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Apologies to both of my readers who have been hanging out for posts. I haven’t been super happy with the Edublogs service for a while now. Poor performance, the introduction of advertising and uncompetitive pricing (to remove the advertising) has prompted a rethink. It goes like this…
“If I was going to pay for a hosting service I should be going for something that was going to perform consistently and deliver the goods.”
Maintenance outages and poor response times in a classroom setting (30 people hitting the site at the same time) have been issues for me in the past. On one occasion this year I had to re-plan 3 lessons on the fly when Edublogs was inaccessible for the whole school day. Fortunately I use an offline editor (Scribefire - it’s a Firefox extension check it out) so I created a Blogger account, reposted most of the stuff I needed and done “double book keeping” since.
So I moved to Squarespace. Not much difference in price, plenty more powerful and it’s where all the cool kids are at. It’s a bit of a pain moving everything over (still not done) but it’s worth it.
So visit me at the new site, add the feed to your RSS reader and sorry again “for an inconvenience caused.”

Filed under: education, web | Tagged: blog, edublogs, hosting, squarespace, web | No Comments »

A bit of love for the users of Office on Windows. Came across this in the Read Write Web feed I subscribe to.
I agree with Sara Perez (of RRW) Offisync looks super hot to me. There is much made of cloud computing but there are times when the cloud doesn’t cut it. Google Gears has been a good “offline step” but why not have the muscle of MS Word at your disposal?
Unfortunately the plugin is not available for OSX so I have not had a chance to try it yet. But after I complete some mission critical stuff over the next few weeks I plan to wipe out my Windows machine and install Windows 7. Then the fun will really start…

Filed under: productivity, software | Tagged: docs, google, microsoft, sync, windows, word | No Comments »

Webspiration the online incarnation of leading visual thinking and planning package Inspiration is open again!
They have reopened sign-ups for free beta accounts. Got an email a couple of days ago and “Audrey” also left a comment on the earlier post. (Thanks Audrey!)
Good news for those who didn’t get in earlier. I make no secret of the fact that I am a massive Inspiration fan. Webspiration is a great development and I anticipate it will only get better.

Filed under: productivity, software | Tagged: inspiration, learning, planning, productivity, visual | No Comments »

This doesn’t have much to do with anything. In fact “random!” may a word that shouts out in your head. Actually that’s a bit of a stretch. I could link to the steady progress of technological innovation, draw parallels with evolution then leave you with dreamy predictions about “where will we be in one hundred years let alone 1 million…” Meh!
Watching a little program on television the other day (yes, it happens!) and this guy is banging on about different animals and their tres cool (as the French would say) adaptations. Now I don’t usually get too excited about biology but we’re talking a beetle that has this little chamber in its body where it mixes two chemicals together causing a highly exothermic (lots of heat) reaction. This raises the pressure in the chamber very quickly so the chemicals then shoot out the only hole in the chamber at great velocity. Squirt! The hole is usually pointed at a predator or something else the beetle has taken a disliking to.
The best for me though was the horseshoe crab. I did not know that its blood contains copper (unlike humans which has iron) and is hence blue. The crab not being a mammal lacks an immune system so instead its blue blood coagulates very quickly on contact with bacteria (anything that’s non-sterile) of which the ocean is choc-a-block. This is extremely useful for humans as it provides a very simple way of testing solutions for sterility. The “Limulus Amebocyte Lysate (LAL) test” is used by hospitals and pharmaceuticals world wide.
Evolution beats technology hands down.
If you’re interested in finding out more about the horseshoe crab…
PBS Nature episode
The Ecological Research & Development Group (ERDG)

Filed under: learning | Tagged: crab, evolution, horseshoe, technology | No Comments »

It’s been a while. Whatever, we push on.
I seem to remember writing an interim post but it appears to have vanished into “the ether” about the same time I was having issues with Edublogs. But more on that later.
My trusty Treo 680 has served me very well thank you for the last few years but is starting to get a bit raggedy around the edges. Heck I’ve dropped it more times than I care to remember. Bottom line, I was in the market for a new smartphone and was surveying my options.
Now it may surprise some of you to know that I don’t really fit into the “average” category when it comes to “technology needs” and the smartphone was no exception. So here’s the list…

• Preference for hardware keyboard. Used to love “graffiti” on the old Palms but you just can’t hammer out text as quickly as you can on a hardware QWERTY. Something about feeling those keys.
• 3G, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity (and ability to handle proxy server at work. Yes I’m talking to you Blackberry Bold)
• A decent camera that can capture photos and video
• Decent voice recorder
• Capcity to view and edit documents, presentations and spreadsheets or run software that does
• Expandable memory slot desireable
• 3.5mm audio slot desireable (to fit my Senheiser noise cancelling headphones)
• Under $1000 (as far under as possible) unlocked with option of outright purchase

Of course it would make and recieve calls, SMS and whatever but truth be known I don’t use the phone that much. I don’t even like answering the phone really. The PDA functions, camera and documents though are a differnet story. With WI-Fi on board I was hoping to throw email into the mix there as well. Unfortunately if you are chasing a smartphone with a hardware keyboard and Wi-Fi around $1000 there aren’t many options so check back later to see if you guessed right. There may even be a prize (seriously, who are we kidding?!)

Filed under: hardware | Tagged: blackberry, pda, phone, smartphone, treo | No Comments »