Posts filed under 'tools'
Lots of great Open Source and Community Source work was showcased at JA-SIG this week. Here’s a list, in no particular order, of the most interesting, most relevant projects for me:
collections management and online access application for museums, archives and digital collections.
software for writing and reading rich media documents in a networked environment.
rich media analytics for humanists and artists.
DSpace repository using the Manakin XMLUI. A comprehensive digital library of public policy research.
guidelines for the interaction of tools with learning/course management systems. This is really about decoupling functionality from any single LMS. It would create a more pluggable model, enabling faculty or students to be application producers and Learning Management Systems and other applications to be consumers.
collaborative project for developing and distributing a library of sharable customizable user interfaces designed to improve the user experience of web applications. Fluid is not only developing component libraries, but is also churning out research, education, and outreach about how to design user experiences.
discover who at Cornell is working on a particular research topic; what they’ve taught or published recently; where facilities might be and what online tools are available to expedite research. Powered by RDF and Semantic Web technologies.
April 30th, 2008
If Google Calendar is your primary calendaring spot but you also need to keep track of events in a Mac group, you can subscribe GCal to a .Mac calendar like so:
1. Visit your .Mac group calendar
2. In the left-hand column there’s a “Subscribe” link and a “Download” link. Copy the URL for the “Download” link.
3. Go to your Google calendar
4. In the left-hand column that shows your list of calendars, click the little drop-down arrow next to “Add” and select “Add by URL”
5. Paste the URL in the Public Calendar field and save. You’re now subscribed to the .ics output of your Mac group calendar.
I found lots of posts out there for doing the reverse. It took me a few trials and errors to find the right URL to use, so hopefully I’ve saved you some trouble. Google Calendar doesn’t seem to like the webcal:// protocol that Apple prefers, so you have to use the http:// version.
January 30th, 2008
I wish this was around when I was working with a Millennium system. Of course, it still would have been hard to use since we were in a Microsoft-only shop. I wonder if it’s adaptable to Voyager?
January 30th, 2008
Wink is a free, but not open source, application for recording screencasts. Wink outputs to a number of file formats including Flash. I don’t know how it compares to Camtasia, but my impression is that Wink lacks many of the editing features. Still, Wink is very straightforward and easy to use and met the needs of my first little screencast.
del.icio.us tags:
tools,
screencasting April 11th, 2007
I’ve been impressed by some of Microsoft’s recent projects, the Windows Live suite in particular. I’ve used FolderShare on a daily basis for the last 4 months to sync folders between my Tablet PC and my desktop machine. It’s a simple P2P tool that works.
I’m using Windows Live Writer to compose this post and I’ve been using it for about the last 3 months. It’s an enjoyable environment and definitely better than discovering that I lost an entire post because I forgot to periodically save while composing in Wordpress.
Jon Udell recently wrote an interesting post about Office Live. I found it compelling enough to try the free version. I would probably jump off a cliff if Jon recommended it. Of course, the requirement of using IE was annoying, but expected. The real problem, captured in my very first screencast, appeared after the Office Live registration process when I wanted to begin using the service. I did not alter or edit the capture at all. This occurred on my Tablet PC running Windows XP and IE 7. It completely prevented me from moving on.
This foible is an example of the downside of Microsoft and continued fodder for Apple’s Mac vs. PC commercials. Microsoft forces us into IE, but even IE 7 and Microsoft’s own sites rarely deliver an enjoyable experience.
I still to hope to revisit Office Live at some point, but for now it’s forgettable.
April 11th, 2007
I’m working on a presentation one of my colleagues is giving next week. I had the idea to insert a well-known piece of TV history. Thanks to sites like YouTube, Google Video, and MySpace, the video I wanted was easily found. Unfortunately, we’re using PowerPoint which presented its own set of challenges and that’s another story. Ideally, I wanted to cue the video to start at a specific spot in my clip. Sure, the whole clip is of itself entertaining, but I’m trying more and more to keep presentations direct, to the point, and tasteful.
After some searching, I discovered that Google Video now supports timecode linking. Google Video uses the Flash Player and Adobe’s marketing name for timecode links is Cue Points. Well, it turns out that this method works nicely if I want to show the video surrounded by the usual Google search box, links, and video information. I didn’t. I wanted to embed a video object that would preserve my cueing either in a web page or directly within my PowerPoint.
Finally, I discovered Angsuman Chakraborty’s post on how to achieve just what I wanted using embedded Google Video. Google makes the embedding easy, but not so much the cueing. It took me a good hour of searching and URL hacking before I realized that it would have to be done in the FlashVars property of the Flash player if at all. That turned out to be the key not only to solving my original problem, but also in creating a successful search in Google.
I don’t frequently bemoan the weaknesses of brute-force search, as it’s been referred to in the digital library community. Frankly, I don’t experience those weaknesses much. However, this was certainly one of those times.
January 18th, 2007