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Learners use Facebook to record evidence of work experience

Learners on the Preparing For Employment Programme (PREP) at Tyne Metropolitan College are using Facebook, the popular social networking website, to help them keep a diary while attending a work experience placement. The diary is used as evidence for this unit, which is part of the Certificate in Employability and Personal Development. Facebook also helps the tutor to keep in touch and be more involved with the learners while they are away from the College.

Read more.

There are e-safety issues with using Facebook in this way, however with adequate guidelines in place for both staff and students, and under the assumption that students will check Facebook more often than college provided tools, this will remind then of the curriculum need to keep a diary.

Personally I would prefer using Posterous which can either be used with e-mail, on the web, or using mobile apps, as it would be a little easier for learners to post photographs and video to an online diary. From a privacy perspective, in my opinion it is easier to lock down Posterous than it is Facebook streams.

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EyeTV Netstream Sat

Elgato have announced  a new version of their Netstream device, the EyeTV Netstream Sat. This allows you to stream, watch and record free-to-view satellite television on any Mac or PC in the house, in full HD. If your home has an existing Wi-Fi network, you can watch live satellite TV wirelessly on a portable computer anywhere in your home or garden.

If you live in the UK then it can access the Freesat signal allowing you to access Freeview and Freeview HD channels available on Freesat.

I do quite like the fact that

  • Stream live TV over the home network to an iPad – even when your computers are turned off

At the moment I need to leave the iMac on to do this. Now I don’t actually have satellite, so would need to use the EyeTV Netstream DTT instead. However as that does not support Freeview HD and so I have decided at £230 it is more of  a luxury than essential, so I don’t mind going downstairs to turn the iMac on to watch TV on the iPad or via the Mac mini on the TV.

Hopefully one day Elgato will bring out a device that supports Freeview HD

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Twitter community angry about joke tweet prosecution

Today has seen Twitter taken over by the joke that earlier this week, after losing his appeal, Paul Chambers who was fined £1000 made earlier this year during the snow.

Dara O’Briain was among many who posted the following:

Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!! #IAmSpartacus

As you can see from the screenshot, another 95 people have retweeted Dara’s tweet. Dara was not along and probably thousands if not tens of thousands people tweeted the same thing…

Actually if you think about it, if a million people on Twitter sent that Tweet, all were fined, that’s £1bn that could be used to offset the spending cuts… A little bit of politics there!

There has been much written about the #IAmSpartacus meme today.

BBC News reports – Twitter anger over bomb tweeter

Guardian says – #IAmSpartacus campaign explodes on Twitter in support of airport joker

Channel 4 News writes – #Iamspartacus Twitter campaign takes off

It has also reached America, well you would expect that with Twitter.

LA Times – Twitter joke goes bad, users protest by evoking Spartacus

CNN – Mass Twitter campaign supports airport threat tweeter

The original tweet was a stupid joke, not a threat, a joke. The fact that two judges could not see that says a lot about how little the establishment understands social media. The protest may show, if Paul appeals again, that this was a joke between friends and in no way was any kind of serious threat.

That nice Stephen Fry has already said he will pay Paul’s fine.

Paul though lost his job because of the prosecution. The sad thing is that I doubt Paul will be the last person to be prosecuted for making a joke on Twitter.

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Apple TV

Though I have had my Apple TV a few weeks now, however I have not really used it, nor have I streamed any rented films either.

Now this is not because of any problem with the Apple TV. It’s partly that I haven’t watched that much television over the last few weeks and haven’t had the time to sit down and watch a film either. When I have wanted to watch something I have relied on on my EyeTV or the Mac mini that is currently under my TV. The Mac mini won’t be here forever and when it goes I am sure that the Apple TV will be used more.

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Navigate to a photo

I was using my iPhone the other day to navigate using the TomTom App when I noticed a new “destination” option, Photo!

I clicked the menu item and I was presented with a series of photographs.

Now initially I thought, well what was the point of that, if it was a photo I had taken I could (as I would be there) add the destination to the TomTom direct. That’s quite useful though as taking a photograph can be quicker than starting up the TomTom App, just have to remember not to delete it from the phone.

But looking through the photographs I realised that some of them were photographs from my photo albums and had not been taken with my iPhone, but obviously also had geo-data attached to the photo. I checked and found that the photographs were in fact taken with a Sony HDR video camera with GPS.

This made a big difference to the usefulness of this option, as somebody else could take a photograph with their GPS enabled camera, cameraphone or iPhone and send me the photo via e-mail. I could then save this and use TomTom to navigate to the GPS co-ordinates attached to the photograph. I tried this out and it worked.

I did try saving a photo from Flickr using FlickStackr, but the TomTom software didn’t pick it up, I suspect the geo-data was not included when I saved the image.

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National Unfriend Day

November 17th is National Unfriend Day.

Are all the people you are “friends” with on Facebook actually your friend?

Is it really important to know that the person you sat next to in A Level Economics had a coffee at their local Starbucks?

November 17th is National Unfriend Day, time to ensure that only your friends are your friends on Facebook.

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Replaced my Airport Express

After another session of “not working” I have replaced my aging Airport Express. Though I would like to have replaced it with a new model, I used one that I had got for AirTunes but in the end found wasn’t needed. So it was still sealed, as I hadn’t got around to opening it, or selling it on eBay.

Configuring it was pretty simple using Apple’s Airport Utility, though did forget to put it into Bridge Mode so at first it didn’t work.

Bridge Mode was necessary as my Airport Extreme is the router on my network, which broadcasts at 5GHz 802.11n. I use the Airport Express in 802.11b/g mode for legacy and mobile devices. As the Airport Extreme acts as the DHCP router, adding a second router on the network would mean that devices could connect to the wifi, but wouldn’t be able to access the internet or “connect” with other devices on my network.

The reason for two wireless networks is that the 802.11n network can work at the full 300Mbps speed, whilst legacy and mobile devices will work just fine on a slower network. If I had a single wireless network it would be “slow” for all devices. This usually isn’t too much of a problem, however I do stream video across my network, and when I use to do this in the past (with standard definition video) on an 802.11g network, I found that due to network congestion I would get buffering which was annoying. With 802.11n I can stream high definition video easily across the network to my Apple TV or my iPad. It also works well in moving large files across the network.

802.11n also makes much more sense when using FTTC (fibre) for internet with its higher speeds.

The main problem I was having with the old Airport Express was that it just stopped working and “vanishing” from the network. As a result it would need to be power cycled to get it working again.

So far so good.

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What NOT To Post On Facebook: Things You Shouldn’t Tell Your Facebook Friends

Huffington Post has posted a series of Facebook safety tips.

Who’s watching your moves on Facebook? Employers, stalkers, federal agents, and even insurance companies have been known to scan Facebook profiles for information. Just as troubling are reports of Facebook account hackers, who put users at risk for identity fraud. Even if you safeguard personal information with a “Friends Only” setting, there is a chance you’ve friended someone whom you barely know or have never met.

Read more.

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MacBook Air, yes please…

Finally managed to get my hands on a real life 11.6″ MacBook Air at my local Apple Store (trying to remember what I did before there were lots of these in the UK). So there I was in the shop and I touched, used and felt the weight of the 11.6″ MacBook Air, I have to admit I pretty much well ignored the 13″ model as I have see the previous version, and to be honest if I was going with a 13″ MacBook, I would go for the MacBook Pro.

So back to the smaller MacBook Air brethren. The first thing that struck me, was how gorgeous the screen was, the high resolution makes for a really sharp display. As I started Safari (very snappy) and entered an URL, I noticed how nice the keyboard was too. One of the problems I have with small laptops (and I have used  a fair few in my time) is that the keyboards can be too small for anything expect peck and touch typing. The MacBook Air keyboard felt full size and I could quite easily see myself typing up long blog posts and other things using it. I was impressed with the speed of the Air, for something that isn’t really a true powerhouse when it comes to processing power and memory.

Having lifted it up, it was lighter than I thought it was going to be. It felt much smaller and lighter than the iPad even though it is 50% heavier.

I do quite like it, would like to get one, but probably won’t as at £849 it’s a little expensive for what for me would be more of a toy than a serious workhorse.