Category: open source
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Video to Flash format
For the first time today, I used some free tools to convert a QuickTime movie into flash format and make the file web-accessible. You can upload a video file to YouTube or Google Video and have the website perform the conversion, but in this case I was converting a video I don’t personally own the…
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Podcast101: Webcast, Podcast, Sakai and the Millennial student
Dr. Victor Edmonds serves as director of Educational Technology Services at UC Berkeley. This podcast is a recording of Dr. Edmond’s presentation at the Hawaii Library Association’s annual conference on November 10, 2006. Show notes for this podcast include: The Sakai Open Source Course Management System Educational Technology Services at UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Webcasts…
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Open Source Tech for Library Intranets
Building an Academic Library with Open Source Technologies Sunyeen Pai, Wing Leung University of Hawai`i at Manoa Presentation at HLA06 (I AM RECORDING THIS PRESENTATION AND WILL SUBSEQUENTLY POST IT AS A PODCAST HERE) Abstract: In 2006, the Univ of HI at Manoa Library used the Plone portal/content management system to implement an intranet. Thsi…
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USB thumb drive security issues
The price of USB thumb drives is continuing to come down, but just like any tool these can be abused as well as used in powerfully constructive ways. I was amazed recently to purchase a 2 GB USB drive for $30 on sale at an office products store. The recent events at Los Alamos with…
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WordPress Multi-User
WordPress MU (multi-user) is now out of beta! This means it is stable enough for “public consumption!” For anyone running or considering running blogs in educational settings, this is GREAT news. The latest iteration of WordPress supports a fairly intuitive rights scheme that lets administrators run blogs with varying levels of user rights, which is…
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IE7 for Windows and Vista / Open Source reflections
After sharing six beta versions over a period of 14 months, Microsoft has formally released Internet Explorer 7 in advance of its major operating system revision, Vista. My personal browser of choice on the Windows side of things will remain Firefox, largely because IE in all previous variants has been the most security-vulnerable web browser…
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Compress and convert video
Apparently the work and discussions around the imminent K-12 Online Conference have energized several (Darren and Chris in Winnipeg, for two) to begin screencasting. Several free and commercial screencasting tools are listed on the K-12 Online Conference tools page. Darren commented today in a skype discussion that his 8 minute screencast made with SmartBoard Recorder…
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Podcast83: Why Rent Productivity Software When You Can Own It For Free?
Richard Shearer is the director of technology for the Wynnewood School District in Oklahoma. For several years, with the support of his superintendent, Richard has switched many of the desktop computers utilized by students from commercial productivity software to the free, open-source software package “Open Office.” From a financial standpoint, this decision has saved the…
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Giving Tiger Mail a try
After the last month of having to juggle email between laptops (due to a repair I delayed getting) and moving to Yahoo webmail for my personal email, I am making a move from MS Entourage 2004 to Apple’s Mail application for OS 10.4 Tiger. I was previously more or less forced to use Entourage because…
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Required digital signatures bad for open source?
I listened to the “Blue Pill” episode of the Security Now! podcast on my drive back to Oklahoma this afternoon, and was interested to learn that Windows Vista may require digital signatures for all installed software. While this might initially sound good from a security standpoint, from an open source software standpoint this could be…