Magazine Notes

A table of the many current browsers available for MacOS X recommends Camino
(www.mozilla.org) and Safari (www.apple.com)
as the best and runner-up. [p. 15]

Using styles and formats in Word can seem daunting, but there are a few things
everyone should know about them. [p. 22]

• To change the formatting of a style, do the following:
  
  
  
  • Apply the style to some text.
  
  
  • Change the format of the text.
  
  
  • Apply the style to the text again.
  
  
  • You will be asked whether you want to update the style. Say OK and all
    other text with that style will also change.
  
  
  
  


• The paint brush icon can be used to apply formatting from some text to some
  other text.
  
  
  
  • Click the paint brush icon. (Click twice if you want to apply it to
    multiple sections.)
  
  
  • Click on the word that you want to change.
  
  
  
  


• If you have applied styles, use the Document Map (under the View menu) to
  see the sections (based on Heading style) and jump between them quickly. Good
  technique for big documents.

Coffee Break Pro, home.earthlink.net/~thomasareed/shareware/coffeebreakpro,
reminds you to take a break at regular intervals. I use Stretch Break to remind
me to stop and give me some activities to stretch my muscles every 30 minutes
and I really like it. Stretch Break costs more than $50. Coffee
Break Pro is a free program for the Mac. While Coffee Break Pro doesn't show
you any stretches, just standing up and reaching for the ceiling will be worthwhile.

NovaMind, www.nova-mind.com,
$59, is a mind mapping tool used for brainstorming or organization of your thoughts.
The Inspiration package is used a lot on the Macintosh. Mind mapping software
can be a wonderful tool to help students learn material, but you will probably
have to help them learn how to use it, both technically and procedurally.

Photo to Movie 1.1.3, lqgraphics.com,
$20, allows you to create a "Ken Burns" style movie, starting with
still pictures. The movie will pan and/or zoom as it displays each photo. The
result is much more powerful than a series of static pictures. Windows has a
similar product in the Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition. The Windows program
is called Plus! Photo Story.

// posted by Bill @ Saturday, July 19, 2003

(This is primarily a K-12 magazine, so there isn't a lot of material that is
relevant to my position at the University of Miami.)

In an article on the "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) process, mention
is made of two tools that allow a school (?) to evaluate its level of technology
use. [p. 6]

• Profiler Online Collaboration Tool (profiler.hprtec.org)


• Learning with Technology Profile Tool (www.ncrtec.org/capacity/profile/profwww.htm)

This issue includes a calendar with grant deadlines. Here are some grants worth
reviewing. Perhaps I should submit a grant, personally, to work with teachers
either at my childrens' school or just teachers in general. The magazine keeps
an on-line listing at www.techlearning.com/grants.html

• Home Depot's At-Risk Youth Grants, ongoing, www.homedepot.com


• Target's Local Grants Program, July 31, www.target.com


• National Geographic Society's Venture Grants, August 11,
  www.nationalgeogrphic.com/foundation


• NEC Foundation of America grants, September 1, www.necus.com/company/foundation


• Intel Community Grants, ongoing, www.intel.com/community/grant.htm


• IBM Grants, ongoing, www.ibm.com/ibm/ibmgives/grant/


• Robert H Michel Civic Education Grants, May 1 and October
  1, www.dirksencenter.org/grantmichelciviced.htm


• Toshiba Small Grants Program for K-6 Science and Math Education,
  October 1, www.toshiba.com/taf/


• NSF Information Technology Experience for Students and Teachers
  (ITEST) Grants, October 17 (preliminary proposal), www.nsf.gov/pubsys/ods/getpub.cfm?nsf02147


• American Honda Foundation Grant, Feb 1, May 1, Aug 1, Nov
  1, www.honda.com


• Pew Charitable Trusts, ongoing, www.pewtrusts.com


• Kellogg Foundation Grants, ongoing, www.wkkf.org


• National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' Clarence Olander Grants:
  In-Service Training for Elementary Schools, December 5, www.nctm.org/about/met/

// posted by Bill @ Saturday, July 19, 2003

Whirlpool's innovation program is a 5 1/2 day course with
two sections. The first section teaches how to ask questions and consider unmet
needs and unsolved problems that could generate new products. The second section
teaches how to investigate competition, potential partners, and ways to enter
the marketplace and make money. At the end "they write an opportunity
brief" with all the details."The innovation process is all
about getting the customer to be the center of everything." [p. 14]

The 2003 APX Award Winners list the following "Collaboration Software"
in the Enterprise Systems: Centra Software, Learn.com, PlaceWare, Raindance
Communications, and WebEx. Blackboard is listed under "Training/Project
Management Administration." [p. 25]

The 2003 APX Award Winners list the following "Online Education"
items: Certification Education: Capella University, LearnKey
Inc, MindLeaders, University of Phoenix Online, and Walden University; Degree
Granting: Capella University, Jones International University, New York
University, University Alliance, and University of Phoenix Online; Professional
Education: Jones International University, Pepperdine, Stanford University,
Thomson NETg, and University of Phoenix Online. [p. 26]

The 2003 APX Award Winners list a product called ZAPit Media
under Presentation Software. I have never heard of it. After review, I see that
they sell professionally designed PowerPoint templates. The templates cost $10
for a single style/color or $50 for a CD with all the styles/colors in one category.
zapitmedia.com [p. 27]

The 2003 APX Award Winners list the following "Conferences/Meeting/Distance
Learning Tools" in the Presentation Products: Centra Software
(I am familiar with their Symposium
software), Da-Lite Screen, Interwise, PlaceWare, and WebEx. [p. 27]

Ad: John Wiley has a number of books on workplace performance under the Pfeiffer.com
label. www.pfeiffer.com [p. 55]

// posted by Bill @ Saturday, July 19, 2003

The new iPods are thinner, lighted, and less expensive than
before. This is an interesting technology. You would expect Sony to be leading
the way but Apple is clearly the dominant player. Why, you ask? Because Apple
doesn't own content (music rights) while Sony does. So Apple is better able
to meet the needs of the users since Sony has to protect the rights of the music
owners. [p. 18+]

If you are a Mac users, you will certainly want to check out the 100
Best Freebies. This is a great way to find productivity enhancers that
you may be missing. [p. 20+]

Firewire has gone from Firewire 400 to Firewire 800 in order
to compete against USB 2.0. The first review of an external FireWire 800 hard
drive shows it taking three seconds to do what the FireWire 400 version took
4 seconds to do. Lots of overhead, huh? [p. 53]

If you do graphics/layout/web design on a PC or a Mac, Macromedia
seems like a great choice. Especially with its educational discounts, you can
get the entire Macromedia Studio FX for under $200. Each of the pieces costs
$400 or more at retail. I use Dreamweaver for web pages (like this) and Flash
for buttons (like the Privacy Policy button on Blackboard.) [List of best software
as reviewed by MacAddict - p. 56]

Griffen Technologies makes the neatest accessories. I love
their PowerMate, a lighted multimedia controller that acts as a jog/shuttle
wheel. They make an iCurve to hold up a laptop that I might take a look at for
my TabletPC. And their iMic provides line-in/line-out from USB. I wonder how/if
these work with PCs. [ad, p. 57]

It is fairly easy to create a custom browser favorites icon.
I wish UM would do that for the www.miami.edu site. I should think about it
for our Blackboad server and for my Vilberg.com site. Instructions can be found
on-line at the http://developers.evrsoft.com/articles/what_is_favicon.shtml
web page. [p. 58]

// posted by Bill @ Tuesday, July 15, 2003

[Full content available
on-line]

I want to take a look at the Flash piece, Broken Saints, at
www.brokensaints.com. Chapter 24 of
this story takes an hour, so it will be interesting to see whether it can hold
my attention. It sounds like an interesting piece of New Media. Wired has a
review of Broken Saints in the Play section. [p.66]

The Kodak
LS633 uses an OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) instead
of an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) as a display device on the back of the camera.
An OLED refreshes faster, can have a much larger viewing angle, and does not
require a backlight, compared to an LCD. I want to take a look at this technology
if I come across it somewhere. The OLED is expected to replace LCDs in things
like portable computers, cameras, PDAs, cell phones, watches, and such. Wired
describes
the Kodak LS633 in the Fetish list in the Play section. [p. 84]

There is an interesting
in-depth article about the X Prize: $10,000,000 award to
the first private group that can create a spaceship that will hold up to 3 people,
fly to an altitude of 100 km (62.5 miles), return safely, and make a second
flight within two weeks of the first. [p. 137+]

There is a nice
couple of pages about the Slammer Internet worm. It goes
into detail on how exactly how it took control of a computer and then went about
flooding the networks with packets. [p. 146]

They have an
interesting piece that takes many of the predictions for the end
of the world, explains it, and then gives a brief analysis of the actual
risk. The ones that they are most concerned about are numbers 9 and 10 on their
list: a sudden drop in temperature on Earth and asteroids hitting Earth. They
say the first is overdue and the second, while unlikely, would wipe everyone
out. [p. 150+]

Ad: Hostway is advertising their $6.95 per year domain names.
I have vilberg.com through register.com and it costs something like $35 a year.
I should take a look at www.hostway.com
and see whether I should/can switch. [ad, p. 158+]

// posted by Bill @ Friday, July 11, 2003

In Extreme Tech, Bill Machrone explains why LEDs will be replacing all (?) other light sources in the future. Interesting prediction/observation. [p. 59]

In the same column Bill Machrone writes about GuruNet,
which, once installed, gives you the ability to "search any word
in any application and it will bring up a bunch of contextually relevant encyclopedia
references." Rather than getting links to pages, you actually get the information.
So if you are looking for informaiton on 802.11g, the new high-speed wireless
networking protocol, this is a great service to use. www.gurunet.com
[p.59]

When you get GuruNet you also get Copernic Agent, www.copernic.com,
a metasearch engine that he likes. [p. 59]

This next note is for technical people that want to try to figure out where
an e-mail really came from. There was an article in the April 8 PC Mag called
"Heading Off Spam" that describes how to take apart the headers of
an e-mail message and see when an IP address is being spoofed.
www.pcmag.com/headingoffspam
[p. 70]

I tend to run applications by locating their icons or else by rightclicking
somewhere to access them from a menu. But lots of people use the "Run"
option from the Start menu a lot. I just can't seem to remember all the command
names. Two that are mentioned in one article are rsrcmtr (for
Windows ME), which brings up the resource meter so you can see whether free
system resources (FSR) are being allocated and deallocated properly when programs
start and stop, and msconfig, which allows you to turn on and
off the programs that load at startup. [p. 75]

I admit that I have never understood the concept of pivot tables in
Excell. There is a step-by-step
solution to a problem that uses PivotTable to count the number of occurances
of each value in a column. This sounds like it would be useful for me when counting
how many courses from each department are active on Blackboard or for a faculty
member when trying to figure out how many As, Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs were given
as grades. [p. 76] [I should walk through this
so that I can better learn this concept.]

Advertisement: Crucial Technology is the BEST and LOWEST COST place to purchase
additional memory. Their web site, www.crucial.com,
has a wonderful tool to determine what memory your particular computer can take.
Adding memory is one of the least expensive ways to increase performance on
a PC, if you are experiencing disk swapping. I have 512 MB in my current machine.
(If you aren't experiencing disk swapping, very large memory cards can actually
slow down your computer.) Crucial also sells compact flash, secure digital,
and similar memory cards at good prices. [ad p. 101]

Microsoft is creating a watch/pager type of system that should be out this
Fall. Called the SPOT technology, it stands for Smart Personal
Objects Technology. SPOT uses FM radio to distribute localized information such
as weather, and traffic, as well as national information such as stock prices,
and such. It can also deliver your personal calendar, contact info, and messages.
The radio network is called DirectBand and transmits at around 12 Kbps. It is
one-way only, sending information to you but not allowing you to send information
back. Bill Gates, in a recent interview, said that his SPOT watch is one of
the few technologies that he doesn't think he could live without. (I assume
they are testing it on the Microsoft campus, since it isn't available to us
yet.) For an advanced preview go to www.microsoft.com/spot.
[p. 102]

I am looking for a Web hosting site for a couple of sites
I maintain. Ads in the back of PC Magazine show one for $7.95 per month (www.olm.net/pcmag)
and one for $4.95 per month (www.AIT.com/pcmag).
I should take a look at these and compare features. [p. 161]

Because the IAC is located in recovered space that is really a long hallway,
we try to monitor the main entrance from our desks. We were using a wireless
video monitoring system. Since Merrick is now connected to
the CaneNet wireless network, the current video system will interfere with it,
since they both use the 2.4Ghz bandwidth. The Veo Wireless Observer might work
for us. It is a stand alone camera that can be connected directly to the Internet.
It costs about $300, and there is $40 motion detector that can be added. www.veo.com
[p. 164]

// posted by Bill @ Thursday, July 10, 2003