Fun Flash Site
Freedom Interactive has a fun site that shows posterboard carriers walking through New York City trying to sell web sites.
Scheduling Content Removal
Today I have started the first serious effort I can remember in the 8 years that I have been with Lincoln Public Schools to clean out all of the orphaned junk on the web site that has collected over that time. I have just completed one of the smaller sections of the site. I figure I removed over 70% of the files that were on the server in the five hours that it took me to go through it all.
Lessons Learned?
- If you are putting things on a web site that you know is temporary, make an appointment on your calendar to remove it (or at least to revisit the content to see if it is still needed).
- Schedule a "Spring Cleaning" date for your site periodically. If I had done this once a year, this effort would have been much easier. I have scheduled 5 days this summer to clean the site and have scheduled one day already for early next summer (hopefully that is all that will be needed).
iTunes Encoding Alternatives
Every couple of weeks I encode the audio for the Board of Education meetings of Lincoln Public Schools an publish them in a podcast. While iTunes works very well as an audio encoding tool, it can be frustrating when podcasting. My audio starts as a track in a quicktime movie. I export that movie as a AIFF file, giving me a very large (1GBish) audio document. I then put this file into iTunes, right-clicked on it and chose to encode it as an MP3. Once encoded, I would edit the ID3 tags to reflect the artist/album/genre that the rest of my podcast has. Now I have two files in my iTunes library. Once uploaded into my podcast (I use Podcast Maker) iTunes would pull a third copy of the file as a part of the subscription (you should always subscribe to your own podcast for quality-assurance purposes). Finally, I have to remember to clean out the garbage files and get everything back in order. A real mess, I think.
Last week I got very frustrated with this and tried the command line utilty LAME to compress my files. This worked very well. It was just a little usability-challenged. I wanted something that I didn't have to pull out an instruction book every time I used it.
Today, a new version of Max was released that does what I need it to do. Max is an audio encoder that only does audio encoding (and does it well). It has a lot of input and output options and can play nicely with a few other applications to do tagging and playing. I'm really hoping that this will finally allow me to do everything outside of iTunes and leave iTunes to do what it does best, organizing and playing audio files.
technorati tags:lame, podcastMaker, iTunes, mp3, encode
O'Reilly Trademarks "Web 2.0"
Dale Dougherty from O’Reilly created the term “Web 2.0” to describe the recent rebirth of web development that has brought us cleaner interfaces as well as AJAX-powered behaviors. As a part of this, O’Reilly has organized a couple of Web 2.0 conferences around the topic. Now, O’Reilly is trademarking the term “Web 2.0” and people are very angry about this. If this were a company like Microsoft, I would have no doubt that they had plans to either lock down the term in a way that nobody could use it, or they would popularize it in a self-centered way that would bring more attention to them. O’Reilly has done nothing I know of to give me a reason to immediately jump to the conclusion that they are doing this for selfish reasons. I think that it is fair that they have exclusive access to the term when it is used to describe a conference (that is all that they are requesting). Considering their history with Web 2.0 conferences, I agree with them that if I saw a conference billing itself as a “Web 2.0 Conference” that I would assume that it was an O’Reilly conference. This is the confusion that they are trying to avoid. I’m sure that O’Reilly would be pretty understanding if contacted about a conference title that used the term “Web 2.0” as a way to clarify the topic of the conference and less as a title for the event.
I'm actually glad that they have taken the step to take some ownership of this. Next thing we would know, Web 2.0 would be a menu item/feature/search/option in Internet Explorer 7 and the term would be off limits to everyone.
New eMac?
AppleInsider reports that Apple is working on a new all-in-one Mac for education, to replace the phased-out eMac, and that Apple is targeting release in the "September timeframe" 2006. If so, Apple would catch only the tail end of the purchase cycle for the school year beginning this Fall, since many educational institutions, faculty, and students are already planning their next purchases.
Mac Rumors: Apple Mac Rumors and News You Care About
It will be interesting to see how Apple tries to bundle a likely LCD display with an education-class computer in the old eMac's price range of $800ish.technorati tags:eMac
Which University Plays the Most Warcraft?
Which Universities have the most gamers? University of Washington tops the list forvisitors to MapWoW. Washington is known for its computer software and game development programs, so it's not too much of a surprise. Several other tech-heavy schools make the list including RIT, Purdue, Virginia Tech (Hokies rule) and Georgia Tech. A few big name schools win out on sheer number of students, such as University of Michigan, The Ohio State University, and The University of Texas (go horns!). The state of California has the most universities in the top 25.
MapWoW.com World of Warcraft Map Blog
University of Nebraska at Lincoln ranked 75 in this listing.technorati tags:wow
Adobe on Del.icio.us
Adobe has published a new link set up on delicious. They have product categories like After Effects, Acrobat and Dreamweaver, as well as content categories like Video and Design. They do not have ColdFusion up there right now, but they said that they are not done setting this up yet.
Target being sued for an inaccessible web site
Sexton has joined the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) as a plaintiff in a lawsuit that charges Target with violating the federal Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act and Disabled Persons Act.
The lawsuit, scheduled for a hearing next month at U.S. District Court in San Francisco, could have a broad impact because Target’s site is hardly the only one that could be accused of having access barriers, according to attorneys for the plaintiffs.
sIFR 3.0 moving along
An alpha version of sIFR 3.0 is available. sIFR is a package of javascripts, css and flash files that allow site designers to replace html text with flash text, allowing for text in any font that is crisply anti-aliased. Version 3 supports new flash features such as drop shadows. LPS uses sIFR 2 for many of it’s page titles.
iPod Vending Machines?
Macy's will dip its foot back into the retail consumer electronics market again by adding iPod vending machines to its stores this fall. The company plans to install Zoom Stores robotic vending machines stocked with iPods in stores across 32 cities according to The Buffalo News. The retailer stopped selling consumer electronics after the market proved to be unprofitable in its stores.
The iPod Observer - Now Playing - Macy's Gets iPod Vending Machines
Please wait while I slide 400 $1 bills in to here...Building Scalable Websites book (from creator of Flickr)
This comprehensive guide covers the design of software and hardware systems for web applications. Using scores of examples and leading-edge tips, it details proven methods for scaling web applications to millions of users. Topics include application architecture, development practices, technologies, Unicode, and general infrastructure work. Ideal for anyone ready to realize the cost and performance benefits available to web applications today.
Engaged or Engraged
Weblogg-ed » Engaging Teachers
Will Richardson considers a Mark Presky talk discussing how students are either enraged or engaged by teachers. Will asks how we get teachers engaged if we want students to be engaged. A teacher kicks off the comments by saying that they are enraged by the lack of support that they get – setting them up to enrage students.
Local Paper Summarizes This Past School Year
SandVox Web Publishing Tool Available (From Creator of Watson)
Karelia announced the immediate availability of Sandovox and Sandovox Pro 1.0, a graphic-based Web site development application, on Wednesday. Sandovox includes support for blog, podcast, and online photo album publication, RSS feed generation, uploading sites via FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, and .Mac, as well as support for add-on modules to enhance the application's functionality. Pro users can also supports the creation of raw HTML code so that advanced users can add their own code and server-side scripting elements.
Karelia Introduces New Web Development Tool || The Mac Observer
PDF Publishing
O’Reilly Radar > Gentlemen Prefer PDFs
I’ve been very interested lately in the PDF publications that have been available on the web. One of the most recent documents that I have bought is Getting Real by 37 Signals. The book sells for $19 which is a bargain considering what books go for at the book store. I get a good price while the authors get all of the revenue. Everyone wins (except the non-existent publisher). I really look forward to a device like the Sony Reader to come along that will allow the easy reading of PDF eBooks, RSS Feeds and other text-based content without sitting at a computer display.
technorati tags: pdf, publishing, sony, reader, 37signals
Create Launchable Apps with Flash
Photos of New Apple Store
Matrix: Blog Uses in Education
EdTechPost: Matrix of some uses of blogs in education
technorati tags: blogging
Turn Your Pictures Into PDFs
Scan, copy and fax with your camera phone or digital camera
ScanR can take mobile-phone (or other) photos and turn them into text-searchable PDFs. Have a whiteboard that you want to save? Snap a photo, email it to them and receive back a PDF. I’ll try this out and report back!
New Yahoo! Front Page Doesn't Support Browsers
New Yahoo! Site Doesn't Support Safari [UPDATED] || The Mac Observer
I'm know that they will have this all fixed before they go live, but while it doesn't surprise me that they don't support Safari, it still surprises me that they do not support Flock. If you use Flock, you sometimes get the feeling that the product is bankrolled by Yahoo!.
No CF on Java 5
Making ColdFusion MX on Mac OS X use JVM 1.4.2 instead of JVM 1.5.0 - TalkingTree.com
I didn’t realize that ColdFusion didn’t run on Java 5. I’m sure that I’ve read this before, but I had forgotten. Anyway, this page details how to tell CF to use 1.4.2 even if the default java for your OS X computer is 1.5
technorati tags: java, mac, osx, coldfusion
Digg It
Small Biz 101: Digg is Your Marketing Secret Weapon - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)
The way to get noticed on the web today is to get listed on Digg. If you can get enough people to “digg” your page, your status on the site will rise to a level that will bring unbelievable traffic to your site.
technorati tags: digg
Spry - Podcast
Scott Fegette: Podcast 02 - Jorge Taylor on the Spry Framework
I havent' had a chance to listen to this yet, but plan to sometime today. It’s a podcast of an interview with someone involved with the Ajax Spry Framework at Adobe. A way to create AJAX functionality in Dreamweaver?
How Apple's Store Strategy Beat the Odds
RIAA Upset by New XM Inno Player
Labels sue XM over music-storing ‘mothership’ | CNET News.com
I've been looking for one of these for a bit. I didn't realize that they were already out. The fact that XM is being sued over them just makes me want one more. Anything to stick it to the RIAA.
This player adds something to XM that is very necessary. I wish that media companies would find a way to get past the idea of streaming media and start creating more solutions like this that allow the customer to pick and choose the content that they are interested, to then listen to at their convenience. There are so many good programs on XM and I almost never remember to listen to them. If I could set my player up to record the programs and then listen to those at work or when I get home, I would be a much better listener.