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Making a move

Simon Robinson — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 06:08:09 +0000

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.”

Get plugged in

Simon Robinson — Tue, 26 May 2009 02:10:56 +0000

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…

Open for business

Simon Robinson — Mon, 25 May 2009 02:51:02 +0000

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.

Technology vs Evolution

Simon Robinson — Thu, 21 May 2009 02:50:32 +0000

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)

How smart is your phone?

Simon Robinson — Wed, 20 May 2009 12:41:43 +0000

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?!)

Why I didn’t get an iPhone (and others)

Simon Robinson — Fri, 15 May 2009 12:18:00 +0000

This post is way overdue and will have lost a bit of its lustre considering the events to follow in the next week or so. But what the heck, it’s about me. I have been in the market for a new smartphone for a while now but decided to get serious a month or two ago. I’ve been using an iPod touch for a while now and being a MacBook owner I was hearing a lot of “So are you getting the iPhone soon?” But with technology (and me?) it’s never quite that simple. I had been pretty happy with my Treo 650 apart from its lack of WiFi so I started to build a shortlist of features;

802.11g
3G
expandable memory (preferred)
hardware keyboard (preferred)
decent camera that can capture video
decent audio capture
synchronise with my MacBook

If you know anything about the iPhone you can start to see the divergence. So I listed the things where the iPhone fell short for me;

No Copy/Cut/Paste (massive for me as I use the “smart” more than the “phone”)
Ordinary camera with no video
No expandable memory (I commute for almost 90 minutes a day so I need to store some stuff)
and like everyone has got one? Ugh!

BUT

it’s a a super nice iPod (apart from the storage limits)
the Safari browser is the best mobile experience you can get at the minute
the user interface is as smooth as
the iTunes Application Store is very compelling

You know what finally flipped me was the price. I don’t use the phone that much. I hammer the productivity, documents, audio and video capture stuff pretty hard. (It’s why the keyboard is an issue.) I’m on a tiny plan, no data, and I rarely go over. I don’t want a larger plan that I know I won’t use. You can sort of get the iPhone outright but you do so by getting a pre-paid then paying for it to be unlocked but it works out expensive.
Now when the 3.0 version comes out with cut/copy/paste that could be a whole different story.
This isn’t just about the iPhone however. The Nokia E63 and E71 caught my eye. Great looking handsets and ticked all the boxes and the prices were definitely right. No touch screen though which I thought may take some getting used to. The Blackberry Bold met all my requirements on the surface as well until I was joining one to the the network at work and found the web proxy cannot be defined by the user. Deal breaker.
So I settled on the Treo Pro. Nice looking device running Windows Mobile 6.1. It couldn’t be that bad. Half the world was using it. Right?

Maybe 3.0

Great news for presenters

Simon Robinson — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 08:57:17 +0000

As of 24-Feb 2009 OmniDazzle is a free download. This is super fantastic news for anyone who presents regularly or takes a lot of screenshots for documentation and “how to” tutorials. It comes with “plug-ins” such as Bullseye to track the mouse, Scribble to annotate and highlight and Flashlight, Focal point, Cutout and Zoom to draw attention to specific areas of your screen. The fact that this app is now free is not good news for products like Mousepose from Boinx Software. Sure, Boinx offers a richer set of features but it also has the US$17 price tag. Unless you’re a hardcore screen presenter or have already purchased Mousepose or similar (like me) 24-Feb may just have been your lucky day.
The Omni Group people are a bunch of OS X developer ninjas who have dedicated themselves to “creating good software” for over 15 years. Check out their other offerings while OmniDazzle downloads in the background. You won’t be disappointed. OmniGraphSketcher is currently on my “trial list”.

Feeling the pressure

Simon Robinson — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:25:45 +0000

Well I have been very surprised to hear that there are more than 3 people that subscribe to the feed or visit this site (thanks Mum!) I have never bothered to track stats by pushing my feeds through Feedburner as I was pretty sure it would be underwhelming. Now it looks like I have doubled my readership so I’m feeling the pressure to expand and provide more content. Edublogs has been irritating me of late (slow, flakey, membership fee issues) so I’m working on a shift. If I have to pay for an ad-free service I figure get your monies worth.
Watch this space.

Getting your shortcut on – Office 2007

Simon Robinson — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:16:03 +0000

Screenshot Tour: The keyboard shortcut goodness of Microsoft Office 2007

In the new Office suite, Microsoft has thrown together a powerful and intuitive keyboard shortcut framework for navigating with the Alt-key

I am sort of letting a cat (Lifehacker) out of the bag and disclosing on of my uber-valuable sources with this one but you have to stick to your principles and “share the love.” What can I say? One of my main services is “Human meta filter.” It’s for Windows peeps only so OSX folk have to just suck it up.
I love my keyboard. Quicksilver is one of the first things I install on my machines. So even though I am not a regular user of Office 2007 I am totally loving what Microsoft have done here. If you take a look at the screen shot photo gallery that Adam Pash has put together, every time you press the alt key little keyboard shortcut letters appear above menus and buttons. Super nice! A very elegant way (IMHO) to reveal the shortcut and help new and transitioning (from older versions) users become more familiar with the interface.

Webspiration beta window closing

Simon Robinson — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:20:55 +0000

Got a little note in my inbox today informing me that Webspiration beta sign ups are closing Wednesday 18-March. Now this will be US time so Australian readers will have until maybe midday depending on what time zone “the switch” is in.
So get in fast people before time runs out on this awesome service and you have to pay top dollar for it.