I have been using Firefox 3 for a while now and I much prefer it over Firefox 2. It’s much faster and more stable than Firefox 2.
Overall well worth upgrading.
“Facebook a valid educational tool”
Is your institution using Facebook?
According to a report, if you’re not then you could be missing out.
The Guardian reports:
Teachers and lecturers are getting the lowdown on how to use social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo in an educational way.
Most schools and colleges in the UK block access to the websites but they are missing out on their potential for education, a government-funded guide says.
Have a look at the full report.
Screencasting on your Mac
I have been looking at screencasting software for the Mac.
One of the original applications for this kind of activity is Ambrosia’s Snapz Pro X.
Snapz Pro X allows you to effortlessly record anything on your screen, saving it as a QuickTime movie or screenshot that can be emailed, put up on the web, or passed around however you want.
Snapz Pro X works for me and I do use it quite a bit.
ScreenFlow is pretty good too, but Leopard only. It looks fantastic and unlike Snapz Pro X the resulting capture can be edited, annotated much more easily.
ScreenFlow is a complete workflow for creating screencasts: powerful enough to capture your desktop, video camera, microphone & computer audio at the same time.
IShowU is suppose to be very good. I did give it a go and seemed pretty easy to use.
Need to show something to someone? iShowU is your answer! iShowU is designed to record anything on your screen, instantly — both audio, and video!
I wasn’t too impressed with the results of capturing video, ScreenFlow and Snapz Pro X seeme better at that. However IShowU does have a range of capture option choices depending on what you want to show the video on.
CamTwist can be used too, though the focus here is on web based video chat type video, so not something for high quality video or presentations. However for the web (ie via something like Ustream) it is ideal.
CamTwist is a software package that lets you add special effects to your video chats. It’s also possible to stream your desktop and still images.
Overall there are many choices in screencasting on the Mac and of course with Parallels you can also now screencast Windows using the same software.
Personally I like Snapz Pro X, but if I was running Leopard on my iMac I think I would be using ScreenFlow.
Borderless Printing
Printing from Indesign CS2 using my Canon MP600R can be fraught with difficulties if I want to use borderless printing.
Even if I think everything is fine, the print which pops out of my printer has a white border… another (expensive) sheet of Canon’s Photo Paper Pro heads for the bin!
Part of the problem is the InDesign print window, which can be confusing and doesn’t always pass on what you ask to the printer.
The other part is that the Canon Mac printer driver won’t let you do borderless printing unless you are using one of their special papers.
As a result you can change the paper to borderless A4…
But as you haven’t changed the paper in the Quality & Media of the print setup, the paper will default back to non-borderless A4 as you can’t use borderless printing with Plain Paper!
Even if you now change the media to some posh (and expensive) Canon paper and print (what you think is borderless), your printout will still come out with white borders.
The key is to change the paper quality before you select the paper type.
Don’t mind me, I just need to go out and buy some more expensive paper…
Sorry host was down
Sorry, hosting service was down for a few hours, all working now.
Toasting
I have always preferred using Toast to burn DVDs over the free iDVD included with all Macs as part of iLife.
Most of the DVDs I burn are of EyeTV Freeview (MPEG2) recordings so was always SO much quicker than iDVD ever could be.
Also for some reason iDVD never really liked the fact I was using PAL over NTSC, not sure why.
Of course you sacrificed functionality and other stuff in the menus, but my view was, was I going to watch the menus or the film?
I use to use the video conversion functions (which were useful) however I have now switched over to VisualHub for that.
I do use the compression facility when compressing large DVDs.
Sometimes an EyeTV recording won’t fit on a standard DVD, and DL-DVDs have not been a favourite of mine, either I created coasters or they weren’t available as printable DVDs.
So I use Toast to create a DVD Disk Image using the recording and then use the compression (use to be Popcorn) to reduce the disk image in size so it fits on a standard DVD-R.
Overall Roxio Toast 9 Titanium
No more .Mac bookmarks
Though I do use .Mac to sync my bookmarks over several computers (with differing levels of success) I do also use the web version quite often on computers that don’t have .Mac support (eg PCs) or that I don’t own.
So you can imagine my disappointment when I received the following e-mail from Apple.
Dear .Mac member:
As you may know, your .Mac subscription is being upgraded to MobileMe, Apple’s new Internet service for your Mac, iPhone, iPod touch, and PC. This includes a new way to manage bookmarks across your computers and even push them over the air to your iPhone and iPod touch.
As part of the transition to MobileMe, web access to your .Mac Bookmarks will end in July 2008 and you will no longer be able to access or update your bookmarks at mac.com. Mac-to-Mac sync will not be affected.
To avoid losing bookmarks saved on .Mac, please sync them with your Mac before June 30. This will ensure that MobileMe can keep your bookmarks in sync going forward. Here’s how.
For more information on the transition, please visit the MobileMe FAQ.
We apologize for any inconvenience.
Sincerely,
The .Mac Team
I can see that it may make things better, but for me losing the web bookmarks will be inconvenient.
Trying to download Firefox 3
Well can I download Firefox 3 on this the launch day?
No!
Everytime I go to the download page, I am only offered Firefox 2.
I will keep trying, but the last time I looked they had passed 1,000,000 downloads and over 1,700,000 people had downloaded Firefox 3.
Well they may have downloaded it, I have had no luck!
The Cloud “killed” my iPod
Okay to say that a Cloud wifi hotspot killed my iPod is exaggerating somewhat, however it did kill Safari for a while and certainly wasn’t easy to sort out.
I had used my iPod touch at a free wifi hotspot which used the Cloud network.
I had signed in and used the web and no problems.
A few days later I wanted to use the web again on the iPod, but regardless of which site I tried to use whether it be entered manually or through a bookmark, Safari on the iPod just reverted back to the Cloud login page!
I couldn’t log out as I was not connected to the Cloud.
So I switched the iPod touch off and no luck, it still revered to the Cloud login screen.
Now I was getting annoyed.
I knew it wasn’t a connectivity issue, as I could use e-mail and other internet functions on the iPod, but could I use Safari? No I could not!
In the end, I worked out that if I managed to stop the Cloud page from loading, I could get Safari working again.
It was a really weird error that would not be resolved easily, but at least I resolved it without needing to restore the iPod which is where I was going.
MySpace to be upgraded
Changes are afoot at MySpace, as they try to attract new and keep old users.
BBC’s Newsbeat says:
MySpace is preparing a major redesign next week as it tries to attract more casual users and increase the amount of time its members spend online.
With the popularity of other social networking sites such as Facebook, sites such as MySpace need to change and alter in order to retain and keep users.
From an e-learning perspective, such changes can cause confusion for learners, and if features are removed or deleted, then it can impact on learning activities and scenarios which use such social networking sites.