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Smart Home Outside Christmas Lights (with Google Home)
I love having our outside Christmas lights automatically turn ON at sunset and OFF at sunrise! In this 10.5 minute video, I share how I’ve set this up at our house in North Carolina using Google Home compatible “WiFi smart plugs” and the Google Home app. Referenced Amazon products in this video include: More ways…
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Password Manager Tips
In this post I’m going to share some lessons learned recovering an MSecure version 4 password manager, but I’m also going to address more universal issues and best practices when it comes to online security and passwords. Since my mother passed away yesterday, these issues have become more dramatic and immediately relevant for our family.…
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Podcast481: CMC World Student News
This podcast features an October 2022 with middle school student CMC (his public alias) who is the creator of CMC World News (cmcworldnews.com). In this 20 minute conversation, CMC shares the origin story of CMC World News and how he came up with the idea, developed the website, and now maintains it with news articles…
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Mastodon Tips (Dec 2022)
Mastodon is an open-source, federated social media platform which can ably serve as a replacement for Twitter. No, Mastodon is not QUITE as easy to use (right now) as Twitter in some ways, but the core capabilities and functions of Mastodon are robust and very functional. Today, I created a 32 minute screencast tutorial video…
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Favorite Chrome Extensions (Nov 2022)
Google Chrome continues to be my preferred web browser in late 2022. For the past couple years, I’ve been using a school-provided MacOS M1 MacBook Air laptop as my “daily driver” computer. Back in June 2015, I wrote the post, “Seven Indispensable Google Chrome Extensions.” This is my update for November 2022, seven years later!…
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Media Dominoes Fall
In tonight’s EdTech Situation Room webshow and podcast, I shared Storyblocks as my “Geek of the Week.” It is an amazing virtual media library for videographers, storytellers, and Storychasers. The Storyblocks website explains: Unlock access to our library of over a million royalty-free footage, template, music, and photo assets as well as an easy-to-use video…
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Share Audio on YouTube
Digital storytelling can take many forms. Recording an audio-only interview using a smartphone is one of the easiest ways to record a family oral history interview, but once you’ve recorded the interview, where do you share the file online? If you pay for a commercial web host to share your audio interview, you have to…
