game machines. All are computers, but they're not
general-purpose computers.
Things that make Cidco's MailStation unique
among specialty devices are a fully functional keyboard, a screen that will let you read
up to 12 lines of an email message at a time, a spell checker, and other features in a
device small enough to fit in a purse.
http://www.cidco.com/
The MailStation is just one of many
forthcoming Internet devices and specialty products that takes a subset of things we can
do on a full computer and makes then easier to use on a smaller device that does not
require a complex operating system such as the Windows, Mac, and Linux operating
systems.
The Psion Series 5 gives you the computing power that you
need without the excess weight. It has a touch type
keyboard and full page width touch-sensitive screen, yet weighs less than 13 ounces (or
less than 360g), has around 35 hours of battery life and fits into your pocket. The Series
5 handheld computer is compatible with all leading Windows 95/NT4 word processors,
spreadsheets and databases, and synchronizes with schedule and contacts software on your
desktop PC, including Microsoft, Lotus, Corel, WordPerfect and other applications. PsiWin
2 - included as standard - docks your Series 5 to your PC. See http://www.psion.com/series5/index.html
The market share leader in the latest PDA devices is Palm
VII. The Internet connections to the world are wireless and use only AAA batteries.
I wish it had a keyboard when it is not connected to a PC. But there are some
great features in spite of not having a keyboard. For a Palm VII product review, see
http://www.computerworld.com/home/print.nsf/all/990521palm
.
The Palm home page is at http://www.palm.com/ .
A keyboard is at last available for the Palm VII wireless PDA:
http://www.palmzone.com/experiences/09.shtml
.
Stan Gibson has some doubts about these
Internet devices and specialty computers in an article entitled "Non-PC devices are
fine, but they're not, well, PCs ."
http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/columns/0,4351,404732,00.html
Bob Jensen's threads on
ubiquitous computing are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ubiquit.htm
Computing History
UCLA's Internet Project --- http://www.ccp.ucla.edu/pages/internet-report.asp
How the Internet Began (Humor) ---
http://home.comcast.net/~singingman7777/Beginning.htm
Link forwarded by Barry Rice
Computing History Timeline ---
http://trillian.randomstuff.org.uk/~stephen/history/timeline.html
Also see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computing
Media College (New Zealand: Tutorials on Production of Multi-media) ---
http://www.mediacollege.com/
American University Computer History Museum --- http://www.computinghistorymuseum.org/
The Apple (Computer) Museum --- http://www.theapplemuseum.com/
A History of Microsoft Windows (slide show from Wired News) ---
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/pcs/multimedia/2007/01/wiredphotos31
Oldcomputers.com --- http://www.old-computers.com/news/default.asp
Technology Product Price Comparison Sites
"Tech Tactics for Hard Times," by Rob Pegararo, The Washington Post,
October 2, 2008 ---
Click Here
Inconveniently enough, though, the stuff of a
technological lifestyle -- the hardware, the software, the services -- can
add up to a large fraction of your budget. And a lot of these items do count
as essential by many people's reckoning. So how can you chip away at that
figure?
The obvious answer is to do nothing: That is, don't
buy new things. Stick with last year's camera, the computer of 2005 and the
printer of 2003. This option isn't always viable, however. Gadgets break,
and technological progress can make using an older but still functional
model seem painful.
When that time comes, you can still shop
defensively. Employ price-comparison sites, like PriceGrabber (
http://pricegrabber.com ),
Yahoo (
http://shopping.yahoo.com ) and Microsoft's Live Search Cashback (
http://search.live.com/cashback ), to locate the cheapest deal. Resist
the temptation of this year's alleged must-have feature -- say, 10
megapixels of resolution on a digital camera or 4 gigabytes of memory on a
laptop -- to buy whatever people were excited about a year ago and which now
costs less.
Buying used hardware can also slash costs, though
some devices, such as laptops, tend to age poorly.
And, of course, decline "upsells" like fancy cables
or extended warranties. (Instead, if you can, buy with a credit card that
extends the manufacturer's coverage for free.)
Software provides another way to trim the tech
budget. Investigate free and open-source alternatives to commercial
programs. For example, try OpenOffice (
http://openoffice.org )
before you drop $150 or more on Microsoft Office.
But your greatest savings by an overwhelming margin
are not in one-time hardware or software purchases, but in the subscriptions
that make up most of the operating costs.
With cellphone, land-line, TV and Internet
services, you can easily hit $175 a month, the equivalent of two laptops a
year.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Although the above sites are probably legitimate, watch for sites found by Web
searches. It is somewhat common for a site (or a TV advertisement) to claim to
make price comparisons across vendors when in fact there is some type of
hidden agenda such as kickbacks from a particular vendor or even some type
of partnering arrangement that makes the price comparisons suspect. For example,
competitor prices might be a "suggested retail prices" which are far different
than the cash and carry prices. I am always suspicious of an auto insurance firm
that advertises "comparison prices" all the time in television advertisements.
It doesn't seem likely that a competitor that often has the lowest prices will
be treated fairly in such price comparisons.
Also be somewhat suspicious of the many software comparison sites, although
many such sites are very informative and helpful.
Bob Jensen's threads on alternatives to MS
Office are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Pricing
Restoration of Files
From the Scout Report on April 17, 2009
.Restoration 3.2.13
---
http://www3.telus.net/mikebike/RESTORATION.html
If you've ever found yourself in a pickle after
accidentally placing some needed files in the recycle bin, you'll appreciate
this helpful application. Created by Brian Kato, the Restoration application
effectively restores files which have been deleted from the recycle bin by
mistake. Conversely, the program has another function that makes it almost
impossible to restore all deleted files. This version is compatible with
computers running Windows 98 and newer.
Remember those trackers who rode ahead of the posses of the wild west
"How Do I Track My Kid's Surfing? Tammy Setzer wants a way to keep her
children from deleting their Web browsing history," by Lincoln Spector, PC
World via The Washington Post, May 5, 2009 ---
Click Here
The browsers, like Internet Explorer and Firefox,
won't let you do that. In fact, they're going in the opposite direction.
They're adding features to help users cover their tracks. (I discuss
these tools in
Selectively Delete Some of Your Browsing History.)
That's wonderful for adults, but it's problematic if you need to protect
your children.
What you need is child protection software--a
program that will operate in the background, keeping track of what your kids
are doing, blocking stuff you want blocked, and reporting back to you.
Before I recommend a program, I want to discuss the
best way to use such software. I'm writing this not as a technical expert,
but as a father with a grown son and two teenage daughters.
If you tell your children that you're going to
monitor their Internet access, they're going to hate you for it (at least
temporarily). But if you don't tell them, it will be far, far worse when
they finally find out. It's best to be open with them, weather the storm,
and seriously listen to their objections. Let them be part of the
decision-making process about what will and will not be allowed, even though
you, of course, must retain the last word.
And tracking their surfing habits makes more sense
than blocking sites. If they know that you can see every site they visit,
they'll learn to make wise choices, and isn't that what this is all about?
I recommend a brand-new program from Symantec
called OnlineFamily.Norton, in large part because it encourages feedback
between parents and children. It won't even let you hide the fact that
you're spying on them. If they visit a site that falls into a category you
object to (last I counted there were 47 categories), they will be told why
they can't visit that site, and they'll get an opportunity to write you
about it. You can block sites in the undesirable categories, merely monitor
them, or have Online.Family warn the kids then allow them to proceed.
Online.Family can also block certain searches,
monitor instant messaging, and control how much time your children spend on
their computers. That last one is important. Too much time on a computer can
be worse for a child than what they do on it.
The actual program is quite small, and runs in the
background on your child's PC. You can monitor their activity from the
Online.Family Web site, or be alerted to problems via e-mail.
OnlineFamily.Norton is free through the end of the
year. Symantec isn't saying what it will cost after that. I suspect they'll
charge for it as an ongoing service, rather than a one-time purchase.
Bob Jensen's threads on computer and networking security are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm#SpecialSection
Mac OS versus Windows OS
I’d be
interested in hearing success stories about the Windows emulators on the Mac.
Increasingly with the greatly reduced prices of computers, most Mac users have a
Windows machine that will run software available only for the Windows OS.
Supposedly these
have gotten better for emulating Windows on a Mac.
Fusion 3 (not
free) is a popular add on ---
http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/
Unlike the Windows emulator available from Apple, Fusion 3 allows split screens
where one screen is Max OS and the other is Windows OS. However, it will also
run in a single-screen Windows view.
I doubt whether
Fusion 3 is updated for the latest Windows 7 views of Windows
"Mac Browser Camino 2 Gets A Release Candidate," MJ Siegler, Tech Crunch
via The Washington Post, October 27, 2009 ---
Click Here
When it was revealed that
Mike
Pinkerton, the lead developer for the
Mozilla's Mac-based
Camino web browser was moving over to Google
to take charge of building Chrome for Mac, there was some concern that
Camino would be neglected. Pinkerton assured development on Camino would
continue, and sure enough it has. Today brings the first release candidate
for Camino 2, the new version of the browser.
Camino, though much less prevalent than its
Mozilla sibling, Firefox, has a solid following among Mac users who
appreciate its speed. It has long been my browser of choice as it's
relatively lightweight and very fast compared to Firefox. And compatibility
with various sites seems better than
Apple's own Safari.
We've been beta testing Camino 2 for several
months now, and it's solid. It offers several improvements over the first
iterations of Camino, notably in speed and the way it looks. Mozilla notes
that this Release Candidate 1 could become the final, first official build
of Camino 2 if there are no critical issue found.
So it looks like despite Pinkerton's Chrome
time commitments, Camino 2 will beat Chrome for Mac even reaching beta
status.
The anticipation for Chrome for Mac continues
to build. Even Google co-founder Sergey Brin admits that he's
disappointed
with how long it has taken to develop. But, as we noted the other day,
Chrome for Mac ? not Chromium, the open source browser on which Chrome is
based ? looks like
it's getting closer to a beta release.
November 22, 2009 reply from Trinity University Geology Professor Glenn Kroeger
Bob:
Fusion 3 runs Win7 great! I have several virtual
machines, so that I can run WinXP, Win7 and Liniux to test software I
develop. I also use Fusion for several heavy duty processing packages for
GIS and seismic processing. Much prefer it to a real windows machine... if
Windows gets uppity, I can restart one virtual machine while my Mac and
other virtual machines just keep chugging along.
For best results, I suggest a faster CPU, larger
cache and as much RAM as possible. For examples, it works great on my
MacBook Pro with a 2.8G processor (with 6M cache) and 4 GB RAM.
Glenn
November 22, 2009 reply from Trinity University Chemistry Professor Nancy
Mills
Bob,
I used VMFusion when I transitioned from Windows to Mac with the idea that I
could use my PC programs and not buy new ones. It was awkward for me to have
to open VMFusion when I needed to draw chemical structures or make plots.
And, my PC programs began to work more erratically. But this did buy me time
to make the complete transition to Mac, which was good.
Nancy
November 22, 2009 reply from Trinity University instructional support expert
Robert Chapman
Hi Robert,
I use VirtualBox from Sun on my
Mac without issue. It supports all of the important features that are
required for running virtual machines simultaneously. There is a free open
source version available. The email included below has experiences/myths
that I would fine either peculiar or very circumstantial for the user. For a
"power user" they seemed like pretty rookie mistakes issues. I hope the Mac
experience goes better for you. If you have any questions about VirtualBox
let me know. Thanks.
http://www.virtualbox.org/
Instructional Support Manager
Robert Chapman
rchapman@trinity.edu
November 22, 2009 reply from Tax Professor Richard Sansing at Dartmouth
I have had success using "Parallels Desktop" on my
Mac to run Scientific Workplace and the Solver function on Excel.
Richard Sansing
Parallels Desktop ---
http://www.parallels.com/
November 22, 2009 reply from David Fordham, James Madison University
[fordhadr@JMU.EDU]
Due to the number of people requesting elaboration
on my comment about the "myths of the Mac", here are my experiences:
Let me preface these by saying I've been told these
myths over and over by Mac fans who enthusiastically tried for years to get
me to ditch my Windows machines for a Mac by using these arguments on me. I
don't say that all Mac users hold these beliefs, but enough of my Mac-fan
acquaintances claim they are true for me to label them "myths" rather than
simply a mistaken error coming from a single uninformed or naive Mac user.)
Myth 1: "The Mac isn't affected by viruses". False.
Even though I very, very rarely use my Mac on the Internet, my iMac
contracted a virus. I don't know where it came from, but our Tech Support
people found it while troubleshooting a problem it caused. And it was darned
hard for them to find me any Anti-virus software that really works on a Mac
without gumming up the works bigtime. They installed three different
Mac-based anti-virus programs before they got one that didn't make at least
one of my standard Mac apps stop working. If Macs aren't affected by
viruses, why are there anti-virus programs for Macs? My tech support people
reluctantly agreed that the myth is false when I asked them that question.
Myth 2: "The Mac OS-X doesn't crash." False. I've
had at least four crashes, none of which can be explained by anyone,
including our tech support people, who repeated the myth to me until they
sat in my office and watched it happen. Yes, the whole shebang, not just one
program (or app, as the Mac users calls them).
Myth 3: "Mac-based programs don't crash." False.
I've gotten used to saving my work every five minutes on the iMac (I usually
go 10-15 minutes on the Windows machines) because I'm tired of seeing the
little pop-up window: "Adobe Premiere Pro (or some other program) has
unexpectedly quit working. You have lost any data that was not recently
saved. You can try opening the program again." This happens regularly in my
Adobe Creative Suite 3 for Mac programs, as well as two native
iMac-'included' apps that came pre-loaded on the machine.
Myth 4: "The Mac doesn't just freeze-up suddenly
like Windows programs do from time to time." False. I've let Adobe
Photoshop, Premiere Pro, iDVD, Safari, and several other programs sit
overnight in a "hung" state before Tech Support comes over and unplugs the
machine -- unlike Windows machines, even holding the button on the back
doesn't seem to reboot a Mac when it's frozen.
Myth 5: "The Mac is a lot easier to learn." Maybe
True for some, but not for me. Then again, I was 53 years old when I started
learning the Mac, whereas I was only 33 when I learned Windows 3.0, which
was built upon the DOS which I learned when I was in my mid-20's, which was
similar to CP/M which I learned when ... so I'll chalk up my learning curve
to age and curmudgeonliness.
Myth 6: "Everything you can do on a Windows machine
you can do on a Mac by using a Windows emulator." False. I have at least
four programs which run fine on Windows which refuse to run at all on my
iMac... out of about a dozen I tried. This was the first myth that our Tech
Support people readily admitted was false without me having to demonstrate
it to them. They recommended de-installing the emulators (which I have,
eagerly) and sticking with running all Windows programs on Windows machines,
and using only Mac programs on the Mac. (Note that this does not solve the
problems I have with the Mac programs noted in the myths above.)
Myth 7: "You can run Windows programs on a Mac, but
they run a little slower than on a Windows machine." Maybe True for some
programs, but not all... Some of my programs were not a little slow, they
were agonizingly slow, taking MINUTES instead of seconds to respond. This
was the second myth that our Tech Support agreed was false without my having
to convince them. I now run Windows programs only on Windows machines.
Myth 8: "Mac's have no trouble with Firewire."
False. Every single time I try to capture video from my Canon ZR-960
videocam, it takes eight or ten plug-ins and unplugs before the machine
finally recognizes it. Once it recognizes it, however, everything is good
from there on out. The Adobe Premiere people say its the iMac, not their
program. The camera works fine on Windows machines. The problem is
indigenous to certain individual iMacs, not all. It works fine first time on
about half of the iMacs tech support tried, but failed on the other half.
The camera works fine first time every time on all Windows Vista machines,
including my Vista Home Edition at home, even using the exact same cable.
(My office WinXP doesn't have a firewire card so I haven't tried it on XP.)
Myth 9: "Mac's have no trouble with USB devices
like outboard disk drives." False. For some reason, my iMac will not
recognize one of my Western Digital outboard disk drives... ever, even
though it has the NTFS partition created on another identical iMac!. The
disk simply doesn't show up on the desktop when plugged in. Either
partition! The disk works perfectly on every Windows machine I've plugged it
into. Both partitions (NTFS and FAT32) show up on XP and Vista machines
without problem. My three other disk drives work okay on my Mac, and even my
thumb drives (FAT32 only!) work fine on the iMac. But this one doesn't. I've
never had a Windows machine that refused to recognize ANY outboard disk
drive. Yes, it's a USB 2.0 compliant disk drive, purchased in 2008. The disk
works on some of CIT's Macs, but not others, and no one can explain why.
Myth 10: "It's just your individual machine, not
Macs in general. You must have a bad machine." FALSE. I've used up a lot of
brownie points with our tech support and CIT people by taking my stuff over
to their iMacs and duplicating the problems on THEIR machines when they try
to tell me it's just my individual machine. In fact, in two instances, I've
succeeded in "stumping the chumps" by making their machine fail in front of
their eyes in new ways that MY machine has never done before. In one of
those two, the tech support guy was actually running the machine, not me. So
it's not just the way I'm holding my mouth or blinking my eyes or doing
covert things with the command keys.
Now in all fairness, I have to admit that I'm
something of a power user, meaning that I probably use about 15-20% of an
application's capabilities, compared to the average user who uses probably
5-10% of the capabilities. I exercise the programs and explore recesses and
features and use the intermediate capabilities (the textbooks call them
"advanced" features, but in reality, even I don't even begin to touch some
of the real advanced capabilities of most mature modern software
applications! So I may be bumping into some unexplored territory with my
attempts to get the real performance out of some of these programs. So I
won't criticize the average Mac user who claims these myths are true,
because his/her experience might never have led him/her into the situations
where I encounter the problems.
Most Mac tech support people will admit that these
myths are myths. The few who still don't admit they are myths seem to
believe I'm bringing bad karma into their offices and machines. If I am, it
is unintentional. But they may be right, given the large number of Mac users
who still insist the above statements are gospel truth.
SUMMARY: I'm not dissing the Macs in favor of
Windows machines. Macs do have a lot going for them. My iMac flies like
lightning compared to Windows when it comes to video editing, video
rendering, audio conversions, photo editing en masse, and other A/V
applications (on those occasions that it doesn't hang, crash, or
automatically reboot without me doing anything!). So I'm relatively happy
with the Mac for those applications. And I can't even complain too much
about the operation or learning curves of some of the Mac apps -- like
Safari, etc. But I don't find those apps any EASIER, however, especially
since the interface's logic is so different from what I'm used to on Windows
machines.
But I must say that I'm not yet convinced that the
Mac is in any way superior (or even comparable) to a Windows machine for any
of the office-related (lower-case o) applications like word-processing,
spreadsheets that I've tried on it, especially for the features that I use,
nor do I believe a Mac is anywhere near as safe and reliable as all of my
Mac-fan friends had led me to believe. In fact, I would dare say that my
iMac has actually been just as unreliable and prone to problems as any
Windows machine I've ever had. Not necessarily worse, but every bit as bad.
I know Mac users who will disagree, and I know
Windows users who will also disagree, believing that nothing can be as
problematic as Microsoft software. I'm going ONLY on my own personal
experience. As my doctor told me only 29 hours ago, as his test diagnosed me
with H1N1 with no symptoms whatsoever but a previously-unexplained fever,
"hey, everybody is different... everybody is different."
David Fordham
James Madison University
Interchangeable Files on a Mac versus a PC
Mac Version of Quicken is Inferior and Incompatible
From Walter S. Mossberg's Mailbox on May 7, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124164628523093263.html
Q: I switched from PC to Mac a
year ago, but now I am thinking of adding a Windows laptop. If I do, what
kind of compatibility problem would I have? I would be using the laptop
mostly to write, to send/receive email and to Web browse.
A: In the old days, there were
compatibility problems, but most of those have gone away. Based on your
simple predicted usage, I'd say that you should be fine. For instance, both
Macs and PCs can interchangeably open and edit all of the major file types
-- JPG pictures, MP3 music, Microsoft Office documents, Adobe PDF files,
etc. Email and instant messages can, of course, be exchanged between the two
platforms, even if you are using different programs. And Macs understand
Windows file extensions. Also, you can use both platforms simultaneously on
the same home network to access the Internet.
In some cases, you might need different programs to
open the same files on the two platforms. But even that obstacle has greatly
diminished. For instance, programs like the Firefox and Safari Web browsers,
Adobe Reader, iTunes, Microsoft Office, Google Earth, Picasa, Photoshop and
many others come in native versions for both platforms that can handle the
same files. And, of course, Web-based programs like Gmail and Yahoo Mail
work on both. Sometimes, the same programs have different features and user
interfaces on Windows and Macs, but I haven't found these differences hard
to master.
The biggest problems for average users are
Quicken, whose Mac version is inferior and incompatible;
Internet Explorer, which is no longer made for the
Mac; and Microsoft Outlook, which is replaced on the Mac by a program called
Entourage that is similar but uses a different file format. And networking
can be tricky. In general, the Mac does a better job of seeing Windows PCs
on a network than Windows does of seeing Macs.
"Helping Your Data Decamp to a Mac," by Katherine Boehret, The Wall
Street Journal, December 10, 2008 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122886922043793175.html
Apple has promoted this PC-to-Mac switching concept
heavily over recent years -- particularly with its "I'm a Mac" commercials,
which bluntly compare the Windows and Mac operating systems. Windows Vista
has been a source of consternation all its own, and some people have opted
for the Mac rather than risking problems with a Vista PC. Apple recently
reported that about 50% of the people buying Macs in the Apple stores are
new to the Mac.
If you buy a new Mac from the Apple store, staffers
there ("Geniuses," as they call themselves) will transfer your files over to
the new machine free. This process takes place in the store, though Apple
says it generally isn't a "while you wait" task. If you buy a Mac elsewhere,
such as online or at Best Buy, Apple stores charge $50 for this transfer.
But some people aren't comfortable with the idea of
handing a computer filled with their personal files over to a stranger. If
this is the case for you, some other viable options include copying your old
PC's data onto a portable hard drive or onto discs that are compatible with
the new computer. If several home computers are networked, files can be
transferred onto a drive accessible by all the machines.
This week, I tried yet another method, copying data
from a Windows machine over to a new MacBook using a special transfer cable
from Belkin International Inc. The aptly named Switch-to-Mac Cable plugs
into USB ports on two computers. It came out a month ago and is available
for $50 at places like Best Buy and Apple stores. Like other transferring
methods, it moves only files and not programs or applications, such as
Microsoft Word. (Windows applications can run on a Mac using programs like
Boot Camp, Fusion or Parallels.)
I tested the Belkin Switch-to-Mac Cable by
transferring data to a new Apple MacBook from my two-year-old Lenovo
ThinkPad X60, which runs Vista. (Most people will transfer from an older PC
that doesn't run Vista.)
After installing the software included and
connecting the transfer cable to both the Mac and Windows PC, short,
on-screen prompts walked me through the steps for copying data from one
computer to the other. On one instructional screen, I checked boxes to
indicate what I wanted to transfer, including documents, pictures, music,
videos, Internet Explorer bookmarks, desktop wallpaper and desktop files.
Here, I could also opt to transfer a custom folder as well as personal
information from Outlook like email, contacts and calendar.
I liked Belkin's simple approach, including
unintimidating software and a straightforward cable with a glowing, white
indicator. But the files didn't all properly transfer from my Windows laptop
to my Mac. Most notably, the software prompted me to move files on my
desktop, but the cable moved only five of the 23 selected files stored
there.
Also, I use Mozilla's Firefox as my default
browser, but Belkin doesn't move Firefox bookmarks to the Mac. Still, my
Internet Explorer bookmarks moved over into Safari, Apple's browser. Belkin
explained that it left out Firefox transfers, instead focusing on programs
like Safari that come installed on Macs. Even without a cable, Firefox
itself will export bookmarks to be moved to the Mac in just a few simple
steps.
I had no problems transferring everything else, and
things like photos and music moved to the Mac appeared there in logical
places. For example, photos stored in the "My Pictures" folder on my Windows
PC automatically moved over to iPhoto on the Mac and retained their original
folder labels in iPhoto.
In most cases, newly transferred files were clearly
labeled on the Mac in folders marked "Windows PC." After my initial
transfer, I used the cable for additional transfers, and the data moved in
those follow-ups were labeled "Windows PC-2" and so on. When my email,
contacts and calendar transferred from my Windows Live Mail desktop client,
I wasn't sure where this data had moved within Apple Mail because I didn't
see a "Windows PC" folder. A Belkin representative explained that files
transferred to Apple Mail are stored in an "Import" folder.
If your transfer doesn't work perfectly the first
time, try moving stray files into a folder that transferred successfully in
a previous attempt. I did this with some of my desktop files when they
didn't move over and it worked, albeit with an extra step.
Over the phone, I walked through numerous
troubleshooting scenarios with Belkin to figure out why my desktop files
didn't transfer over to the new Mac, but nothing helped. Belkin said it
hadn't seen my desktop transfer problem in its tests.
I was frustrated to find that Belkin doesn't offer
much in the way of detailed instructions for users, such as a FAQs Web site
or troubleshooting steps for common hiccups. Its simplicity is an asset, but
when performing an important task like transferring data, I'd rather have
the option of knowing more than less. Belkin says it plans to add more help
for users in the future.
As its name indicates, the Belkin Switch-to-Mac
Cable isn't designed to transfer data from one Mac to another, nor from one
Windows PC to another. Nor will it transfer data from a Mac to a Windows PC.
Additionally, all hidden directories and system directories are ignored, as
are all files with the following extensions: .exe, .com, .dll, .scr, .ini,
.db, .lnk.
Not tested was a competing product from Detto
Technologies, the $50 Move2Mac, which comes in two versions: One enables
transfers from older PCs without USB ports, the other enables transfers from
PCs with USB ports that are running Windows 98, Millennium, 2000 or XP --
but not Vista, which the Belkin enables.
If you're moving away from a Windows PC, Belkin's
Switch-to-Mac Cable is one tool that can make this transition easier.
Saving Websites as PDF Files
PDFMyURL Saves Web Sites as PDF Files ---
http://lifehacker.com/5461512/pdfmyurl-saves-web-sites-as-pdf-files
You can also use Adobe Acrobat to save Websites
as PDF files
Exacting Print Outs of Web Pages
David Albrecht wanted hard copies of some pages in his blog --- for example
see the page at
http://profalbrecht.wordpress.com/
As with most blogs and many other Web pages, the File, Print commands on a Web
browser does not generate the desired facsimile when printed.
David asked AECMers to suggest ways to get printed facsimiles of his Web pages.
The thread drifted a bit into screen capturing of video frames.
Capturing Web Pages and Other Windows Screen Images (including scrollable
images)
In particular note Shari Thompson's answer message
below.
January 27, 2010 message from Rick Lillie
[rlillie@CSUSB.EDU]
I use a relatively
simple screen capture program called "CaptureWizPro" by Pixelmetrics (
http://www.pixelmetrics.com/
) for capturing screen content. I like it much better than other capture
programs. I went to "The Summa" web page and used CaptureWizPro to capture
the web page and saved it in .pdf format. . . .
I
used the "auto scroll down" feature to capture the entire web page. I saved
the page as a .pdf file and clicked the option to "fit to page."
When you open the attached .pdf file, you may need to use the +/- option at
the top of the Adobe Acrobat screen to adjust the size of your blog page. I
was able to increase the page size to file most of the screen which made
your content very readable.
People have individual preferences for screen capture. Of all that I have
used, I CaptureWizPro the best. It makes capturing/printing/saving blog
pages very easy to do.
Want to take this
one step further? Try WebNotes (
http://www.webnotes.net/
). With WebNotes, you can annotate (highlighting and sticky notes) web
pages and .pdf documents. WebNotes is a Web 2.0, hosted service. I use it
to annotate web pages and .pdf documents that I include in my course
materials. WebNotes provides an easy way to guide students through
articles.
Hope this helps.
Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy
CSUSB, CBPA, Department of Accounting & Finance
5500 University Parkway, JB-547
San Bernardino, CA. 92407-2397
Email:
rlillie@csusb.edu
Telephone: (909) 537-5726
Skype (Username): ricklillie
January 28, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Rick,
This is very interesting software, I notice that there are some Websites
that offer free downloads, but I don’t trust those sites. I have already
ordered the professional version from PixelMetrics, but since I like to buy
software on a mailed CD it will be a couple of weeks before the CD is
delivered up here. I like a mailed CD because I can install the software on
multiple computers and do not have to be online for the installation. Also
if the vendor goes bankrupt I still have the installation CD.
Question 1 I just read where this will also capture video frames from
YouTube. Have you tried a YouTube screen capture?
Question 2 Have you tried to capture a picture of a Windows Media Player
screen of paused video using CaptureWizPro?
One of the most difficult things to capture perfectly is a Windows Media
Player screen. I’ve never had any luck using SnagIT with on Windows Media
Player screens. SnagIT captures what looks like an image, but you really
cannot save the image as a bmp or other picture file.
Thanks for telling us about the CaptureWizPro software.
Bob Jensen
PS: Some Blog Printing Considerations
The Problem of Frames in Blogs ---
http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2007/11/27/hp-blog-printing
Scrapbook Blogger ---
https://www.scrapbookblogger.com/
January 28 2010 reply from Rick Lillie
[rlillie@CSUSB.EDU]
Hi Bob,
About Question #1
The CaptureWizPro
does capture video. I saves files in a variety of formats. I have not
tried to capture a YouTube video file. When I include a YouTube video in my
course materials, I either include the URL link to the video or use the html
code to embed the Flash player in the web page.
Video and audio capture
Record screen activity and/or sound to AVI, WMV, or GIV movie files of
WAV audio files.
About Question #2
Yes, you can
capture screenshots from Windows Media Player. I've had the experience with
getting nothing but a black screen. Below is the explanation from
CaptureWizPro.
Rick Lillie
January 28, 2009 reply from Shari Thompson
[shari.thompson@PVPL.COM]
Hi David
I think a relatively hassle-free way would be to use Adobe Acrobat (either
Acrobat Standard or Acrobat Pro). Albeit somewhat more costly than other
software suggested, you can try Acrobat for free by downloading it from:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/
I’ve found Acrobat to be the most convenient way to
quickly convert a document—in any software format—into a good quality pdf
that prints the way it displays. I use Acrobat almost daily at work. It
makes document distribution a heck of a lot easier.
Acrobat samples: • I converted a section of your
blog to an 8-pg pdf in about a minute (see “The Summa” pdf, attached)
Someone earlier mentioned want if you want just the
blog text without the ads in the margins. I know of a couple ways to do
this:
o One way: Start with the originally converted
pdf, and then use the crop tool to take off the right margin. Acrobat
displays a pop-up that visually shows how much of the actual image will
be cropped. (see “The Summa cropped ”)
o Or use the browsers print feature and select
“Adobe PDF” in place of your printer: Select “text only” from your
browser’s print button and choose “adobe PDF” as the printer. Adobe then
converts the selected text (and images, if selected) into a pdf. (see
“The Summa - just the text”)
Email or give me a call if you have any questions.
My employer paid $300 for it a few years ago, but looks like you could buy
it at academic pricing for $160:
http://www.adobe.com/education/purchasing/education_pricing.html
Shari Thompson CIA
Internal Auditing Manager
Professional Veterinary Products
Direct 402.829.5248 Fax 402.829.5322
www.pvpl.com
January 28, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Shari,
What a
great idea.
Thanks so
much.
Just to
make it easier for readers, I linked your facsimile
files as follows:
The software below looks interesting:
Scrapbook Blogger ---
https://www.scrapbookblogger.com/
Bob Jensen
Convert Scanned Picture Files or PDF
Files into MS Word or Other Text Files
Turn PDFs Into Word Documents:
The aptly named PDF to Word service
extracts the text from PDFs for easy editing in Word. And it's free!" by Rick
Broida, PC World via The Washington Post, May 15, 2009 ---
Click Here
Ever wish you could edit a PDF file in Microsoft Word? Seems like that
should be easy enough, especially when you're dealing with a document that's
mostly text. Alas, a PDF is really just a collection of images, meaning you
can't edit the contents in their native format.
Of course, there are
pricey software utilities that will convert a
PDF into Word-friendly text. But there's also
PDF to Word, a Web
service that accomplishes the same thing
absolutely free.
All you do is upload your PDF and choose your
desired output format: Word or Rich Text Format. Then you sit tight while
the service works its magic, eventually sending you an e-mail with a link to
download the converted document.
Best bet: Choose Word over RTF. Word conversions
end up looking remarkably similar to your original PDFs. Ultimately, the
quality varies from one document to another depending on its content,
layout, etc.
Jensen Comment
It is also possible to scan hard copy pages and convert the scanned text into
computer text. This is not so simple when using electronic book readers like
Kindle, which is why they are the most secure form of publishing for authors who
do not want their works copied. Of course no form of publishing is completely
secure since cameras may take pictures of text pages.
Scan Multi-Page Image Documents into PDF and Text Files (especially
note the reply from Patricia Walters at the ending of this Tidbit)
Nitro Professional ---
http://www.nitropdf.com/
Nitro PDF® Professional, the
complete Adobe® Acrobat® replacement, helps you do what you need to with its
powerful tools to create, convert, edit, combine, secure, annotate, form-fill,
and save 100% industry-standard PDF files.
Nitro Pro has claimed the
top spot in Computerworld's review of PDF editors, beating out Acrobat X (and
the rest) with its powerful editing features and superior ease of use.
May 29, 2011 message from Jim Richards
As long as it is a PDF
document and not something that has been scanned as images to PDF, then Nitro
Professional should do it. It will do more than one page at a time.
Sometimes trial versions will only do a small number of pages but the full
version will do the entire document but it might take a while to do it. I have
tried it will annual reports but I have never tried to do 244 pages in the one
document.
I just tried it with the XBRL Dimensions
Specification and it worked fine. I was going to do a research report from
Aberdeen that contains graphics but it needed a password to open the document in
Nitro.
Tables sometimes cause Nitro problems. On some
occasions it does read them as a table but other times it is tabular columns. It
may depend on how the original document was created.
I am not sure if I can
attach a zip file to list email for you to look at so I will send it directly to
your email address.
Jim
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Richards
Phone (Home): (08) 9249 6874
Phone (Mobile): 0419-172-100
May 29, 2011 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Jim,
I'm confused by your first sentence. If the document is already a PDF
document, what would be the purpose of scanning it into a PDF document?
Then it dawned on me that the purpose might be to obtain PDF documents that
do not have origin security clearance for selection, cutting, and pasting.
But why should it matter how the original PDF document was generated when
using Nitro? Pehaps what you were saying in the first sentence is that when
a file is not an image file or a text file, then Nitro does not do a PDF
conversion?
Also creating a PDF document is not quite the same
as obtaining a fully-editable OCR text document. A PDF document can have
search capabilities vis-a-vis an image file, but if the selected PDF text
cannot be copied into free text it would seem that this is not quite the
same as OCR with something like Omni Page Pro ---
http://www.nuance.com/for-business/by-product/omnipage/index.htm
I question whether
Nitro
will work when a book publisher types a book in MS Word, and converts
the book into a
PDF document with security settings that will not allow
selection, copying, and pasting. If this were possible the whole world
would be converting published
PDF books
into MS Word documents that can be modified by users. I suspect Nitro
only works when the original authors set weaker security parameters for
their PDF documents. Otherwise book publishers would stop publishing in
PDF formats.
My guess is that the only way to illegally beat the
PDF book
publishers is to create an image file of each page --- which then is an
image file that cannot be edited easily or searched for key words.
Book publishers cannot prevent image file duplication even when they
only sell books in hard copy. That's why God invented scanners.
Getting image files from
eBook
readers like the Kindle and the
iPad is a
bit trickier, although there are probably scanning apps out there now
for copying book pages. Are there such apps available?
I've never held an
eBook
reader over a flatbed scanner.
Bob Jensen
May 30, 2011 reply from Jim Richards
Hi Bob,
Sometimes a PDF ( and a private reply from Barry
confirmed this) is a PDF that has been created by scanning pages to create
images of each page rather than creating the PDF from a Word document. If the
PDF consists of pages that are images it would require OCR and Nitro does offer
this as an additional alternative but it is not something I have tested.
What I was trying to explain
was the two different ways in which the PDF could have been created. It could be
a “native” PDF created by some other application(s) [such as Word and printing
to a PDF file or Acrobat itself] or simply pages that have been scanned and
collected together in a PDF document. The latter would require OCR capabilities
if the text was to be extracted from the document.
Nitro can extract the text
from a PDF file if it is a “true” PDF but the more difficult approach is to
extract text using OCR if the original document used to create the PDF scanned
images of a pages. So if someone had an paper document, scanned all of the pages
and then inserted those images into a PDF file, the PDF consists of images
rather than text. This would mean that OCR would be needed to try and extract
the text from the document.
My understanding from Barry
that this latter process was used to create his PDF file.
Jim
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Richards
Phone (Home): (08) 9249 6874
Phone (Mobile): 0419-172-100
May 30, 2011 reply from Scott Bonacker
If you have one of the
Acrobat products, you can run OCR on it and then copy the text. But you’ll lose
formatting. Accuracy of the OCR depends heavily on the quality of the scan – at
least 400dpi black and white is what we use.
Or you can save it as a Word
file from within Acrobat, not sure all formatting would survive though.
Not cheap, but if you are
going to do this often you could get OmniPage Pro
http://www.nuance.com/for-individuals/by-product/omnipage/index.htm
Might be a good departmental
purchase -
Nuance also has a free reader that comes with a
conversion service
http://www.nuance.com/products/pdf-reader/index.htm
There is a Yahoo group that might have ideas as well –
paperlessdigitallife@yahoogroups.com
I
hope this helps,
Scott Bonacker CPA
Springfield, MO
May 31, 2011 reply from Patricia Walters
I just downloaded
and tried the Nuance PDF Converter for Mac that worked like a charm converting a
pdf to word. I haven't yet tried it on a longer annual report, but I was
impressed that all formatting was retained.
I was also impressed that I
could remove words or sentences entirely from the pdf rather than simply
blackline them.
Thanks again
for this recommendation.
Pat
Bob Jensen's technology bookmarks are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm
Convert From One Text Format into Another Format
"Pandoc Converts All Your (Text) Documents." by Lincoln Mullen,
Chronicle of Higher Education, February 23, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/pandoc-converts-all-your-text-documents/38700?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
For the past few months we ProfHackers have been
running an occasional series about using the command line. I got us started
with a couple posts
explaining why you might want to use the command line
and
how to get started using it. Konrad followed with
a posts about
the uniq command and
the sort command for working with
text and data files. Amy added a post about
how the command line let her hack the NOOK Color,
and I wrote about
using pdftk to manipulate PDFs.
Taking up the command line is easier if you have a
specific problem you’re trying to solve. For me, the problem was that I
wanted to do all of my writing in a
plain text format, like Markdown or
LaTeX. But I need to be able to share my writing
in a variety of formats: HTML for the web, PDF for printed documents or
academic writing, and occasionally RTF or Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.
The best way I’ve found to move between these
formats is
Pandoc.
Pandoc is a command line tool written by a philosophy
professor, John
MacFarlane. Its general use is to take a document
in one format and convert it to another. You can get an idea of the wide
variety of formats Pandoc can translate by looking at an
enlargement of the header diagram.
Here’s an example of how this works. Suppose that
you have a Markdown document like the one we created for the post on
Markdown. (View
pandoc-example.markdown on GitHub.)
You can convert this to a number of text formats with a simple terminal
command:
Markdown to HTML (HTML
output on GitHub):
pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.html
Markdown to LaTeX (LaTeX
output on GitHub):
pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.tex
Markdown to DOCX:
pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.docx
Markdown to PDF (download
PDF):
pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.pdf
That command calls pandoc, tells it
which file to convert (pandoc-example.markdown) and tells it
which file to export (e.g., pandoc-example.html). Pandoc
figures out what types of files these are from the extension, or you can
pass it additional arguments. For some of the formats, you can convert the
other way. For example, you could convert LaTex to Markdown or to a Word
DOCX, or HTML to Markdown or LaTeX. To convert to PDF, though, you’ll need
to have LaTeX installed on your system.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
Microsoft’s Word 2007, Excel 2007, and
PowerPoint 2007 Compatibility Pack
July 27, 2009 message from a friend
Oh, no! I have XP because
some of my programs wouldn’t run on Vista and all I’ve heard about Vista is
what a pain in the behind it is. Someone sent me a Word doc a couple of
weeks ago, and I couldn’t open it because it was in Word 7. I wrote back,
said I couldn’t open it, and could they send the message (it was an
invitation of some sort) in the body of an e-mail message. Never heard back
from them. I wouldn’t get a computer with Windows 7 yet…if XP will be
minimally supported for another five years, I can wait a year or two. I need
a new computer, but I don’t need headaches.
July 28, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen
There are various
alternatives (free and not free) for reading docx, xlsx, and pptx files. But
I do not trust downloads from companies I’ve never heard of before.
I recommend looking into
Microsoft’s Compatibility Pack ---
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA101686761033.aspx
Microsoft has added new file
formats to Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 to reduce file
size, improve security and reliability, and enhance integration with
external sources. To help ensure that you can exchange documents between
Microsoft Office releases, Microsoft has developed a Compatibility Pack for
the Office Word, Office Excel, and Office PowerPoint 2007 File Formats.
Bob Jensen
Saving a Video Clip as a Bitmap
Drag the video clip into the Camtasia Producer
timeline.
Find the frame you want to save as a bitmap
Click on File, Save frame as
Name the file and save
Sending Large/Huge Files Free
Send files, large and small, with more privacy on the Web ---
http://www.pando.com/
A free way to send up to a 1 Gb huge file by email
This is a good way
to send video and audio files!
YouSendIt is now called Hightail ----
https://www.hightail.com/
From the Scout Report on August 11, 2017
Firefox Send ---
https://send.firefox.com
It can be frustratingly difficult to send large
files over the internet using email or instant messaging. Many email
providers impose attachment size limitations. In part, they do this because
the email system was not designed to move large quantities of data and often
does not perform well when forced to do so. Many instant messaging systems
were designed with large file transfers in mind, but these transfers are
often thwarted by firewalls. Firefox Send is a new and easy-to-use solution
to this problem. It leverages the encryption support in modern browsers to
encode files before upload to Mozilla's servers. When the upload is
complete, users receive a download URL that they may share over IM, email,
etc. These URLs include the encryption key necessary to decode the file, but
they place it in the 'fragment' section of the URL which is never sent to
the server. Mozilla's servers will delete their encoded copy of the data
after one download or after 24 hours. Source code for Firefox Send is
available on github, allowing more technical users to host their own Send
servers.
Tunnelbear ---
https://www.tunnelbear.com/
From the Scout Report on March 6, 2015
poetic.io ---
https://poetic.io/
poetic.io is a simple and secure way to transfer
files. Sign up just requires an email address. From there, users may drag
and drop files as large as 3GB to the poetic.io page, enter destination
emails, and then send. (To put this in perspective: the average full-length
movie is about 1GB.) Besides speed and efficiency for large file movement,
the site also provides basic security, so that readers know only their
recipients will receive the data. The site is free and accessible from any
computer with an Internet connection, and can be a welcome tool for teachers
who need to share data with students and each other, co-workers who are
working on data-heavy projects, and others who share large data files
(video, graphics, photos) in their work and play.
I love the Hightail (formerly YouSendIt) service that does not require zip or any form of
file compression. You can learn how to use YouSendIt in less than a minute
--- https://www.hightail.com/
Question
It frequently happens that you want to send or receive email attachments
that are just too large to sent via email.
For example, my Christmas letter was a DOC file that contained so many
pictures that I just could not send it via email to Kinkos for printing.
What are some of the free alternatives for doing transferring such files
between friends or organizations?
What is this neat new thing called SideDrop?
Answer
You can read about alternatives for sending large files at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#SendingLargeFiles
I love the Hightail alternative and cannot explain why this valuable
service is free ---
https://www.hightail.com/
It's a bit slower than attaching email, but that's because the files are so
large.
For example, I told Jerry Searfoss he could send me the blueprints of his
grand new house in Pullman via YouSendIt, and it worked.
Hightail added a service called SideDrop ---
https://www.hightail.com/
You can watch a video at the above site that explains SideDrop. Even if you
don't want to bother with SideDrop, Hightail is still a great service.
From the Scout Report on January 25, 2013
Digital Pigeon ---
https://digitalpigeon.com/
If you're looking to send large files, why not give
Digital Pigeon a try? With this free version of the program, users can send
up to four 500MB files a month to three recipients. It's a great way to
consolidate the transfer of large pieces of information, and the site
includes a demonstration and an FAQ section. This version is compatible with
all operating systems.
"A Way to Share Photos, Files And Money in Black & White: Walt
Mossberg reviews Xsync, an iPhone app that uses QR codes to transfer photos,
songs, videos and even money, The Wall Street Journal, January 16,
2019 ---
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324734904578243730813204830.html?mg=reno64-wsj
Say you want to quickly transfer a file, like a
photo or a contact entry, from your smartphone to a friend's. Most people
would email or text the file. But a number of technologies have come along
to make the process quicker and simpler.
On some Android phones, you can "beam" files like
photos from phone to phone by tapping one phone to another, or bringing them
very close. But that requires that both phones have a special chip, called
NFC, which isn't yet universal on Android phones and doesn't exist at all in
iPhones.
Another approach is to use an app called Bump,
which transfers files between iPhones and Android phones when those holding
them do a sort of sideways fist bump. It works pretty well, but you have to
make contact with the other person.
This week, I've been testing a different
approach—an iPhone app called Xsync. It doesn't require any special chip and
instead uses a free app and a hardware feature almost every smartphone
possesses—the camera. While it is primarily meant, like Bump, for transfers
between phones in proximity, it works over long distances. I was able to
almost instantly send and get photos, videos and songs using Xsync between
two iPhones held up to computer webcams during a Skype video call.
The key to Xsync is the QR code, that square symbol
found seemingly everywhere these days—online, in print newspapers and
magazines, on posters and other places. These codes typically just contain
text—often, a Web address. But Xsync, a tiny company based in Seattle,
generates QR codes that initiate the transfer of whole files, or in the case
of photos, even groups of files. It has a built-in QR code scanner to read
these codes using the phone's camera.
The biggest drawback to Xsync is that it is
currently only available for the iPhone. An Android version is planned for
sometime this quarter. Meanwhile, you can use an Android phone with any QR
code reader to receive, though not send, files sent via Xsync.
The Xsync app is something of a teaser for the
underlying technology, which the company calls the Optical Message Service.
The company's goal isn't to build its own apps, but to license the
technology to cellphone makers so it becomes a built-in way to transfer
files.
Here's how it works. Once you install Xsync on your
iPhone, you select an audio file, photo, video, contact, or calendar
appointment, each of which is represented by a simple icon. The app creates
a QR code representing the intended transfer of that file and temporarily
sends the file to Xsync's server. Your friend uses Xsync to scan the QR code
you've created with his or her iPhone's camera, and the files are sent to
your friend's iPhone.
In my tests, it was easy, quick and reliable. I
successfully used Xsync to send and receive all the included types of files
with an iPhone 5, an iPhone 4S, and an iPad Mini. I was also able to receive
files on an Android phone, a Google GOOG -0.96% Nexus 4, via a QR code
generated by Xsync.
You can even generate a QR code using Xsync that
will allow you to transfer money from your PayPal account to another
person's, though that requires an added authentication step for security.
But it worked, and would be a good way to, say, split a bill at a
restaurant. (This PayPal feature of Xsync doesn't work with Android, for
now.)
The company says the file transfers are secure, for
two reasons. First, they are encrypted. More important, each code is
generated for a specific transfer and expires after a relatively short time.
For instance, codes for photos expire after 24 hours, according to the
company.
You can use Xsync to transmit certain kinds of
files—including documents—you've stored in your Dropbox account, though,
oddly, the Xsync app hides this document-transfer feature under an icon for
sharing calendar appointments.
And you don't have to be close to make the
transfer. In addition to my Skype example, you can send a QR code generated
by Xsync via email or text message, or even post the code to Facebook FB
-1.59% . Another person can then scan the code to get the file.
Xsync can generate codes that represent either
existing files on your phone, or files you create on the spot. If you don't
want to use an existing one, the audio, photo, video and calendar icons in
the app invite you to create a new file to be transferred.
Continued in article
Signature995 9.0 ---
http://www.signature995.com/
If you're looking for a way to securely transmit and
digitally sign PDFs, look no further than this application. Using Microsoft
Cryptographic technology, Signature995 features a multi-tabbed interface that is
easy to use. Visitors can also encrypt other file types (such as doc and zip
files), and they can also limit file access to certain users. This version is
compatible with computers running Windows 95 and newer.
Screencasting
ScreenCast from TechSmith is a leading storage/server alternative for your
Jing and Camtasia videos ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TechSmith
However, there are quite a few other screeencast video capturing alternatives
and hosts ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_screencasting_software
This is a pretty impressive Wikipedia comparison site!
Bob Jensen's video helpers ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
Dropbox (Cloud Storage) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropbox_%28service%29
"Dropbox Will Simplify Your Life," by David Pogue, The New York
Times, October 20, 2011 ---
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/dropbox-will-simplify-your-life/
Every time I’m tempted to write about some tech
product that’s been around awhile, I’m torn. On one hand, I’ll be blasted by
the technogeeks for being late to the party. On the other hand, it doesn’t
seem right to keep something great hidden under a barrel from the rest of
the world.
So here goes: I love Dropbox.
Continued in article
October 26, 2011 reply from Lim.K.Teoh
SugarSync is also a good alternative that offers a
greater storage for free. Its unique advantage is that we don't have to
install any software to access the files.
Lim
October 22, 2011 reply from Rick Lillie
I read David Pogue's post
about Dropbox. I agree it is easy to use and is a great tool for file
sharing.
There are many software
programs and hosted collaboration services available (both free and for fee)
that focus on file sharing as a way to collaborate. But, file sharing is
just one aspect of collaborating with others on a project.
Dropbox is great for what
it does. There are alternatives that do much more than what Dropbox does.
For example, for the past few
years, I have used
Collanos Workplace as a way to collaborate
with students on independent study and group projects. Collanos is similar
to Groove Networks (now part of enterprise edition of Microsoft Office).
Collanos emphasizes organizing the project and workflow and includes many
options for communicating and incorporating other technology tools as needed
to meet project needs.
I've also used Collanos Workplace
to collaborate with colleagues on research projects. Recently, I've been
using a great online hosted collaboration service called
Glasscubes.
It's more intuitive than Collanos and shifts the
process to "the Cloud."
There are lots of tech
tools to use for research and classroom activities. The key is to find the
tool that "best fits" the needs of the project and the technology skills of
both students and instructor.
Best wishes,
Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy
CSUSB, CBPA, Department of Accounting & Finance
5500 University Parkway, JB-547
San Bernardino, CA. 92407-2397
"Automatic File Conversions and More with Dropbox Automator," by Joe
Brockmeier, ReadWriteWeb, December 31, 2011 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/automatic_file_conversions_and_more_with_dropbox_a.php
Computers keep getting closer and closer to making
people obsolete. The latest step towards human obsolescence?
Dropbox Automator, a
Web-based tool for setting up actions that happen as soon as you put a file
in a Dropbox folder. It’s not flawless just yet, but it might provide a
useful service for many Dropbox users.
The service is powered by
Wappwolf, an online “action
store” that features a set of Web actions
that can process files. For example, it has ready made actions to encrypt
and decrypt files, extract text from PDFs, convert documents to PDF,
generate QR codes and manipulate images.
Zoho CRM offers a complete customer life cycle
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"8 Simple Ways To Share Data Online," by
David Strom, ReadWriteWeb, June 17, 2011 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/biz/2011/06/8-simple-ways-to-share-data-on.php
If you have to jointly
author a spreadsheet with a colleague, what is the first thing that you do?
Email it back and forth. This can be painful, particularly as you try to
keep track of your partner's changes and hope the emails transit back and
forth across the Internet. Add a third or fourth person, and things get
worse. Luckily, there is a better way, and a number of Web-based service
providers have stepped up with tools to make spreadsheet sharing a lot
easier than sending attachments.
We've written about a
few of them, including
Longjump and Hyperbase (one of our products of the
year for 2008), but I have tried a bunch others, and will show you what is
involved and how they stack up.
The process is very
straightforward: you either copy and paste data or take your spreadsheet and
upload it to the service, after creating accounts for you and your
collaborators. Then you can make changes via your Web browser, no other
software is required. Some of the services allow for more bells and
whistles. Setup time is minimal; your data is properly protected by the
service and safe from harm. And you don't need to learn any Web/database
programming skills either.
For many people, the
spreadsheet is still one of the most popular low-end database applications.
The rubric of a table of rows and columns is easily understood and can
easily be used as a way to view records and fields of a database. Plus, you
don't need to design special reports to view your data entries, and you can
easily sort your data without having to create data dictionaries or other
database structures, just use the appropriate Excel commands. Having a
specialized service that can share this data makes it easier to collaborate
too, whether your partners are across the office or on the other side of the
world. As long as they have an Internet connection, they are good to go.
There are eight different
services currently available, in order of increasing cost:
Online Spreadsheet
Sharing Services
Pricing and
support
When you decide on the
particular service, it pays to read the pricing fine print. There are
discounts for annual subscriptions on most services, and some such as
Smartsheet offer additional discounts for non-profit and educational
institutions. All of these services have 14 day or 30 day free trials to
get started, so you can get a feel of what is involved in manipulating
your data and how easy it is to make changes, produce reports, and
receive notifications.
Continued in article
June 18, 2011 reply from Amy Dunbar
I find Google docs great for small spreadsheets,
but cumbersome for large files.
I set up Dropbox folders for each of my groups in
my online class (3-5 students in a group). They post their project
spreadsheets in the group folders, and if a student has a question, I can
quickly open the spreadsheet to see what is going on. Students contact me by
AIM and we discuss the spreadsheet via AIM. Works like a charm for me.
Amy Dunbar
UConn
Bob Jensen's threads on sending large files
across the Internet ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#SendingLargeFiles
Question
How can you both send large files across the Internet and convert them to PDF
format?
From the Scout Report on December 12, 2008
You Send It Express ---
https://www.hightail.com/
Sending large files to colleagues and friends
around the world can be cumbersome, so it's nice to learn about Hightail
Express. Visitors who sign up to use the application can send up to 2GB,
convert files to the pdf format,
and also take advantage of password protection and certified delivery. This
version is compatible with computers running Windows XP, Vista, or Mac OS X
10.4.11 or higher. Additionally, it's worth noting that this is a trial
version which is offered for free for fourteen days.
December 19, 2008 reply from M Robert Bowers
[M.Robert.Bowers@WHARTON.UPENN.EDU]
Just a reminder if you want to convert files to
pdf. There is a program, cutepdf (
www.cutepdf.com )
that converts any file to pdf. If the program has a File|Print feature,
it allows you to print to cutepdf.
Process Terminator 1.0 ---
http://www.jcsoftware.co.nr/
Getting rid of an unresponsive program or process
on a computer can be frustrating, so it's nice to learn about this
application. Process Terminator allows users to list the running processes,
examine them, and quickly terminate the processes in question. You can find
the program by clicking on "Downloads" from their homepage. This version is
compatible with computers running Windows 95 and newer.
Students and instructors sometimes need to send each other very large files,
including files with lots of graphics, audio, and even video (such as video
recorded using Camtasia). Email attachments are limited to relatively small
files.
"Send Large Files via Yahoo Mail: Can't get by with Yahoo's 25MB
attachment limit? Have no fear: a newly added Drop.io application effectively
raises the limit to 100MB," by Rick Broida, PC World via The
Washington Post, September 18, 2009 ---
Click Here .
Good news for Yahoo Mail users: If you've had
trouble sending large files, help is at hand. A new Drop.io application lets
you send attachments as large as 100MB.
By default, Yahoo allows attachments no larger than
25MB. That's pretty decent, but it probably won't cover a video, big batch
of photos, or the like.
Enter
Drop.io,
one of my favorite file-sharing services. When you sign into your Yahoo
account, look for Drop.io's new Attach Large Files option in the
Applications box. Give a click and follow the instructions to select your
file(s) and compose your message to go with it.
Don't worry about the clogging up your recipient's
inbox with your mammoth attachment: Drop.io doesn't send the actual file,
but rather a link to where it can be downloaded.
Drop.io is an easy to use, online collaboration and file sharing service that
provides users with a simple, real time and private way to chat and share ---
http://drop.io/about
Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop.io
When possible, files that are not extremely private are best placed,
temporarily at least, on a Web server such that only the link need be
transferred. Users can then download these files files. I've had large files
that I kept on a Web server for less than 20 minutes --- just long enough for
particular persons to download the files.
Bob Jensen's threads on other alternatives for transferring very large
files across the Internet ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#SendingLargeFiles
TeamViewer 4.0.5615 ---
http://www.teamviewer.com/index.aspx
MediaMax allows you store up to 25 Gb free ---
http://www.mediamax.com/index.aspx
"Share Video Captures and Huge Files for
Free: Two terrific tools: Jing gives you smart, painless video and
screen captures; TransferBigFiles lets you share files of up to 1GB in size,"
by Steve Bass, PC World via The Washington Post, July 25, 2007
---
Click Here
I tried Jing this
morning and I love it. It's smart and free, and a kick to use. In less
than a minute, I figured out how to highlight a portion of my screen,
record what I was watching, and save it to Jing's server, ready to
share.
Jing is a freebie
developed by TechSmith, the same people who sellSnagItandCamtasia, the
industrial-strength screen and video capturing tools. I'm telling you
this because I don't want you to be disappointed with Jing, especially,
if you've used either of TechSmith's other programs. Jing is, as the PR
guys said, a lightweight application. And for lots of people, that's
just fine.
. . .
I have a new way to send
a gigantic files. No, I mean really gargantuan files, up to 1GB.
Axosoft'sTransferBigFilesis a nice, free alternative toYouSendIt, the
Web-based service program that only allows 100MB--unless you want to pay
a fee.
TransferBigFiles lets
you send up to five files at a time. I like being able to send a file to
five people, too, though I'd prefer being able to blind-copy the
recipients. Other features: You can password protect the file and get a
confirmation that it's been downloaded. Files are held for five days and
then deleted.
Chances are good that
the folks at Axosoft will discontinue the service in a year (as did
dropload.com, another file transfer site), once they discover how much
competition there is and that they won't become millionaires with this
service. But for now, let's start transferring files.
Camtasia Studio (not free but great for the price) ---
http://www.techsmith.com/products.asp
In particular look for Screencast
Yet Another Way to Send Large Files Across the
Internet
This is important as we enter the era of sending students our Camtasia videos
--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
My PowerPoint file on Camtasia is at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/PowerPoint/
"Sending Large Files Down the Tubes: Sharing
Content Is Just a Drag And Drop Away," by Katherine Boehret, The Wall Street
Journal, October 3, 2007; Page D8 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119137101138247131.html
Too many times,
I've shared a large batch of digital files with friends or family
members only to realize that I included an unwanted photo or shared with
someone accidentally. But once these documents are sent, they're out of
my control and on a server somewhere being distributed via email or
through a photo-sharing service. Making certain files private or
changing who has access to those files is a complicated, time-consuming
process.
|
This week, I tested another product in the
long line of programs that uses automatic synchronization to
simplify the process of sharing large files by giving you the
ability to change files and privacy options at any time. It's
called Tubes (www.tubesnow.com)
from Tubes Networks and it takes its name
from the pneumatic vacuum-tube system commonly used in bank
drive-throughs that motivated me to join my Mom on visits to the
bank as a kid. Mom would pull up and a container would whoosh
over through a tube to arrive beside the car window; after a
quick exchange it returned with her deposit slip and a lollipop
for me.
Tubes aims
to work with the same sort of magic. Once installed, its desktop
application stays opened on your computer as a place where
"tubes" are made for sending files. Any type of file can be
dragged, dropped and sent off to share with other people using
these virtual tubes. As soon as you release data into a tube, a
whoosh sounds (like that of the vacuum tube) and your files are
encrypted and uploaded to the Tubes server.
Invited
guests view your tube's data in its full, uncompressed format.
The owner of the tube always has the final say on what is shared
with whom, and changes made to tubes on your hard drive are
detected instantly via automatic synchronization, guaranteeing
viewers will always see the latest version of the tube. Shared
tubes are also accessible via the Web, saving viewers from
downloading the Tubes desktop program.
Other products like Sharpcast (www.sharpcast.com)
and Pando (www.pando.com)
also offer ways to share large digital
files; Sharpcast uses synchronization similar to that of Tubes
-- it all happens behind the scenes without any work on the
user's part.
Tubes is
available in a free version that provides a gigabyte of storage,
or in paid versions with five, 10 and 20 gigabytes of storage
for $6, $11 or $21, respectively.
Most of
the time, Tubes worked well for me when I installed it on two
Windows machines, one running XP and one running Vista. Tubes'
smart use of an already familiar process -- dragging and
dropping -- gives you the impression that you already know how
to use it and makes sharing files seem easy. I started dragging
all sorts of files into tubes that I created, naming them and
labeling them with a representative icon (one of 10 offered by
Tubes or one of my own images).
For all
its usefulness, Tubes certainly has room for improvement. For
now, there isn't a Mac version of the program, and when friends
and I tried accessing shared tubes using a Mac Web browser, the
results were inconsistent and sometimes didn't work at all.
Windows Vista had its own issues. After installing Tubes on my
Vista laptop, an error message labeled "invalid argument" made
me feel like a member of the debate team. And I couldn't see
thumbnail images of photos in my tubes using Vista, though I
could on Windows XP.
Today,
Tubes is releasing an updated version of its program that aims
to improve the usability and look of the product, including
refining the processes of sharing tubes and looking at tubes via
the Web.
Before
sharing tubes, I adjusted the permissions granted to each guest
by labeling them as a Reader, Author or Editor; only the Owner
can invite others to view a tube. But these labels can get
confusing. More than once, I granted guests the highest level of
permission, which is Editor, allowing them to make changes to
the files in my tube, only for the guest to be asked for his
registered Tubes email and password, which an invited guest
shouldn't need.
The Tubes
experience was best when the recipient of my Tubes invitations
had the application installed on his or her desktop.
After
installing Tubes on a computer at work, I installed it on my
home PC and easily auto-synched tubes that I created at work
onto my home PC -- a big plus.
Tubes
incorporates the Web by assigning a unique URL to every file in
every tube, and every tube automatically generates its own Web
site, or "tubeSite," as it's called. Individual URLs for each
file can be found by right clicking on a file and selecting an
option to copy the URL into an email or browser. I copied the
URL of a shared MP3 audio file and pasted it into my browser; it
played a Fountains of Wayne song with no problem. But sharing
these URLs with others is only possible if the owner gives
permission.
Comments
about tubes can be made in the "tubeBlog" -- accessible through
any tube in the application or online. I created a tubeBlog for
a tube with photos from one of my vacations, adding descriptions
and comments to specific photos. Others, with my permission,
could do the same, using the photos from the tube or just
leaving comments.
A friend
used Tubes to share photos with me while vacationing in Italy
and Amsterdam. I added my own travel photos and an itinerary
made in Microsoft Word to his tube and changed the tube's title;
these alterations synched instantly.
Even if
you aren't online, you can access tubes or make changes to them
by dragging files in or taking them out; updates are made
automatically the next time your computer connects to the Web.
Tubes is
off to a good start, but it needs to improve its system to make
permission levels more understandable for tube owners and those
invited to see a shared tube. With a few improvements, Tubes
could be a product that I'll continue using on Windows computers
long after this column.
Continued
in article |
TeamViewer 4.0.5615 ---
http://www.teamviewer.com/index.aspx
Bob Jensen's threads on competing alternatives
for sending huge files (many of them free) are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#SendingLargeFiles
I’ve avoided Dropbox thus far due to the high cost of
storage.
Dropbox file synchronization and storage
---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropbox_(storage_provider)
Dropbox
is a
cross-platform
cloud-based
storage application and service operated by
Dropbox, Inc. The service enables users to store and sync files online and
between computers and share files and folders with others using
file synchronization.There are both free and
paid services, each with varying options.
It is also not clear to me that Dropbox will always be able to penetrate a
campus firewall if you are updating a desktop PC from your laptop at a remote
site.
Dropbox has good reviews but is not truly a free service unless your college or
other employer subscribes for you. I think it is free service to faculty and
staff at the University of Connecticut.
For me, this would be very expensive file storage at over $1,000 per year that I
instead get free from Trinity University. 50 Gb will not go far when you are
serving up multimedia files on the Web.
A PC Magazine Review of Dropbox ---
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2343852,00.asp
Dropbox is the simplest, most elegant file-synchronization tool I've ever used.
Dropbox Basic provides 2GB of storage free, and Dropbox Pro gives you 50GB for
$9.95 per month or $99.95 per year. The service stores files with strong
encryption on multiple servers in Amazon's S3 service and works equally smoothly
on Windows, Mac, and
Linux PCs. If you prefer to synchronize
folders you already have on your system, or if you want to keep several folders
fully synchronized between multiple machines, Dropbox may not be for you. It
synchronizes only files stored in a single dedicated folder. But its smooth and
hassle-free operation make it our
Bob Jensen's threads on archiving and long-term storage
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob4.htm#archiving
Orbit Downloader 2.7.8 (download multiple
files at the same time) ---
http://www.orbitdownloader.com/
August 23, 2005 message from Scott Bonacker
[lister@BONACKERS.COM]
This company says that you can upload large
files to their server and email a link to download the file, all for
free.
https://www.hightail.com/
Does anyone have experience with this company?
I currently use filesanywhere.com for something
similar, but that is a paid service. A few more bells and whistles to be
sure though.
Scott Bonacker, CPA
Springfield, Missouri
Jensen Comment:
I experimented with this by sending a 200 Mb video file to myself. It is a
fantastic free service that can be used when the file you want to send is
too large to attach to an email message. It supposedly will take a file up
to 1 Gb without even having to zip or otherwise compress the file. My
Internet Explorer browser wanted to block the download, but when I clicked
to accept the file it downloaded beautifully.
My students will find this useful for sending large database files to
each other in course projects.
You do not have to send the file by email to Hightail. All you have to
do is provide the recipient's email address and the file on your computer
that you want to send. You do not even have to supply your own name or your
own email address. The recipient then receives a message that he/she has
seven days in to download the file. Hightail will not store the file
beyond seven days.
I cannot vouch for the security of data stored by Hightail. If you are
sending sensitive data such as credit card numbers or a book draft that
you've not yet secured a copyright number, then I suggest that you encrypt
the file before sending it. There are various options for encryption. For
example, most database programs like MS Access have encryption utilities in
the software itself. Another encryption alternative (free) is described
below.
August 25 reply from a Computer Science Professor
And how does YouSendIt access the file on your
system?
This is the problem to which I refer by the
phrase "today's digital environment". The idea of giving someone else
your data and a destination and "trusting" them to do the right thing
with the data is a scary thought.
Why not deposit your data in your web space
yourself and notify the recipient of its availability. If it needs to be
secure, encrypt it with Open encryption software (public key), such as
gpg, before putting in in your web space. And certify your public key.
August 26, 2005 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi XXXXX,
Perhaps there is a security problem that I do not know about. If this
is a gimmick to crack a firewall, then I would like to know more about
it. It does not seem more dangerous than the many times I download
files from Web sites, e.g., PDF files, PPT files, etc.
This is incredibly easy to use. I can imagine people who do not have
enormous amounts of Web server space available using the Hightail
alternative for sending home videos, audio files, and large picture
files. In many cases, people are sending files that they would willingly
place on a server if they had enormous server space available at zero
cost.
Thanks to you and Gerald, I make some very large files available now
on a Computer Science Department Web server ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/ Of course these can be
easily downloaded by anybody in the world.
However, there are some database files that I cannot place on a Web
server. Most are hypothetical databases acquired free from various
vendors, databases that I'm allowed to modify for my teaching purposes
and students can modify for assignments. These would not be of much use
for anybody to steal, and I do not have the legal right to make them
available to anybody other than my students.
Even if I did put some of my larger databases on your Web server, I
would hog a tremendous amount of your capacity for very limited use by a
few of my students for a very short period of time.
Hightail simply asks the email address of where you want to send a
huge file and then gives you a browse button to find that file on your
system. Large files do take some time to send out.
It would probably be best to send that recipient an advanced warning
to expect such a file.
The recipient is then notified when the file is available for
downloading and that it will be held for seven days.
When the recipient downloads the file, he/she receives an option to
either run the file or to save it.
Neither the sender nor the recipient need install any software and
the service, for whatever reason, is free.
My students are especially going to like this for exchanging
databases in my courses. Obviously the files would have to be encrypted
or sent by some other means if the files were truly sensitive.
Bob Jensen
Free
encryption software
From the T.H.E. Journal Newsletter on August 25, 2005
Cypherix's
(www.cypherix.com)
Cryptainer LE
is a free 128-bit encryption program that allows users
to modify and hide files with a single password by
creating multiple 25MB encrypted containers on their
hard disk that can be loaded and unloaded whenever
necessary. The easy-to-use, drag-and-drop system works
on all 32-bit versions of Microsoft Windows, and can
protect and secure any file or folder on any media,
including flash drives, CD-ROMs, and USB keys. Cryptainer LE also allows users to send encrypted
e-mails without requiring the recipient to install the
program to decrypt the files. To download, visit
www.cypherix.com/cryptainerle/index.htm.
|
|
Remote Control Computing (Windows, GoToMyPC,
Cisco VPN, UserView, Crossloop, etc.)
"The iPad Now Can Take Command of Computers," by Walter S.
Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, January 20, 2011 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704590704576092010647673424.html
It has long been possible to control one PC or
Mac from another, legally and with permission. Though the process can be
tricky to set up, companies often use it as a maintenance and training
tool, and some consumers use it to help others solve computer problems,
or to reach back to their home or office machines while on the road to
access information.
But what about remotely controlling a PC or Mac
from the newest category of digital device, a multitouch tablet? Well,
it turns out there are apps for that.
Such apps have been around on super-smart
phones like the iPhone for years, but phone screens are so small that
using them to open and operate programs and folders on a Mac or PC is
very frustrating, at least to me. The iPad, with its roomy 10-inch
screen, is a different story. It actually has the real estate to make
the process much more practical.
I've been testing a couple of these apps on my
iPad, using them to remotely control Windows PCs and Macs at my home and
office. In fact, I'm typing this paragraph in Microsoft Word on a Mac
remotely from the iPad.
My conclusion is that these apps do work,
but even on the large iPad screen, they're too clumsy and confusing to
use on a regular basis, mostly because touch-screen tablets aren't a
great match for the way traditional computers—designed for a mouse and a
physical keyboard—work. Also, the apps
have some functional limitations, and they are heavily dependent on the
speed of the network or Internet connection, which can make them slow at
demanding things like video.
For my tests, I selected two apps squarely
aimed at average consumers. One is called LogMeIn Ignition, and is the
iPad and iPhone incarnation of a longstanding computer-to-computer
remote-control product called LogMeIn. The other is called iTeleport. It
has been around, under various names, since the early days of the iPhone,
and now comes in an iPad edition as well.
Both apps get around the complexity of setup by
installing a special free program on the computer you wish to control
that talks to the iPad app. The apps can see and control all the
computers on which you have installed companion programs. I found setup
easy and the connections generally reliable and fast enough, except for
video.
But the big drawback to these products is that
they are clumsy in controlling the target computer. Each allows two
basic methods for this. In one, your finger moves the computer's mouse
cursor and you click the virtual mouse by tapping. In the other, you can
directly tap on things on the remote screen. In my view, LogMeIn was
better at the first method and iTeleport was better at the second. But I
found both clumsy and tedious in both programs, especially when I tried
to combine controlling the remote computer with the frequent need to use
touch to move the image of the screen around the iPad's display.
Continued in article
On your wireless system
"How to Turn Your iPad into a Touchable Second Monitor ," by Jason B.
Jones, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 23, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/how-to-turn-your-ipad-into-a-touchable-second-monitor/34299?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
. . .
Air Display is only slightly more spendy than
DisplayPad, but it also has more flexibility: it works on both OS X and
Windows, and you can install it on any iOS device–handy for all those
times you want to mirror your 27″ iMac monitor on an iPhone screen! By
contrast, DisplayPad is Mac-only and iPad-only. If that is the only
combination you want to use, though, in my experience DisplayPad is
slightly smoother.
I use the app almost entirely for editing
documents, for grading, and for typing in notes from various sources,
and so the ability to control the Mac from the iPad is of less interest
to me. You can see some of the challenges of using these apps for input
by viewing these dueling videos of people running full-blown Photoshop
on their iPad: first on
DisplayPad, and
second from
Air
Display. (Keep in
mind, though, that the strength of the wifi network is the first
predictor for how well the apps work.)
Bob Jensen's technology bookmarks are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm
Running Your On Campus Computer from Off-Campus
Using GoToMyPC Software
I am
afraid I don’t have much to add other than what you can read under
“Security” at
https://www.gotomypc.com/en_US/helpIndex.tmpl
The
30-day free trial is important since you can test whether GoToMyPC can
penetrate your campus firewall. Keep in mind that your on-campus
computer has to be booted up, which may entail having a secretary boot
it up now and then (e.g., after there’s a power failure on campus).
Also
keep in mind that if you have a laptop that you use on campus, there’s
not added risk in connecting that same laptop off campus.
I used
GoToMyPC for a few years and was able to penetrate the Trinity
University firewall. There were not problems using my laptop off campus
to access my office computer on campus. I was somewhat surprised that
GoToMyPC could penetrate the sensitive firewall at Trinity University.
After I
retired, Trinity requested that I instead use their Cisco VPN system
which is much more limited (albeit free) than GoToMyPC. With VPN, I can
update files stored on network drives (e.g., Web server files,
BlackBoard files, and my LAN private-access drives on the Trinity
network) but not my on-campus computer (which no longer exists after my
retirement). I suspect that I could access my on-campus secretary’s
computer with GoToMyPC, but I have no need to do that. When I want to
send files to her, I upload files via VPN or FTP to my Drive J LAN drive
on campus. She also has rights to access my Drive J. She can also access
my Web server files such that the few times I’ve had trouble accessing
the Web server from New Hampshire she can update my Web files on campus.
For a few weeks recently, the Clean Sweep security program for Web
server access was giving me trouble. I actually had to send my laptop to
techies on campus to fix up the Clean Sweep problem. In the meantime I
uploaded files to Drive J on campus, and Debbie then uploaded them into
the Drive W Web server on campus. Fortunately this is no longer
necessary after my laptop was returned from the techies on campus.
The VPN
system really does not add much more than what I can also do with the
old fashioned FTP protocol. I actually use VPN and FTP with equal
effectiveness. But I miss my GoToMyPC full access to a campus computer.
Other
alternatives to GoToMyPC ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoToMyPC
Bob Jensen
How to Teach With "Start" and "Remote Control" in Windows
You should become very familiar with the Landmark Act before designing any
course materials
For over two years, after we bought our retirement home in New Hampshire,
and before I retired from Trinity University in Texas, I used GoToMyPC to
remotely operate my desktop computer in Texas from hotel rooms and my home
in NH during summers, holiday breaks, a sabbatical leave, and other visits
to NH. GoToMyPC works great and did penetrate my university's firewall. This
is an annual-fee based option for remotely controlling your office computer
or the computer of a friend or student in a distant location ---
https://www.gotomypc.com
Also check on LogMeIn ---
https://secure.logmein.com/home.asp?lang=en
I now use Cisco's VPN which is free to me when I want to download files
into various servers on the Trinity University Network. But VPN is not quite
the same as a remote control system for operating a distant computer ---
http://compnetworking.about.com/od/vpn/p/ciscovpnclient.htm
Since I no longer have an office and desktop computer in Texas, I no
longer use GoToMyPC. However, the other day I had call to use a free utility
that is built into the Windows operating system. I simply clicked on "Start"
and "Remote Control" and gave a Trinity University computer technician
remote control of my PC (actually it's joint control since we both had
control of my computer). This remote control can be granted for any
specified amount of time (e.g., 20 minutes or two hours) and can be granted
without having to give your password to the remote operator, although you
can also choose the password-required option.
Note especially that the pre-specified time allotment is a key advantage
over the free "Start" and "Remote Control" alternative relative to the
fee-based GoToMyPC alternative. However, GoToMyPC has some key advantages
when the remote user is on public computers such as Internet cafes and
public library computers.
The remotely located technician named Gabe and I were both on the
telephone and jointly operating my computer. He performed some repairs and
updates to my computer's email system while I watched. He also explained
what he was doing on the phone. This saved us both a lot of time relative to
the typical technical support phone call in which the technician asks you
over the phone to do a sequence of complicated things on your computer. You
have to fumble with your keyboard and phone at the same time, and the
technician sits and waits doing nothing for periods of time. It is much
faster to use "Start" and "Remote Control" and let the technician do the
work while you watch and listen. I might add that I did not have to turn off
my firewall for this, although firewalls may be a problem for some users.
It suddenly struck me that "Start" and "Remote Control" might be
a useful option for teaching one-on-one to a student at a remote site
ranging from an on-campus dorm room to a site half way around the world. It
would be much more efficient than trying to explain something technical on
the phone with the student and then having to wait until the student makes
it work on her/his computer.
This could be especially useful as a free alternative for remotely
teaching certain types of handicapped students such as students having
limited use of their arms or hands. Special course materials could even be
designed with the "Start" and "Remote Control" features in mind.
It also struck me that Gabe and other technicians are often doing the
same things over and over with computer users. It would save a lot of money
and time if technicians like Gabe and Microsoft made Camtasia videos
explaining common repetitive solutions to computer problems ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
UserView ---
http://www.techsmith.com/uservue/features.asp
TechSmith has a newer product called UserView that really sounds exciting,
although I’ve not yet tried it. It allows you to view and record what is
happening on someone else’s computer like a student’s computer. Multiple
computers can be viewed at the same time. Images and text can be recorded.
Pop-up comments can be inserted by the instructor to text written by students.
UserView can be used for remote testing ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus
Userview offers great hope for teaching disabled students such as sight
and/or hearing impaired students ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
Set up free conference calls at
http://www.freeconference.com/
Also see
http://www.yackpack.com/uc/
Bob Jensen's threads on Technology Aids for the Handicapped and
Learning Challenged are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
You should become very familiar with the Landmark Act before designing any
course materials.
From the Scout Report on April 11, 2008
CrossLoop 2.11 ---
http://www.crossloop.com/ipage.htm?id=download
What if Bob is in Shanghai working on a project
and Jane is in Dubai and needs access to something on his desktop? There
are a number of ways to solve this quandary, and one of them happens to
be the CrossLoop application. With CrossLoop, users can virtually share
computer desktops across all sorts of borders, whether political or
other. Guest users can save files to the other desktop and also use any
application. This version is compatible with computers running Windows
NT and newer.
Synching and Backup of Multiple Computers
May 14, 2011 message from Roger Debreceny
Ross Stevenson asked recently about synching
and backup. I use three systems in tandem.
First, for some years now I have been synching
all files on my laptop and two desktops with Windows Live Mesh (and its
predecessors). It works seamlessly and quickly. It does require a bit of
discipline to ensure that you maintain the same directory structure --
which actually makes life a little easier as the file that you need will
be in the same place on each computer.
http://explore.live.com/windows-live-mesh?os=other
Second, one of those PCs in turn is backed up
daily to Mozy@Home. I am currently backing up 45gb to Mozy.com at a cost
of ~$50pa.
Third, I use a free subscription to synch up to
2gb through www.dropbox.com. This synchs the files to the three
desktops, the Web through
www.dropbox.com ,
Android phone and Android tablet. I share a folder
in that structure with a co-author. Our shared writing and data files
are stored in this folder. There are Mac, iPhone and iPad dropbox apps
as well. There are also some newer alternatives to dropbox, but they do
not seem to have any better functionality.
Roger Debreceny
"Synchronizing Your Bookmarks on All Your PCs," by Walter S. Mossberg,
The Wall Street Journal, February 5, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123379804164650385.html
Lots of people now have multiple computers, at
home and at work, and many use more than one Web browser. That makes it
hard to keep bookmarks straight. If, for instance, you bookmark a Web
site as a "Favorite" on your PC at work using Microsoft's Internet
Explorer, it doesn't automatically show up as a bookmark in Apple's
Safari browser on your Macintosh at home.
But I've been testing a new, free program,
available now, that aims to solve this problem. It synchronizes your
bookmarks automatically among all your computers, Windows or Mac, and
across all the main brands of Web browsers -- Internet Explorer, Safari
and Mozilla's Firefox. On PCs running Windows XP or Vista, it works with
Internet Explorer and Firefox. On Macs, it works with Safari and
Firefox.
The program is called Foxmarks, and it's from a
San Francisco company of the same name. The Foxmarks software has been
around since 2006, but worked only with the Firefox browser -- hence the
name. Yet Firefox isn't the dominant choice on either Windows or Mac. So
the company decided to expand the product to Internet Explorer, which is
the built-in browser on Windows (and thus No. 1 in the world) and
Safari, which is the built-in browser on Mac.
This new version, available for download at
foxmarks.com, doesn't merely synchronize your bookmarks between copies
of the same browser. It synchronizes them between different browser
brands, even if some are running on Windows PCs and some on Macs.
In my tests, Foxmarks worked well, with a few
minor caveats. After using it for five days, I now have exactly the same
set of bookmarks (or Favorites, in Internet Explorer's parlance),
arranged in the same order, on multiple computers -- Windows and Mac --
in a total of 12 different copies of Internet Explorer, Firefox and
Safari.
There's a different version of Foxmarks
customized for each of the three main browsers, but each talks to the
same password-protected Web account, which contains the latest version
of your bookmarks. When you add, delete, rename or rearrange any
bookmark in any browser on any of your computers, the Foxmarks software
sends the change up to the Web account. Then, the next time any of your
other browsers checks with the Web account, it receives the change.
For example, in my tests, I bookmarked a
Wikipedia article in Firefox on my Dell running Windows Vista. Foxmarks
then caused that same new bookmark to appear in Internet Explorer on the
same Dell, and in both Firefox and Safari on my Apple Macintosh
computer. And, on each machine, the new bookmark for the Wikipedia
article was in the same location.
In another case, I changed the order of two
bookmarks in the Bookmarks Bar in Safari on one of my Macs, and the same
re-ordering was replicated on a Windows PC in the Links Toolbar of IE
and in the Bookmarks Toolbar of Firefox.
If you don't want exactly the same set of
bookmarks on all your machines, you can set up different profiles with
different bookmarks for your work and home computers.
You can access the password-protected Web site
containing your bookmarks from any PC, even if it isn't one of yours,
and can view a customized version of this site via the browser on an
iPhone or other smart phone. You can even set up a mobile profile that
will show you just a subset of your bookmarks in your phone's Web
browser, though you can't sync bookmarks to and from a phone.
From the Web, you can alter your bookmarks, and
these changes will then be pushed down to the browsers on your
computers. You also can share bookmarks with others via email or an RSS
feed.
There are other Web-based repositories of
bookmarks, notably a service called Delicious. But none that I know of
automatically synchronizes bookmarks among browsers and computers, which
is the main function of Foxmarks.
Foxmarks has another feature: It can also sync
stored passwords for Web sites you frequently visit. But this trick
works only in Firefox, and in my tests didn't work properly all the
time.
The software has a few other limitations and
glitches. The Internet Explorer version is still labeled a beta, or
test, version because it still produces occasional syncing errors,
especially in Vista. That was true in my tests, and I'd be wary of using
it with Vista, though it performed solidly in Windows XP. It works
reliably only with Internet Explorer 6 or 7, not the pre-release version
of Internet Explorer 8, which the company isn't yet supporting.
On the Mac, Foxmarks works only with the
current Leopard version of the operating system and the current version
3 of Safari. It doesn't work with the Windows version of Safari.
And syncing isn't instant. It can take as long
as an hour for each computer to check with the Web site and get the
changes.
The company plans to keep Foxmarks free, but is
hoping to make money from future, unspecified products.
Foxmarks is a clever, well-done product that
can help users of multiple computers and multiple browsers to keep their
Web lives in order.
Questions
How can you search for text within a stored image, especially books and articles
downloaded as images rather than text?
What if you could collect, in one well-organized, searchable, private
digital repository, all the notes you create, clips from Web pages and
emails you want to recall, dictated audio memos, photos, key documents, and
more?
Evernote --- http://www.evernote.com/
Perhaps the real "killer" feature of the program is that it has optical
character recognition (OCR), which allows users to search for text within stored
images. (there are free and fee options)
From the Scout Report on February 12, 2010
Evernote 3.5.1.1410 ---
http://www.evernote.com/
Looking to remember an image you found? Or
perhaps a helpful email link? Evernote makes this all possible, and it
can be used with a range of mobile devices as well. The program works as
a note-taking application as well, and everything a user does with the
program is automatically synchronized to their Evernote account.
Perhaps the real "killer" feature of the program is that it has optical
character recognition (OCR), which allows users to search for text
within stored images. This version of Evernote is compatible with
computers running Windows XP and Vista or Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6.
"Digital File Cabinet You Can Bring With You Anywhere," by Walter
S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, January 20, 2010 ---
http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20100120/evernote-review/
What if you could collect, in one
well-organized, searchable, private digital repository, all the notes
you create, clips from Web pages and emails you want to recall, dictated
audio memos, photos, key documents, and more? And what if that
repository was constantly synchronized, so it was accessible through a
Web browser and through apps on your various computers and smart phones?
Well, such a service exists. And it’s free.
It’s called Evernote. I’ve been testing it for about a week on a
multiplicity of computers and phones, and found that it works very well.
Evernote is an excellent example of hybrid computing—using the “cloud”
online to store data and perform tasks, while still taking advantage of
the power and offline ability of local devices.
The idea behind Evernote is to be a sort of
digital file cabinet. It allows you to create “notebooks” containing
items called notes. These notes can range from text to photos to many
kinds of attached files. You can locate, group and peruse them quickly,
without having to dig through a computer’s file system. When I first
reviewed the product, back in 2005, Evernote was a Windows-only, purely
local information organizer. Now it’s a multi-platform, Internet-savvy,
synchronized place for your ideas.
You can sign up for Evernote free at
evernote.com, and use it entirely as a Web-based application, through
any of the major Web browsers. But Evernote also comes in customized
versions for a staggering array of devices: Windows and Macintosh
computers, and for all the major smart phones, including the iPhone; the
BlackBerry; phones running Google’s Android operating system; the latest
Palm (PALM) phones; and Windows Mobile phones.
This week, Evernote, which is made by a small
Silicon Valley company of the same name, is introducing a totally
revamped Windows version that brings the platform into parity with the
company’s previously more advanced Macintosh version.
I tested Evernote on two Macs and two Windows
PCs, as well as an iPhone, a Palm Pre phone and the new Nexus One phone
from Google (GOOG). I also tried free plug-ins the company offers that
make it easy to insert all or part of a Web page or email into an
Evernote note. These are available for the Internet Explorer, Firefox,
Safari and Chrome Web browsers, and for the Outlook email program. There
are also system-wide Evernote buttons, which make capturing notes
quicker, for Windows and the Mac.
I found Evernote works well for gathering ideas
for business or personal projects, hobbies, or events you’re planning.
When you see something or think of something you want to add, you can do
it from whatever computer or phone is handy, and it will shortly appear
on all of them.
Here are a few examples of how I used Evernote.
I typed notes to myself on my desktops and laptops. I dictated a
reminder to myself using the Evernote app on my iPhone. I used the Nexus
One’s camera to take a picture of a person’s business card. I also
copied text from Web pages, emails, and Word documents, and pasted them
as notes. I even attached whole files to notes.
Within a few minutes, all of these notes were
available on my personal Evernote Web site and from within all the
Evernote apps on my computers and phones. I could search through them,
email them, print them, group them with related items, or edit and
annotate them.
Every Evernote user also gets a unique Evernote
email address, and anything you email to that address goes into your
repository as a new note. You also can use Twitter to get a note into
Evernote.
The program has a few extra-cool features. If
you create a note from a photo that includes printing, Evernote’s
servers will try to figure out the words and make them searchable. This
worked well in my tests with photos of business cards. And some
smart-phone apps can save items directly into Evernote notes. One
example I tested successfully was the Associated Press news app on the
iPhone.
There are a few minor downsides to Evernote.
While there’s no overall limit to the amount of data you can store, you
can only upload 40 megabytes a month with the free version, attach
certain types of files to notes, and you are forced to view ads. A
premium version, which costs $5 a month, or $45 a year, increases the
quota to 500 megabytes monthly, removes the ads, allows attaching any
file type, and adds more features.
Also, I found the Evernote programs and apps,
while similar, differ slightly depending on the capabilities of the
platform they run on. Among the phone versions, for instance, the iPhone
app is by far the most full-featured, and is currently the only one that
can store whole notebooks offline, though the Android version is due to
get that feature soon. Finally, the Evernote plug-in crashed Outlook on
one of my Windows computers.
But, all in all, I found Evernote to be a
valuable, easy-to-use tool that simplified my work and made good use of
both the Internet and all my devices.
Jensen Comment
The video video introduction and links to a video library are at
http://www.evernote.com/about/video/
This is a product that I am probably going to install.
Bob Jensen's technology bookmarks are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob4.htm
An alternative to Safari Web browsing for Mac Users (Camino is better in
some ways)
"Mac Browser Camino 2 Gets A Release Candidate," MJ Siegler, Tech
Crunch via The Washington Post, October 27, 2009 ---
Click Here
When it was revealed that
Mike
Pinkerton, the lead developer for the
Mozilla's Mac-based
Camino web browser was moving over to Google
to take charge of building Chrome for Mac, there was some concern that
Camino would be neglected. Pinkerton assured development on Camino would
continue, and sure enough it has. Today brings the first release
candidate for Camino 2, the new version of the browser.
Camino, though much
less prevalent than its Mozilla sibling, Firefox, has a solid following
among Mac users who appreciate its speed. It has long been my browser of
choice as it's relatively lightweight and very fast compared to Firefox.
And compatibility with various sites seems better than
Apple's own Safari.
We've been beta testing Camino 2 for several
months now, and it's solid. It offers several improvements over the
first iterations of Camino, notably in speed and the way it looks.
Mozilla notes that this Release Candidate 1 could become the final,
first official build of Camino 2 if there are no critical issue found.
So it looks like despite Pinkerton's Chrome
time commitments, Camino 2 will beat Chrome for Mac even reaching beta
status.
The anticipation for
Chrome for Mac continues to build. Even Google co-founder Sergey Brin
admits that he's
disappointed with
how long it has taken to develop. But, as we noted the other day, Chrome
for Mac ? not Chromium, the open source browser on which Chrome is based
? looks like
it's getting closer to a beta release.
New Technology for WordPress sites
"Omeka Gets Access Keys Plugin, by Cory Bohon, Chronicle of Higher
Education, June 14, 2011 --- |
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/omeka-gets-access-keys-plugin/34011?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Just a few months ago, I
wrote a post introducing a plugin I developed
that allows anyone to make their WordPress site more accessible and
easier to navigate. [Note: like almost all WordPress plugins, this
one works if you're hosting your own site but not if your site is hosted
by WordPress.com.] This plugin–which
is listed in the WordPress.org plugin directory–makes
it easy to specify keyboard shortcuts for built-in WordPress functions
and for access to other internal or external pages.
Access keys, as you may already know, are an
example of universal design: they make a site easier to navigate not
only for people who are blind or have low vision but for all people
(provided they can use a keyboard).
But I couldn’t just stop with WordPress. Over
the past few weeks, I’ve been working to create a plugin with the same
functions for
Omeka, a content management system for
scholarly collections (and a ProfHacker
favorite). Just yesterday, I released the
Access Keys plugin for Omeka to the public, allowing any Omeka
administrator the ability to make their site a little more accessible
with just a few clicks.
The Omeka Access Keys plugin allows an admin to
give keyboard shortcuts to the following built-in action:
- Skip to Content
- Go to Home Page
- Browse by Items
- Browse by Collections
- Go to Previous Item
- Go to Next Item
- Advanced
Search
In addition, the Omeka plugin will read aloud
the available access keys to users navigating through the site using a
screen reader. For the visual users, the site administrator can place a
small link to a listing of the access keys anywhere in the theme.
Continued in article
How to Download PC Videos to Giant Screen
TV Sets
Question
Giant screen TV sets are better than computer screens for viewing video,
including course content video recorded by instructors using such capturing
software as Camtasia. As we increasingly download video files or capture
streaming video on the Web into video files, it is possible to transfer
those files to a DVD disk for playback on other computers and TV sets with
DVD players. However, is it possible to transfer files to TV in one step
without having to make DVD disks?
"From the PC to the TV:
Device Captures Certain Video Files To View on the Tube," by Katherine
Boehret, The Wall Street Journal, October 24, 2007; Page D5 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119317840417068995.html
With
video content making up a huge chunk of the online world nowadays,
wouldn't it make sense to have a one-step way to transfer videos from a
PC to a TV, just as easily as moving files from one computer to another?
Imagine a
special device that not only plugged into your PC so you could drag and
drop video files onto it, but also then hooked up to your TV to play
back those videos. Rather than watching TV shows or movies on your
laptop, you'd be doing so while comfortably relaxing on the couch, no
high-tech networking required.
SanDisk
Corp.'s Sansa TakeTV (www.take.tv)
attempts to do just that, but is more complicated
than it should be. This device, essentially a 4½-inch USB thumb drive
with attachable accessories, costs $100 or $150 for four or eight
gigabytes, respectively. By itself, it moves videos from a Mac or
Windows PC to a TV, but only certain types of files are transferable.
Since TakeTV won't work with videos downloaded from other online
services, such as
Apple Inc.'s
iTunes Store, SanDisk created its own service, called Fanfare (www.fanfare.com),
to work with TakeTV. Users plug TakeTV into a PC, download a movie or TV
episode from Fanfare, unplug the device and attach it to a TV to watch
the videos. Fanfare is still in its beta, or testing, stage and doesn't
currently offer much content. Its big-name networks include Showtime and
CBS, but only certain episodes of some shows, like "Dexter," "Survivor"
and "CSI Miami," are available.
SanDisk's
TakeTV and Fanfare are just getting started, and because of that have
plenty of restrictions. On the upside, Fanfare is a visually attractive
program -- a real change for a company best known for selling flash
storage. And the quality of the video playback was impressive. But for
now, this device-and-service combination is frustratingly green.
Fanfare
works only on Windows right now, and downloaded videos can't be played
back on the PC. Because of its current beta status, fees for movies and
episodes of TV shows are being waived for a limited time. Content
providers will eventually charge $1.99 per episode or nothing if they
choose to use an ad-supported model.
SanDisk
plans to keep improving Fanfare's content, now limited to a total of 90
episodes from shows on six networks. But playing videos on a TV can be
frustrating, lacking simple features like a visible progress bar when
you're rewinding or fast-forwarding. And if you need to stop a video
halfway through watching it and happen to power off the TakeTV, your
place is lost.
TakeTV
gets points for its clever design. Its USB part tucks into a sleek
holder that disguises the whole thing as a slender rectangle for porting
around. On its own, the holder operates as a remote for controlling
TakeTV when it's connected to your TV. A separate television connector
plugs into the TV using red, yellow, and white composite cables or just
an S-video cable. This TV connector must also plug into a power outlet.
Not
everyone will like the way TakeTV looks hooked up to a television, as
its connector uses long, unsightly composite cables.
I started
off slow, first just dragging and dropping video files from my computer
into TakeTV. At first, I accidentally moved MP4 files, which aren't
compatible with TakeTV. Some types of video files that would transfer:
DivX, XviD and MPEG-4 (AVI, MPG and MPEG files fall under this last
category). Here's the problem: Most people don't know what format their
videos are in, so finding the correct formats could be a real hassle.
One file I
transferred was a short video of a trip to California. Its footage
looked startlingly crisp and clear when played back on a standard
definition television. SanDisk says videos will play in DVD quality, and
I thought this was an accurate assessment.
Using the
Fanfare service was rather straightforward. Upon plugging your TakeTV in
for the first time, you'll be prompted to download the Fanfare client,
and to use the client you'll need to register, creating a user name and
password.
The
Fanfare program is colorful and animated. It shows the available
networks (CBS, Showtime, Smithsonian, The Weather Channel, Jaman and TV
Guide) in a vertical list. Network names and titles of show episodes
glow as you move your mouse over them; still shots from each movie or
show illustrate just what you'll be getting, including previews of
certain videos.
With my
TakeTV plugged into a PC at work, I selected a plus icon to download the
pilot episode of Showtime's twisted series, "Dexter." This 53-minute
episode took 30 minutes to download. I downloaded a 17-minute film
called "Countdown," which took just short of 20 minutes to download. But
I couldn't watch these videos until I was in front of my TV at home due
to Fanfare's no-PC-playback policy.
Once
TakeTV was plugged into my TV, I chose videos from a list; a pre-created
folder called "Fanfare Downloads" automatically holds everything you
download from the service.
I was
using the $100 four-gigabyte TakeTV, which SanDisk estimates will hold
about five hours of video; the $150 eight-gigabyte should hold up to 10
hours. A useful illustration of my device's capacity showed in Fanfare
to indicate how much space was taken (mine was 46% full when I wrote
this).
SanDisk
knows it has a lot of improving to do, especially if it wants to
challenge successful services like Apple's iTunes. As is, TakeTV has the
right idea, but forces users to jump through too many hoops. It plans to
make Fanfare usable on Macs sometime in the future, and hopes to enable
video playback on PCs before the end of the year. For now, it's best to
hold off on getting excited about this device or its service.
Bob Jensen's tutorials
on Camtasia are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
How to capture
streaming video and/or streaming audio ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia
Question
When might you want to run Linux on your Windows computer?
"E-Banking on a Locked Down (Non-Microsoft) PC," by Brian Krebs
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#IdentityTheft
Question
How can you best publish books, including multimedia and user interactive books,
on the Web?
Note that interactive books may have quizzes and examinations where answers are
sent back for grading.
My Answers ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
NetRipper 2.0 (Photographs,
Graphics, Education)
http://www.net-ripper.com/index.php
|
Net-Ripper
Features
Net-Ripper
Features |
Net-Ripper
turns your favorite Web gallery into a slide show WHILE
IT DOWNLOADS! Images are RESIZED TO YOUR SCREEN,
and there's NO CLICKING on popups and links!
View previously captured images OFF-LINE.
|
How
does Net-Ripper work?
How
does Net-Ripper work?
1.
Rips The Best Images from Web Sites.
Net-Ripper is an enhanced web browser which instantly turns
images from web pages into slide shows. Multiple pages are
searched at once for images and movies, annoying popup message
and banner adverts are skipped, meaning more efficient use of
connection time. Net-Ripper also remembers where it's up too,
and will carry on grabbing where it left off when a site is
visited again.
2.
Creates a Slide show as it Rips.
The slideshow is created as soon as the first image is
downloaded, and plays while Net-Ripper continues to download and
add images to the slide show. Images are re-scaled to fit the
screen as they are played, there is no need to scroll to see all
of a large image, or to reduce screen resolution to make small
images a reasonable size.
3.
An Offline Browser.
Net-Ripper automatically archive images downloaded for later
offline access, displaying all the sites grabbed using thumbnail
images. Users can browse through the sites and individual
images, deleting those that are no longer required. Any of the
archived images can also be displayed as a slide show. |
Bob Jensen's summaries of course authoring and course
management software are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm
Question
Would you like to choose a color and then easily find its RGB number code?
Flickr Color Selectr (gives color codes and
sample picture backgrounds) ---
Click Here ---
http://color.slightlyblue.com/
Move the color slider up or down and then move the mouse around the rectangle. A
left mouse click then brings up a new set of pictures using the color that you
pointed on with the mouse. You also get to see a large number of changing
pictures by moving the mouse and slider around.
Bob Jensen's
summary authoring software ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
-
Survey of Courseware Shells and Authoring Software
Compare Web Tools
-
UMinfo - Tools for
Developing Interactive Academic Web Courses
-
Tool Comparison
(Compares authoring software, asymetrix librarian, etc.)
Welcome to CyberClass
WBT Systems - TopClass: Distance Learning and Web Based Training
Management Systems
-
Allen Communication (Quest)
-
Asymetrix Learning Systems, Inc.
(ToolBook)
-
YAHOT: ToolBook:
Utils
OnLive, Inc. (especially for Mac users)
-
Macromedia -
Authorware
-
Macromedia Director
Dreamweaver
Welcome to GoLive CyberStudio 3
PHP3: PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor
-
Macromedia:
Dreamweaver - New Features
Macromedia
Dreamweaver - Dreamweaver 1.2 Quick Reference
Rick Birney's demo of streaming ToolBooks
Welcome to CyberClass
-
WBT Systems (TopClass Authoring Software
for Education and Training)
-
Welcome to Aimtech
IBM Global Campus Community
-
Mellon Technology Project
-
Share Carolina - UNC-CH (Free Internet
Tools)
-
Computer Resources
-
http://192.156.184.95/multimed.txt
-
Lessons from Business School Web Sites
-
Multimedia Software
-
Netscape created it.
Prosoft will train you to master it.
-
Web Course in a Box
Learning Insights Software for
Business and Finance Courseware
Create your own Web applications with ease using this free Zoho Creater
software
August 7, 2006 message from Richard Campbell
[campbell@RIO.EDU]
"This free Web-based software
handled the job -- but without the bells and whistles of Access that had baffled
Mr Hughes. And since the program stored his data on the Web, his colleagues
could tap into it easily with a browser. "To me it was like a godsend" says Mr.
Hughes, operations manager at SoluChem. "
Robert A. Guth, The Wall Street Journal Online ---
http://www.zohocreator.com/
Exclusive benefits of Zoho Creator
---
http://www.zohocreator.com/
| |
Create Apps from scratch
Create your web application in minutes,
not days. It's just a few clicks away.
|
|
|
Create Apps from spreadsheet
Import your spreadsheet to create web application automatically. |
| |
Browse,
Copy & Customize
Browse public applications. See something you like? Copy and customize
to your needs.
|
|
|
No coding required
Create web application without coding. You don't need to have HTML or
PHP skills . |
| |
Embed Forms/Views in website
Embed Forms and Views easily into your
website and blog.
|
|
|
Share your App
Share your app with other users or keep
it private among your friends, colleagues and clients. |
Zoho Creator helps you to easily create personal
and business web applications on your own by structuring and presenting your
data in a lot of interesting and useful ways. You can view the data as a
table, calendar or just as a summary. In addition to just viewing your data
in many ways, you might also want to perform one or more of the following:
-
Perform an action when a row
is added successfully or detect when someone adds a row to a form. For
example, you might want to receive email notifications as and when a row
is added.
Learn more
-
Perform an action when a row
is updated. For example, in the case of a bug tracker, you might want to
receive email notifications whenever the status of the issue gets
modified.
Learn more
-
Validate the form data before
persisting it.
-
Add a row only if it
satisfies a certain criteria and reject the other entries. For example,
in a recruitment application, accept only those applicants who have more
than two years of experience.
Learn more
-
Define formulas for
calculations. For example, assume a student database has marks obtained
by students in all the subjects and you want to display the total and
average marks also.
Learn more
-
Create complex filters in
views.
Learn more
With Zoho Creator, you don't have to write code
to build a simple data collection and viewing application like a Contacts
list. But, scripting will be indispensable for building a full fledged
application with complex logic, for example, Library Manager.
Jensen Comment
Although this is not course management software, it can be used for authoring
presentation lessons by instructors.
Bob Jensen's summaries of course authoring and course management software are
at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm
I have a document online
that is intended to provide updates on electronic book technologies and
products --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm
Create Your Own Wiki
Probably the main advantage of a wiki is that Web pages can be made and modified
directly from a Web browser such as Internet Explorer. Persons other than the
original author can generally modify a wiki module.
How Wikis Work ---
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/wiki.htm
Also see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
Best known Wiki site is Wikipedia
where readers can add modules, modify modules, and add modules to discussion
tabs ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Bob Jensen's threads on the pros and cons of Wikipedia ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#KnowledgeBases
Creating Your Own Wiki Site ---
http://personalweb.about.com/od/wikihostingandsoftware/Wiki_Sites_Wikia_Wikicities_etc.htm
Media Wiki - Wiki Software
This is the wiki software that is used by Wikipedia, Wiki source,
and Wiktionary to create their wiki's. Get a copy of this wiki
software for yourself.
Netomat - Wiki Hosting
Share your pictures and other files, write text, even draw on this
wiki hosting site. This is your own wiki site that you can use to
communicate and share things with your friends and family for free
with this wiki hosting site.
There are many other wiki
hosting alternatives that you can find using Google.
One example of where you can pay for space to create a wiki site ---
http://www.wikispaces.com/
K-12 teachers may apply for free space.
Richard Campbell forwarded the
following instructional video about Wikispaces ----
http://epmedia.ecollege.com/media/kaplan/store/mediasohl/using_wikis/using_wikis.html
Software Updates and Reviews ---
http://www.versiontracker.com/windows/
The Taxonomy Warehouse is a
fantastic search engine in terms of helpful categories --- http://www.taxonomywarehouse.com/
There are many manuals for using
the Mac, but few that come with two hours of
video tutorials. Jim Heid's Macintosh iLife is
like watching a presentation at the local Apple Store, without having to lift
your posterior off the sofa.
"The Easy Way to the ILife," Leander Kahney, Wired News,
December 21, 2004 --- http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,66102,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2
Online Magazine (for Information Professionals) --- http://www.onlineinc.com/onlinemag/index.html
ONLINE is written for Information Professionals and
provides articles, product reviews, case studies, evaluation, and informed
opinion about selecting, using, and managing electronic information products,
plus industry and professional information about online database systems,
CD-ROM, and the Internet. This site contains selected full-text articles and
news from each issue of the magazine. Direct letters to the editor to Marydee
Ojala ( Marydee@xmission.com ). If
you are interested in writing for ONLINE, please see the Authors' Guidelines.
Advice
for hiring external service for your computing devices (tech support) --- http://www.digitalduo.com/402_dig.html
The ultimate portal to
businesses and products http://www.1jump.com/
I have a directory of computer haredware
and software firms. This directory is in sorry need of
updating. However, you may find it somewhat useful. There are
really two files:
-
Web tools, including tools for Browsers; HTML, XML, &
CSS; Graphics & Design; Multimedia; DHTML & JavaScript; Java; Servers &
E-Commerce; Scripting; Demo. http://www.webtools.com/
When searching for a vendor, I recommend that you go to the http://www.realnames.com web site:
If you know a product name and want to find what company makes that
product or vice versa, you might triy http://www.realnames.com
. Web site URLs are also provided. I typed in "Authorware" and was
taken directly to the Authorware product section at the Macromedia web site.
When searching for a book, I recommend that you go to the http://isbn.nu/ price comparison web site:
Probably the best known online bookstores are Amazon at http://www.amazon.com and Barnes and Noble at http://www.bn.com .
The Powells book seller claims to be the largest new and used bookstore in the world at http://www.powells.com/ . But
there are other online bookstores.
A free comparison guide that will
find you the best deal among various bookstores is provided by Glenn Fleishman.
You can search even faster by typing the ISBN number following the
"nu/" in the URL address. However, I do not recommend
that you do this since it will take you directly to only one book seller (Amazon). Instead I recommend that you do the following:
- Find the ISBN number by whatever means. If you don't know the ISBN number, you can
go to one book seller such as Amazon
or Barnes & Noble to locate the book
and the ISBN number.
- Go next to http://isbn.nu/ . (I do not recommend
adding the ISBN number directly to the end of the URL.)
- Enter the ISBN number in the box provided at http://isbn.nu/
. For example enter 0130811521 in the box.
- Click on the "Compare" button to
get a listing of alternative deals for the book. For the above book, Books-A-Million
has a significantly lower price that most other vendors. However, when you read the
footnote you notice that in order to get this lowest price you must have a Millionaire's
Club Membership costing $5.00 per year. However, the savings on this one book
justifies the membership price. Without this membership, Barnes & Noble has the
best price on this particular book having ISBN 0130811521. Amazon
certainly does not have the best deal on this book.
- Carefully read the footnotes and note the shipping charge comparisons that are also
provided.
Alternately, you can also select a particular book seller in the drop box below the
ISBN entry field. This does not give you a table of comparison prices like you get
with the "Compare" button.
Out-of-Print books can be searched for by title from http://www.outofprint.com/ .
Internet Companies
Directory (A Partial Listing)
| COMPANY |
DESCRIPTION |
URL |
|
e-Retail
(consumer products and services) |
| 1-800
Contacts |
Contact
lenses |
http://www.1800contacts.com/ |
| Alloy
Online |
Goods
for teens |
http://www.alloy.com/ |
| Amazon.com |
Books,
music, electronics |
http://www.amazon.com |
| Autobytel.com |
New,
used car guide |
http://www.autobytel.com/ |
| Barnesandnoble.com |
Books,
music |
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ |
| Drugstore.com |
Medical
products |
http://www.drugstore.com/ |
| eBay |
Auctions |
http://www.ebay.com/ |
| Egghead.com |
Computer
products |
http://www.egghead.com/ |
| Expedia |
Travel
planning |
http://www.expedia.com/ |
| Hotel
Reservations Network |
Discounted
hotel rooms |
http://www.180096hotel.com/ |
| Priceline.com |
Travel
reservations |
http://www.priceline.com/ |
| Stamps.com |
Postage |
http://www.stamps.com/ |
| Ticketmaster |
Guides,
tickets |
http://www.ticketmaster.com/ |
| Travelocity.com |
Travel
reservations |
http://www.travelocity.com/ |
| e-Finance
(banks, brokerages and credit companies) |
| Ameritrade |
Securities
broker |
http://www.ameritrade.com/ |
| Charles
Schwab |
Securities
broker |
http://www.schwab.com/ |
| CSFBdirect |
Securities
broker |
http://www.csfbdirect.com/ |
| E-Trade |
Securities
broker |
http://www.etrade.com |
| IndyMac
Bancorp |
Mortgage
lender |
http://www.indymacbank.com/ |
| Intuit |
Personal
finance info |
http://www.intuit.com/ |
| NetBank |
Consumer
banking |
http://www.gefn-compubank.com/ |
| NextCard |
Consumer
credit |
http://www.nextcard.com |
| TD
Warehouse |
Securities
broker |
http://www.tdwaterhouse.com/ |
| Wit
SoundView |
Securities
broker |
http://www.witsoundview.com/ |
| e-New
Media (advertising/subscription-supported media) |
| AOL
Time Warner |
Consumer
content |
http://www.aoltimewarner.com/ |
| Ask
Jeeves |
Search
engine |
http://www.ask.com/ |
| Cnet
Networks |
Technology
content |
http://www.cnet.com/ |
| HomeStore.com |
Real
estate content |
http://www.homestore.com/ |
| HotJobs.com |
Career
content |
http://www.hotjobs.com/ |
| InfoSpace |
Wireless
content |
http://infospace.com/ |
| MarketWatch.com |
Financial
content |
http://cbs.marketwatch.com/ |
| McAfee.com |
Computer
protection |
http://mcafee.com/ |
| MP3.com |
Music
content |
http://www.mp3.com/ |
| Multex.com |
Financial
content |
http://www.multexusa.com/ |
| NBC
Internet |
Consumer
content |
http://www.nbci.com/ |
| SportsLine.com |
Sports
content |
http://sportsline.com/ |
| Terra
Lycos |
Consumer
content |
http://www.terralycos.com/ |
| TheStreet.com |
Financial
content |
http://www.thestreet.com/ |
| Apollo
Group U of Phoenix Online |
Education
content |
http://www.ipopros.com/histdeal_pla.asp?deal=2285 |
| Yahoo |
Web
guide |
http://www.yahoo.com/ |
| e-Access
providers (connections to the Internet) |
| Aether
Systems |
Wireless
Internet access |
http://www.aethersystems.com/ |
| Excite
At Home |
Internet
access |
http://www.excite.com/ |
| EarthLink |
Internet
access |
http://www.earthlink.net/ |
| Juno
Online Services |
Internet
access |
http://www.juno.com |
| Metricom |
Wireless
Internet access |
http://www.metricom.com/
IMPORTANT NOTICE:
Please be advised that Metricom has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection. |
| NetZero |
Internet
access |
http://www.netzero.net/ |
| Prodigy
Communications |
Internet
access |
http://www.prodigy.com/ |
| RCN |
Internet
access |
http://www.rcn.com/ |
| Research
in Motion |
Wireless
Internet access |
http://www.rim.net/ |
| WorldGate
Communications |
Internet
access |
http://www.wgate.com |
| e-Learning
providers (corporate) For more details go to http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm |
| Caliber |
Training and
executive dev. |
http://www.caliber.com/ |
| Pensare |
Executive development with plans for degree programs in
partnership with prestige universities |
http://www.pensare.com/ |
| UNext |
Executive development and for-credit programs through
UNext's Cardean
University and in partnership with prestige universities |
http://www.unext.com/ |
| Smart Force |
Executive development |
http://www.smartforce.com/ |
| Quisic |
Content development, executive development, and for-credit
courses |
http://www.quisic.com/
(Formerly called University Access) |
| Headlight (From
CyberU) |
Recreational learners and an online small business
training center |
http://www.cyberu.com/training/headlight/index.asp |
| OnlineLearning.net |
Training and executive development and for-credit courses |
http://www.onlinelearning.net/ |
| University of Maryland University College |
Training and executive development and for-credit courses |
http://www.umuc.edu/ |
| Fathom (headed by Columbia University in conjunction with
many prestigious partners) |
A huge knowledge portal that offers over 600 courses |
http://www.fathom.com/index.jhtml |
| New York University Online |
Training and executive development and for-credit courses |
http://i5.nyu.edu/~jmm282/nyupage.html |
| University of Phoenix |
Training and executive development and for-credit courses
(The largest accredited private university in the world.) |
http://www.phoenix.edu/index_open.html |
| The Kaplan Colleges |
Training and executive development and for-credit courses
(including the online Concord School of Law) |
http://www.kaplancollege.com/ |
| Sylvan Learning Systems |
Training and executive development and for-credit courses
(and testing centers) |
http://www.sylvan.net/ |
| Intellnex from Ernst & Young (the first Big 5
accounting firm university) |
Training and executive development |
http://www.intellinex.com/flash/index.htm |
Many
other corporate providers are discussed in a book that can be downloaded
free:
The Business of Borderless Education, by S.C. Cunningham, et al.,
(Australian Department of Education, Evaluations and Investigations
Programme of the Higher Education Division, 2000). Hard Copy ISBN
0 642 44446 3 and Online Copy ISBN 0 642 44447 1 --- http://www.detya.gov.au/archive/highered/eippubs/eip00_3/bbe.pdf |
Bob Jensen's documents on e-Learning are available free at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
(Note that most prestige universities have already or are forming private
corporations for online delivery of training, executive development, and
for-credit courses)
How to find online training and education programs http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm
Bob Jensen's other bookmarks are
at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob.htm
Hi Professor Jensen,
I am the webmaster
for PacificCable.com. We sell computer cables, networking supplies and X10
Home Automation products. Can you please check out our website http://www.pacificcable.com
and consider adding a link to us?
Thanks,
Cliff Knopik
Webmaster http://www.pacificcable.com
800-931-3133
Toshiba
- Toshiba Top 10 Most
Frequent File Downloads
- Toshiba Service
& Support (Special Site)
- Toshiba Service
& Support Home
- Toshiba Top 10 Most
Frequent File Downloads
AHP Analytic Hierarchy Process
- What'sNew at Expert Choice? (AHP and ANP)
Expert Choice, Inc. Homepage (AHP)
-
Apple
Tired of Computer Viruses, Spyware, and all the Other Microsoft Diseases?
Switch to a Mac
If you switch to a Mac, a must book is Mac OS X: The Missing Manual
by David Pogue http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596000820/002-3743809-1628824?v=glance
This book explains how to translate what you
liked to do in Windows into how to do the same things on a Mac.
A Few Questions and Answers from
Walt Mossberg
"Spreadsheets and Firefox;
Managing Network Contacts, by Walter Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal,
September 30, 2004; Page B5 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109649487646631729,00.html?mod=technology%5Ffeatured%5Fstories%5Fhs
Q:
If I switch from Windows to the Macintosh, will all my Windows programs
still run on the Mac? Can I use all my files, like Excel spreadsheets and
photos and music?
A: Apple's Macintosh computers
use their own operating system, not Microsoft's Windows, and therefore they
aren't designed to run Windows programs. So, if you switch to a Mac, you
shouldn't count on using your current Windows programs, such as Outlook, or
Windows Media Player. There are Mac versions of some popular Windows
programs, like Microsoft Office, and equivalents for other programs. You
shouldn't buy a Mac unless you are prepared to leave your Windows software
behind and use new Mac software.
However, there is an exception. If
you must use an irreplaceable Windows program or two occasionally, you can
run them on the Mac, provided you buy special software from Microsoft called
Virtual PC, which emulates a Windows computer on a Mac. Essentially, it
fools Windows programs into believing a Mac is a Windows PC. But Virtual PC
is slow, and is vulnerable to Windows viruses and spyware, so I don't
recommend it for heavy use.
Files are a different story. All your
Windows MP3 music files, JPG picture files, text files, Adobe PDF files, and
other common file types can be used right out the box on a Mac. And, if you
buy Microsoft Office for the Mac, all of your Excel, Word and PowerPoint
files can be instantly opened and edited on the Mac.
Q: I've switched to the
Firefox Web browser, but have found that some Web pages that formerly opened
fine in Internet Explorer, especially financial pages, don't work right in
Firefox. What can I do?
A: Firefox is a better, more
secure browser, and it supports all major Web-site design standards. But,
unfortunately, some Web sites, particularly financial Web sites, have been
designed to use nonstandard features of Internet Explorer. For these sites,
I suggest you revert temporarily to IE, even if you use Firefox for
everything else.
Q: I am faced with the
daunting task of building and utilizing my personal network of contacts,
which means calling leads and maintaining an extensive to-do list, reminders
and notes. Do you know of an application that would manage this process?
A: You want a contact manager,
rather than a simpler address book and calendar program like Outlook or
Lotus Organizer. The difference is that contact managers are designed to let
you manage and record all your interactions with each person, or group of
people -- including notes, e-mails, appointments and more. These programs
are popular among salespeople and others.
The best-known personal contact
manager is ACT, by Best Software, at www.act.com
Another prominent contact manager is GoldMine, by FrontRange Solutions, at www.goldmine.com.
-
-
- There are many manuals for using the Mac,
but few that come with two hours of
video tutorials. Jim Heid's Macintosh
iLife is like watching a presentation at the local Apple Store,
without having to lift your posterior off the sofa.
"The Easy Way to the ILife," Leander Kahney, Wired News,
December 21, 2004 --- http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,66102,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2
- Making the Macintosh: Technology and Culture in Silicon Valley
(History) http://library.stanford.edu/mac/
- Apple web site contents
The Apple Store
(U.S.)
- Pippin World Wide Web Site
- THE GUIDE
Tune into the latest rumors about Apple
Corporation --- http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,53743,00.html
Asymetrix
(Now called Click2Learn)
- Asymetrix
(Click2Learn) Home Page
Asymetrix Technical Support
Asymetrix Downloads
Asymetrix Distance
Learning Development Resources: Cool Sites Research Corner
- Asymetrix Insite
- Platte Canyon Multimedia Software
Corporation (illustration of ToolBook and Microsoft Agent Speech Recognition)
- Past, Present and
Future: A Trip down ToolBook's Memory Lane (Microsoft Agent Speech Recognition)
-
Rick Birney's demo of streaming ToolBooks
- Asymetrix Insite Training & Education
Tools
- Asymetrix Supercede
- Welcome to Aimtech
- Tom L. Hall
(Toolbook, Asymetrix, Neuron, Authoring, Science, Chemistry)
- Tom Hall Syllabus
Article (6/97,43-46)Windows Multimedia Authoring for Educators: ToolBook II
- Some of My Favorite
Links (Tom L. Hall, Asymetrix Toolbook)
- Welcometo Aimtech (Icon Author)
Tool Comparison (Compares authoring
software, asymetrix librarian, etc.)
- Visit Asymetrix support newsgroups at:
news://news.asymetrix.com/asymetrix.iconauthor
news://news.asymetrix.com/asymetrix.librarian
news://news.asymetrix.com/asymetrix.toolbook.dist
news://news.asymetrix.com/asymetrix.toolbook.scripting
news://news.asymetrix.com/asymetrix.toolbook.cbt
news://news.asymetrix.com/asymetrix.toolbook.assistant
news://news.asymetrix.com/asymetrix.iconauthor
news://news.asymetrix.com/asymetrix.3d
news://news.asymetrix.com/asymetrix.dvp
news://news.asymetrix.com/asymetrix.webpub
On the leading edge with (the
billionaire former partner of Bill Gates) Paul Allen at http://www.paulallen.com/ (a man of many
talents and interests who invests in so many things that it boggles the mind of a poor
bookkeeping professor)
Neuron
- Asymetrix Impulse
for Neuron
- Multimedia and Web
Design with ToolBook II and Java (Tom Hall's Neuron Demos)
- : Asymetrix Neuron
Frequently Asked Questions
- circuit (Neuron
Demo)
- Download Asymetrix
Neuron: The ToolBook Plug-In
- Multimedia Albums and Books (Neuron)
- Multimedia and Web
Design with ToolBook II and Java (Tom Hall's Neuron Demos)
- ToolBook Neuron Applications in Education
(History, Economics, math, etc.)
- M&H Valve Company Website - (ToolBook
Neuron Corporate Catalog)
Corel
- Corel Internet
Products-Low Bandwidth Version of This Page
- Corel WEB.GRAPHICS
SUITE Product InformationLow Bandwidth Version of This Page
- Welcome to Corel
IBM
- IBM Global Campus
Community
IAT: Homepage
- IBM Corporation
- IBM PC ThinkPad
- IBM Planetwide
search results
- IBM Services and Support
- IKE - IBM Kiosk for Education
- Search the IBM Planetwide web
- ThinkPad and PS/Note
Intel
- Intel Pentium(R)
Processor with MMX(TM) Technology
Kodak
- KODAK:Picture This
Postcard Tips
- Your Kodak PictureThis Postcard
Macromedia
- Macromedia Director
- <Dreamweaver
- Macromedia:
Dreamweaver - New Features
Macromedia
Dreamweaver - Dreamweaver 1.2 Quick Reference
- Macromedia - Shocked
Site of the Day
- Macromedia -
Pathware
- Jeff's Page (Authorware, Shockwave, ACS
Seminar Member, Music, Piano)
- Authorware Exercise
Tutorial Pages
- ACS Authoring Workshop Home Page
- Macromedia: Shockwave Center
- Macromedia Flash
Generator
- CNN Plus: Games!
(Shockwave)
- Macromedia: Web
Center: Welcome
- Macromedia: Welcome to Macromedia!
Microsoft
Access
-
Bob Jensen's Microsoft Access Helpers
Microsoft Access Accounting Systems
- Jerry's Programming
Information (including Microsoft Access Database Links)
- Vitali Sh.Kaufman's Bookmarks (Good Links
to Technology Firms and Education Links)
- Access2Web by SiteSoft (Software for
Publishing Access Databases on WWW)
- Relational Databases
Course Descriptions (Videotape Training)
- FAQs about Connecting to the Internet
- Microsoft Access for
Windows 95 Version 7.0 New Features
- Microsoft Access for
Windows 95 Version 7.0 Introduction
- Microsoft Access for
Windows 95 Version 7.0 Forms and Reports
- Microsoft Access for
Windows 95 Version 7.0 Advanced Database Management
- Microsoft Access for
Windows 95 Version 7.0 Introduction to Application Development
- Microsoft Access for
Windows 95 Version 7.0 Advanced Application Development
- Microsoft Access 2.0
for Windows Managing Forms and Reports
- Microsoft Access 2.0
for Windows Advanced Database Management
- Microsoft
Access 2.0 for Windows
- Digital Dreamshop's Microsoft Access
Developer's Pages
- Microsoft Technical
Support Knowledge Base
- Tony's Main Microsoft Access Page
- Microsoft Access Accounting Systems
- DECUS S95: Databases
and Data Management (DM) Sessions (All About Oracle Databases)
- CPECourse (Microsoft
Access Training Course)
FrontPage
- FrontPage
Home
Page
-
PC Computing's 1,001 Best Internet Tips
General
- Microsoft Corporation
Download Free Microsoft Software
(alphabetical listing)
Microsoft Press
- SBN Workshop -
Microsoft Agent Home
- Platte Canyon Multimedia Software
Corporation (illustration of ToolBook and Microsoft Agent Speech Recognition)
- Past, Present and
Future: A Trip down ToolBook's Memory Lane (Microsoft Agent Speech Recognition)
- Peedy's Pizza Palace
- Microsoft Agent
Character Data
- Peedy's Pizza Palace
- Richard Campbell's MS Agent Demo
- Microsoft Financial Forum (Annual
Reports)
Microsoft Solutions
Workshops Online Learning Tutorials
- Internet Explorer Home
- Microsoft Internet Information Server
- Microsoft Technical
Support--Advanced Support Options
- Welcome to Windows95.com! The best 32-bit
Shareware, Drivers, Tips, and Information on the Internet!
- Microsoft in Higher
Education - Vision
- Microsoft Press
- Microsoft's COM
(Component Object Model)
- Microsoft Corporation Products
- Microsoft Free Downloads
- Microsoft in Higher
Education - Commentary
- Bill Gates: The Road Ahead
- Excel Viewer/Reader
- Guide to Microsoft (History & Guide)
- Microsoft Annual
Report - 1996
- Microsoft Internet Information Server
- MS Annual Report -
Financial Statements
- Powertoys
- Search Microsoft
- Windows 95 / NT Shareware Library
- CPECourse (Microsoft
Software Training Modules)
- Country Codes
(Microsoft )
- Welcome to Windows95.com! The best 32-bit
Shareware, Drivers, Tips, and Information on the Internet!
Miscellaneous Computer Firms
-
Bob Jensen's Vendor Database
Gartner Interactive Home
- Harcourt Brace's
Useful Links
- Adaptec CD-Recordable Software
- Downloadables
(Adaptec Easy CD Writer 95 Pro)
- Adobe
- AltaVista: Simple
Query ToolBook II
- Autodesk Homepage
- Bell Labs
Text-to-Speech
Linux Resources(TM)
- Sybase, Inc.
- Network Computing Online Home Page
- Borland Online
- Compaq Online
- Compaq Online USA -
QuickSpecs - Presario 3020
- Computer Reseller News
- Corel WEB.GRAPHICS
SUITE Product Information
OnLive, Inc. (especially for Mac users)
Welcome to Cyberflix the Interactive Story Company.
- Corel WEB.WORLD
Product Information
- Creative Labs is now Creative Inspire
- Dell Store
- Dolch Computer Systems
- Qualcomm's Eudora Place
- ExtronWEB (VGA Switches)
- Fractal Design Corporation
- Gateway 2000 USA
- DEAN Program (Great Plains Software)
- Here's Ernie
- Welcome to Hewlett-Packard
- HoTMetaL PRO 3.0
Features
- IAT: Homepage
- IKE - IBM Kiosk for Education
- IPIX- The World Leader in Immersive
Imaging and Graphics
- Intel's Connected PC Home!
- IntelSmart Video
Recorder III
- Intex.Net Dallas / Fort Worth Service
Provider
- Intranet
Construction Site SoftQuad's HiP Hotmetal Publisher)
- JASC Paint Show Pro
- JOIN US
- Litton-FiberCom Home Page
- Microsoft Corporation
- MicroWarehouse Online Advantage
- Mind Path Technologies (Remote Control)
Wireless Computing - RF mice and keyboards
- MindQ Home Page
- Packard Bell
- Packard Bell
Multimedia F170
- Pathminder: Mind Path Technologies
(Remote Control)
Wireless Computing - RF mice and keyboards
- Peachtree Software Home Page
- http://www.km.philips.c...cdr/cdd3610/cdd3600.pdf
(CD-R, CD-RW)
- PIONEER COMMUNICATIONS INC.
- Sagebrush Systems Home Page for audio,
sound card software (Recall)
- SoftQuad: Products:
HoTMetaL: Evaluation Download
- Take Charge Of
Enterprise Resources With Eight Remote-Control Solutions
Wireless Computing - RF mice and keyboards
- Quarterdeck: HUB
- SoftQuad: Products: HoTMetaL PRO
- Software Partners, Inc. - Adobe Acrobat
Products and Services
- Texas Instruments Welcomes You
- The Multimedia PC
Versus the Next-Generation Game System - July 1995
- Toshiba
- Upgrade to HoTMetaL
PRO 4.0
- Upside's Book of
Lists
- VersionCheck Home Page
- Welcome to Corel
- Welcome to Dell.com
- Welcome to FIBRCOM
On the leading edge with (the
billionaire former partner of Bill Gates) Paul Allen at http://www.paulallen.com/ (a man of many
talents and interests who invests in so many things that it boggles the mind of a poor
bookkeeping professor)
Netscape
- http://home.netscape.co.../yellowpages/index.html
- http://home.netscape.co.../yellowpages/index.html
- Netscape DevEdge
Online
- Netscape |
Destinations
- Plug-in Finder
- Recent Intranet
Press Releases
- Recent Intranet
Press Releases
- Table Of Contents
- Welcome to Netscape
Retail Stores and Online Shopping
-
Technology
Products Shopping Links
LinkSys (good for switching devices)
- CompUSA's Home Page!
- Computer Reseller News
- Packard Bell
- Packard Bell
Multimedia F170
Sterling
Software Products at http://www.sterling.com/products/
Cool - A suite of software products that provides high-powered modeling and generation
tools in an integrated work management environment. (For an AIS course that uses
this product see
ACC 419/619 ).
Sams - Software that manages, monitors, and automates data storage in both distributed
and centralized environments.
Solve - Software for end-to-end desired
state management of mission critical networked business applications from a service
perspective.
Vision - Software to enable customers to extend the life and usefulness of legacy
applications and to facilitate enterprise-wide information access .
VM - Systems
management and Web software for IBM's VM operating system .
Sun
- Java(tm) - Programming for the Internet
- Sun Microsystems
Video Boards
- miro Computer Products (MPEG Board)
Microsoft Word Training Modules ---
http://www.internet4classrooms.com/on-line_word.htm
Learnthat.com: Free web training for computer courses ---
http://www.learnthat.com/courses/computer/default.asp
Introduction to C Programming ---
http://www.le.ac.uk/cc/tutorials/c/
From the University of Arizona
Getting Started With Excel ---
http://www.studyfinance.com/lessons/excel/index.mv
MacWorld: Tricks and Tips ---
http://www.macworld.com/howto.html
Bob Jensen's video tutorials on Excel and MS Access ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
In particular, the videos are listed at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/
MacWorld: Tricks and Tips ---
http://www.macworld.com/howto.html
Learning Tree International (Global Information Technology Training)
This company is featured in a full page article in Barrons, January
20, 2003, Page 27.
Learning Tree International is a world leader in
hands-on training for IT Professionals. Over 1.3 million course participants
from 18,000+ companies have enhanced their IT skills through intensive hands-on
exercises led by expert instructors with real-world experience. Courses are
presented at Learning Tree Education Centers and other locations throughout the
world, as well as on-site at client facilities. Choose from over 150
courses in today's hottest technologies, including Windows
XP, 2000, .NET, Java, XML, Oracle9i and 8i, UNIX and IT Management,
along with 42 Professional Certification Programs.
A Web Training Course From the U.K.
Becoming WebWise http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/learn/index.shtml
Welcome
to BBC Becoming WebWise!
This new online course is the easy way to get to grips with the
Internet. It lets you learn at your own pace and can lead to a
nationally recognised qualification. Enrol at your local college
for one of the accredited qualifications. |
- The eight key
sections, or trips, will take you through the Internet basics
in a simple and easy to follow format. Remember, you can
return to any of the sections as often as you like. It will
probably take you about ten hours to complete the course.
- Becoming WebWise
will help you find out about getting connected, e-mailing,
searching, bookmarking, making your own address book and the
very basics of building your own web page. You will also learn
about technological developments like Digital TV and WAP
phones, your legal rights online, the history of the net, and
the other ways in which you might get online.
- As you progress
through the course, you will be able to see your scores by
visiting your scorecard. This will tell you which trip and
landmarks you have visited and also your scores in our tasks
and quizzes. It is important to log out at the end of your
visit so that your scores and progress will be saved.
- Remember: in
order to obtain the accredited qualification you must enrol at
a local college. Use our national
coursefinder section to find one.
- Use the Register
or Log
In link to get a scorecard. If you would like to enter
Becoming WebWise without registering or logging in then use
this link: Enter
Becoming WebWise
|
From The Scout Report on January 18, 2002
FindTutorials http://www.findtutorials.com/
FindTutorials offers hundreds of tutorials and
professional online IT and Softskills training courses that are
available for a variety of disciplines and skill levels. In addition, it
offers an online e-mail system, an IT job database with thousands of
daily updated positions, and a host of additional resources on internet
training skills. With simple to use navigational tools and a
"sophisticated in-house developed site search", finding
information to meet your requirements merely takes the click of a
button.
Miscellaneous Computer Training
- The Education Alliance Network provides, free of cost, the materials
for colleges and universities to expose college-level students to financial management
software, helping them gain hands-on experience to real-world technologies http://www.gps.com/ean/
-
- Microsoft Solutions Workshops Online
Learning Tutorials
O'Reilly Web Based Training
AzNET News (San Diego State
University)
Welcome to MCC's Online Courses
Computer Literacy --- Online technology bookstore
Jensen & Sandlin Survey of High End Courseware Shells and
Authoring Software
- Index to BUSN 2311
--- Computers in Business
- Andersen Consulting Careers - The
Multimedia Experience (Shockwave)
- Network Computing
Technology Center
-
Software Training Videotapes and CDs (Bob
Jensen's List)
- Vitali Sh.Kaufman's Bookmarks (Good Links
to Technology Firms and Education Links)
- UVC Index of
Microelectronics Videos (software videotapes and CD-ROMS, including Java) Good Site
- Asymetrix Insite Training & Education
Tools
- LearnItOnline Home Page (Computer
Training)
- TheToolbox
Technical Help
- The Shodor Education Foundation
(Technology education in math & science)
- Upcoming Workshops
(ACS Associated Colleges of the South)
- Welcome to CD-PowerMedia Productions Inc.
- Video Courseware by Vendor
- E&A (Software training videos and
CD-ROMs)
- Mix Software Inc, C/C++ programming and
training products
- http://www.osservices.com/ (software
training on CD-ROMs and videotapes)
- Page One Design Inc.
- Video Training Catalog (Photoshop Videos)
OnLive, Inc. (especially for Mac users)
- Page One Design Inc.
(software video and CD-ROMs)
- Page One Design Inc
- CD-ROM Interactive Training (FrontPage training CD-ROM)
- A1 PCtraining Videos/CD ROMs (software)
- Compulearn Home (videotape and CD-ROMs
for software)
Firefly Communications: CRT Main Page
- Labyrinth
Communication Ltd. (Music technology hardware & software training videos)
- MindQ Home Page
- CPAssociates Seminars, Inc. - Accounting
Software Update '96
- Web-Based Training
Information Center (Good Discussion of CBT)
- Links to WBT and
Related Sites (CBT Links)
- Media-Based Course
Descriptions (Sun Inc training courses and videotapess)
- LearnItOnline Home Page (Computer
Training)
- Kaltec's
Programmer's Parlor (Helper Links )
- Kaltec's Microsoft
Access Web Site Links Extensive Lishing of Helpful Links)
- Bookmarks for Chuck
Estin (Links to Grants, Education Technology, Authoring)
- Otherpages on BASIC
- TheBeginners Basic Homepage © 1995-1997 Steven Salmon
- CPECourse (Microsoft
Software Training Modules)
- CPECourse (Microsoft
Access Training Course)
PC Computing's 1,001 Best Internet Tips
-
The Taxonomy Warehouse is
a fantastic search engine in terms of helpful categories --- http://www.taxonomywarehouse.com/
Bob Jensen's search helpers are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm
Portal to Asian Internet Resources --- http://webcat.library.wisc.edu:3200/PAIR/index.html
A Title VI-funded project, the Portal to
Asian Internet Resources (PAIR) offers scholars, students and the
interested public more than six thousand professionally selected,
cataloged and annotated online resources.
Committed to directing users to Asian area
content in the humanities and social sciences, the PAIR Project is
supported by an impressive complement of area studies scholars,
bibliographers and subject selectors based at the libraries of the
University of Wisconsin, the University of Minnesota and the Ohio
State University.
With a primary mission of providing direct
access to online Asian information in native languages and scripts,
the PAIR Project team also hopes to broaden access by offering users a
suite of instructional resources on the use of Asian character sets
and search engines.
- http://www.netmike.com (Pete
Mazany, Business Game Education, Marketing, Strategy, Finance, Economics)
Duxbury Resource Center (Excel Simulation Software).
Stagecast Software (Larry Tesler)
- Computer Reseller News
- The Virtual Institute of Information
- ExtronWEB (VGA Switches)
- TechWire (Tech News)
- TUCOWS (Software Acquisition)
- Welcome to Ratings.org. The internets
ratings resource
- CNET.COM
- Welcome to
BUYDIRECT.COM
- The FONTSITE
- I2 Home (Internet2, Internet 2)
- 3Com Bigpicture - TV
Phone
- Axis Communications - Networked by Axis
- Cisco Connection Online
- Microplex Systems Ltd.- Network Print
Servers and Hubs
- Sun Microsystems
- Network Associates Inc. - (Virus Updates)
- The New Ascom Home Page
- Network Computing
Technology Center
- Country Codes
(Microsoft )
TechNewsWorld ---
http://www.technewsworld.com/
Technology News for Dummies: What are the best sites?
Danny Briere is no dummy, he just writes for them.
Author of seven "For Dummies" books ranging from advice on turning your home
into a smart home, to putting in your own home theater, to how to hack and mod
your home wireless network, Mr. Briere is quite at home in the digital home.
That's not unexpected for the chief executive at TeleChoice, a consultancy for
the telecom and cable industries. Mr. Briere practices what he preaches in using
new technologies to make his life easier and less complex.
"Recommended Reading," The Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2005; Page R2 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111438840734015616,00.html?mod=todays_us_the_journal_report
|
In order to advise on the latest and greatest
in home entertainment, Mr. Briere estimates he reads more than
100 magazines, newsletters, and Webzines each week to keep
current on news and happenings. However, if he were stranded on
a deserted island with only a handful of high-tech sites to stay
king of the tech mountain, here are some sites he's certainly
miss online:
• CNET,
www.cnet.com
Tried but true, CNET really sets the pace these days when it
comes to hardcore technology-only news. If it's happening in
technology, CNET is writing about it, and it usually has an
angle that others don't have. Combined with its reviews of
products and tutorial sections, it's a must-stop before you make
any technology purchase."
• Engadget,
www.engadget.com
"Started by veterans from Gizmodo, Engadget offers a similar
fun-loving approach to gadgetry. Quick hit feature stories and
reviews about new technologies are their specialty. My favorite
recent story was a discussion of the pros and cons of
mood-sensing lights on your car that warn other drivers when
you're cranky. Engadget covers iPods, media extenders, wireless
devices, and other such advances too."
• eHomeUpgrade,
ehomeupgrade.com
"EHomeUpgrade covers the latest in home technologies in a way
that expands the definition of a 'fixer-upper' to include adding
home controls and robots alongside your digital media servers
and home wireless networks. EHomeUpgrade will keep you informed
about the latest moves in technifying your home. Where else can
you count on a detailed review of the Sony AIBO ERS-7M2 robotic
dog?"
• SmartHome,
www.smarthome.com
"SmartHome always shows you about four or five different ways to
get the same thing done, in a do-it-yourselfer fashion that will
please the most goal-oriented parts of your psyche. Whether it's
for home automation, audio or video distribution, smarthome
sensors, computer interfaces, etc., SmartHome will give you a
lot of ideas for how to make home entertainment a whole-home
activity."
• PVRBlog,
www.pvrblog.com
"PVRBlog is a blog in the limelight now with the intense focus
of so many players on the future of PVR/DVR (personal video
recorder/digital video recording) technology. With TiVo's
fortunes rising and falling, new interactive video and
programming functions being added to many new devices, and with
the telcos moving so fast into IPTV (Internet protocol
television), sources like the PVRBlog provide a daily dose of
insight and analysis on what's happening in video devices."
• Home Theater blog,
hometheaterblog.com/
"There are lots of high quality magazines covering home theater
-- and most of these require print to really bring justice to
their presentation of home theater topics. But Home Theater blog
gives ongoing regular commentary, enlightened by an active reply
commentary from readers. The author is a feet-on-the-street
installer with practical insights on what the big companies are
doing to define home theater. In my book, the one who does the
work usually has the best things to say."
• Wired,
www.wired.com
"Wired magazine simply has great, detailed, and tremendously
unique technology stories to tell all the time. If nothing else,
Wired gives me great fodder for party talk. The top story this
week was about wearable computers for dogs that track the
pooches' social life...it's called 'petworking'. Wired is more
than pertinent, it's downright interesting too."
• BoingBoing,
www.boingboing.net
"Dubbing itself a 'Directory of Wonderful Things,' BoingBoing is
an uncategorizable mix of technology, gadgets, sci-fi and EFF/ACLU-leaning
politics that might not fit at all with the average
businessperson, but it is very hip and heavily read. You never
know what you'll find that you'll enjoy, but when you find it,
you'll like it a lot."
|
Online Magazine
(for Information Professionals) --- http://www.onlineinc.com/onlinemag/index.html
ONLINE is written for Information Professionals and
provides articles, product reviews, case studies, evaluation, and informed
opinion about selecting, using, and managing electronic information products,
plus industry and professional information about online database systems,
CD-ROM, and the Internet. This site contains selected full-text articles and
news from each issue of the magazine. Direct letters to the editor to Marydee
Ojala ( Marydee@xmission.com ). If
you are interested in writing for ONLINE, please see the Authors' Guidelines.
- Yahoo Links
UCLA Internet Report: Surveying the Digital Future --- http://www.ccp.ucla.edu/newsite/pages/internet-report.asp
AnchorDesk at http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_3505.html
InfoWorld at http://www.infoworld.com/
CNET at http://home.cnet.com/
- TechWeb at http://www.techweb.com/
Bob Jensen's
New Bookmarks
The Argus
Clearinghouse (ratings of web sites)
Application Development Trends (Journal)
- Network Associates Inc. - (Virus Updates)
- Internet World Daily
- Online Journalism Review Frameset
- EDUCOM: Transforming Education Through
Information Technology
- newmedia.com
- T.H.E. JOURNAL ONLINE
- ZDTips - Home Page (Word, Excel, etc.)
- Computers --- What to buy
- World Wide Web FAQ
- WWW FAQ: What are WWW, hypertext and
hypermedia?
- Web-Based Training
Information Center (Good Discussion of CBT)
- Links to WBT and
Related Sites (CBT Links)
- The Virtual Institute of Information
- Wall Street Journal Personal Technology
Home Page
- The Software Review Source (Add Your Own
Review)
- CMPtv
(Compter Chronicles, PBS, News) --- http://www.computerchronicles.org/index.asp
- CNET.COM
- Today at Connect-Time Magazine
- Hypermedia Communications, Inc.
- SENTRY TECHNOLOGY GROUP (Software
Magazine)
- TechWeb
- Welcome to PCTV (Computer Chronicles)
--- http://www.computerchronicles.org/index.asp
Internet Archive: Moving Images Archive (Multimedia) --- http://www.archive.org/movies/movies.php
Many great video downloads.
Note that you can locate and download 427 Computer Chronicles (my
favorite) television shows classified by topic.
- PBS Web Site Guide
- GEO Publishing (Real
Audio, Streaming Audio)
- Microsoft in Higher
Education - Commentary
- Welcome to
BUYDIRECT.COM
Federico Mercatali's Free Internet Tools
- Main Page
- Welcome to Windows95.com! The best 32-bit
Shareware, Drivers, Tips, and Information on the Internet!
- PC Meter Tackles Web
Measurement (Accounitng Assurance Services)
- Internet Domain Survey (Growth Trends on
the web, data, statistics)
Internet Economy Indicators --- http://www.internetindicators.com/
- American National Standards Institute
- International Telecommunication Union
(ITU) Home Page
- IEEE Home Page
- Includes a five-year archive on Jakob Nielsen's bi-weekly
column on Web usability (including summaries of common design flaws in personal and
corporate web sites) at http://www.useit.com/
-
- On the leading edge with (the billionaire former partner of
Bill Gates) Paul Allen at http://www.paulallen.com/
(a man of many talents and interests who invests in so many things that it boggles the
mind of a poor bookkeeping professor)
Probably the main computer security site is at CERT
--- http://www.cert.org/
You
should know about this site when you have a computer security question ---
http://www.alw.nih.gov/Security/security.html
The U.S. Department of Justice Cybercrime Website ---
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/
Bob
Jensen's Technology Glossary on security --- http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/245glosf.htm#Security1
Bob
Jensen's Things to Know --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm#ThingsToKnow
- Hackers Hall of Fame --- http://tlc.discovery.com/convergence/hackers/bio/bio.html
-
- I love my Quick View Plus as a way of opening Word and Excel files that people send me
without running the risk of starting a Windows macro virus (even when you copy or print
from the file). You can download a free trial version and give it a test run. http://www.jasc.com/qvp.html
-
- Recall that I previously provided you with some WebTrust
cases without case solutions at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5342/262wp/262case1.htm
. You can now link to the solutions from the cases themselves. Also see
Jensen, Howland, and Sidlinger solutions at http://www.aicpa.org/members/div/career/edu/caselist.htm#98
.
-
- "Why do hackers hack? They say it's to learn about technology and how
computers work. That's small comfort to security pros," by George V. Hulme,
Information Week, November 10, 2003, pp. 42-56 --- http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=16000606
-
- Spyware Blaster 2.6.1 --- http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html
Help stop unwanted persons and companies from tracking your network
navigation. Chances are that somebody has installed Spyware on
your computer without your knowledge or permission.
-
- http://www.infowar.com
Introduction to Internet Security
Index of
/~jhowland/security
-
Electronic Sabotage
Net confidential (Security, Privacy)
- RAND
- Computer Security:
Questions & Answers
- Media Metrix (Tracks Web Navigations of
Web Users)
- http://www.seas.gwu.edu...reto/papers/infowar.pdf
(Information Warfare)
- Information Warfare
Cookies
- Databases,
Replication, Locusts And Floods
- Is DCOM The Object
Of Middleware's Desire?
- Mission Impertinent
- CERT Coordination Center (Carnegie Mellon
Security Database)
- Some links to fraud
discussion
-
Introduction to Computer Security (John
Howland)
- Sidlinger Computer Corporation (Bruce
Sidlinger )
- Internet Guide for
Accountants, ISBN 0-13-270968-6
- Visa-Electronic
Commerce
- Password recovery by CRAK Software for
Word, WordPerfect, Excel, Lotus, Quattro Pro, etc.
- Visa-Electronic
Commerce
- VeriSign
- The Better Business Bureau Central Web
Server for U.S. and Canada
- TrustE Directory
- AICPA NewsFlash! - 9/16/97 - AICPA
Launches CPA WebTrust Electronic Commerce Seal
- CPA WebTrust
- TCS Home Page
- Password recovery by CRAK Software for
Word, WordPerfect, Excel, Lotus, Quattro Pro, etc.
NIPC (National Infrastructure Protection
Center's Wakeup Call on Security)
Especially note the FAQs at http://www.nipc.gov/
Security for All or Portions of Web
Documents
Many educators would like to put more materials on
the web, but they are concerned about protecting access to all or parts of
documents. For example, a professor may want to share a case with the world but
limit the accompanying case solution to selected users. Or a professor may want to
make certain lecture notes available but limit the access of certain copyrighted portions
to students in a particular course. If protecting parts of your documents is of
great interest, you may want to consider NetCloak from Maxum at http://www.maxum.com/ . You can download a free
trial version.
NetCloak Professional Edition
combines the power of Maxum's classic combo, NetCloak and NetForms, into a single CGI
application or WebSTAR API plug-in. With NetCloak Pro, you can use HTML forms on your web
site to create or update your web pages on the fly. Or you can store form data in text
files for importing into spreadsheets or databases off-line. Using NetCloak Pro, you can
easily create online discussion forums, classified ads, chat systems, self-maintaining
home pages, frequently-asked-question lists, or online order forms!
NetCloak Pro also gives your web
site access to e-mail. Users can send e-mail messages via HTML forms, and NetCloak Pro can
create or update web pages whenever an e-mail message is received by any e-mail address.
Imagine providing HTML archives of your favorite mailing lists in minutes!
NetCloak Pro allows users to
"cloak" pages individually or "cloak" individual paragraphs or text
strings. The level of security seems to be much higher than scripted passwords such
as scripted passwords in JavaScript or VBScript.
Eric Press led me to http://www.maxum.com/NetCloak/FAQ/FAQList.html
(Thank you Eric, and thanks for the "two lunches")
Richard Campbell responded as follows:
Alternatives to using Netcloak: 1.
Symantec http://www.symantec.com has a free
utility called Secret which will password-protect any type of file.
2. Winzip http://www.winzip.com has a another shareware
utility called Winzip - Self-Extractor, which has a password protect capability. The
advantage to this approach is that you can bundle different file types (.doc, xls) , zip
them and you can have them automatically install to a folder that you have named. If you
have a shareware install utility that creates a setup.exe routine, you also can have it
install automatically on the student's machine. The price of this product is about $30.
Free Spreadsheet Software
December 13, 2005 message from Richard J. Campbell
[campbell@RIO.EDU]
Ray Ozzie of Microsoft has been talking about
providing pieces of Office as a web service.
Here is a link to a free online spreadsheet:
www.numsum.com
Richard J. Campbell
SoftPedia Freeware --- http://www.softpedia.com/user/help.shtml
SoftPedia.com is a
library of over 20,000 free and free-to-try software programs for Windows and
Unix/Linux,games and drivers. We review and categorize these products in order
to allow the visitor/user to find the exact product they and their system needs.
We strive to deliver only the best products to the visitor/user together with
self-made evaluation and review notes. We add more than 50 products on our site
every day. All our services are FREE of charge for the visitors/users. There is
a membership system, but it does not require a payed subscription, although it
offers a series of advantages for the registered user.
- Tucows at http://www.tucows.com/
Download Netscape
Navigator Software
- IPIX- The World Leader in Immersive
Imaging
- Internet Assistant
for Micrsoft Word
- Microsoft Internet
Assistant for Word 6.0 for Windows
- Microsoft Word Free
Software
- MPEG compression museArc
Informationsseite
- Texas Networking, Inc.
- TUCOWS (Software Acquisition)
- Welcome to Ratings.org. The internets
ratings resource
- Windows 95 / NT Shareware Library
- The FONTSITE
Federico Mercatali's Free Internet Tools
- Main Page
- Adaptec CD-Recordable Software
- Downloadables
(Adaptec Easy CD Writer 95 Pro)
- TUCOWS World Wide Affiliate Site
Locations!
- Software Download |
Index of Products
- Filez - Search 75M files and 1000s of
servers for freeware, shareware, & commercial software
- Live3d: Download
Page: Windows Versions
- Welcome to Windows95.com! The best 32-bit
Shareware, Drivers, Tips, and Information on the Internet!
- Neuron: The ToolBook
Plug-In Showcase
- Keyboard Express,
Windows Macro Utility, Download
- Bell Labs
Text-to-Speech
- Intel Indeo® Video
4.3 (Driver download)
sourceXchange - marketplace for open source development http://www.sourcexchange.com/
Free Alternatives
to/for MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.
What is Microsoft (MS) Office? ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office
"Microsoft Office to Go Online for Free,"
Fortune, July 13, 2009 ---
Click Here
Also see
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/23838/?nlid=2174
This will not be the full-featured version of Office that you can
purchase, but it will compete head on with Google Office.
Unfortunately
none of the free alternatives to MS Office will have all the new and
supposedly wonderful features of the 2010 Version of MS Office
Richard Campbell forwarded this link describing the new
features to look forward to with the MS Office 2010 ---
http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-10284013-12.html?tag=smallC
Also see
http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/productivity/0,1000001108,39674807,00.htm
Not necessarily free alternatives to MS Office
Alternatives to Microsoft Office ---
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3524_7-5140428-1.html?tag=nl.e501
Question
What is Microsoft Office Live and its competitors?
See
http://officelive.microsoft.com/
Free alternatives to MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint,
etc.)
Like the Web-browser world before Firefox,
the market for so-called productivity software--word processors,
spreadsheets, and presentation tools--has been torpid for years,
dominated almost completely by Microsoft. But no longer. IBM's release
of a test version of the Lotus Symphony productivity suite earlier this
month adds another option to the list of free Microsoft Office
alternatives, which already include Google's Docs, Apple's iWork, and
the open-source OpenOffice programs, on which Symphony itself is based.
"IBM's Symphony for the Office Worker," MIT's Technology Review,
September 28, 2007 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19447/?a=f
Great Deal
for Students for MS Office Software
Microsoft
is running a new student promotion, dubbed
The Ultimate Steal,
which
allows eligible college students to purchase Microsoft Office Ultimate
2007 at the discounted price of $60. Office Ultimate includes Word,
Excel, Powerpoint, Access, InfoPath, Groove, OneNote, Outlook and
Publisher. Office Ultimate 2007 carries a list price of $680, though a
quick Google search turned up offers as low as $240.The offer comes with
a 30 day free trial (which is also available to non-students via the
Office website)
and the deal expires April 30 2008. The offer is available to students
in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Microsoft recently ran a
similar promotion
(now expired) in Australia, and, judging
by
the way that one
worked,
the new
deals will likely be limited to select schools and you'll need access to
your university .edu e-mail account.
Scott Gilbertson, "Students: Grab Office Ultimate 2007 For $60,"
Wired News, September 12, 2007 ---
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/
September 12, 2007 reply from
a friend
Students can download fully-functional
office suite software for FREE at
http://www.openoffice.org/
and never have to worry about their student
licenses to Microsoft expiring.
September
12, 2007 reply from Bob Jensen
I don’t think this free software is as full-featured as MS Office
or fully compatible when reading and editing MS Office files such as
Excel workbooks, although I must admit that Open Office is getting
better and better (see below). Most open source office products
(including those from Google) are not full-featured with such things
as pivot tables/charts, goal seek, solver, and all the built in
math, statistical, and other functions. .
I suspect Microsoft has greater fear of student installation of
illegally pirated MS Office software. The relatively low $60 student
full-featured version may be Microsoft’s effort to reduce student
pirating. I wish Microsoft similarly worried as much about faculty
pirating.
It would be a terribly inefficient market if Microsoft could make
billions of dollars selling a product when equal or better products
are available free to anybody in the world. I doubt that Trinity or
most other organizations or most students will abandon MS Office for
years to come, although I’m a big fan of open sharing ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
A problem for most students is that, when they eventually enter
the job market, most employers will want them to know or learn MS
Office. Becoming familiar with MS Office as a student saves a lot of
trouble somewhere down the road.
However, thank you for the link. You might also note the free
Google Office alternative.
Google Office ---
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-6156207-7.html?tag=yt
If anybody eventually destroys Microsoft it will probably be
Google, although Google claims that it has no such intentions in
spite of its occasional facing off against Microsoft in court.
Mac users might also note the recently improved ability to run
Windows and MS Office software on a Mac X "Parallels Updates Desktop
For Mac, Makes Windows Integration Even Tighter," by Michael Calore,
Wired News, September 11, 2007 ---
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/09/parallels-updat.html#more
Bob Jensen
Home and Student version of Office for Mac
Walter S. Mossberg, Wall Street Journal, January 17, 2008; Page
B4 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120053503736796333.html
Q: After reading your Jan. 3 column, I
looked unsuccessfully for a Home and Student version of Office for
Mac 2004. Does such a version exist?
A: In the 2004 release
of Microsoft Office for the Mac, this low-priced version had a
different name: the Student and Teacher edition. Microsoft
presumably changed the name of this $150 product to the Home and
Student edition in both Office 2007 for Windows and Office 2008 for
the Mac, because, while it was technically limited for sale to
families containing students or teachers, no proof was required and
it was widely purchased by consumers in general.
However, there's a big
difference between the latest Windows and Mac versions of the Home
and Student edition. In the Mac version, it includes Word, Excel,
PowerPoint and Entourage, Microsoft's equivalent of Outlook on the
Mac, which, like Outlook, includes email, calendar and contact
functions. But the new Windows version now omits Outlook, and
instead substitutes OneNote, a note-taking and information
organizing program that is far less commonly used. So, Windows users
must spend much more money to get a version of Office that includes
Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.
What is the future outlook for Open Office ---
http://www.openoffice.org/
What is Open Office XML ---
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-376.htm
How seriously do these open sharing initiatives threaten MS Office that
is crucial to the survival of Microsoft Corporation?
What is Open Office? ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Office
This
site provides some useful comparisons, many of them are encouraging
in terms of compatibility with both MS Office and multiple operating
systems, including
Linux.
Although Microsoft Office retains 95% of
the general market, OpenOffice.org and StarOffice have secured 14%
of the large enterprise market as of 2004[36]
and 19% of the small to midsize business market in 2005.[37]
The OpenOffice.org web site reports more than 62.5
million downloads.[38]
OpenOffice.org is the office suite used on
the British Army’s Bowman deployable tactical communications system.
Other large scale users of OpenOffice.org include Singapore’s
Ministry of Defence, and Bristol City Council in the UK. In France,
OpenOffice.org has attracted the attention of both local and
national government administrations who wish to rationalize their
software procurement, as well as have stable, standard file formats
for archival purposes. It is now the official office suite for the
French Gendarmerie.[39] Several
government organizations in India, such as IIT Bombay - a reputed
technical institute, the Supreme Court of India, the Allahabad High
Court[40], which use Linux,
completely rely on OpenOffice.org for their administration.
On October 4, 2005, Sun and Google
announced a strategic partnership. As part of this agreement, Sun
will add a Google search bar to OpenOffice.org, Sun and Google will
engage in joint marketing activities as well as joint research and
development, and Google will help distribute OpenOffice.org.[41]
Besides StarOffice, there are still a
number of OpenOffice.org derived commercial products. Most of them
are developed under SISSL license (which is valid up to
OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta 2). In general they are targeted at local or
niche market, with proprietary add-ons such as speech recognition
module, automatic database connection, or better CJK support.[42]
In July 2007 Everex, a division of First
International Computer and the 9th largest PC supplier in the US,
began shipping systems preloaded with OpenOffice.org 2.2 into
Wal-Mart and Sam's Club throughout North America.
Also see
http://apcmag.com/4849/open_office_hits_2_1
Until I read the above modules, I was not aware how far along
OpenOffice.org software has traveled. I sent an Excel file to a computer
scientist who is an avid fan of the
Linux
operating system. The file I sent him uses Excel's IRR financial
function to compute the internal rate of return of a stream of cash
flows. His Linux Open Office spreadsheet not only read my Excel file, it
computed the IRR when he varied the cash flows.
"Microsoft Office versus Open Office shootout," by George Ou,
September 14, 2005 ---
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/Ou/?p=101
"New Zealand Automobile Association has just announced that it is
dropping Open Office and switching back to MS Office," Computer World,
July 16, 2007 ---
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/tech/A6AB17B34B1BA81ECC2573160079BFBC
Open-source programs step on 235 Microsoft
patents, the company said. Free Linux software violates 42 patents.
Graphical user interfaces, the way menus and windows look on the screen,
breach 65. E-mail programs step on 15, and other programs touch 68 other
patents, the company said. The patent figures were first reported by
Fortune magazine.
Technology Review, May 15, 2007 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/Wire/18737/
This is doubted and disputed, August 7, 2007 ---
Click Here
"Desktop Linux Is All About Office," by Joe Wilcox, eWeek,
August 7, 2007 ---
Click Here
I'm not convinced that any of these efforts
are all that effective on the server, because of where and how Linux
is used there. The desktop is another matter because:
- There is no Office for Linux.
- Other critical desktop applications
are missing.
- Microsoft is offering more
applications along the vertical stack.
- Some new Microsoft software locks
businesses into long-term licensing contracts.
- Longer term, the question is: Will no
Office on the Linux desktop pollute Linux viability back to the
server? The answer is as much about Linux vendors and the
open-source community as it is about Microsoft. There should be
more enterprise software along the Linux desktop-to-server
stack.
Jensen Comment
I would certainly like know about research studies regarding the
following:
-
What are the functionality advantages
of Open Office? What things can Open Office do (aside from run on
multiple platforms) that MS Office cannot do?
-
What are the functionality limitations
of Open Office? What things can be done in MS Office that cannot be
done in Open Office?
-
To what extent can Open Office files be
read and edited by MS Office users?
-
Aside from training costs differences
(where MS Office clearly has the advantage since 95% of the market
already has workers trained in MS Office), what are the other cost
differentials? How "free" is Open Office?
-
What are the user support advantages
and limitations of Open Office vis-a-vis MS Office?
-
Are there any case studies of
accounting systems that actively use Open Office?
-
Microsoft includes the relational
database program MS Access in its Ultimate version of MS Office. How
far along is Open Source in developing a relational database system
for Open Office?
-
How seriously is the current market
share of MS Office seriously threatened by the ever-improving Open
Office?
-
Can a pocketless Open Office afford the
inevitable court battles over patents and copyrights that will
probably evolve when Open Office becomes a significant threat to a
very deep-pocketed Microsoft Corporation?
What is Open Office XML? ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML
Open
Office XML is extremely important to the future of global financial
reporting as the world's financial statements are being marked up
(tagged) in the XML-based XBRL ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm
Many
of the above questions raised about Open Office also are questions for
Open Office XML.
Can you activate Microsoft Office on another computer?
I checked with a Microsoft contact (that's one of
the perks of my job, and it's a lot easier than trying to decipher an End User
Licensing Agreement). The answer is yes. You're allowed to move a license (how
many licenses you have depends on your version of Office) from one computer to
another. You can also reinstall it onto the same computer. Should the activation
wizard refuse to reactivate, call the 800 number displayed on your screen. A
customer service representative will fix the problem for you. (to
which Jensen comments "yeah right!"
Lincoln Spector, PC World via The Washington Post, December
22, 2008 ---
Click Here
"Create Your Own Lookalike Office 2003 Toolbar and Add It to the
Ribbon," by Stanley Zarowin, Journal of Accountancy, March
2010 ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2010/Mar/TechQA1.htm
Bob Jensen's technology bookmarks are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob4.htm
Microsoft to Give Free Server Space to Serve Up
Some MS Office Files "In the Cloud"
Jensen Comment
This is yet another effort by Microsoft to lock in users to its bread and butter
MS Office software in light of ever-increasing free open-sharing alternatives to
MS Office that are just getting better and better, In terms of this "In the
Cloud" server, what is not clear is how Microsoft is dealing with the macro
virus threat of served up MS Office files like Word (doc), Excel (xls), and
PowerPoint (ppt) files. These MS Office files have much higher virus risks than
Web server files like HTML and XML files. It would be a tremendous service if
Microsoft would launder out the viruses in its "Cloud" files, but I doubt that
this is likely to be the case. I suspect users who download MS Office files
still face those troublesome macro viruses. Knowing the file authors does not
always give 100% protection since viruses can be innocently passed on in MS
Office files. I think the Cloud files are more of a service to the authors
themselves using password security screening. It is an advantage to have those
files in the cloud as back up files in case PCs crash and burn. But since most
employees of large organization can download backup files into that
organization's servers, it's not clear that this new service from Microsoft is
very helpful except for lone wolves in society. But as John Rymer states below,
Microsoft will eventually make more sensational moves to protect its MS Office
revenue.
What is Microsoft (MS) Office? ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office
"Microsoft to bring a sliver of its Office suite
to the Web," MIT's
Technology Review, October 1, 2007 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/Wire/19461/?nlid=575
Microsoft Corp. is unveiling a Web
component for its desktop-based Office programs that lets computer
users store, share and comment on documents, but the software maker
did not go so far as to let people create new files from scratch
online.
Microsoft Office Live Workspace, as the
free Web site is called, isn't quite live. Starting Monday, users
can sign up to be part of an early ''beta'' test of the service. A
number of those users will be able to start using the service at
some point this year, Microsoft said.
Office Live Workspace will give users about
250 megabytes of storage, or room to keep about 1,000 average Office
documents ''in the cloud.'' PC users can upload Word, Excel and
PowerPoint files, and use the site to e-mail friends or colleagues
and invite them to read and add comments to those documents through
a Web browser.
However, if users want to edit the text,
they must open the document using an installed copy of Microsoft
Office.
Office Live Workspace taps into a few of
Microsoft's Web offerings. Users with Hotmail, Xbox Live and other
Microsoft accounts can use that information to log on to Workspace.
Once there, they can use their stored contact list to send
invitations.
The service is compatible with Office 2003
and Office 2007, and users will be able to save from Office to the
Web site and open files they've stored online.
Workspace wasn't intended as a standalone
program, said Chris Capossela, a corporate vice president in
Microsoft's business software division, but rather a ''companion
service.'' At a media event last week, Capossela and Jeff Raikes,
president of the division, stressed that users were most interested
in using the power of the Web to access their documents from any
computer, and for collaborating, and not for creating sophisticated
documents.
Office Live Workspace is not to be confused
with Office Live, a set of tools Microsoft first developed to help
small businesses build Web sites and manage online advertising
campaigns. Office Live will be renamed Office Live Small Business,
Microsoft said.
The vast majority of computer users use
Word, Excel and other Office programs, in spite of challenges from
open source desktop programs like OpenOffice. Google Inc. and
several small startups offer Web-based word processing, spreadsheet
and presentation software, and recently, Google launched tools that
even let its programs work offline.
While Microsoft is officially mum on
whether it will add more useful features to an online version of
Office, Capossela said the software maker plans to remain the leader
in productivity software.
John Rymer, an analyst for Forrester
Research, said that on its own, Workspace isn't all that exciting,
but it's unlikely Microsoft will stop there.
''The payoff is going to come later, when
you've got editing, real collaboration ... when it's really Office
reconstituted,'' he said. ''That's not going to come for a while.''
After experimenting online in areas far
from Microsoft's core business software products, the software
maker's first step is, in part, meant to prove it is serious about
offering software online, Rymer said.
Microsoft also announced Monday it will
sell its Exchange, SharePoint and Communications server software as
services over the Internet. That means that information technology
departments at companies with more than 5,000 PC users won't have to
buy disks, install software and manage the server computers.
Instead, Microsoft will host the software on servers in its own data
centers and sell access to companies on a subscription basis.
The software maker did not disclose any
pricing details.
Not Free But Getting Better
New Office for Macs Speeds Up Programs, Integrates Formats
Despite the fierce rivalry between Microsoft
and Apple, there is one product on which the two companies work closely
together: the Macintosh version of Microsoft Office. Microsoft makes a
nice chunk of change from this software suite, which includes Mac
versions of the famous Word, Excel and PowerPoint programs. Apple needs
the Microsoft office suite so its Macintosh computers can live in
harmony with the dominant Windows world. On Jan. 15, Microsoft will be
releasing its first new version of Office for the Mac in nearly four
years. It is called Office 2008, and it has two big changes from the
current version, Office 2004.
Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2008 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119932334970563823.html
History of the PC
Personal Computer History
"Forgotten PC history: The true origins of the personal computer --- The PC's
back story involves a little-known Texas connection," by Lamont Wood,
Computer World, August 8, 2008 ---
Click Here
This year marks an almost
forgotten 40th anniversary: the conception of the device that ultimately
became the PC. And no, it did not happen in California.
For decades, histories have traced the
PC's x86 lineage back to 1972, with
Intel Corp.'s introduction of the 8008 chip,
the 8-bit follow-on to the 4-bit 4004, itself introduced in 1971 and
remembered as the world's first microprocessor
(download PDF).
But the full story was not that simple. For one
thing, the x86's lineage can be traced back four additional years, to
1968, and it was born at a now-defunct firm in San Antonio. The x86 was
originally conceived by an all-but-forgotten engineer, Austin O. "Gus"
Roche, who was obsessed
with making a personal computer. For another
thing, Intel got involved reluctantly, and the 8008 was not actually
derived from the 4004 -- they were separate projects.
Industrial designer John "Jack" Frassanito,
head of John Frassanito & Associates Inc., a
NASA contractor in Houston, remembers wincing
while plans for the device were drawn by Roche on perfectly good
tablecloths in a private club in San Antonio in 1968. He was then a
young account manager for legendary designer Raymond Lowey (who did the
Coke bottle and the Studebaker Avanti, among other things). Frassanito
was sent to Computer Terminal Corp. in San Antonio to help design CTC's
first product, an electronic replacement for the Model 33 Teletype. CTC
had been recently founded with local backing by former NASA engineers
Phil Ray and Roche.
After arriving in San Antonio -- where he soon
joined CTC's staff -- Frassanito said that he quickly discovered that
the teletype-replacement project was merely a ruse to raise money for
the founders' real goal of building a personal computer.
A hidden agenda
"When writing the business plan, they decided
to stay away from the notion of a personal computer, since the bankers
they were talking to had no idea what a computer was or wasn't,"
Frassanito recalled. "So for the first product, they needed something
they could get off the ground with existing technology. But the notion
from the get-go was to build a personal computer firm."
The resulting terminal, the Datapoint 3300,
established CTC as a going concern, and planning began on the project
that Frassanito realized was Roche's obsession. He remembers lengthy
discussions with Roche about what a personal computer should do and look
like. Roche often expressed himself using metaphors from various
classics, such as Machiavelli's The Prince, which Frassanito
found necessary to read.
To ensure a market for the machine, Frassanito
said that the CTC founders decided to promote it (with appropriate
programming) as a replacement for the IBM 029 card punch machine, and
they gave it a half-height display to match the aspect of an
IBM punch card.
To keep it from being intimidating in an office, they gave it the same
footprint as an IBM Selectric typewriter.
The resulting compact enclosure had heat
problems, and in late 1969 and early 1970, the designers began looking
for ways to reduce the number of components, including reducing the CPU
board to one chip.
The start of Intel's involvement
Frassanito recalled accompanying Roche to a
meeting with Bob Noyce, head of Intel, in early 1970 to try to get Intel
-- then a start-up devoted to making memory chips -- to produce the CPU
chip. Roche presented the proposed chip as a potentially revolutionary
development and suggested that Intel develop the chip at its own expense
and then sell it to all comers, including CTC, Frassanito recalled.
"Noyce said it was an intriguing idea, and that
Intel could do it, but it would be a dumb move," said Frassanito. "He
said that if you have a computer chip, you can only sell one chip per
computer, while with memory, you can sell hundreds of chips per
computer." Nevertheless, Noyce agreed to a $50,000 development contract,
Frassanito recalled.
Frassanito's recollection of Noyce's negative
reaction is echoed in the transcript of a group interview done in
September 2006 at the
Computer History Museum in Mountain View,
Calif.
(download PDF). The group included six people
who were involved in the development or marketing of Intel's first CPU
chips: Federico Faggin, Hal Feeney, Ed Gelbach, Ted Hoff, Stan Mazor and
Hank Smith. They agreed that Intel's management at the time feared that
if Intel put a CPU chip in its catalog, the computer vendors that were
Intel's customers for memory chips would see Intel as a competitor and
go elsewhere for memories.
That fear, they indicated, was evident as late
as 1973. The group also recalled that work was suspended on the CTC
chip, called the 1201, in the summer of 1970 after CTC lost interest,
having decided to go ahead with a CPU board using
transistor-transistor-logic (TTL) circuits instead of relying on a
chip-based design. TTL is the level of integration that preceded
microcircuits, where a chip might have tens of transistors rather than
thousands.
Continued in article
- Beckman Institute Visualization Facility
- IPIX- The World Leader in Immersive
Imaging
- The World-Wide Web
Virtual Library: Educational Technology (21-May-1996)
- UIUC Centers for
Research
VRML
SUNY Albany Guide to Web Resources ---
http://libguides.library.albany.edu/content.php?pid=130754&sid=1121460
Bob Jensen
'
s Overview and Timeline of OLAP, GML, SGML, HTML, XML, RDF, and XBRL --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm
Internet FAQ Archives ---
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/
NSF and the Birth of the Internet (video and slide show) ---
http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/nsf-net/
Internet Archive: Cornell University Libraries
http://www.archive.org/details/cornell
Graveyard for Websites
Cyber Cemetery ---
http://digital.library.unt.edu/explore/collections/GDCC/
How Internet Stuff Works
|
|
Do you ever wonder how the Internet really works? How do Web
pages, e-mail and music move to and from your computer? Learn all
about the amazing..an OC-48 can transmit 2,488 Mbps (2.488
Gbps). Compare that to a typical 56K modem transmitting 56,000 bps
and you see just how fast a modern backbone is...
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet-infrastructure4.htm
Learn about the airborne Internet and how you might use this
technology in the near future. Read more here!..Sky Station
International is counting on its blimps to beat Angel to the punch
in the race to deliver high-speed Internet access from high
altitudes...
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/airborne-internet3.htm
Learn about the airborne Internet and how you might use this
technology in the near future. Read more here!..Not to be left out
of the high-flying Internet industry, NASA is also playing a
role in a potential airborne Internet system being developed
by Aero...
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/airborne-internet4.htm
Learn about the airborne Internet and how you might use this
technology in the near future. Read more here!..One the three
companies developing an airborne Internet network is Angel
Technologies. Its HALO Network may be ready for deployment at the
end...
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/airborne-internet2.htm
A fascinating article that describes how and why batteries
work!..Archived Edition Although the Y2K problem came and
went in January of 2000, we have saved this article as an archived
editon of How...
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/y2k.htm
Internet urban legends spread quickly because of the
convenience of email. Learn about common Internet urban
legends and the truth behind them...The methods of passing urban
legends have evolved over time. In the past 10 years, there has been
a huge surge of urban legends on the Internet...
http://people.howstuffworks.com/urban-legend5.htm
Con artists can trick you out of your money. Learn how to spot con
artists, characteristics of con artists, and how to avoid
scams..actually selling anything, it's a pyramid scheme. The
Nigerian Money Transfer Widespread use of the Internet has
given con artists another way to scam...
http://money.howstuffworks.com/con-artist1.htm
Cookies are widely used by Web sites to keep track of their
visitors. Are cookies letting Big Brother into your PC? Find out
what Internet cookies..customized weather information. When
you enter your zip code, the following name-value pair gets added to
MSN's cookie file: WEAT CC=NC%5FRaleigh%2DDurham...
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/cookie3.htm
Private networks give companies a way to extend their secure
networks using regular Internet pathways. Find out how remote
users can access a local network...2 Tunneling Protocol) - L2TP
is the product of a partnership between the members of the PPTP
Forum, Cisco and the IETF (Internet Engineering Task...
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/vpn15.htm
Private networks give companies a way to extend their secure
networks using regular Internet pathways. Find out how remote
users can access a local network...Most VPNs rely on tunneling to
create a private network that reaches across the Internet.
Essentially, tunneling is the process of placing an entire...
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/vpn13.htm
History of Web Browsers and Alternative Browsers ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser
Wiki Browsers ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_browser
Internet Explorer ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer
Apple Safari ---
http://www.apple.com/safari/
Free Download Page for Google's Open Source Chrome Web Browser ---
http://www.google.com/chrome
Google's Chrome ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome
Video Tutorials on Chrome
Also see and listen to the NPR review ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94211079
Negative Review from PhysOrg ---
http://www.physorg.com/news139625282.html
From the Scout Report on September 5. 2008
Camino 1.6.3 ---
http://caminobrowser.org/
In Spanish, the word "camino" means
"path" or "way", and over the past few years the Camino web
browser has carved out its own "path" throughout the world of
Mac users. This latest version of Camino features a newly
redesigned interface that is clean and visually cohesive.
Additionally, the browser features automated RSS feed detection
and an embedded dynamic spell check feature. This version is
compatible with computers running Mac OS X 10.3, 10.4, or 10.5.
|
-
Drupal Might Better Be Termed: Websites for
Dummies
It's free and purportedly great for novices wanting to start up a
full-featured Website without having to become techies
Drupal ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupal
"Drupal: Simple, flexible Web publishing,"
by Clay Shirky, MIT's Technology Review, August 2008 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/TR35/Profile.aspx?Cand=T&TRID=688
Also see the video ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/video/index.aspx?id=688&brightcove=1695290092&iframe=tr35&autoplay=true
The Internet has made publishing on a global scale
almost effortless. That's the rhetoric, anyway. The truth is more
complicated, because the Internet provides only a means of distribution; a
would-be publisher still needs a publishing tool. A decade ago, people who
wanted such a tool had three choices, all bad: a cheap but inflexible
system, a versatile but expensive one, or one written from scratch. What was
needed was something in the middle, requiring neither enormous expense nor
months of development--not a single application, but a platform for creating
custom publishing environments. For tens of thousands of sites and millions
of users, that something is Drupal.
Created as an open-source
project by Dries Buytaert, Drupal is a free content management framework--a
tool for building customized websites quickly and easily, without
sacrificing features or stability. Site owners can choose from a list of
possible features: they might, say, want to publish articles, offer each
user a profile and a blog, or allow users to vote or comment on content. All
these features are optional, and most are independent of the others.
With Drupal's high degree of
individualization, users can escape cookie-cutter tools without investing
in completely custom-made creations, which can be time-consuming, costly,
and hard to maintain. The Howard Dean presidential campaign used Drupal in
2004, and today it's used by Greenpeace U.K., the humor magazine the Onion,
Nike's Beijing Olympics site, and MTV U.K., among many others.
The diversity of its users
has led to many improvements, Buytaert says: "The size, passion, and
velocity of the Drupal community makes incredible things happen." There are
tens of thousands of active Drupal installations worldwide. Thousands of
developers have contributed to the system's core, and more than 2,000
plug-ins have been added by outside contributors.
Buytaert began the work that
became Drupal in 2000, when he was an undergraduate at the University of
Antwerp. He had a news site called Drop.org, and he needed an internal
message board to host discussions. After reviewing the existing options for
flexible message boards, Buytaert decided he could write a better version
from scratch.
The original version of
Drupal (its name derives from the Dutch for droplet) worked well enough to
attract additional users, who proposed new features. Within a year, Buytaert
decided to make the project open source. He released the code in January
2001 as version 1.0.
Since open-source projects
tend to attract expert users, they often lack clear user interfaces and
readable documentation, making them unfriendly to mere mortals. But Buytaert
understood from the beginning how important usability is to the cycle of
improvement, adoption, and more improvement that drives the development of
open-source software. The core Drupal installation comes with voluminous
help files. The central team regularly polls users as well as developers
(which is unusual in an open-source project) to decide what to improve next.
The process reveals not just features to add, but ones to remove, and ways
to make existing features easier to understand. For example, the project's
website has been redesigned to help people new to Drupal figure out how to
get up and running.
Buytaert has also founded a
company, Acquia, to offer support, service, and custom development for
Drupal users, especially businesses. He calls Acquia "my other full-time
job" and likens it to Linux distributor Red Hat, which provides custom
packaging and support for its version of the open-source operating system.
With Drupal version 7, due
later this year, Buytaert hopes to include technologies that will make sites
running Drupal part of the Semantic Web, Tim Berners-Lee's vision for
making online data understandable to machines as well as people. If Drupal
hosts a website containing a company's Securities and Exchange Commission
profile, for example, other sites could access just the third-quarter
revenues, without having to retrieve the whole profile. The goal of sharing
data in smaller, better-defined chunks is to make Drupal a key part of the
growing ecosystem of websites that share structured data. If this effort
succeeds, it will ensure Drupal's continued relevance to the
still-developing Web.
Wal-Mart's Latest Sale: Broadband The
retail giant's ISP turn is likely to push down prices and
squeeze out competition.
Will other big-box stores follow
suit?
Broadband sellers, beware. A new
provider is on the scene—and it's a known price cutter.
Wal-Mart Stores (WMT)
plans to announce Oct. 9 that it will resell high-speed
Internet access from Hughes Communications (HUGH),
the world's largest provider of
broadband services via satellite. Granted, the market for
satellite broadband is small, given the widespread
availability of digital subscriber line access from phone
companies and cable modem services from cable operators.
Currently, satellite service tends to be more expensive and
it's available mainly in hard-to-reach rural areas. Fewer
than 500,000 Americans subscribe to satellite broadband
access, according to consultancy
Parks Associates. "It's still
mainly for people who don't have a choice," says Michael Cai,
an analyst at Parks. Only about 10% of Americans have no
access to DSL or cable broadband.
Olga Kharif, Business Week, October 8, 2007 ---
Click Here
Bob Jensen's technology bookmarks are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm
Jensen Comment
Satellite broadband is great downloading alternative in the boondocks where
cable and DSL connections are not available. But relative to cable and DSL
broadband alternatives, satellite
downloading is slower and satellite
uploading
is via a snail's pace landline telephone ---
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question606.htm
-
DSL Information
December 24, 2008 message from ashley smith
[ashleys780@gmail.com]
Hi Professor Jensen,
I'm a Trinity alum and I was looking over the
school's site when I came across when I came across your FAQs about the
WWW page. Great Idea. I know I could use a lot more knowledge when it
comes to the Internet and computers. I noticed you had a section on
ISPs. I use Qwest for my Internet Service and they have some useful info
about DSL on their site:
http://www.qwestdeal.com/faq.html . Just thought since it helped me
out it could potentially dumb things down for some of your other users.
I'm no computer wiz, but it helped me a ton! Happy Holidays,
Ashley Smith
Bob Jensen's Technology Glossary is at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/245gloss.htm
"Video: Tim Berners-Lee on
the Semantic Web: The inventor of the World Wide Web explains how
the Semantic Web works and how it will transform how we use and understand
data," MIT's Technology Review, March 27, 2007 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18451/
Internet Society ---
http://www.isoc.org/
Internet Gridlock Video is clogging the Internet
Video downloads are sucking up bandwidth at an
unprecedented rate. A short magazine article might take six minutes to read
online. Watching "The Evolution of Dance" also takes six minutes--but it
requires you to download 100 times as much data. "The Evolution of Dance" alone
has sent the equivalent of 250,000 DVDs' worth of data across the Internet.
"Internet Gridlock Video is clogging the Internet.: How we choose to unclog it
will have far-reaching implications," by Larry Hardesty, MIT's Technology
Review, July/August 2008 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20919/?nlid=1172&a=f
Jensen Comment
Although the Internet is not exactly a "free good" in the sense of the
air we breathe, a relatively small cost makes very nearly a public good in
the following sense ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good
In economics, a public good is a good that is
non-rival and non-excludable. This means, respectively, that consumption
of the good by one individual does not reduce the amount of the good
available for consumption by others; and no one can be effectively
excluded from using that good.[1] For example, if one individual eats a
cake, there is no cake left for anyone else, and it is possible to
exclude others from consuming the cake; it is a rival and excludable
private good. Conversely, breathing air neither significantly reduces
the amount of air available to others, nor can people be effectively
excluded from using the air. This does not make it a public good this is
because air is a free good. These are highly theoretical definitions: in
the real world, there may be no such thing as an absolutely non-rival or
non-excludable good; but economists think that some goods in the real
world approximate closely enough for these concepts to be meaningful.
Non-rivalness and non-excludability may cause
problems for the production of such goods. Specifically, some economists
have argued that they may lead to instances of market failure, where
uncoordinated markets are unable to provide these goods in desired
quantities.[citation needed] These spanner issues are known as public
goods problems, and there is a good deal of debate and literature on how
significant they are, and on what their solutions might be. These
debates can become important to political arguments about the role of
markets in the economy. More technically, public goods problems are
related to the broader issue of externalities.
The University of California and other universities are putting video
courses on YouTube because it costs nothing to store and deliver YouTube
videos around the world. Families are now putting videos of each of their
childrens' annual birthday parties on YouTube. Does it surprise us that
there is an emerging bandwidth problem when such "free goods" are not
rationed by any legislation or pricing mechanism. How long can YouTube
freely supply Webservers for the videos of the world even if there is
advertising revenue? What's the cost benefit of a YouTube video that has
only been downloaded three times except by accident?
Bandwidth does have finite limits and creating more of it will be costly.
Who should bear that cost?
"Web
tool may banish broken links," by Jo Twist, BBC News Online,
September 24, 2004 ---
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3666660.stm
Students have developed a tool
which could mean broken weblinks are history.
Peridot,
developed by UK intern students at IBM, scans company weblinks and
replaces outdated information with other relevant documents and links.
It works by
automatically mapping and storing key features of webpages, so it can
detect significant content changes.
The students said
Peridot could protect companies by spotting links to sites that have been
removed, or which point to wholly unsuitable content.
"Peridot
could lead to a world where there are no more broken links," James
Bell, computer science student at the University of Warwick, told BBC News
Online.
"I
personally hope it would be developed to a level where it would do
that."
Peridot alerts
web administrators not only which links are broken, but also where the
original page has gone.
It can also tell
which links have changed and the degree of change in content.
Donkey work
Currently, said
the students, website reviews require manual maintenance.
Administration
staff have to go through all the links on an intranet - internal website -
or external website to check the information being linked to is still
relevant.
The web-based
Peridot tool registers webpages - either on an intranet or on websites -
and follows link targets to compare them to webpages it has previously
seen.
"The way we
identify the content is through a process called fingerprinting which
allows us to take representation of document like a fingerprint,"
explained Andrew Flegg, IBM software developer and technical mentor for
the Peridot team.
On intranet
sites, which are relied on by many companies to not only keep their
employees but also provide links to important company documents,
out-of-date links can result in loss of productivity for workers, said Mr
Bell.
"Internally,
you have users who are trying to do their jobs and the intranet is there
to facilitate that. If they can't get the information they cannot do their
job properly.
"Externally,
you have cases of companies that link to disreputable content which could
seriously damage their reputation."
This happens when
a website which contained previously vetted information changes ownership
or is updated content with inappropriate material.
It is a
particularly sensitive problem if the firm is pitching itself as reliable
and trustworthy company, added Mr Bell.
Large scale
The team, which
is working on IBM's Extreme Blue internship programme at its UK labs in
Hursley, has already filed two patents for the project.
Similar tools do
already exist, but they tend to simply detect which links have been
broken.
Peridot's
innovation is that is detects more substantial changes and has adjustable
levels of autonomy, according to the researchers.
It generates a
report on a website and it can automatically e-mail admin staff with
appropriate information.
Staff can either
review the changes and accept or ignore, or they can rely on its apparent
accuracy and choose to be alerted after the tool automatically updates a
link.
The team has
prototyped the tool so it runs reliably over 100,000 pages, said Mr Bell.
So far, it has
never replaced a link with something else that is equally unsuitable, but
work still needs to be done to optimise its performance, said the student
team.
The Peridot team
were presenting their research to top executives and engineers this week
in Amsterdam, along with other intern research project team across five
countries.
Peridot is a
green gemstone which, legend has it, was used in ancient cultures to help
people find what they had lost.
It was also
believed to possess mystical powers including helping dreams become a
reality, attracting wealth, calming anger, and dispelling negative
emotions.
Keep Updated on the Latest Gadgets
Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, September 2004, Page 21
--- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/sep2004/news_web.htm
Research for Techies
www.technologyowl.com
At this Smart Stop CPAs and tech enthusiasts can
read news and reviews of the latest technology products before buying that
next peripheral. Categories include computers, mobile phones and personal
digital assistants for the office. Users can scan headlines and summaries
for links to reviews on digital and home entertainment products.
“Just the Good
Stuff”
www.thegadgetbox.com
A new high-speed public dryer that sucks the
water right off your hands? Mitsubishi Electric made it happen. Read all
about it and other gadgets at this fun Web site. CPAs also can check out a
computerized “smart shoe” from Adidas and T-Mobile’s answer to the
Blackberry—Sidekick—which purportedly is a hit in Hollywood. Featured
gadgets for the office include a travel power briefcase and an iceless can
cooler.
Question
How can you download an entire Website?
One answer
HTTrack Website Copier 3.32-2
http://www.httrack.com/
HTTrack is a
free
(GPL,
libre/free software) and easy-to-use offline browser utility.
It allows you to download a World Wide Web site
from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all
directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your
computer. HTTrack arranges the original site's relative link-structure.
Simply open a page of the "mirrored" website in your browser,
and you can browse the site from link to link, as if you were viewing it
online. HTTrack can also update an existing mirrored site, and resume
interrupted downloads. HTTrack is fully configurable, and has an
integrated help system.
WinHTTrack is the Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP release
of HTTrack, and WebHTTrack the Linux/Unix/BSD release.
See the
download
page.
October 18, 2003 message from Dan
[dan@htmlcodetutorial.com]
I emailed you some months ago about our site
www.HTMLCodeTutorial.com
that gets over 6000 visitors per day. We now have a new Webmaster Resource
Directory where you can add your site for free if you want to exchange
links with us. There is a link to "Submit your site" on the home
page.
Email me if you have any questions.
Thanks, Dan
internet.com's network of more than
160 Web sites is organized into 16 channels:
Internet Technology
http://internet.com/it
E-Commerce/Marketing
http://internet.com/marketing
Web Developer
http://internet.com/webdev
Windows Internet Technology
http://internet.com/win
Linux/Open Source
http://internet.com/linux
Internet Resources
http://internet.com/resources
ISP Resources http://internet.com/isp
Internet Lists
http://internet.com/lists
Download
http://internet.com/downloads
International
http://internet.com/international
Internet News
http://internet.com/news
Internet Investing
http://internet.com/stocks
ASP Resources
http://internet.com/asp
Wireless Internet
http://internet.com/wireless
Career Resources
http://internet.com/careers
EarthWeb
http://www.earthweb.com
A Web Training Course From the U.K.
Becoming WebWise
http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/learn/index.shtml
Welcome
to BBC Becoming WebWise!
This new online course is the easy way to get to grips with the
Internet. It lets you learn at your own pace and can lead to a
nationally recognised qualification. Enrol at your local college for
one of the accredited qualifications. |
- The eight key sections,
or trips, will take you through the Internet basics in a simple
and easy to follow format. Remember, you can return to any of
the sections as often as you like. It will probably take you
about ten hours to complete the course.
- Becoming WebWise will
help you find out about getting connected, e-mailing, searching,
bookmarking, making your own address book and the very basics of
building your own web page. You will also learn about
technological developments like Digital TV and WAP phones, your
legal rights online, the history of the net, and the other ways
in which you might get online.
- As you progress through
the course, you will be able to see your scores by visiting your
scorecard. This will tell you which trip and landmarks you have
visited and also your scores in our tasks and quizzes. It is
important to log out at the end of your visit so that your
scores and progress will be saved.
- Remember: in
order to obtain the accredited qualification you must enrol at a
local college. Use our
national
coursefinder section to find one.
- Use the
Register
or Log
In link to get a scorecard. If you would like to enter
Becoming WebWise without registering or logging in then use this
link:
Enter
Becoming WebWise
|
Web Design
Tools -- prana3 ---
http://www.prana3.com/tools/
| Welcome to prana3
Interactive Design's Web Tools. We are your central online source for
quality Web design and development information, tools, guides,
tutorials, links, free Web graphics and more. |
|
|
|
Web sales have proven to be a small slice of most sectors, so retailers
are more selective about their investments in Web initiatives. They're
starting to view their Web sites like any other store--now that it's built
and functioning, what justifies spending more money on it?
http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eFS80BcUEY04e0BD3h0A5
Here's a guide Susan Beck at the NMSU Library has prepared for student
evaluation of Web sites ---
http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/eval.html
A message from Ron Tidd about evaluation of Web Sites:
-
Also consider:
Bobby- http://www.cast.org/bobby/
web page validation for accessibility by people with disabilities (be
attentive and expand the community)
W3C- http://validator.w3.org/
free HTML validation service
Web Site Garage- http://websitegarage.netscape.com/
tune up your web page
Web Wonk- http://www.dsiegel.com/tips/
Tips for designers and writers
Web Shui at http://builder.cnet.com/webbuilding/0-3881.html?tag=st.bl.3880.dir.3881
-
-
- Association of Internet Professionals
- WEBPRO - The International Association of
Professional Web Developers
Lawrence Lessig--Berkman Center for Internet and Society
- The Virtual Institute of Information
-
-
"Erasing Cookies From a PC," by Annelena Lobb, The Wall Street
Journal, July 26, 2005; Page D1 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112233873147495654,00.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal
|
Erasing Cookies From a PC
The Problem: Your PC is filling up with
cookies, which let Web sites track your
Internet-browsing habits.
The Solution: Cookies are short text
files that attach to your PC when you visit Web
sites. Some disappear from your computer when
you exit Internet Explorer, while others remain.
You'll likely want to keep some cookies on your
PC -- you can't visit sites like Yahoo and Gmail
without them. In other cases, they let you avoid
retyping your ZIP Code or address every time you
visit.
Here's how to avoid unwanted cookies: When using
Internet Explorer, go to the "Tools" menu and
click on "Internet Options." Select the
"Privacy" tab, and click on "Advanced Settings."
Check the box that lets you override automatic
cookie handling. Then you can ask to be prompted
whenever cookies appear -- you'll get a pop up
asking whether you want to accept it. If you
later wish to change your settings, click the
"Edit" button under the "Privacy" tab. You can
delete it from the list of managed sites. |
Powerful Cookies 1.0.7
http://www.freewebs.com/powerfulcookies/
For those people who are concerned about erasing evidence of their
Internet activity stored in their browser, Powerful Cookies 1.0.7 may be
worth taking a look at. Visitors can use this program to delete cookies,
clean index.dat files, clean the cache, remove temporary files, and
erase typed URLs. This application is compatible with Windows 95 or
newer.
-
HTTP Cookie Info
- DoubleClick International Home Page
(cookie maker)
- PrivNet, Inc. Cookie Controls
- NSClean and IEClean information cookie
controls
-
-
Media College (New Zealand: Tutorials on Production of Multi-media)
---
http://www.mediacollege.com/
-
-
Jensen & Sandlin Survey of High End
Courseware Shells and Authoring Software (1998)
Includes a five-year archive on Jakob Nielsen's bi-weekly
column on Web usability (including summaries of common design flaws in personal and
corporate web sites) at http://www.useit.com/
- http://reallybig.com/default.shtml
Mellon Technology Project
- Share Carolina - UNC-CH (Free Internet
Tools)
- The Academic Technology Specialists Web
Space
AHDS: Scholars' Information Requirements
in a Digital Age
- Beginning WebCT
- Drummond's Inter-Frame Navigation
Gartner Interactive Home
- Lessons from Business School Web Sites
- Mainframe
(Inter-Frame Navigation)
- NCSA--A Beginner's Guide to HTML Home
Page
- PC Computing's 1,001 Best Internet Tips
- The Castle Home Page
- MicroVision Development - HRML Helpers,
Clip Art
- Web Course in a Box
- Macromedia -
Pathware
Welcome to CyberClass
- WBT Systems (TopClass)
- Common Web Page
Mistakes
- So You Want An
Explorer Scrolling Marquee, Huh?
-
Webmaster Resources (includes tutorials
on making and maintaining a Web site) ---
http://www.boogiejack.com/index.html
Web Developers Virtual Library --- http://www.stars.com/
September 5, 2004 message from Rob Collyer - Dot Magic Solutions [rob@dotmagic.co.uk]
Dear Bob,
I am contacting you in the hope you
consider listing our website as an additional resource of web
design and development information for your students.
Our website consist of articles and
tutorials on many aspects of design and development. The biggest
part of our website is forums... a place where any of your
students can go day or night, to ask questions and receive free
help and advice, tips and tricks etc for any web design /
development issues.
As our website also houses articles and
tutorials, it is an excellent place for students to submit this
type of resource. Authoring articles and tutorials is a great way
for them to become known in their chosen area... a great thing to
direct people to on a resume and of course they go some way to
establishing the author as an expert in that area.
The address of our website is: http://www.webforumz.com
, I would be very grateful for you to include reference to it on
your website as an additional source of help and information.
I would be happy to furnish you with more
info should you so require and look forward to hearing from you.
Kind Regards,
Rob Collyer - 20 years experience of
programming:
VB, ASP, (X)HTML, SQL, ASP.NET, XML, COM, CSS, JavaScript, XSS,
SOAP. Site Admin www.webforumz.com
Bob Jensen's Threads on XML,
XLink, XHTML, XBRL, XForm, XSLT, RDF and the Semantic Web --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm
Accounting and Office Software
--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm
- Includes a five-year archive on Jakob Nielsen's bi-weekly
column on Web usability (including summaries of common design flaws in personal and
corporate web sites) at http://www.useit.com/
http://reallybig.com/default.shtml
WEBGUIDE for Publishers (Good listing of
links for web publishing)
Berkeley Software Design, Inc: Home Page - Creating Net Sites
Information Builders - Home Page
- Developing World
Wide Web pages at Cornell
- Lessons from Business School Web Sites
- Netscape Internet
Service Providers
- PC Computing's 1,001 Best Internet Tips
- World Wide Web FAQ
- WWW FAQ: What are WWW, hypertext and
hypermedia?
- Web-Based Training
Information Center (Good Discussion of CBT)
- Links to WBT and
Related Sites (CBT Links)
- The Virtual Institute of Information
- Technical Help
- A Beginner's Guide
to HTML
- A Beginner's Guide
to URLs
- Creating Net Sites
- Creating Pages for
the World-Wide Web
- Developing World
Wide Web pages at Cornell
- Getting started with
the World Wide Web
- NCSA--A Beginner's Guide to HTML Home
Page
- Netscape Internet
Service Providers
- sci.geo.petroleum
Internet Resources
- Technical Help
- The Hypertext
Madness of Laurence Simon
- Tom Hicks has some really helpful tutorials for authoring and networking
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~thicks/ (Go
to tutorials)
- World Wide Web FAQ
- WWW FAQ: What are WWW, hypertext and
hypermedia?
- Yahoo! - Computers
and Internet:Software:Data Formats:HTML:Guides and Tutorials
- Berkeley Software Design, Inc: Home Page
- Creating Net Sites
- Creating Net Sites
- Developing World
Wide Web pages at Cornell
- Netscape Internet
Service Providers
- Technical Help
- Welcome to GeoCities Home Page
- World Wide Web FAQ
- WWW FAQ: What are WWW, hypertext and
hypermedia?
Heavy duty web publishing systems are reviewed in
"Untangling Your Web Site," NewMedia, April 1999, 42-50. The
online version is at http://newmedia.com/newmedia/99/05/labreport/Untangling_Your_Site.html
-
- Webmaster Resources (includes tutorials on making and
maintaining a Web site) ---
http://www.boogiejack.com/index.html
-
-
FreeIndex.com (free things for your
web site, counters, etc.)
Harcourt Brace's Useful Links
- /waldnerm/images/counter/
- (Web Counter Gifs)
- Web Site Color Center
- Stroud's CWSApps List - Windows 95/NT
Apps -(Authoring of Animated Gifs)
- The Virtual Institute of Information
- Accent Software Int'l - language
solutions for the Internet (Search)
- Foreign Languages on
the Internet: Selected Sites
- French Language
Resources on the Internet
- GeoCities Jump
Station
- Gif Animation of
Under Construction
- The Good Page (Free
Server Space)
- Photodex - Graphics Software (online
graphics)
Agent7 Plus (voice activated animation on
the web)
- Internet Domain Survey (Growth Trends on
the web, data, statistics)
- Hotmail - The World's FREE Web-Based
Email
- @tension inc. Web Design & Marketing
- Lessons from Business School Web Sites
- Texas Networking, Inc.
- TexNet Internet Services ($15 Internet
Access)
- Welcome to Tripod: Tools For Life
- Welcome to GeoCities Home Page
Clip Art and Animated Gifs
Human guides at About.com at http://www.miningco.com/
-
- NSF and the Birth of the Internet (video and slide show) ---
http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/nsf-net/
-
- Webmaster Resources (includes tutorials on making and
maintaining a Web site) ---
http://www.boogiejack.com/index.html
-
-
The Virtual Institute of Information
- Internet Domain Survey
- Hannon - The
Business of the Internet (www, Bryant College)
- Architects of the Web (John Wiley History
Book)
- BSDI White Paper: Becoming an Internet
Service Provider - Kolstad
- home.page tool kit
- NCSA--A Beginner's Guide to HTML Home
Page
- The World-Wide Web
Virtual Library: Educational Technology (21-May-1996)
- Internet Domain Survey
- The Industry Standard: The Newsmagazine
of the Internet Economy
- community of hosts home page
-
- AT&T Intranet
Profile
- http://www.frontiertech.com/
- IntraNeT
- Intranet
Construction Site SoftQuad's HiP Hotmetal Publisher)
- Intranet?
- Intranets: Readings
and Resources
- Net Search
- The World-Wide Web
Virtual Library: Educational Technology (21-May-1996)
- Welcome to CyberNET Publishing !
- Welcome to Intranut
- Zona Research Inc. - Internet and
Intranet: 1996, Report Profile
http://www.frontiertech.com/
- IntraNeT
- Net Search
- Zona Research Inc. - Internet and
Intranet: 1996, Report Profile
- RFP: Corporate
Intranets
- Intranet?
- Netscape Unveils New
Line of Integrated Client-Server Solutions
- Silicon Graphics
Intranet Profile
-
- Raymond Software
(JavaScript Examples)
- JavaScript Demos
- JavaSoft News
- JavaWorld - August 1996 - IDG's magazine
for the Java community
- Shlurrrpp......Java learning Java : The
Java tutorial for java programming
- The Java Boutique (Java Illustrations)
- The World-Wide Web
Virtual Library: Educational Technology (21-May-1996)
- MindQ Home Page
- Gamelan (Links to Free JavaScripts)
- Gamelan ( Zoltan Schreter Password,
Multiple Choice, Neural Network JavaScripts)
- JavaScript
Backpropagation Neural Network Simulator ( Zoltan Schreter)
- Assess your knowledge! ( Zoltan Schreter)
- Our Web Password
Systems ( Zoltan Schreter)
- The pWord Web
Password System ( Zoltan Schreter)
- JavaSoft News
- JavaWorld - August 1996 - IDG's magazine
for the Java community
- Shlurrrpp......Java learning Java : The
Java tutorial for java programming
-
- Archie McPhee Home Page
- Idoru
- University of
Kansas, Department of Philosophy
-
What is JHTML?
What is Dynamo?
"Intro to JHTML," by Alanna Spence, Webmonkey,
27 Jul 2001 --- http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/01/27/index4a.html
What's that? You managed to land a job
(Congratulations!) at a company that just took the ATG
Dynamo plunge and you need to learn JHTML in a hurry? Don't
worry. You're a front-end developer, which means you already
have the whole HTML thing down pat. And while you wouldn't
exactly call yourself a programmer, you're pretty comfortable
with JavaScript,
CSS,
and server-side
includes. With that phalanx of Web-dev skills under your
belt, you already have what it takes to start creating smart
page templates with Dynamo — you just need a guide to get you
up and running. And that's just what I'll be serving up in this
tutorial.
Even if you have no idea what Dynamo is
all about (a fact you mentioned nothing about in that job
interview), you're still golden. The basics of Dynamo are pretty
easy to understand.
What is Dynamo?
Dynamo is a Java-based Web server
application that lets you create dynamic, personalized,
server-based applications for the Web. As a front-end developer,
the aspects of Dynamo that you'll be dealing with the most are
the JavaBean components and Server Pages.
Dynamo Components are server-side
JavaBeans and servlets that control the back-end functionality
of your Dynamo server. They handle database requests, logging,
scheduling, and HTTP requests. These components are connected to
your HTML pages by Dynamo Server Pages, which use the .jhtml
file extension. Server Pages are basically just additions to
standard HTML tags that the Dynamo server processes to create
dynamic HTML pages that can be displayed via any old Web
browser.
The beauty of Dynamo Server Pages is
that they allow you to keep Java code separate from the HTML
code. This gives you at least two big advantages: Java
programmers can focus on writing Java code and don't have to
mess with your HTML, and the JHTML pages that you create are
processed by the dynamo server and spat out as nice, readable,
standard HTML code with no Java embedded in it. So no browser
compatibility issues!
- Webmaster Resources (includes tutorials on making and
maintaining a Web site) ---
http://www.boogiejack.com/index.html
-
-
Bob Jensen's JavaScript and HTML
Tutorials and Links
-
BUSN 2311 Computers in BusinessBob Jensen
The WDVL: JavaScript Tutorial for
Programmers
- developer.com -
Directories
- Visual JavaScript
Developer's Guide
- The Java Tutorial
- Javascript:
Scrolling in a Window
- Complete Idiot's
Guide to JavaScript
- Complete Idiot's Guide to JavaScript
(Windows)
- UserActive
JavaScript Labratory (Learning JavaScript Tutorials)
- The Java Tutorial
- Java Development Kit
- Java Technology -
Documentation
- The Java Tutorial
- Complete Idiot's
Guide to JavaScript
- Introduction to Java
- Macromedia
Dreamweaver- webmonkey behaviors (shared code)
- Netscape DevEdge
Online
- O'Reilly &
Associates (David Flanagan JavaScript Book)
- JavaScript Authoring Guide
- Introduction to
JavaScript
-
- developer.com -
Directories
- Sample Quiz
(JavaScript Multiple Choice Code)
- Linear Programming
(Integer Programming in JavaScript)
- TestMaker in
JavaScript (Education Technology)
- WebGrade Section 1
(JavaScript for Posting Grades on the Web)
- WWWalker Avatar Chat World (Java Applets)
-
- Domain Name Services
(Register a web site)
- Free domain name news plus tons of
information about domain names (register, search)
- The URL-minder: Your
Own Personal Web Robot! (Register URL)
- WPRC URL Submission
(Register)
- WPRC FLDB : General
- WPRC URL Submission
(Register)
- HotBot | Add URL (Register)
- HotBot | Add URL
- Domain Name Services
(Register a web site)
- Add to Yahoo!
- home.page tool kit
- http://www.consultants-...ultants/consultants.htm
- Network Computing Online
- SimpleNet - Fee Based Web Site Listings
- WebCrawler Add URLs
- WebCrawler Searching
- WebCrawler's Surf
Backwards
- WhoWhere? GeoCities Personal Home Pages
Directory
- Yahoo! -
Entertainment:People
- Internet Domain Survey (Growth Trends on
the web, data, statistics)
Internet Economy Indicators
--- http://www.internetindicators.com/
-
- Shockwave and Flash
- Macromedia - Shocked
Site of the Day
-
Web Developers Virtual Library --- http://www.stars.com/
- Contact Consortium: TheU a World Virtual
University Project
- home.page tool kit
- Infoseek Guide: VRML
- Intervista Home Page
- Mississippi Space Grant Consortium
(Interactvie Online Labs, 3-D, VRML)
Welcome to Cyberflix the Interactive Story Company.
- MySki - Customize Your Own Skis!
- P a p e r S o f t w a r e
- Palace Home Page
- Real Problems in a
Virtual World
- The Magical World Of VRML
- The Palace, Inc.
- The Virtual Reality Modeling Language
- The World-Wide Web
Virtual Library: Educational Technology (21-May-1996)
- VRML Suppository
-
- Mathematical Surface Modeling and
Visualization (San Diego Super Computer Site)
- SDSC
- SDSC:A National Laboratory for
Computational Science and Engineering
- The VRML Repository
- VRML Repository: Mathematics
- VRML Repository: VRML Worlds
-
Bravo! Tune into the return of the Digital Duo
I am really glad to see the Digital Duo return to PBS television.
Back in the 1990s I loved this show as a helper to those of us
struggling to learn new computing and networking technologies.
The most important attribute of this show is the willingness of the
Duo to criticize the products or services that they are evaluating.
The Duo is consumer-oriented. Unlike its counterpart
Computer Chronicles, the Digital Duo show is probably not
especially popular among vendors who supply technology
products and services. PC World seems to be sponsoring
the Duo these days, but the PBS shows are commercial free and as
critical as ever when vendors are poorly designing things and/or
giving poor service. I think they tell it like it is!
The main site for the Digital Duo
http://www.pcworld.com/digitalduo/index/0,00.asp
The Digital Duo is the independent, irreverent
video review of all things digital. Hosted by Stephen Manes and
Angela Gunn.
More
about PC World's Digital Duo ---
http://www.pcworld.com/digitalduo/aboutd2/0,00.asp
The Duo's weekly shows are probably listed in your television
guide for your local PBS channel. I
suggest you record each show and then save the recordings that you
think will be helpful to your students or your family in the future.
Local PBS station listings (you can enter your zip code) are
given at
http://www.pcworld.com/digitalduo/listings/0,00.asp
One of the features that I watched this weekend featured free
access to credit reports. The Duo pointed out how the majority
of the sites that now offer free credit reports should be avoided.
They recommended using
https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp
I think this is good advice, but I have some other recommendations
(such as paying for FICO scores) at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#CreditReports
-
-
- Includes a five-year archive on Jakob Nielsen's bi-weekly
column on Web usability (including summaries of common design flaws in personal and
corporate web sites) at http://www.useit.com/
-
- Digital Duo technology show each week on PBS television. See http://www.digitalduo.com
World Wide Web FAQ
The Argus
Clearinghouse (ratings of web sites)
- WWW FAQ: What are WWW, hypertext and
hypermedia?
- Web-Based Training
Information Center (Good Discussion of CBT)
- Links to WBT and
Related Sites (CBT Links)
- The Virtual Institute of Information
- Index to BUSN 2311
--- Computers in Business
- Media Metrix (Tracks Web Navigations of
Web Users)
- community of hosts home page
- WEBGUIDE for Publishers (Good listing of
links for web publishing)
- Accent Software Int'l - language
solutions for the Internet (Search)
- Broker Query Results
for: HTML
- Cornell University's CU-SeeMe Page
- Download Netscape Navigator Software
- Geoscience WWW
- Getting started with
the World Wide Web
- Getting started with
the World Wide Web
- Helpful Links
- home.page tool kit
- http://www.consultants-...ultants/consultants.htm
- HyperText Markup
Language Specification 3.0
- HyperText Markup
Language Specification Version 3.0
- Microsoft Internet Information Server
- NCSA--A Beginner's Guide to HTML Home
Page
- Netscape Extensions
- OneWorld/SingNet WWW
& HTML Developer's JumpStation - Page 2
- OneWorld/SingNet WWW
& HTML Developer's JumpStation - Page 2
- OneWorld/SingNet WWW
& HTML Developer's JumpStation - Page 3
- OneWorld/SingNet WWW
& HTML Developer's JumpStation - ver 2.0 (21 Oct 1994)
- QuikLink Software (Bookmark Organizing
Software)
- sci.geo.petroleum
Internet Resources
- The Hypertext
Madness of Laurence Simon
- The World-Wide Web
Virtual Library: Educational Technology (21-May-1996)
- Thomas Boutell's Home Page
- WebSpeed WWW Business Applications
Development and Consulting
- World Wide Web FAQ
- World Wide Web FAQ
- Yahoo! - Computers
and Internet:Internet:World Wide Web
- Yahoo! - Computers
and Internet:Internet:World Wide Web
-
-
- Macromedia
Dreamweaver
- BUILDER.COM - Web
Authoring - Writing Dynamic HTML for all browsers
- BUILDER.COM - Web
Authoring - Writing Dynamic DHTML for all browsers
- W3C - The World Wide Web Consortium
(Dynamic HTML, DHTML)
-
- Includes a five-year archive on Jakob Nielsen's bi-weekly
column on Web usability (including summaries of common design flaws in personal and
corporate web sites) at http://www.useit.com/
A Beginner's Guide to HTML
- More HTML for
Dummies - Resources
- A Beginner's Guide
to URLs
- Creating Net Sites
- Creating Pages for
the World-Wide Web
- Developing World
Wide Web pages at Cornell
- Getting started with
the World Wide Web
- home.page tool kit
- NCSA--A Beginner's Guide to HTML Home
Page
- NCSA--A Beginner's Guide to HTML Home
Page
- Netscape Internet
Service Providers
- sci.geo.petroleum
Internet Resources
- Technical Help
- The Hypertext
Madness of Laurence Simon
- World Wide Web FAQ
- WWW FAQ: What are WWW, hypertext and
hypermedia?
- Yahoo! - Computers
and Internet:Software:Data Formats:HTML:Guides and Tutorials
- American National Standards Institute
- International Telecommunication Union
(ITU) Home Page
- IEEE Home Page
HyperText Markup
Language Specification 3.0
HyperText Markup Language Specification
Version 3.0
Linking Documents Together
Microsoft Internet Assistant for Word 6.0
for Windows
Microsoft Word Free Software
Sandia National Laboratories
Search Sandia
Search Sandia National Laboratories Information
The Web Developer's Virtual Library
Web Launch Program
NCSA--A Beginner's
Guide to HTML Home Page
QuikLink Software (Bookmark Organizing
Software)
-
- Intranet
Construction Site SoftQuad's HiP Hotmetal Publisher)
- HoTMetaL PRO
-
"Web 2.0 Winners and Losers," Wired News,
September 20, 2006 ---
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71810-0.html?tw=wn_index_2
A few weeks ago, I implored readers
of the Monkey Bites blog to sumbit their votes for the best
and worst Web 2.0 sites out there.
I asked them to build a list of
their own can't-live-without-it and oh-please-make-it-stop
destinations. After tallying up the votes from our readers,
I posted the people's choice list on Monkey Bites blog. With
their picks in mind, I set out to build my own roster.
There are plenty of good ideas in
the Web 2.0 world, and an even greater number of bad ones.
In the interest of brevity, I've chosen five sites from each
category. The web services industry certainly has more than
five winners and five losers, so we've only highlighted the
exemplars.
I visited the very top of the
iceberg and descended all the way down into the depths of
suckitude to compile this list. Enjoy the results.
First, the Winners.
Flickr A picture is worth 1,000
tags.
I've known for a long time that if
you want to demonstrate what tagging is all about to
somebody who's new to Web 2.0, just send them to Flickr. The
photo-sharing site has the best application of semantic
categorization on the web. This is because they ask a
question that invites creativity: What words would you use
to describe a photo? The setup also makes searching the site
a breeze.
Other things Flickr gets right:
enhancing the community through pools, clusters and groups;
options to preserve rights through Creative Commons; free
and pro accounts; the open API. Odeo Listen up.
When podcasting arrived, everyone
wanted in on the game. All you needed to get started was a
microphone, some audio editing software, a web server,
knowledge of peak limiting, compression, EQ techniques ...
Ouch. Then Odeo breezed in and de-mystified the podcast.
Odeo allows users to record and
share audio using simple, browser-based tools. A browser
with Flash installed, an internet connection and a
microphone are all you need to start podcasting. The site
has tools for sharing and managing audio feeds, an extensive
podcast directory and a contact manager that facilitates
sharing audio between friends. The company even offers a
component that gives mobile users the ability to record a
podcast from their mobile phone. Writely Who needs MS Word?
The big, groundbreaking idea behind
Web 2.0 is that the web should and will take over
application hosting duties from the desktop. In other words,
all of your documents, contacts, lists, e-mails and -- most
importantly -- your office productivity tools live on the
internet. They're all available no matter where you are or
whose computer you're using.
Writely is a word processor that
runs in the browser. It offers everything you'd expect from
a word processor, including spell check, extensive
formatting capability and support for dropping in images.
Writely also makes it easy to collaborate with others. Your
colleagues can log in and edit a document you started. Users
can also collaborate over e-mail, and then publish the
results to a blog when they're done. And, yep, it's free.
del.icio.us Where'd I put that link?
Without del.icio.us, I'd be
drowning in a morass of bookmark clutter. Seriously,
drowning. Every article I've saved for later, every YouTube
video I've earmarked for repeat viewing, every cache of free
MP3s, every (ahem) NSFW page I come across. It all gets
posted to del.icio.us. It's truly a lifesaver.
Del.icio.us takes a while to catch
on with some people (what is "social bookmark sharing"
anyway?) but once they get the hang of it, they're hooked.
One-click posting from the browser bookmark bar, the ability
to peek at what your friends are reading and the crazy stuff
you find by running tag searches all add up to a truly
useful web app. Not to mention the API that gives you RSS
feeds, blog posting functionality and import/export
capability between del.icio.us and your browser. I'll never
lose a webpage again.
NetVibes Start here.
Remember start pages? Those portal-riffic
pages that displayed local weather, news, daily horoscopes
and sports scores were last seen in vast numbers circa 1999.
But with the explosion of RSS and Ajax, a smarter breed of
start page has emerged -- and the king of the hill is
NetVibes. The Parisian company has created an aggregation
tool that lets each user create a personalized page that
pulls news feeds and data from web services into modular
boxes. The boxes update automatically, and their display
options are totally customizable.
NetVibes is built for nine
languages. Users can pull in any RSS feed on the web, as
well as Flickr photos, Alexa charts, to-do lists, Writely
documents and shared calendars. There are even interfaces
for webmail services like Gmail and Yahoo Mail. And, unless
you want to access your personalized start page from another
computer, no user registration is required. Très bon.
And now, the Losers.
MySpace No thanks for the ad.
They say 100 million users can't be
wrong. Well, can't they? Regardless of how popular MySpace
is or how many bands, web celebs or stalkers it continues to
empower and enable, the social networking site is about as
pleasant to look at as last week's cat vomit. The user
interface is clunky and counterintuitive. Advertising is
ubiquitous and invasive. The garish backgrounds and animated
images seem sucked from some terrible time portal that leads
straight to the nascent web of 1995. Oh, and auto-launching
audio widgets and video players? Don't get me started.
Unfortunately, MySpace is going to
be around for a while, so we'd better all get used to it --
or build something better and get everyone to switch.
Squidoo Advice 5 cents.
If you're an expert on some obscure
topic, you should be able to use that knowledge to gain fame
and notoriety -- and maybe make a little bit of dough in the
process. That's the idea behind Squidoo. It's a community
site that encourages experts create a "lens," or a page that
concentrates on a single topic.
The Lensmasters, as they are known,
point curious users to resources on the web about their
topic of expertise, giving topical search a more human
touch. The Lensmasters earn royalties in the process through
Squidoo's revenue sharing program. Sounds pretty
revolutionary, except that the Lensmasters don't point you
to anything that you can't find on Google. Some of the
Lensmasters do a good job, but a number of the lenses are
just glorified ads and many are bogged down by opinionated
writing.
The bulk of the lenses on Squidoo
are made up a few sentences written by the Lensmaster,
followed by a dozen or so ads for books and CDs from Amazon.
And, as TechCrunch points out, the best Lensmasters are only
receiving about $30 per month for their work, much less than
they could be making if they started their own blog and
pulled in AdSense ads. Browzar Huckzter.
Upon its release in late August
2006, this new web browser promised the most secure browsing
experience possible. Browzar purportedly kept your browsing
secret by covering all of your tracks. The application
wouldn't keep a history or cache, it deleted cookies and
didn't record form or search data, according to Freeserve
founder Ajaz Ahmed, Browzar's creator.
The blogosphere gave Browzar a
glowing review, even though it was a little clunky and only
worked in Windows. Then, a few days later, reports started
showing up about Browzar's inability to completely delete
page caches or browsing history. It was a lemon. And just in
case that wasn't enough, it pushed users to its own branded
search page full of contextual ads. No cookie for you,
Browzar. Fo.rtuito.us Gimme.a.break
Fo.rtuito.us turns the social
networking model on its head. Instead of relying on the
traditional social software experience where you connect
with people you already know or bond with strangers over
common interests, Fo.rtuito.us delivers a total stranger,
chosen at random, to your virtual doorstep.
You interact with that person for
four days, discussing interests, sharing ideas and generally
getting to know them. Then, you decide whether you have
enough in common to actually be their friend and offer them
the prize of adding them to your network.
It's an interesting idea, but it
never took off. Even if you ignore the silly del.icio.us
rip-off URL, you can't ignore the fact that traffic to the
site has almost totally flatlined. What good is a social
network that nobody uses? Friendster Tipped scalability.
Friendster was the original social
networking golden child. When it first arrived, it was the
coolest thing in the universe -- everyone just had to run to
the site and set up a page. In fact, everyone did, and
Friendster wasn't ready for its newfound popularity.
As the site's traffic grew and
grew, page loads ground to a halt. People stopped going to
Friendster, but they had already tasted the joys of online
social networks. So, when the new kid on the block (MySpace)
showed up and offered them a site with the same
functionality that didn't timeout during the login process,
the masses bailed. And the rest is history.
Yahoo spruces up Flickr photo-sharing service with free
editing program
Yahoo Inc. is touching up its popular
online photo-sharing service, Flickr, with free editing tools
aimed at the growing number of shutterbugs who want to doctor
their digital pictures. The editing software, expected to be
introduced late Tuesday in a partnership with Picnik Inc.,
represents Yahoo's latest attempt to broaden Flickr's appeal as
the Sunnyvale-based company closes its older Yahoo Photos
service. ''We think this is going to be very attractive to
mainstream users who aren't necessarily great photographers,''
said Kakul Srivastava, Flickr's senior director of product
management.
MIT's Technology Review, December 4, 2007 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/Wire/19821/?nlid=734
I really like the Digital Duo that appears weekly once
again on PBS. I found that you can bring up prior shows on
your computer by going to
http://www.pcworld.com/digitalduo/index/0,00.asp
On October 17, 2005 the following links appeared at the above
site:
-
-
-
- Web Developers Virtual Library --- http://www.stars.com/
-
- Includes a five-year archive on Jakob Nielsen's bi-weekly
column on Web usability (including summaries of common design flaws in personal and
corporate web sites) at http://www.useit.com/
-
- The Industry Standard: The Newsmagazine
of the Internet Economy
- Microsoft Access Accounting Systems
- WEBGUIDE for Publishers (Good listing of
links for web publishing)
- Berkeley Software Design, Inc: Home Page
- Creating Net Sites
- Creating Net Sites
- Developing World
Wide Web pages at Cornell
- Lessons from Business School Web Sites
- Netscape Internet
Service Providers
- PC Computing's 1,001 Best Internet Tips
- Technical Help
- The World-Wide Web
Virtual Library: Educational Technology (21-May-1996)
- World Wide Web FAQ
- WWW FAQ: What are WWW, hypertext and
hypermedia?
- Web-Based Training
Information Center (Good Discussion of CBT)
- Links to WBT and
Related Sites (CBT Links)
- The Virtual Institute of Information
Berkeley Software Design, Inc: Home Page
- Creating Net Sites
- Developing World
Wide Web pages at Cornell
- Lessons from Business School Web Sites
- Netscape Internet
Service Providers
- PC Computing's 1,001 Best Internet Tips
- Technical Help
WEBGUIDE for Publishers (Good listing of
links for web publishing) -
-
A New Look for MS Outlook
Xobni makes it easier to find relevant information buried in your inbox.
"A New Look for Outlook," by Kate
Greene, MIT's Technology Review, October 2, 2007 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/19463/?nlid=575&a=f
For more than a
decade, the look and
feel of e-mail
inboxes has remained
agonizingly static.
Many of today's mail
applications can
predict the address
a user is typing and
show threads of
conversations, and
some are searchable
by keyword, but none
provide a truly
innovative way to
view e-mails.
Now, a startup based
in San Francisco
called
Xobni
("inbox" spelled
backward) has
released a test
version of
software
that gives Outlook,
at least, a
completely different
feel. Xobni's goals,
says cofounder
Adam Smith, are to
pull out relevant
but sometimes buried
information from a
person's inbox and
other folders, and
make it easy to
find. Overall, Smith
and cofounder Matt
Brezina succeed in
building an
attractive, useful
interface to show
people a side of
their inbox that
they rarely see,
such as phone
numbers buried in
the bodies of
messages and social
networks between
e-mail
correspondents.
The idea of indexing
e-mail is certainly
not new, and
Google Desktop
has a feature that
goes through a
user's Outlook files
to make searching
them easy. But what
makes Xobni distinct
is that it turns
e-mail from a
message-based system
into a people-based
system. When a Xobni
user highlights an
e-mail in her inbox,
a panel
pops
up
showing useful
information about
the sender. If a
picture is
available, it
appears, as does a
bar graph showing
the times of day
when the sender has
e-mailed the user.
This is useful for
gauging when that
person may be online
and working in the
future. Xobni keeps
track of the number
of e-mails the user
and sender have
exchanged and even
ranks the sender in
terms of the
frequency of e-mail
contact.
An extremely useful
feature is one in
which Xobni displays
the phone number of
the sender, pulled
out from an e-mail
signature or the
body of an e-mail.
What's more, the
software is able to
provide a list of
people who have also
been included on
e-mails with the
sender and user,
revealing a social
network that would
most likely
otherwise go
unnoticed. For
instance, when
looking at the
social network of
one of my more
well-connected
colleagues, I found
e-mail addresses for
a couple of people
who weren't in my
Outlook
contacts
and whose e-mail
addresses are useful
to know.
The Xobni panel also
includes a list of
recent e-mail
conversations
organized by thread
and sorted by date,
and a list of files
exchanged between
the user and the
sender, likewise
organized by date.
In addition, Xobni
keeps track of the
last time the user
and senders were in
contact with each
other, providing a
view of people the
user might not have
e-mailed in a month,
three months, or a
year or more.
Continued in article
|
|
|
-
-
Photo Storage/Sharing on the Web
Those "Free" Online Personal Photo Storage/Sharing Sites: Yahoo is
Dropping This Service
"How the Big Photo-Sharing Sites Stack Up," by Katherine Boehret, The Wall
Street Journal, August 1, 2007, Page D8 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118592598712284053.html
Yahoo's recent announcement
that it would be closing its Yahoo Photos division on Sept. 20 forced its
users to decide what to do with their photos. The site's photo-storage and
sharing service, which has been around for about seven years, is bowing to
its hipper counterpart, Flickr.com, also owned by Yahoo Inc.
|
When
faced with the daunting task of transferring entire collections of
uploaded photos to a new Web site, or just choosing a site on which
to start sharing digital photos, consumers are worried about
choosing the wrong one.
This
week, I compared data about five popular photo-sharing sites: Kodak
Gallery, Shutterfly, Snapfish, Flickr and Photobucket. Many other
sites offer to do the job, such as SmugMug and Webshots, but I stuck
to the five major sites suggested by Yahoo as alternatives to its
photo service.
Continued in article |
MediaMax allows you store up to 25 Gb free ---
http://www.mediamax.com/index.aspx
Question
Would you like to choose a color and then easily find its RGB number code?
Go to Flickr Color Selectr ---
http://color.slightlyblue.com/
"Mapping Your Digital Photo World: Card Uploads And Charts Shots
With Location Data, by Kathering Boehret, The Wall Street Journal,
August 20, 2008; Page D8 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121917547623154115.html
After spending summer vacation shooting the sights,
many people face the same chore: labeling and organizing digital photos
before forgetting what they are and where they were taken.
Now there's a way to upload photos that are already
labeled with their exact latitude and longitude using geotagging, the fancy
name for labeling data with information on its geographic origin. Photos
with "geotags" have coordinates embedded invisibly in them. Some programs or
online photo services use these tags to generate maps showing just where
each photo was taken, or to label or organize the images. Not long ago, this
capability was mostly done through manual labeling or with costly equipment.
This week, I tested the $129 Eye-Fi
Explore Card (EyeFi.com),
a special two-gigabyte memory card from Eye-Fi Inc.
that adds a photo geotagging feature to Eye-Fi's original functionality: the
automatic wireless uploading of photos, straight from a digital camera to a
home computer or photo-sharing service. If all goes well, users can capture
and upload what are essentially geographically prelabeled batches of digital
photos -- with minimal effort and time.
But after days of testing, I found
myself more frustrated as I used this wireless memory card in various places
and situations, and found the tagging to be unreliable in one scenario.
(Eye-Fi Inc. said my experiences weren't typical.) At home in Washington,
D.C., and while on a business trip to California, I tried it using a
two-year-old Kodak digital camera and two different Vista laptops, though it
also works on Macs.
Eye-Fi introduced the Explore Card as
a follow-up to the company's original wireless memory card, which it
introduced last fall. Once set up, the first Eye-Fi card initiated the
transferring of photos to a computer or Web site whenever the digital camera
was turned on and as long as it was near a pre-associated wireless network.
Through a partnership with Skyhook
Wireless, the Explore card can automatically label photos with their
latitude and longitude using data from the Skyhook's Wi-Fi positioning
system. As long as a photo is captured within the Skyhook coverage area,
which the company says covers 70% of North America, and the geotagging is
enabled, each photo will be coded with data identifying where it was
captured.
The Explore Card turned otherwise
normal photo-sharing sites into mini maps showing where I had traveled while
on a business trip in Silicon Valley. I set my account up to work with
Flickr, Kodak Gallery, Snapfish, Shutterfly and Picasa Web Albums, though
only one will work at a time. Flickr, Picasa Web Albums and Smugmug make use
of geotagged photos by tagging shots with their location data, such as
"Downtown Palo Alto, California." I used Flickr and Picasa Web Albums to
instantaneously generate a map showing where I was when I took photos.
On Flickr, each image was represented
by a pink dot associated with one of several photos displayed in a
horizontal bar below the map. This map can be searched for specific tags
(photo labels) or locations and can be narrowed to show images from everyone
who uses Flickr, just your own photostream, or only photos from friends or
contacts. My searches returned results in seconds, finding shots that were
geotagged with "Palo Alto" and tagged by me as containing flowers. I enjoyed
looking at other Flickr users' photos when I searched everyone's images,
specifically in cities where I recognized landmarks.
Picasa Web Albums showed each
geotagged image on a map by placing tiny versions of each photo on the map.
In certain cases, when I had multiple photos taken at the same spot, photos
appeared with lines drawn from them to a spot, much like spokes of a wheel.
I also looked at my Picasa photos on maps in Google Earth; a quick link to
the program is conveniently found at the top of the Picasa Web Albums
screen.
Another key feature of the Explore
Card is its hotspot connectivity. The card is capable of working in any
Wayport location, which includes McDonald's restaurants and certain airports
and hotels. Though using Wayport locations normally requires sign-ins and/or
payment via a computer screen, the Explore Card works as soon as the camera
is turned on in these locations. This service is free for the first year,
but after that, it costs $19 annually to continue.
Finally, the Explore Card notifies
users via SMS or email messages when photos have either started or finished
uploading; or if these uploads are interrupted, which happened to me a few
times. This is useful in Wayport wireless zones, where the camera has no
real way of signaling when an upload is finished or when a computer isn't
handy.
In a hotel with a flaky Wi-Fi
network, the Explore Card was crippled, though I blame the hotel for this
inconvenience. But even when I traveled to a local McDonald's, where Eye-Fi's
maker has a deal for free Wi-Fi for its cards, the Eye-Fi stuttered and
couldn't consistently upload photos. When I plugged the card directly into
my laptops, the results weren't much better.
If you aren't within Wi-Fi range
while taking a photo, it won't be geotagged. I ran into this issue in one
instance: On California's highway 101, I took a handful of photos, but when
I checked my Eye-Fi account later, none of these photos was automatically
geotagged.
Some people worry about privacy
settings when it comes to uploading geotagged photos directly to a sharing
Web site. Settings within the Eye-Fi Manager make it easy to adjust
permissions to determine who can see your photos within each of about 25
sharing sites.
Users can opt to share photos only to
a home computer through their own Wi-Fi network, and a special card is
designed for just that: the $79 Eye-Fi Home. This is meant to serve as a
shortcut for transfers.
The original Eye-Fi, which costs $99,
was a useful tool as a wireless memory card, but I didn't have as much luck
with the more expensive Eye-Fi Explore. Still, when it did work, I found
geotagging to be a great way of automatically labeling and organizing my
photos. Instead of just being neatly stored in a folder on your computer,
geotagged images are given a spark of life and relevancy when plotted out on
a map.
-
- Information Systems
Databases and Networking of
Databases
Network
Databases: Past, Present, and Future
http://ashok.pair.com/
is a great supplementary site about PowerBuilder, Java, SQL, RDBMS, and OOP.
The Argus
Clearinghouse (ratings of web sites)
Web Developers Virtual Library --- http://www.stars.com/
XML and RDF
Bob Jensen's Threads on XML, XLink, XHTML, XBRL, XForm, XSLT, RDF and
the Semantic Web --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm
Network
Databases: Past, Present, and Future
RDF and XML --- The Next Big Things on the WWW!
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/260wp/260wp.htm#RDF
Just about every recent technology magazine and journal
carries at least one article about the looming XML and RDF. My top recommendation,
apart from my own overview mentioned above, is entitled "XML: The Last Silver
Bullet" by Jack Vaughan in Application Development Trends, April 1000,
24-30. He contends that "coming as it does on the heels of the Web's great
success (HTML), XML is viewed by some as having a far broader impact." This is
a nice summary article of the history of XML (it only started in 1996) and XML's
tremendous future. Vaughn also discusses RDF. The online version of this
article is at
http://www.adtmag.com/pub/apr99/f04eaix0499.htm
For a time, not much was out there in the way of authoring software for
XML and the standards have not yet been fully established to be embedded in web browser
software. However, some business firms are already experimenting with XML.
One piece of software that already has an XML backbone is the Dynabase from INSO (800-733-5799) at http://www.inso.com/ . Dynabase
can be built on top of such relational database systems as Oracle, Sybase, Informix, SQL
Server, and DB2. (It should be pointed out, however, that XML will eventually be an
object-oriented database system). Dynabase uses a proprietary programming language
that is very close to Visual Basic and will, therefore, integrate well with Microsoft's
Office 2000 products. It is a bit early for poor professors to start experimenting
with Dynabase since it carries a price tag of $50,000. But Dynabase is already on
the move in the corporate world.
A leading company for heavy duty SGML and XML development is ArborText at http://www.arbortext.com/ . ArborText produces
a new software product called EPIC described as follows:
Because Epic connects directly to Microsoft Word, you can easily
import existing product information contained in Word files and convert them to valid XML.
Epic can also use Word’s filters to import product information contained in other
formats including Microsoft Excel tables, WordPerfect files, and more. After the
import is finished, Epic helps you fix up anything that does not convert to valid XML.
In addition to a traditional editing view, Epic also displays the document in an
editable, hierarchical view through its Document Map. In addition, Epic contains
several tools that simplify the structured XML authoring process. One example is the
Insert Element panel on the right. This allows authors to find the appropriate element by
first selecting a category; in this example, the author has selected the "List"
category and can then choose from all the types of lists that Epic supports.
In addition, ArborText has the The ADEPT Series
described at http://www.arbortext.com/Products/ADEPT_Series/adept_series.html
ADEPT Series -- Supports XML and SGML authoring and page
publishing on Windows-based PCs and UNIX-based workstations. ADEPT·Editor -- Allows
authors to write text, place graphics and create books, manuals, catalogs, encyclopedias,
and similar types of information. Also, ADEPT’s Willow technology enables tight
integration between ADEPT and document management systems. ADEPT·Publisher -- Includes
all the capabilities of ADEPT·Editor plus page composition. ADEPT·Publisher
automatically lays out pages by balancing the need for page fullness with the need to keep
related elements together to provide a powerful tool for increasing author productivity.
Document·Architect – Provides an application development tool to build DTDs
(Document Type Definitions), design stylesheets, and and customize the behavior of ADEPT.
Pricing at ArborText appears to be negotiated, and it does
not appear possible to find ballpark pricing at the company's web site. It appears
that ArborText software is not priced for poor professors.
Microsoft has a free download of XML Notepad in beta form
that will perform some simple XML basics. It is described at http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/NOTEPAD/intro.asp
. Frequently asked questions about XML Notepad are answered at http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/NOTEPAD/faq.asp . I downloaded a free copy from http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/NOTEPAD/download.asp
Microsoft Corporation's dedication to great new things in XML is described at http://www.gca.org/memonly/xmlfiles/issue4/edit.htm
Both Internet Explorer and Netscape have XML viewing capabilities. See http://www.softseek.com/Internet/Web_Browsers_and_Utilities/Browsers/Review_20326_index.html
. On the heavy duty side of XML, see SQL Server 7.0 and XML Power Microsoft’s Product Catalog http://www.microsoft.com/backstage/
Probably the newest XML authoring software packages is
called XMETAL from the company (Soft Quad) that originated the HTML and web server
software called HOT METAL PRO. The price is only $495 for
the world and $347 for poor professors (very reasonable for XML authoring). You
can read the following in documents at http://www.sq.com/products/xmetal/index.html
XMetaL is a highly customizable XML authoring tool that delivers
unprecedented ease of use to authors while shielding them from the complexities of XML,
lowering costs of both customization and deployment.
You can read the initial press release about XMETAL at http://www.sq.com/press/releases/pr990525.html
.
Data Recovery ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_recovery
One company to consider for data recovery ---
File Savers
www.filesaversdatarecovery.com
Picture File Recovery
Enter "Picture File Recovery" at
https://www.google.com/advanced_search
Archiving and Long-term storage
Remember that Total System Backup entails more than merely backing up
files ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup_software
"Windows 7's Built-in Backup," Lincoln Spector,
PC World via The Washington Post,
January 20, 2010 ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/18/AR2010011802423.html?wpisrc=nl_tech
Robert wants to know if Windows 7's built-in backup
program is worth using.
Microsoft has a history of bundling really bad
backup programs with their operating systems. The company has been accused
of a lot of monopolistic behavior, but their backup programs often seemed
designed to not threaten the market for third-party competitors.
So I wasn't prepared to like Windows 7's Backup and
Restore. But much to my amazement, I kind of do. It does image backups for
system protection and file backups for regular data protection--and does
both for the Home Premium as well as the Business and Ultimate editions. For
file backups, it defaults to backing up exactly what you should be backing
up (libraries, appdata, and a few other important folders), and lets you
tell it to back up any other folders you want to protect.
Backup and Restore can backup files incrementally,
saving only those created and changed since the last backup. And it does
versioning--if several versions of a file have been backed up, you can pick
which you want to restore. It defaults to restoring the most recent backup,
and generally avoids the confusion that versioning causes in some people.
And it's all very easy and direct.
Not that it's perfect. Backup and Restore allows
you to pick which drive you wish to backup to, but won't let you pick a
folder in that drive. It can be pretty picky about restoring an image, to
the point where I wouldn't use it for image backup. You can save to a
network, but not over the Internet. If you're looking for something better,
see
7 Backup Strategies for Your Data, Multimedia, and System Files.
PC World Senior Editor Robert Strohmeyer
(full disclosure: He's my editor) created a
video showing how to
set up a scheduled, automatic backup with Backup and Restore. But since I
don't believe in automatic backups--at least not to local media like an
external hard drive--I'll tell you how to back it up manually.
(What do I have against automatic backups? For them
to work, the backup media must always be available. This is fine if you're
backing up over a network or the Internet, but an external drive that's
connected to your PC 24/7 is vulnerable to the same disasters that could
destroy the data on your internal hard drive. It's best to connect a backup
drive only when you need to.)
To launch the program, simply click Start,
type , and select Backup and Restore. Plug in your external hard
drive and click Set up backup. Make your own decisions in the setup
wizard, but when you get to the last page, click Change schedule.
Uncheck Run backup on a schedule (recommended), and click OK.
You're set up.
To back up your data (and you should do this every
day), plug in the external drive, launch Backup and Restore as described
above, and click Back up now.
You can continue working as you back up.
ComputerWorld's Spotlight on Cloud Storage ---
http://resources.idgenterprise.com/original/AST-0062134_DS2_FINAL.pdf
"Google Stores, Syncs, Edits in the Cloud," by Walter S. Mossberg,
The Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303459004577362111867730108.html
For years, some people who wanted to store
files on remote servers in the cloud have been emailing the files to
their Gmail accounts, or uploading them to Google's GOOG -0.07% lightly
used Google Docs online productivity suite, even if they had no
intention of editing them there.
Now, Google is formally jumping into the
cloud-based file storage and syncing business, offering a service called
Google Drive, which will compete with products like Dropbox and others
by offering lower prices and different features. It works on multiple
operating systems, browsers and mobile devices, including those of
Google's competitors Apple AAPL -0.32% and Microsoft MSFT -0.02% . There
are apps for Windows, Mac and mobile devices that automatically sync
files with Google Drive.
I've been testing Google Drive, which launches
today, and I like it. It subsumes the editing and file-creation features
of Google Docs, and replaces Google Docs (though any documents you have
stored there carry over). In my tests—on a Mac, a Lenovo PC, a new iPad
and the latest Samsung 005930.SE +1.16% Android tablet—Google Drive
worked quickly and well, and most of its features operated as promised.
At launch, it's available for Windows PCs, Macs and Android devices. The
version for the iPhone and iPad is planned for release soon.
Google Drive, which can be found at
drive.google.com, offers users 5 gigabytes of free storage, compared
with 2 gigabytes free for the popular Dropbox, and equal to the free
offering from another cloud storage and syncing service I like,
SugarSync. That's enough for thousands of typical documents, photos and
songs.
Prices for additional storage drastically
undercut Dropbox and SugarSync. For instance, 100 GB on Google Drive
costs $4.99 a month. By contrast, 100 GB costs $14.99 monthly on
SugarSync and $19.99 on Dropbox. Google Drive will offer huge
capacities, in tiers, all the way up to 16 terabytes. (A terabyte is
roughly 1,000 gigabytes.) And if you buy extra storage for Google Drive,
your Gmail quota rises to 25 GB.
But one of Google's biggest rivals isn't
standing still. Microsoft is expanding both the features and capacity of
its little-known SkyDrive cloud storage service as well. That product
started out as a free, fixed-capacity (25 gigabytes) online locker
mostly for users of the stripped-down, cloud-based version of Microsoft
Office, though it also has been available as an app for Windows Phone
smartphones and for iPhones. It's giving away even more free storage
than Google—7 GB, though that is a cut from what it used to offer free.
It also is charging less than Google. For instance, you can add 100
gigabytes for $50 a year. And users of the old version get to keep their
25-gigabyte free allotment. I wasn't able to test this new version of
SkyDrive for this column. It also is offering syncing apps for Windows
and Mac.
Google Drive is meant as an evolution of Google
Docs. While you could previously upload a file to Google Docs using your
Web browser, for Google Drive, the company is providing free apps for
Mac and Windows that, like Dropbox, do this for you. They create special
folders that sync with your cloud-based repository and with the Web
version of the product. So, you can drag a file into these local folders
on your computer and that file will be uploaded to your cloud account
and will rapidly appear in the Web version of Google Drive, in the
Google Drive folders on your other computers, and in the Google Drive
apps on Android, iPhone and iPad devices. These local apps also sync any
changes to the files you make.
One big difference between Dropbox and Google
Drive is you can edit or create files in the latter, rather than merely
storing or viewing them. This is because Google Drive includes the
rudimentary word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and other apps
that make up Google Docs.
But there is a catch. If your stored document
is in a Microsoft Office format, you can only view it. To edit it, you
have to click a command to convert the file to Google's own formats, or
choose a setting that converts Microsoft Office files when uploaded. But
this latter feature only works when uploading from the website.
Google Drive also is missing some features of
SugarSync I like. The latter doesn't require you to place files in a
special folder; it syncs the folders you already use on your PC and Mac.
Also, unlike SugarSync, Google Drive doesn't let you email files
directly into your cloud locker.
Google Drive allows you to share files and
folders, and collaborate with others. You can also email files as
attachments. People with whom you share files can be allowed different
rights: to view, comment, or edit them. You can also keep the files
private.
Because Google has run into hot water over
keeping users' information private, some people may be reluctant to
trust their files to Google Drive. But the company insists that, while
it does process and store your files, no human can see them and, at
least today, the files aren't used to target advertising at users. The
company notes no file can be placed in Google Drive unless the user
wants it there.
The service does a very good job of searching
files, even finding words inside PDF or scanned documents. The company
claims it can find images when you type in words describing them, like
"bridge" or "mountain"—even if those words don't appear in the image's
file name. But I found this mostly worked with photos of famous places
or people Google has collected via its Google Goggles product. Google
Drive failed to find images with generic file names on almost all of my
own pictures, even when they included things like mountains or other
common objects.
Continued in article
Castle.so (file sharing utility with no file size limit) ---
https://castle.so/
Bob Jensen's threads on storing and sharing files ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#archiving
"Receive Files in Dropbox with FileStork," by Jason B. Jones,
Chronicle of Higher Education, August 25, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/receive-files-in-dropbox-with-filestork/35567?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
We’ve written before about options for
receiving papers electronically outside either e-mail or a campus-based
learning management system. (For example, earlier this month I wrote
about
GoFileDrop, which lets you receive files of
any type into your Google Docs account. Also see
Send to Dropbox or
Dropbox Forms.)
The advantages of such a
system are, basically, that it gets files out of your e-mail and
directly into a location where you can start to work with them, that it
eliminates uncertainty around e-mail receipt, and that it doesn’t get
you locked into the LMS. Handy!
A recent entry into the
file-receipt market is
FileStork (Via
LifeHacker). FileStork makes it incredibly
simple for
Dropbox users to request files from people on
either a one-time or more open-ended basis. (This is probably a little
easier and safer than sharing a folder with an entire class.) Here’s how
it works.
Continued in article
"Losing Is for Losers: It’s Easier Than Ever to Back Up Your Work,"
by Carol Saller, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 3, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2012/02/03/losing-is-for-losers-it%E2%80%99s-easier-than-ever-to-back-up-your-work/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Bob Jensen's threads on storage alternatives ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#archiving
"Thanks to Google Plus, Picasa Gets Unlimited Storage for Photos &
Videos, Also Better Tagging," by Sarah Perez, ReadWriteWeb, July
1, 2011 ---
Click Here
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/thanks_to_google_plus_picasa_gets_unlimited_storage_for_photos_and_videos.php
With the launch of
Google Plus,
there may be some confusion as to how the photos uploaded to the social
network (Google+) integrate with Google's online photo-sharing service
(Picasa),
especially in terms of storage limits. The answer provides some great
news for Google Plus users - nearly everything you upload to Google Plus
won't count towards your storage limits on Picasa, with the only
exception being videos longer than 15 minutes.
And there's another nifty feature involving
photo-tagging, too - your Google+ friends can now tag your Picasa
photos.
Thus far I past my photographs on two Web servers at Trinity University:
Server One
Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
Server Two
More of Bob Jensen's Personal History in Pictures ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/
From the Scout Report on January 6, 2012
Comodo Online Storage ---
https://www.ccloud.com/
Having a backup of important files is crucial,
and Comodo Online Storage offers one possible solution. After completing
a brief registration, visitors will be able to store up to 5GB at no
cost. The site also includes a video presentation, a simple drag & drop
feature for adding files, and the ability to create folders for said
materials. This version is compatible with Windows XP and newer.
From the Scout Report on June 8, 2012
DataLocker ---
http://www.appsense.com/labs/data-locker
Personal cloud services are growing rapidly and
they can be quite useful. However, they open up various security
concerns and people can be a bit wary of using them. The DataLocker
suite of products is free, and it can encrypt and store secure files in
any local file system or cloud storage system, including Dropbox.
First-time visitors can check out a tutorial on this website to decide
whether they wish to download the application. This version is
compatible with all operating systems.
A Great Network Hard Drive
"Network Hard Disk by Western Digital Offers Easy Backup," by
Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123862013727579735.html
Now, there's a new networkable hard disk that,
in my tests, proved so simple that anyone who can plug in a cable can
use it, with no setup or knowledge, provided your computers have the
most current operating systems. It works concurrently and seamlessly
with both Windows PCs and Macs, and can even stream music to Apple's
iTunes program installed on either platform.
In addition, it can stream music, photos and
videos to a TV, if you have a compatible add-on box attached, such as an
Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. Its contents also can be accessed over the
Internet from any major Web browser.
The product is the My Book World Edition, from
Western Digital. This second version of the World Edition sells for $230
for a model with a capacity of one terabyte (roughly 1,000 gigabytes)
and $450 for two terabytes. It's available from various retailers, or at
westerndigital.com.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
I generally update files on an external hard drive and, thereby, make it
easier to transfer files when needed to my two main computers. The most
current updated files are always on the external hard drive that I normally
back up at least once per week.
But my backup system is not a "total backup system."
What's the difference between backup and "total backup?" --- See below
Question
Do you know anything about Glide Effortless?
"If TransMedia can fix these problems, it just might have a hit on its hands
with Glide."
Glide Online Service Has Good Potential,
But Rough Edges," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal,
March 16, 2006; Page B1 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/personal_technology.html
The
high-tech hype machine is in full throttle right now, pushing the idea that
one day soon people will store all their files online, and that
sophisticated new "Web applications," running on remote computers, will be
used to manage and view all those files. But as with most hype, the actual
evidence has been scarce.
Now, a small company in New York City, far from the
Silicon Valley publicity industry, is quietly delivering on that vision. The
company, TransMedia Corp., has launched a rich, slick consumer Web service
that can store, display, and share photos, music, videos, Web links, blogs
and other documents. It's called Glide Effortless, available at
www.glidedigital.com.
Glide
Effortless, which runs equally well on Windows and Macintosh computers, is
the most interesting online service I've seen in quite a while. It's a
large, integrated environment that has its own graphical user interface and
often responds as quickly and smoothly as a desktop software program, even
though it runs on remote servers.
Glide
has elements of photo-sharing sites, social networking sites and Web
publishing services, but is different from any other site or service I've
seen. It requires a broadband Internet connection, and works inside the
latest versions of the most popular browsers: Internet Explorer for Windows;
Safari for the Mac; and Firefox for either Windows or Mac.
In my
tests, I found that Glide has some rough edges. Not everything works as it
should all the time, and there are some annoying aspects. It needs some
work. But overall, I was impressed with the design, the care for detail and
the ambition of the service.
Glide
is a subscription service whose prices vary based on the amount of file
storage you need and the features you get. It starts with a couple of free,
but limited, plans offering 300 megabytes of storage. The options range up
to a full-featured plan offering 4 gigabytes of storage for $9.95 a month,
or $99.95 a year, if you pay upfront. There are also family plans, and the
opportunity to buy extra storage a la carte.
Parental controls are available in the family
plans. And the company requires that its members have verifiable identities.
There's no advertising in Glide. The company augments the membership fees it
collects by offering shopping opportunities, though today they are limited
mainly to buying prints of photos stored online and, oddly, to buying
expensive chocolates. Music sales are in the works.
You can upload all of your files to your Glide
account manually, from within the service. Glide also offers a small program
that resides on your hard disk and automates mass uploads to the service. In
my tests, this little program installed and worked fine on the Mac, but not
on Windows.
The main Glide screens are divided into two parts.
At the top, a large window contains icons representing your files. Video
file icons actually play the video in tiny form.
The bottom part of the screen displays
"containers," Glide's term for a folder, playlist, or collection of files.
These are represented by icons that look like boxes. You can add files to a
container by just dragging their icons onto the container's icon.
Glide is a good example of the new type of Web
application that mimics desktop software. Dragging and dropping works
perfectly. Menus snap open instantly, and page layouts can be quickly
changed without having to reload pages.
Every file and container icon in Glide contains a
pop-up menu of actions you can take. For instance, with a photo file, you
can display the picture in various sizes, edit it, delete it, download it,
email it and more.
Action menus don't look like normal menus. In
Glide, they are universally presented as pie charts, with the various
commands occupying the slices in a circle. There are multiple pie menus for
each item; you cycle through them by clicking on a mysterious symbol in the
middle of the chart. It works, but it's a bit goofy.
You can share your files, either via email or an
online conference. The email contains a link that takes the recipient to a
special Glide page.
There are too many features in Glide to enumerate
here, and that's also its Achilles' heel. TransMedia has tried to pack so
much into Glide that it hasn't fixed a lot of glitches.
During my tests, I frequently ran into situations
where music wouldn't play, or took several minutes to do so, and so did a
person to whom I emailed some links to my music. I was able to create and
publish a Web page, but only in one of the two styles Glide offers; the
other refused to work. And I could see no way to edit or expand the Web site
after it was published.
A friend with whom I had shared some Glide content
emailed me using Glide's internal system (Yes, it has email, too.) but the
message never arrived. I uploaded two videos to Glide. Neither appeared in
the video screen of Glide for over 24 hours. Finally, one appeared, and
worked, but the other merely appeared as an unplayable file.
If TransMedia can fix these problems, it just might
have a hit on its hands with Glide.
You can send large files via options described at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob4.htm#SendingLargeFiles
Free and Fee Storage on Web Servers
Given the rather significant security concerns
about Dropbox recently, it’s time to start thinking about alternatives like
SpiderOak.
"SpiderOak as a Secure Alternative to Dropbox," Chronicle of Higher
Education, June 27, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/spideroak-as-a-secure-alternative-to-dropbox/34305?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
The writers at ProfHacker have
often recommended Dropbox as dead simple way to
backup and share documents across multiple devices and users.
Recently, however, Dropbox has suffered from some
privacy issues, most recently a programming bug that left every user’s
Dropbox
completely unlocked for a four hour period.
Combine this security lapse with Dropbox’s default encryption system, which,
as
Dave Parry argues, makes it possible for your
files to be accessed by a third party via a backdoor, and some of us
ProfHackers have begun considering more secure alternatives to Dropbox.
At the head of the list is
SpiderOak.
Like Dropbox, SpiderOak automatically backs up
files to the cloud, and those files can be accessed from many other
devices. Like Dropbox, SpiderOak works on multiple platforms—Windows, Mac,
and Linux, as well as Android and iOS. Like Dropbox, SpiderOak offers a free
2GB version, from which you can upgrade all the way up to 100GB for
$100/year ($100/year only gets you 50GB at Dropbox).
Despite these similarities, there are several
significant differences between Dropbox and SpiderOak. Most relevant here,
SpiderOak encrypts the files on your computer before uploading them
to the server. That means it’s all but impossible for anybody other than
yourself to access readable versions of your data by hacking into SpiderOak.
Even SpiderOak itself has no access to your unencrypted files, something
SpiderOak calls its “zero knowledge” policy.
The other significant difference is that SpiderOak
offers a wider range of features, trading Dropbox’s elegant simplicity for
greater control. For example, you can opt to forego instant backing up and
instead have SpiderOak backup during the night, when it’s less likely to
borrow processing power from other applications. Also, rather than having a
single “My Dropbox” folder, you can select any existing folder to be backed
up by SpiderOak. Another feature is that in addition to backing up your data
on the “cloud,” you can also use the desktop version of SpiderOak to sync
between hard drives and flash drives.
While I’ve started using SpiderOak, I haven’t
entirely given up on Dropbox. The main reason is that other apps I use also
rely on Dropbox. For example, I use
1Password
to track my passwords, and that data is automatically backed up to Dropbox,
where 1Password for iOS and Android can also access it. Appropriately
enough, my 1Password data is safer than any other data I have on Dropbox,
since 1Password does encrypt my passwords, even if Dropbox doesn’t!
Continued in article
February 17, 2010 message from Rick Lillie
[rlillie@CSUSB.EDU]
Hi Bob,
I use an outside web hosting service called
Webhost4life for all of my online course materials. I've used the service
for about eight years and have had few problems. I subscribe to the premium
hosting service. I currently use FrontPage 2003. Although, I will change to
an updated software program in the near future.
The fees are extremely reasonable. They give me
300GB of storage space. There are no traffic charges. Overall, tech support
is quite good (but not perfect) and is available 24/7.
I upload all videos (Camtasia, TokBox, SightSpeed,
etc.). They stream without any problem.
I use Blackboard for my blended and online courses
at my university (CalState San Bernardino). I also teach online courses for
UCLA Extension. I use Blackboard as a web portal and hyperlink to my
materials hosted on my Webhost4life server. I purchase my domain name (drlillie.com)
through GoDaddy.com. I've never encountered any domain issues with
GoDaddy.com
I am also playing around with a new hosted web
service called Weebly. This will not replace what I am doing through
Webhost4life, but it is an interesting way to create mini websites quickly
and easily.
Rick Lillie
Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA Assistant Professor of
Accounting Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy CSUSB, CBPA,
Department of Accounting & Finance 5500 University Parkway, JB-547 San
Bernardino, CA. 92407-2397
Second Message from Rick
Hi Bob,
Here's the link to the Webhost4life subscription
plan options. I subscribe to the "premium" plan which includes unlimited
storage space and traffic. It costs me about $29 per month, which I pay on
an annual basis. The basic plan runs about $10 per month for very generous
features and tech support, as compared to other hosting service providers.
The 300+ GB of space is not free. I pay a
subscription fee. However, compared to other services that I have
researched, Webhost4life is pretty much a no (or limited) hassles service
provider.
Once in a while, I have encountered a technical
issue of one sort or another. When this has happened, Tech Support has in
most cases been most helpful; not 100% perfect, but close enough for
marbles.
I agree with your comment about tech world life
being measured in dog years. I have been very satisfied with
Webhost4life.com's performance and related costs. For me they work well.
As with any recommendation, there's always the risk
that a service might work for someone else. It's always a good policy to
check things out before purchasing.
Rick Lillie
Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA Assistant Professor of
Accounting Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy CSUSB, CBPA,
Department of Accounting & Finance 5500 University Parkway, JB-547 San
Bernardino, CA. 92407-2397
I added Rick's message to
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob4.htm#archiving
I’ve avoided Dropbox thus far due to the high cost of
storage.
Dropbox file synchronization and storage
---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropbox_(storage_provider)
Dropbox
is a
cross-platform
cloud-based
storage application and service operated by
Dropbox, Inc. The service enables users to store and sync files online and
between computers and share files and folders with others using
file synchronization.There are both free and
paid services, each with varying options.
It is also not clear to me that Dropbox will always be able to penetrate a
campus firewall if you are updating a desktop PC from your laptop at a remote
site.
Dropbox has good reviews but is not truly a free service unless your college or
other employer subscribes for you. I think it is free service to faculty and
staff at the University of Connecticut.
For me, this would be very expensive file storage at over $1,000 per year that I
instead get free from Trinity University. 50 Gb will not go far when you are
serving up multimedia files on the Web.
A PC Magazine Review of Dropbox ---
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2343852,00.asp
Dropbox is the simplest, most elegant file-synchronization tool I've ever used.
Dropbox Basic provides 2GB of storage free, and Dropbox Pro gives you 50GB for
$9.95 per month or $99.95 per year. The service stores files with strong
encryption on multiple servers in Amazon's S3 service and works equally smoothly
on Windows, Mac, and
Linux PCs. If you prefer to synchronize
folders you already have on your system, or if you want to keep several folders
fully synchronized between multiple machines, Dropbox may not be for you. It
synchronizes only files stored in a single dedicated folder. But its smooth and
hassle-free operation make it our
Bob Jensen's threads on free services for sending large
files over the Internet ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob4.htm#SendingLargeFiles
"How to protect data - a quick reference," AccountingWeb, April
2008 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=103784
The latest technologies
and gadgets make it incredibly easy for your data to be stolen from right
under your nose, unless you take steps to protect it. Nick Lowe, from
Check Point Software,
reports.
The ability to move massive amounts of information
between PCs and portable storage devices means that it's now incredibly easy
for confidential data to be taken from companies without knowledge or
consent
The perpetrators of such crimes are rarely
stereotypical hackers, attacking systems via the internet from their mafia
headquarters or their student dorms. Instead, the data thieves are
frequently much closer to home. Unescorted visitors, for example, or
temporary staff who have joined the organization purely to copy data and
hand it over to a competitor. Or, as is becoming increasingly common,
unhappy staff who are about to resign but think it's a good idea to first
take copies of anything which might be useful in their new job. And lastly,
innocent employees who simply don’t follow security policy, copy work files
to take home and lose the unprotected storage device.
Unguarded USB ports on today's PCs are perhaps the
biggest threat to corporate IT security. USB memory sticks can typically
store up to a gigabyte of data, but an MP3 player, smartphone or PDA can be
just as effective for the data thief as they can all be quickly connected to
any PC via a USB cable without the need for any driver software to be
installed (and therefore, without the need for the thief to be logged in as
an administrator).
A few drags and drops, and the deed is done in a
few seconds. Where the amount of data to be stolen is beyond the capacity of
an iPod or PDA, external USB drives comprising half a terabyte of storage
are now available on the high street for less than a hundred pounds.
USB devices aren't the only way in which
information can be stolen electronically, of course. Most mobile phones
nowadays include a camera, which can be used to quickly make an electronic
copy of a printed page.
Pocket OCR wands and portable scanners offer
similar facilities to the opportunistic data thief who stumbles across a
confidential printed document. Or he could simply make a photocopy of a
document and put it in the post. However, using any of these methods to
steal large quantities of data is simply not practical because of the time
required. Controlling the use of USB devices is of far greater importance.
While the disgruntled employee is a prime suspect
in many data thefts, actions by former employees should also be considered
in your data protection plans. Do all of your users’ accounts and passwords
get deleted as soon as the person leaves the company or changes department?
Failure to delete such information isn’t just dangerous, but might also mean
that you fall foul of the Data Protection Act by storing personal
information that you do not need to retain.
To reduce the problem of data leakage in your
company there are three effective strategies. First, ensure that you have a
policy which clearly states who is allowed to take data off-site, and how
the data must be protected when it’s away from your premises.
Second, ensure that data doesn't leave the building
without your knowledge. Finally, ensure that data which needs to be removed
from the building is protected so that it can’t fall into the wrong hands.
To control which data files leave your premises in
the first place, set up user accounts on servers and workstations so that
employees can't access information which they have no need to see. Those in
sales and marketing, for example, probably don't need access to the product
development department's files on the server, so set the access permissions
accordingly.
Over-use of rules and regulations can lead to low
morale, however, if the workforce feels that it clearly can't be trusted.
Beware of becoming seen as Big Brother. It won't drive the data thieves
away, but simply make them more determined.
It's also well worth investing in a port control
product such as my company's Pointsec Protector, which can automatically
block USB devices from being connected to your systems without
authorization. The software also includes transparent encryption, so that
information copied to USB devices is automatically rendered inaccessible to
thieves.
Normally you will want to prevent confidential
files leaving your premises, but this won't always be the case. Sometimes,
allowing staff to take files away is necessary and beneficial. Salespeople
need access to product information when they're away from the office, and
marketing people often prepare PowerPoint presentations for delivery at
conferences and seminars. Staff need to take work home at the weekend if
they're particularly busy, and preventing them from doing so will deprive
the company of some useful effort (not to mention all that unpaid overtime).
It's absolutely vital that you protect information
which is taken off the premises. If a sales manager's laptop is stolen from
the boot of her car, you need to be sure that the customer information on
its hard disk can't be accessed by the thief. If your marketing manager's
PDA goes missing while he's at a conference, can you be confident that the
document containing details of next year's product launches won’t be
accessible to whoever buys the stolen hardware?
The solution to this problem is encrypting data.
There are many products on the market, but ensure that the solution you
choose is proven, transparent and automatic, eliminating user interaction
and creating a fully enforceable solution that holds up to the most
stringent compliance requirements. Deploying an encryption solution will
improve the level of trust and loyalty of clients and employees who
recognise that every effort is being made to protect their sensitive data
and ensure that a lost or stolen device never results in a data breach.
ZumoDrive (about $3 per per month per gigabyte) ---
http://www.zumodrive.com/
Bob Jensen's small business helpers are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#SmallBusiness
Total Backup
Time Machine: A Built-in Feature on a Mac for Backing Up the Entire
Computer System Painlessly
(simpler than Vista's tedious alternative for a PC)
With its new Leopard operating system, Apple tried
to solve one of the most nagging problems faced by home-computer users: how
to regularly back up their computers completely and painlessly. Leopard
includes a feature called Time Machine that automatically and continuously
backs up a Macintosh computer's entire hard disk, without requiring the user
to do any tedious setup or have any technical knowledge. Time Machine is a
key selling point for Leopard and the Mac. It is more complete, and yet
simpler, than the built-in backup feature in Vista Home Premium, the most
popular home version of Windows.
Walter S. Mossberg, "Apple's Time Capsule Gives You Easy Way To Back Up
Wirelessly," The Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2008; Page B1 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120476918311515527.html
You're unlimited Google warehouse is on the way
Google Inc. is preparing to offer online storage to
Web users, creating a mirror image of data stored on consumer hard drives,
according to company documents that were mistakenly released on the Web. The
existence of the previously rumored GDrive online storage service surfaced
after a blogger discovered apparent notes in a slide presentation by Google
executives published on Google's site after its analysts presentation day
last Thursday. "With infinite storage, we can house all user files,
including e-mails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it
accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)" the notes in the
original Google presentation state.
"Google offers glimpse of Web-based hard drive: Plan to let users store all
kinds of data and information in one central place is mistakenly released,"
Money Magazine, March 7, 2006 ---
http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/07/technology/google.reut/index.htm
Meanwhile Microsoft Corp.'s (Research) new
version of the Windows operating system, called Vista, will emphasize a
Web-like search instead of its traditional folder-based navigation.
Google might offer similar services but shift
the primary location of user data from the Windows desktop to Google's
own computers.
Some current Total Backup solutions:
http://www.clunkclick.net/
http://www.nifty-stuff.com/backup-system.php
http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=336040&pfp=BROWSE
Disaster Recovery ---
Click Here
MediaMax allows you store up to 25 Gb free ---
http://www.mediamax.com/index.aspx
"Disaster recovery, backup, and restore: Big challenges for small
businesses," AccountingWeb, April 2008 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=104490
The time and effort involved in creating the plan
can be reduced by using readily available disaster recovery templates or
working with consultants, but the starting point for every company is a risk
analysis, according to the
Disaster
Recovery Planning Forum, identifying and
assessing the potential that the loss of business functions, processes, and
records could have on the operation of the business.
When writing a disaster recovery plan, you can find
recommendations on the Forum, including the following:
Identify and define the company's mission critical
business processes and systems. Review them for vulnerabilities and
identifying steps required for restoration and recovery.
Make sure data is backed up to secure and separate
locations.
Evaluate various storage solutions including
storage area networks, data replication systems, new virtualization systems,
network attached storage devices, and managed storage.
Pay significant attention also to . . .
telecommunications providers to ensure they have built diversity and
redundancy into their networks and have well developed and tested
contingency plans.
Members of the forum suggest that employees should
be invested in the plan and fully informed about their responsibilities in a
disaster. The disaster recovery plan should detail how business managers
will communicate with their employees.
With the overload on cell phone communication that
occurred during the September 11th, 2001 disaster in mind, some specialists
are recommending options such as contracting with a third party service for
backup e-mail domains or using text messaging services. Managers also need
to consider the impact of staff using the more affordable smart phones that
can support business functions. As these devices come into use, IT staff
must set up procedures to secure data, according to Chen.
Implementing any plan will require selecting backup
technology and storage and establishing procedures. Tape backup systems
require that someone be able to physically remove them from a damaged
office. Online options which have increased dramatically in recent years,
including software packages available for small businesses, have the
advantage of providing offsite storage as well as backup
Prices for online services are all over the map, so
it pays to shop around. For example, two products
recommended by PC Magazine are SOS
online backup, which costs $74.50 per year for 1GB; $237 per year for 10GB,
and Mozy Remote Backup, which costs only $39.95 a year for 20 GBs.
Third party services usually charge monthly rates
for back up and storage of files and servers. Laura DuBois, an analyst at
International Data Corp., believes many of these services are good enough in
terms of general protections, according to
internetnews.com. But the service
provider should be a true partner to function well in disaster recovery.
Attila Kozma, president of Earth to Stars of
Glendale, CA, the company offering ThetaBackup.com, suggested several tips
to help business owners select an appropriate vendor internet news.com
reports:
The transferred data need to be encrypted and
compressed before transmission;
The online backup and data recovery practices of
the online backup company should be verified to determine if they store SMB
data securely;
Recovery times must be rapid;
On-site professional help should be available
whenever requested at an affordable rate;
Open files should be backed up;
Many versions of files should be saved online, as
opposed to only the last saved version; and
The online backup client software should verify
the sent data for its correctness.
Iron Mountain Digital is the world's largest
provider of data backup-recovery and archiving software as a service. Iron
Mountain offers a range of services for small and medium sized businesses,
the company's web site says. Peachtree Online Backup partners with Iron
Mountain for PC backup. .
Disaster recovery infrastructures for small and
medium businesses have become more affordable in the past year with
disk-to-disk backup and server virtualization,
techtarget.com reports. Other technologies that are
available are storage networks and data deduplication technology, which
automatically removes duplicate records. Microsoft, Intel Corp., and
Advanced Micro Devices are building virtualization into their
infrastructures and, "It's now relatively easy to implement for an SMB
without huge depth of knowledge of virtualization," says Carmi Levy of
Info-Tech Research Group Inc. in London, Ontario, according to
cio-midmarket.com.
Testing the disaster recovery plan is critical.
Access to the company's system should be restored and the data should be
retrieved from off site storage. Changes to the IT environment can affect
the recovery, so testing every six months or every year will be needed to
ensure that the recovery plan functions in the current environment. Managers
and staff should be fully involved in testing.
Bob Jensen's small business helpers are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#SmallBusiness
From the Scout Report on October 31, 2008
Path Finder 5.0 ---
http://www.cocoatech.com/
Finding certain files on a computer can be an
onerous chore from time to time, and Path Finder 5.0 is a good solution for
anyone who's been bedeviled by such a task. The application includes a dual
pane browser, cut and paste support, and a website that includes an
interactive tour through its other features. This version of Path Finder is
compatible with systems running Mac OS X 10.5 and newer. Also, this is a
30-day free trial version, and a full paid license is required after that
point.
VideoInspector 2.0.1.114 ---
http://www.kcsoftwares.com/index.php?vtb
Have you ever had a video file that just wouldn't
play? VideoInspector 2.0.1.114 may be just the thing for such a situation.
VideoInspector helps identify the coder-decoder required to play a specific
file and it is available in over 12 languages. There's also online support
for this application, and it is compatible with computers running Windows 95
and newer.
Question
How can you back up files to other computers and storage devices, including
remotely located equipment?
"SugarSync Offers The Best Method Yet For
Replicating Files," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, April
3, 2008; Page B1 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120718363843685161.html
It's a real problem keeping all the
files you need available and up-to-date on multiple computers in multiple
locations, whether they are key business documents or just favorite photos
or songs. Adding to the problem is the increasingly common use of smart
phones as little laptops, and the growing mixed use of Windows machines and
Apple Macintoshes, which use different programs.
Now, there's a new service called
SugarSync that keeps your files replicated and synchronized across all your
computers, whether they are Windows PCs or Macs. It even offers limited file
synchronization on certain smart phones. The service is from a Silicon
Valley company called Sharpcast and is available at
sugarsync.com.
Not only does SugarSync place the latest version of
every file you designate for syncing on all your chosen computers, but it
also creates an archive of these files on a special, password-protected Web
page. That way, you can access the latest version of any file even when you
are at a public or borrowed computer that lacks the SugarSync software.
I have been testing SugarSync on five different
computers -- three Windows PCs and two Macs -- as well as on a Treo smart
phone. I tried syncing everything from Excel spreadsheets to Word documents,
from photos to songs to PDF documents.
My verdict: While SugarSync isn't free and has a
few rough edges, it is by far the best solution I have tested to replicating
and synchronizing your files across multiple computers. It really works.
Every time you change a file -- say, by editing a
Microsoft Word document or rotating a photo -- the changes are replicated
within seconds on every computer to which it has been synced and in the Web
archive as well, as long as the computers are connected to the Internet.
For example, I set up SugarSync to synchronize a
folder containing some Word documents. Then, I opened one of the documents
on a Dell and added a sentence to it. A minute later, I opened the same file
on a Mac, which was also connected to my SugarSync network. The file already
had been updated on the Mac to include the change I had made on the Dell.
While SugarSync is primarily about file replication
across computers, it also helps solve another nagging problem: backups.
Because the files you care about most are now replicated on multiple
machines in multiple places, and are stored as well in a Web archive, they
are also backed up. So if one of your machines dies, you don't lose your
files. And, if you find yourself in need of a file that doesn't exist on the
computer in front of you, it can be downloaded.
SugarSync works by uploading your synchronized
files to its servers, in encrypted form, and then sending them down to your
computers when they change. There is a 45-day free trial that gives you 10
gigabytes of file storage. After that, you can keep the 10 gigabytes for $25
a year. There are five other storage plans, ranging from $50 a year for 30
gigabytes to $250 a year for 250 gigabytes.
The software that makes it all possible, called
SugarSync Manager, is free and comes in Windows and Mac versions, as well as
versions for Windows Mobile phones and certain BlackBerry models. An iPhone
version is in the works, but for now, you can scan your online archive using
a special SugarSync page available through the iPhone's Web browser.
You install the manager software on any computer
you wish to be part of the synchronized network. You can select different
folders on different computers for syncing. All get uploaded to the Web
archive, where they can be accessed at will.
You can choose which folders you wish to replicate
fully on each machine. For instance, you might want your main documents
folder to be replicated on every hard disk, available even when you're
offline. But, with a folder of lesser importance, you might be content to
just fetch a file when you need it from the Web archive.
SugarSync creates two special folders. One, called
Magic Briefcase, is always replicated on every machine's hard disk, so you
can quickly add a file to it even if you didn't select the file's original
folder for synchronization. The other, called Web Archive, retains files in
their original versions, never updating or changing them.
So, what are the rough edges I spoke about?
Well, the Mac version of SugarSync manager is still
in beta, crashes occasionally and has various bugs. A final Mac version is
promised later this spring. The cellphone versions can only view photos and
whatever documents the phones allow, but changes you make on the phones in
documents other than photos aren't synced back to the computers or to the
Web site.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
I use for Memeo similar backup services an am quite happy with it ---
http://www.memeo.com/
When I change some of my files they are automatically updated on another laptop
and on an external hard drive. For $59 Memeo is a terrific buy.
Advice on leaving your personal computer files to you distant ancestors
Burning material to the disk itself is a snap, thanks
to built-in tools most operating systems now have. There's also advanced
programs, such as those from Roxio (www.roxio.com)
or Nero (www.nero.com),
that help organize material into folders. One warning: Do not compress files to
save space. You may not be able to decompress them in 2015. Software that allows
you to organize your archive across multiple disks, like Genie-Soft (www.genie-soft.com),
can be handy as well, but test it by trying to open the files directly without
using the backup program.
Joab Jackson, "Create an Electronic Archive," Washington Post,
March 27, 2005; Page M03 ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64566-2005Mar24.html?referrer=email
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) including SAP,
Baan and PeopleSoft
Email Messages Regarding Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Education Modules --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/245glosap.htm
SAP = (Acronym for a long German name) SAP is a company from
Germany that sells the leading suite of large-scale client-server business software. The
US branch is called SAP America. The web site is at http://www.sap.com
. SAP is powerful but very slow and expensive to implement. The following message
appears in InformationWeek Online for November 13, 1997:
General Motors has chosen SAP's R/3
software as its global financial application. The decision is part of the automaker's
"common platform strategy," a program that aims to reduce costs and complexity
by standardizing GM's many businesses on several core IT products. GM says it plans to
implement the financial apps in a "phased rollout," beginning with its
automotive assembly and components operations in Europe and the Asia-Pacific, and later in
North and South America. GM's goal is for full deployment by 2002. The R/3 software will
replace a mix of applications GM has running in hundred of locations, a GM spokesman said.
SAP software isn't new to GM: The automaker already has SAP human resources modules in a
handful of places, including its Opel manufacturing operations in Germany and Delphi parts
operations in France. The GM spokesman noted, however, that the new deal with SAP doesn't
include HR modules. GM will take the lead in managing the R/3 rollout, while former GM
unit EDS will "have some role," probably alongside other third-party service
providers, the spokesman said. Financials terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
Major ERP providers include the following:
I worry some about business schools that are jumping on the huge commitment to bring
SAP or other ERP software to students. SAP is one of the various alternatives for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). First SAP is a major
commitment of resources, faculty, and students. Second, there is a legal liability
risk that should be carefully cleared through any university's legal department since it
is possible for users to find themselves in lawsuits brought against developers of
SAP.
More importantly, I worry about the future of ERPs. In this
context I call your attention to an article by Tom Stein entitled "ERP's
Fight for Life," in Information Week, April 12, 1999, 59-66. The online
version is at
http://www.informationweek.com/729/erp.htm
On May 5, 1999 InformationWeek Online reported the following:
J.D. Edwards has hit hard times as the demand for ERP software remains stagnant. The company said yesterday it
expects an operating loss of more than $25 million for its second quarter, ended April 30. Company officials blame the
anticipated shortfall on lower-than-expected license fee revenue, the impact of headcount additions made in the first fiscal
quarter, investments in product development, and a $2.1 million write-off as a result of the acquisition of the Premisys Corp.
According to preliminary results, J.D. Edwards expects to report total second-quarter revenue in the range of $215 million
to $235 million, which represents approximately a 3% to 12% increase over revenue of $209 million in the same period last year. License fee revenue is projected to be in the range of $60 million to $65 million. The company says revenue was adversely impacted by a general slowdown in demand for enterprise software as companies focus on year 2000 readiness. Final results for the quarter will be released on May 26.
Brent Thill, a financial analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston Corp., says the shortfall in license revenue is attributable to
a slippage of new customer orders in the United States. He adds that J.D. Edwards' win rate against market leaders SAP
and Oracle fell to 30% from 50% six months
ago.
Various schools of business have moved heavily into SAP. One
example is California State University at Chico. It would be interesting to hear
from some accounting faculty who are using SAP to give some advice to faculty who are
contemplating recommending SAP to their administrators. Please address such
questions as the following:
- Do you feel SAP is worth the legal risk to your institutions?
- Do you feel SAP is really benefitting students relative to its costs and
related alternatives?
- What types of programs should and should not be adopting SAP?
- What are some of the better alternatives for teaching about ERPs without
having to jump deeply into software such as SAP, Baan, Oracle, and PeopleSoft?
E-Commerce
Web Developers Virtual Library --- http://www.stars.com/
e-Commerce and e-Business Helpers for Accountants --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce.htm
A Guide to E-Commerce at http://e-comm.internet.com/
An Electronic Encyclopedia at http://e-comm.internet.com/library/glossary.html
A longer listing of this and similar glossaries can be found at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/245gloss.htm
U.S. Policy on E-Commerce at http://www.ecommerce.gov/
Electronic Books
Directory (U. Mn.)
- Electronic Commerce World: On-line
journal for electronic commerce - Articles, Resource Directory, Discussions
Internet Economy Indicators (e-Commerce) http://www.internetindicators.com/
Oingo searching at http://www.oingo.com/
From the Scout Report
The Economic and
Social Impacts of Electronic Commerce: Preliminary Findings and Research
Agenda_ [.pdf] http://www.oecd.org/subject/e_commerce/summary.htm
Electronic Commerce
has been in existence for little more than three years, but due to its
enormous capacity to affect "economic activities and social
environments," it has already had a huge impact on retail, finance, and
communications, representing 30 percent of GDP. This 156-page report from the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development examines the past and
potential impact that e-commerce promises to have on business and the economy.
The report is broken into five chapters, which need to be downloaded
separately, including "Growth of electronic commerce: present and
potential," "Electronic commerce, jobs and skills," and
"Societal implications of electronic commerce," each with its own
set of charts and graphs. A report summary is also included
Mitchell Levy really has a street-smart handle on what is happening
on the streets of e-commerce (EC), e-marketing, and new technologies. I signed up. The
main link to the newsletter is at http://ecmgt.com/
eBusiness links brought to my attention by Levy Mitchell
E-Commerce Internet-based Services for Rent Storefronts:
http://store.yahoo.com
http://www.btsw.com
http://www.econgo.com
http://www.affinia.com
Electronic Software Distribution:
http://www.cybersource.com
http://www.buydirect.com
E-Marketing Automation:
http://www.rubricsoft.com
http://www.marketfirst.com
Affiliate Marketing:
http://www.linkshare.com
http://www.befree.com
Newsletter Distribution:
http://www.egroups.com
http://www.onelist.com
Customer Interaction: live communication:
http://www.liveperson.com
http://www.hearme.com
Customer Interaction: automated e-mail response
http://www.brightware.com
http://www.egain.com
E-mail Marketing:
http://www.markethome.com
http://www.lifeminders.com
Online Auctions:
http://www.ebay.com
http://www.amazon.com
http://www.moai.com
http://www.opensite.com
Create Your Own Search Engine:
http://www.jayde.com
http://www.searchbuilders.com
Running a Bulletin Board:
http://www.befree.com
Location Mapping:
http://www.mapquest.com
http://www.mapblast.com Online Calendar Applications:
http://www.ecal.com
http://www.when.com
Actively monitor the online community:
http://www.ewatch.com
http://www.cycheck.com
http://www.cyveillance.com
For more examples, please check out either of these two Web pages:
http://ecnow.com/examples.htm
http://ecnow.com/Internet_Marketing.htm
ISWORLD has a number of resources devoted to e-commerce. Included are cases,
syllabi, site design, security, Internet technology, e-markets, applications,
social issues and more.
http://www.isworld.org/isworld/ecourse/index.html
Investing in E-Commerce and other technologies poses huge
problems for business decision makers, because the popular investment criteria such as
Return on Investment (ROI) are so difficult to compute and there are so many uncertainties
about both investments and returns. These topics make interesting case studies in
both managerial accounting and accounting information systems courses. Two articles
of interest are as follows:
"E-Commerce: New Sense of Urgency Companies Rush For
Online Market Share Flurry of multimillion-dollar deals signals new effort to be
competitive in E-commerce," by Clinton Wilder in Information Week, May 24,
1999, 48-56.
"Rethinking ROI Some projects have become so important
that companies are looking for new ways to measure their return on investment--or are
dispensing wtih ROI studies completely," by Tom Stein in Information Week,
May 24, 1999, 59-68.
Both articles deal with problems of ROI as a criterion for
investment decisions and performance evaluation. The online versions of these
articles can be found at http://www.informationweek.com/maindocs/index_735.htm
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