Archive for September, 2008

30
Sep

What I Have Learned

Last week we worked with iCal, Google Calendar, Text messaging, Google Earth, and Polleverywhere.com.

We got iCal subscribe to Google Calendar so it would be able to see what events we sheduled for each day in Google Calendar. I worked viewing events on iCal from Google Calendar, but you could not create events in iCal and have them go to Google Calendar. We also worked with sending our scheduled events for the day to our phones through a text message.

We setup Google Calendar to send a text message to our phones every morning showing what events we had planned for that day. On your phone, if you want to see what events are planned for the next day, you can reply “Nday” to a previous message and it will send you the events.

We worked with Google Earth. We created a blog and put a picture and text as a post. Then we switched to html style and copied all of the writing and picture. We then went into Google Earth and pasted the html as a new pin.

Also, we looked at Polleverywhere.com. You can create an online Poll and make it into a graph. To vote, you send a text to 41411 and put in a certain code for one of the choices that you are voting for.

This is My New Blog.

24
Sep

Calendar

In class we have learned how to set up calendars. We have set iCal to subscribe to Google Calendar. This means that iCal can see the Google Calendar as a read only format, so you cannot add events to the calendar and have Google Calendar receive these events. There is a third-party software that will let you do this. We are going to look at that and see if it will work.

We have also learned how to have google calendar send text messages. You can choose to have it send texts about the events for the current day, the following day, or just your next scheduled event, if you have many events for that day.

Later this week, we are also going to work with Google Earth.

15
Sep

Nike + iPod

The New Nike + iPod is now available for iPod Touch and iPod Nano. It is a great way to measure your time, the distance that you have run, your pace, calories burned, and other things.

Nike + iPod Kit

It works by putting a chip in the bottom of your shoe, and having your iPod wirelessly receive signals from the chip. Your iPod will give you all of the information and compare it to the goal that you set on your iPod. Later, when you connect your iPod to your computer, you can sync all of the information to nikeplus.com. It will store all of your exercise information and create a chart to show if you are improving.

In the Article that I read, It tells all of the negatives about the Nike + iPod kit. One thing that is bad about this kit, is it does not use the new features of the iPod Nano and iPod Touch. Both of these iPod’s now have the accelerometer in them, or the sensor that can measure movement and the direction of gravity. This is exactly what the chip you put in your shoe does. The argument is that this kit has no point and the iPods could calculate this information without it, like the Wii Remote. Another negative of this kit is why doesn’t it use the internet features of the iPod Touch. It could sync your information to nikeplus.com whenever you connect to WiFi instead of needing to connect to a computer.

12
Sep

Google Android

Google Android is a company within google that has been out for many years. They have just now come up with an operating system and phone that will support all of google’s web applications like gmail, calendar, docs, reader, earth, maps, and many more. 

Its release date is rumored to be November 10th of this year. It is expected to be a big competitor with the iPhone in particular, because the iPhone has some of the same google apps that will be in the Android.

For more info look at this article: http://venturebeat.com/2008/08/18/android-phone-is-approved-by-fcc-nov-10-the-apparent-release-date/

12
Sep

Eye Tracker

The Eye tracker is an exercise to show what parts of a website attracts the eye.

This is the exercise: Interactive Quiz

This article tells a little more about what attracts the human eye: The Best of Eyetrack III:  What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes

After I did this exercise many times, I started to memorize where the hotspots were on the website. 

10
Sep

New iPod’s are here!

The Rumor ended up to actually be true.

The largest change of all of the iPods is the iPod Nano. They have come out with something called the nano- chromatic. It is similar to the first and second generation iPod, but with a larger screen, accelerometer controls like the iPod Touch, and a larger hard drive.

Another major change that has taken place is the remake of the iPod Touch. The new model has external volume controls and a curve to the back of it. The main change is the lowering of the price. The new 8GB iPod Touch is only $229.

The last major change in the iPod line is the iPod Classic. All of these are 120GB for $249.

There is a minor change in the ipod shuffle’s. All they have done is changed the colors back to the origional colors they were when they first came out.

iTunes 8 has also come out, just as predicted. Two major changes have occured. The iTunes library has been changed so it can be organized by album, artist, composer, or Genre. The other major change is the addition of the new tool called Genius. It is a new playlist service that can scan your songs and playlists and can come up with new playlists based on the Genre of music.

This is all Apple has come out with so far. There is still a hope for new laptops to come out sometime soon before the holidays.

10
Sep

Tips for effective blogging

Look at this article for tips on how to be an effective blogger:

http://theedublogger.edublogs.org/2008/04/27/heres-my-first-five-tips-for-writing-better-blog-posts-what-are-yours/

The Writer of this post has great tips to make a blog better. These are each of the tips that the writer gave us and reasons why they are great tips.

1) Using short Paragraphs

2) Using Headings- It is a good idea to use headings so the reader will know the topic that you are about to talk about

3) Using Hyperlinks- It is good to put links in your comments so the readers will be able to get extra information that is not in already in your blog

4) Comment back to readers that have made a comment on your post- make sure to do this to the people that made the comment will know that you saw it

5) Submit your blog to a blog feed- It is good to do this to increase your number of viewers that are looking at your blog

This is what I would suggest to make your blog better:

1) Use pictures to make your blog more exciting and show the reader what your post is about, almost like a heading

2) Use videos in your blog to let your reader get more information, almost like a link to another website

09
Sep

Useful Widgets and Plugins

Here are some widgets and plugins that i am using and find useful:

Widget Pack: It is a great plugin that gives you additional widgets like ClustrMaps, Vod:Pod Videos, Twitters, Google Search, Flickr, and more.

Add This Social Bookmarking: It is useful for me and other people by making it easier add my blog as a bookmark in delicious and other social bookmarking sites

Meta: I find this useful because it gives you links to edit your blog and to log out of your account.

Calendar: The calendar is a great way to remind you what the month and date is if you don’t have any other way of knowing.

Before I add these widgets, I would like to know about what they are: Pages, Categories, Text, and RSS.

05
Sep

Widgets

Widgets are tools that show up on your blog that make it easier to navigate through your blog and makes your blog more personal. Widgets are also used in other places besides your blog, like your dashboard on a mac or your gadgets toolbar on windows.

Calendar

I am using the calendar because when you click a date on it, it will show all of the posts and comments that were written on that date.

Avatar

The Avatar is the picture that is like your profile picture. If you comment on someone else’s blog, it will show up on their blog to show that you wrote that comment.

Search

The Serch widget allows you to search for any post or comment that is in your blog.

Recent Comments

The Recent Comments Widget shows all of the most recent comments that people made on your posts.

Recent Posts

Recent Posts shows all of the most recent posts that you wrote on your blog.

Meta

Meta is a list Links to log in or log out, your site admin, and your entries and comments. Lets you get to different parts of your blog much easier.

Tags

Allow you to create links to what is used most often in your blog.

To add widgets to your blog, go to http://(your username).edublogs.org/wp-admin/widgets.php

03
Sep

Upcoming Apple Event

Apple has scheduled an event for Tuesday, September 9th. They are expected to release new iPods and hold off on the release of new laptops until after the 15th.

iTunes 8 is supposed to come out also. Close to the same time, MySpace music will be coming out. This will be a big competitor.

The price of the iPod touch will fall below the price of the iPhone.

Check out this blog to hear more:

http://www.technorati.com/posts/vVEiJDDIO6ZUA9jg4booJ5CR%2BQ69ARrP_5Pg6EUWS7Q%3D

For more information go to this site:

http://venturebeat.com/2008/09/02/what-will-we-see-from-apple-on-tuesday/

Watch this video

Apple Event




 

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