Sep

24

Blog Gems

Filed Under Blog Gems | 2 Comments

A few items from recent class blogs that caught my eye:

And many good sites were shared, all of which will be at your fingertips when you are subscribed to the blogs today!

Sep

24

Coffee and Class Notes

Filed Under Class Info | 2 Comments

I’m drinking some much needed coffee (do you drink coffee?) and it seems like a good time to post a few notes.

First, the student blog entries posted so far have been amazing. Not only many interesting sites to check out in response to the assignment last week, but some outstanding entries fulfilling the “one non-directed blog post per week” participation requirement. In another post, in a regular weekly feature here, I will highlight a few posts and ideas that really got my attention.

Second, there have been some good guesses regarding the Something to Ponder question. Some of the guesses have been true, but none are the one I was looking for. Yes, all the sites are written in mostly valid XHTML, many of them (not all) are about web designers or firms, they have relatively clean, modern design, and they are all available in the Internet Tubes… but there’s another characteristic they all share.

Sep

21

Feed Reading

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Next class session we will be looking at feed reading, or using RSS feeds to keep up with what’s new on a lot of web sites easily and in one central location. This is also called “aggregation.”

CommonCraft has a great short video on this called RSS in Plain English that should help you understand the concept.

There are many feed readers available. Some run on your desktop and others are accessible on the web. While the desktop readers are sometimes more powerful and customizable, web readers provide the convenience of being able to access them from pretty much any computer.

I will demonstrate using Google Reader, one of the many services enabled by signing up for a free Google Account. If you want to be ahead of the game, you can sign up for the Google Account before class!

We will be importing all the class blogs to Google Reader using the Class Blogs OPML file (a list of sites). If you have the know-how, you can download that file and import it into Google Reader using the Import/Export section in the Manage Subscriptions area.

Sep

21

Something to Ponder

Filed Under Design, Questions | 7 Comments

What do these sites have in common?

Post your thoughts and guesses to the blog. Winners get 1.77 million points and maybe some candy if I remember to bring it.

Sep

14

Following Student Blogs

Filed Under Blogging, Class Info | 1 Comment

Soon I will link all the student blogs in the sidebar. However, to make it easier to keep up, I will show you how to use Google Reader for all your web feed reading needs. Feel free to sign up for a Google account if you don’t already have one. I will also provide an “OPML” file which you can import and sign up to view all the blogs at once.

Plus, your Google account will allow you to access other cool services like the iGoogle customized page and custom search, among other things.

Sep

14

Office Ultimate 2007 Steal Deal

Filed Under software | 1 Comment

For the next 6 months or so students can purchase the Office 2007 Ultimate Edition for just $59.95. This is really an incredible deal, and I don’t even like Microsoft much. The Ultimate Edition includes everything: Access, Outlook, OneNote, Groove, and all the standard applications. This is significantly cheaper than any academic price.