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13 Apps to Turn Your iPhone into a Blogging Machine

2008-07-24T16:30:54Z

Paul Glazowski via Mashable! shared by 13 people

Seeing as how Web services today are becoming more and more multi-faceted and multi-functional, particularly in the social networking and social media space, it really is open to debate what is and what is not part of a specific segment of the market. Where blogging starts and where networking ends, for instance, is a gray area that has grown ever larger with time. Mobile utilities in particular have evolved to contain powerful assets that accomplish several tasks at once.

Perhaps nothing better exemplifies this fact than the items which can now be found within Apple’s App Store, where the supply of downloads for the iPhone (and its slightly-less-phenomenal sibling, the iPod touch) expand with each passing week. So we focus today on that very storefront, to determine which applications now available can help to best enable mobile blogging in all its myriad forms and purposes, wherever cellular, Wi-Fi, and/or GPS signals might be found.

Good ol’ run-of-the-mill blogging: TypePad and WordPress

If we burrow down to the core of the blogging world, there are several platforms which sport robust frameworks, and many of them are free to use. WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, Live Spaces, are just a few that sport mass userships and audiences. But only two currently reside as native, officially-released applications within the iPhone/iPod touch paradigm. They are, as we noted recently, TypePad and Wordpress.

WordPress arrived with its own utility after TypePad had introduced itself to users. Both have received good reviews so far. And why not, really. Both aptly manage the basic tasks of posting and editing blogs, and each enables the user to upload photos from a library or take new images via the iPhone’s onboard camera.

I have already offered my own impressions about both applications, and happen to favor TypePad’s application a bit more than the WordPress release because TypePad provides support for English and French, but both essentially get the same job done similarly well. Neither path will lead you astray. Quite honestly, as I said before, one’s choice of application will naturally fall to whichever platform one prefers as it appears on the desktop, and whether one has invested much time in either setting.

Micro-blogging

There are even more choices in the microblogging realm, and if photos are one’s main source of intrigue, the list is even more voluminous. So let’s dig in. To start, there are the Twitter-specific applications: Twitterific, available for free and ad-supported [iTunes]; or as a paid-for premium version [iTunes]; Twittelator [iTunes]; and Twinkle [iTunes].

My experiences, coupled with feedback from others tells me Twitterific is the most pleasant, as it has the benefit of housing a browser within.

If you’re one to click on URLs posted by friends, this is definitely a convenient feature. And in my trials, it has proven quite reliable. It is most useful due to the fact that it makes any transfer out of Twitterific and into Safari Mobile unnecessary. Once you’ve taken a look at whatever webpage you were directed to, you can close the browser and immediately carry on with reading incoming feeds. No need to repetitively enter and exit applications.

Twinkle is aesthetically pleasing, no doubt, and it adds a location dimension to facilitate conversation among users within a given area. But the application has been known to crash regularly. According to Tapulous, Inc, the creator of Twinkle, an update should arrive this Friday, July 25, to fix bugs and “other minor problems.”

Miscellaneous and (even more) multi-functional

Here’s where it all comes down to personal tastes and desires. Some applications will connect you to numerous services for easy, synchronized posting. Others will help you satisfy only your tendencies as a photo blogger. Some will help you connect with friends, micro-blog a bit, and even post duplicate hellos and how-are-yous to Twitter. That’s because… well… it all comes back to Twitter, doesn’t it? Without further adieu, here are some items for your consideration listed in no particularly prearranged order.

LifeCast [iTunes]: Manage your day’s events in organized fashion. Want to keep what you do for work and for play exclusive? No problem. LifeCast is about keeping things tidy. Also, non-English speakers will enjoy its slightly multi-lingual reach. French, German, Italian, and Spanish are all supported. Also, if you’d like to post text to Blogger, you may. The same goes for Tumblr (photos, too). Geo-tagging comes with.

Bluepulse [iTunes]: We gave this a brief review some days ago. And while it wasn’t my personal cup of tea, it’s something that others have shown an affinity for. If you’d like something Twitter-esque (with a Twitter connection, to boot), albeit in a way that allows you to message multiple people of your choosing — rather than, say, everyone on your friends and followers list(s) — this one’s a treat. The layout may take some getting used to, though. It appears designed to make existing Bluepulse users comfortable when making “the switch.”

ShoZu [iTunes]: If this one were to be described in a single word (not yet recognized by the grammar police), it would no doubt be “awesomeness.” You need only look at the list of supported sites and services to get a grasp on what this ShoZu is all about. It is the Swiss Army knife of online social interaction (so far as photo uploads and status updates and things are concerned, anyway).

Pownce [iTunes]: Despite what the heads at Pownce say, this one’s original intent was most definitely to give Twitter a little slap-slap. Which seemed like it might’ve been possible, until it didn’t. For what it’s worth, it’s still a nifty service. If you want it on your iPhone, the download is available.

Kyte [iTunes]: Mobile photo blogging is super cool, for sure. But mobile slideshow blogging is exponentially more kick-ass. Kyte makes that happen. For this one you might need to take a few minutes to craft something nice, but it’s worth it.

Clowdy Photo Blogger [iTunes]: The name says it all. It also lets you see photos taken “nearby” to where you stand. A number of downloads currently available in the App Store do this as well, but Clowdy works the photo realm exclusively. It’s free, and it’s all of 0.1MB large.

Graffitio [iTunes]: This operates with the same location-based concept as Clowdy, but it’s text-based. The best way to explain it is to offer an example. Say you’re at a restaurant. You can check Graffitio to see if a Facebook-like “wall” has been created for the place. If so, you can post a public message to it. If a wall doesn’t exist, create one. If enough people participate in the experiment and visit various locations regularly, it starts to become a rather interesting series of whiteboards.

Speaking of Facebook, the Web’s largest social network (arguably) has its own application [iTunes], as many have already learned, and in some respects, it’s about blogging, too. If you’re one to routinely update your status, and your friends do too, what’s to say you all aren’t blogging? And with the recent update to the application, introduced late last week, you can post to your own wall as well as those of friends. Upload photos seamlessly too.

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Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

Jaiku on Your iPhone
TypePad Announces Native iPhone 3G Application
World’s Simplest iPhone App
iRovr Launches Mini Social Network for the iPhone
TypePad Blogging from your iPhone
Multiply Launches iPhone Edition
iPhone to Launch in Germany on T-Mobile

Blackboard Contract for UNC System and thoughts on Moodle

2008-07-23T19:52:04Z

Recently, Blackboard announced that "The University of North Carolina & North Carolina Community College System Select Blackboard for Statewide e-Learning Platform."

While Blackboard is heralding it as a "system selection", I think it's just spin. In reality this is really more of a short-term (3 year) economic solution for the UNC system's current users of Blackboard, which includes us and Charlotte and UNC and maybe others. While the release would imply that all UNC schools would have Blackboard forced upon them, that is not the case. Really this agreement should be applauded as a collective bargaining agreement that probably saved North Carolina some money.

Some might read this news release from Blackboard though and fret about implications with Moodle or other open source LMS solutions, as NCSU and other UNC schools are in the middle of evaluating these tools as replacements for Blackboard. The thing is that, at least at NCSU, a potential migration away from Vista would take a minimum of 3 years, which would actually be perfect timing with this recently struck agreement. But, while I'm on the subject of LMSs, I'll take a moment to talk about Moodle versus Vista.

While Moodle and open source solutions represent a shift to a better ideological place, moving to Moodle isn't a no-brainer decision. Moodle represents a great deal of pain if it would be selected. Migrating faculty to a new system would take a lot of resources, both financial and in man-hours of both training staff and faculty. Also, who really knows what problems Moodle could potentially throw at us down the line if in fact we went with it as a enterprise-level LMS? The problems could potentially be even worse than what we've seen with WebCT/Bb Vista. This is probably something that could be researched, but to the community at large, this is a total unknown. If in fact Moodle did have a serious problem, the only difference would be that instead of being able to point at Blackboard as having deficient support, we'd only have ourselves to blame. And as a last point, the money involved is a moot point, they both (Moodle and Blackboard Vista) would cost about the same amount according to our best estimations.

Now don't misunderstand me, I do like Moodle and I'm very much in favor of piloting it and I am an advocate for open source. I'm also not saying sticking with Blackboard is a no-brainer either. I'm just trying to represent an opinion/argument that doesn't get a lot of air time. I think we often over-inflate Moodle or paint too rosy a picture, what we need is an as-objective-as-possible comparison of the two systems and an equally objective decision to move forward.

Mocha VNC Lite is Simple Remote Control for iPhones [Featured IPhone Download]

2008-07-16T12:00:00Z

iPhone/iPod touch only: Mocha VNC Lite, the latest free utility added to the iTunes App Store, is one of those great programs that jailbreak enthusiasts probably thought would never appear in official form. Having arrived, however, it's a simple, easy to use tool for remote-controlling a Windows, Mac, or Linux system from your palm, with full keyboard access, double-click abilities, and support for 32-bit colors. You can flip your phone to landscape for widescreen desktops, and zoom in and scroll just like you would with a Safari web page. The only apparent restrictions on this "Lite" version are a lack of support for right clicks, a QWERTY-only keyboard, and no macros, but for controlling your media center or desktop from another room, Mocha should work just fine. Mocha VNC Lite is a free download for 2.0 iPhones and iPod touches only.

Mocha VNC Lite [iTunes Store via Just Another iPhone Blog]

Byline — Google Reader Client for iPhone

2008-07-15T17:14:59Z

John Gruber via Daring Fireball shared by 10 people

Phantom Fish’s very impressive $10 feed reader for the iPhone. Syncs over the network with your Google Reader account, not just for subscriptions and read/unread status, but also for saving web pages for offline reading. Very strong rival to NetNewsWire. Be sure to check out the video tour.

★

Kindle 2.0 Coming Around October 2008

2008-07-16T01:17:30Z

John Biggs via TechCrunch shared by 13 people

Our rendering

An insider let slip that two new Amazon Kindle models will hit stores this holiday season, with the first coming as early as October.

The first is an updated version with the same sized screen, a smaller form factor, and an improved interface. The source told us that Amazon has “skipped three or four generations,” comparing the old Kindle to the 1st gen iPod and the new version to something like the sexy iPod Mini.

The second new model, which is shaped like an 8 1/2 x 11-inch piece of paper, is considerably bigger than the current model and should be available next year.

Both models should come in multiple colors and may be aimed at younger readers.
Read more…

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Our Googley advice to students: Major in learning

2008-07-16T00:48:00Z

Management guru Peter Drucker noted that companies attracting the best knowledge workers will "secure the single biggest factor for competitive advantage." We and other forward-looking companies put a lot of effort into hiring such people. What are we looking for?

At the highest level, we are looking for non-routine problem-solving skills. We expect applicants to be able to solve routine problems as a matter of course. After all, that's what most education is concerned with. But the non-routine problems offer the opportunity to create competitive advantage, and solving those problems requires creative thought and tenacity.

Here's a real-life example, a challenge a team of our engineers once faced: designing a spell-checker for the Google search engine. The routine solution would be to run queries through a dictionary. The non-routine, creative solution is to use the query corrections and refinements that other users have made in the past to offer spelling suggestions for new queries. This approach enables us to correct all the words that aren't in the dictionary, helping many more users in the process.

How do we find these non-routine savants? There are many factors, of course, but we primarily look for ...

... analytical reasoning. Google is a data-driven, analytic company. When an issue arises or a decision needs to be made, we start with data. That means we can talk about what we know, instead of what we think we know.

... communication skills. Marshalling and understanding the available evidence isn't useful unless you can effectively communicate your conclusions.

... a willingness to experiment. Non-routine problems call for non-routine solutions and there is no formula for success. A well-designed experiment calls for a range of treatments, explicit control groups, and careful post-treatment analysis. Sometimes an experiment kills off a pet theory, so you need a willingness to accept the evidence even if you don't like it.

... team players. Virtually every project at Google is run by a small team. People need to work well together and perform up to the team's expectations.

... passion and leadership. This could be professional or in other life experiences: learning languages or saving forests, for example. The main thing, to paraphrase Mr. Drucker, is to be motivated by a sense of importance about what you do.

These characteristics are not just important in our business, but in every business, as well as in government, philanthropy, and academia. The challenge for the up-and-coming generation is how to acquire them. It's easy to educate for the routine, and hard to educate for the novel. Keep in mind that many required skills will change: developers today code in something called Python, but when I was in school C was all the rage. The need for reasoning, though, remains constant, so we believe in taking the most challenging courses in core disciplines: math, sciences, humanities.

And then keep on challenging yourself, because learning doesn't end with graduation. In fact, in the real world, while the answers to the odd-numbered problems are not in the back of the textbook, the tests are all open book, and your success is inexorably determined by the lessons you glean from the free market. Learning, it turns out, is a lifelong major.

Posted by Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior VP, Product Management

OneNote 2007 Toolkit for Teachers – Part 1

2008-07-15T14:44:00Z

Last week we launched a bunch of new OneNote education resources on the new OneNote site for educators. This site contains great resources for OneNote and teachers so make sure to bookmark it and check back regularly. I also want to give a shout-out to the new Office Back to School site, which has a bunch of great materials around Office and education, including Parents and Teachers.

Today I want to talk more about the OneNote 2007 Toolkit for Teachers. If you haven’t yet downloaded this toolkit DO IT NOW!!! I promise you won’t be disappointed. This toolkit is a OneNote notebook with training, how-to articles, teacher-focused OneNote feature explanations, videos, lesson plan examples, and other resources to help teachers start and then master the use of OneNote in the classroom.

I’ll repeat my recommendation from last week to:

Download and go through the toolkit
Share it with other teachers
Put in on your school's internal network for others to use
Tell your faculty and principal about it
Tell your administrators about it

What’s in the toolkit?

There are 8 sections in the toolkit, and I will be covering two of them in greater detail today. Here are the 8:

Welcome
Great Education Features
Lesson Plans
Collaboration
Distribution
Examples
Common Questions
OneNote Add-ins

Section #1 - Welcome

The first section of this notebook contains a lot of basic materials around what is OneNote, why you might want to use it, and how to get started. If you’re like most people, you will usually skip introductions, how-to videos, and explanations of what the product is. I fully understand that- it’s human nature. But for those of you who actually look through this type of information, you will get a huge head start on the people who skip everything in this section. But don’t tell those folks (sshhhh) – they will just wonder how you became a OneNote Ninja so quickly and why they are still at 100-level OneNote learning :-)

In this Welcome section, you’ll also find things like OneNote and learning styles information, Training videos, How-to articles, case studies about OneNote and education.

And last but not least, a OneNote Toolkit is never complete without the OneNote song!

Section #2 – Great Education Features

The next section of the Teacher toolkit covers many specific OneNote features. Not only do we have content from the OneNote Guide, but we’ve also added and enhanced existing content with education-focused materials. You will find pages such as:

Managing Teacher Schedules
Organizing Planning Materials, Class Work, Answer Keys, and Research
Using OneNote for Day to Day Tasks
Posting a OneNote "Class" package to SharePoint
Attaching Files to Your Lessons
Turning On Rule and Graph Lines
Creating and Modifying Templates

That’s it for today. I’ll be covering the other sections of the Toolkit in future blog entries.

Technorati Profile

iPhone: The New Personal Computer

2008-07-14T09:39:40Z

Alex Iskold via ReadWriteWeb shared by 21 people

When Apple first announced the launch of its iPhone platform, we wrote here that it is a game changer . Even the core of iPhone is a major advance in mobile computing, but with the platform iPhone becomes the new personal computer. The desktop from now on will be for professional and business work. Laptops aren't going away, but will get increasingly less personal use. The reason is that iPhone with its application platform is a better personal computer and it's widely accessible.

At Your Fingertips. Fast.

Every major service, Amazon, Netflx, Twitter, Digg, Flickr, Facebook, is already available, or will soon be, on iPhone. Either the companies or third parties will deliver these applications. The result is, you have the world in your pocket; anytime, anywhere you can access what you need.

This is powerful and unprecedented. For a while now, we've been seeing desktop and web converging, with increasingly more desktop apps leveraging the web. iPhone places this convergence into the spotlight. Smart little apps with fluid Apple design are now leveraging the vast amounts of information available on the web.

Location Awareness

Another leap is location awareness. Apps are now smarter because they understand an important part of your context. Want nearby movies, restaurants or maps? Applications automatically leverage your current location.

And we're now seeing a true blend of physical and digital. When you're at a restaurant, see what your friends thought about it. When in a bookstore, look up reviews on Amazon. If in Paris, access an instant map. Sure, you could do this before, but this iPhone platform takes the experience to a new level. It takes it to the mainstream.

The New Personal Computer

There's an irony in Steve Jobs' recent move to drop the word computer from the company name. Arguably, this iPhone is the first really personal computer. True, the PC was called that first, but from today's view PC is for heavy tasks while iPhone is small, smart and portable.

iPhone comes with a pack of applications perfect for today's consumers. Like iMac 10 years ago, this device focuses on essentials. It has all the necassary communications: phone, email, text messaging. It has a camera and a way to manage photos. It's the best smart phone to play video. And its music support rocks.

Even the original iPhone was great at finding information: maps and Safari made the web instantly accessible. Now with the application platform open-ended, all other non-Apple essentials become available. Each of us can download the apps for services we use and make iPhone personalized and personal.

What's Next for Business Computing?

Beyond personal computing iPhone aims to help people do business. Its much anticipated Exchange integration will generate an army of converts. Jobs and his crew know the personal computer needs to support business folks, as few people would want to carry two devices.

Where does this leave laptops and PC? Obviously neither is going away anytime soon, but both are more orientated towards business professionals. Programmers will not be using an iPhone to write Java code. Designers will not be using it for graphics, and engineers will never run CAD on iPhone. These aren't personal computing things, but business. iPhone will become our new personal computer.

Conclusion

Seeing the new applications on the iPhone is eye-opening. They're powerful, they're beautiful, and they're only getting better. Having all personal applications and services at your fingertips makes one realize iPhone is really the first personal computer.

Increasingly, desktops and laptops will be for professional computing. iPhone and its descendants will be our new personal computer. This is an exciting page in the history of our technology. It's the start of an era: ubiquitous, portable, personal computing.

BlackBerry Thunder first-ever live pics unearthed

2008-07-13T22:07:00Z

Joshua Topolsky via Engadget shared by 6 people

Filed under: Cellphones

If you're a BlackBerry fan feeling the need for relief from the throngs of iPhone lovers, the cats at CrackBerry may have uncovered a solution to your problem. The RIM aficionados have gotten their hands on the first ever live pictures of the phone-maker's touchscreen device -- the Thunder -- and it's looking pretty darn sweet. Feast your eyes on the above photo (featuring the much-discussed "tactile" keyboard), and hit the read link for another look.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Encyclopedia of Mormonism Online in Searchable Text

2008-07-11T18:10:27Z

In September 2007, we announced that the Encyclopedia of Mormonism was available online at BYU.edu in PDF format. We’re now happy to announce that the Encyclopedia of Mormonism is available in text format that is fully searchable. Each entry also has a link back to a PDF scan of the page from the original 1992 publication.

This is a great resource for information about the Church. It contains one million words in about 1,500 articles in four volumes. Learn more about the project from the Church News and in the Preface.

Bookmark:

Apple Notifies Developers: iPhone App Store To Launch Thursday Morning

2008-07-10T00:35:09Z

Apple finally let developers know when their iPhone apps will be live on the App Store for users to download and use: around 9 am PST Thursday morning. That, at least, is when the embargo lifts and press can start writing about the specific applications. Presumably the App Store will go live, along with iPhone 2.0 software in general, around that time.

We’ve created a directory of some of our favorite apps and will be posting on each of them then. We also have some TechCrunch-related news around an iPhone App as well. It’s not too late to submit your app for inclusion - details for submission are here.

And just as the news dies down on the new apps, get ready for the iPhone 3G, which goes on sale starting Friday morning at 8 am.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Novint's Developing WoW Drivers

2008-07-08T16:24:00Z

Hi everyone! We made an exciting announcement today letting everyone know that we're developing drivers for World of Warcraft. The drivers, built using WoW’s LUA Scripting system, will let you feel your character’s actions, spells, enemy attacks and other interactions dramatically enhancing the gaming experience. Novint is also integrating a unique interface in the game which gives players easy access to a customizable selection of spells and other game inventory items, allowing players to intuitively map up to 36 actions to Falcon movements with an in game User-Interface.

We're really excited about this opportunity because it will allow us to bring Falcon compatibility to another 10 million people. When you combine that with our deals with EA and Valve that's a pretty big number (about 30 million). You can read more about the WoW drivers on our Web site. What do you think about the drivers?

20+ Must-Have WordPress 2.5 Compatible Plugins

2008-07-07T14:53:36Z

Sean P. Aune via Mashable! shared by 15 people

Even though WordPress 2.5 has been out for a while now, not all plugins are up-to-date. We’ve put together a list of 20+ must-have WordPress 2.5 compatible plugins to manage your blog, engage readers, and tempt new ones as well.

Below you’ll find helpful plugins that enable you to block spam, track analytics, promote your posts, and more. As always, please remember the more plugins you have, the slower your install will run!

Akismet - Every WordPress blogger’s best friend. Akismet is the first line of defense between your blog and an endless stream of comments attempting to sell you Viagra.

All in One SEO Pack -A popular plugin with SEO fanatics, its All in One SEO Pack lets you insert meta tags, helps you with duplicate content, optimizing titles and more.

Broken Link Checker for WordPress - As your blog gets more and more posts, it can be difficult to go back and look for what has broken with time. This plugin will check images and links and notify you via the dashboard when it locates something.

cforms II - Creating forms for your site has always been a bit of a pain to do from scratch. cforms streamlines the process allowing you to build one form and then insert it wherever you like with a simple line of code.

Enforce WWW Preference - This plugin will enforce either choice you have for your domain name, whether it be with WWW or without.

Events Calendar - Replace the default calendar with a more advanced one that will allow you to add events to your site.

Google Analyticator - Google Analytics is a popular way of tracking your site visitors, but it can be a pain in the behind to install properly. This plugin allows you to enter your code, and it will take care of making sure it gets to the right place in all of your themes.

Google XML Sitemap - Helps you generate XML enabled sitemap to help with indexing by search engines like Google, MSN, Ask and more. This plugin says it requires WP 2.1+, but it is working with 2.5 for sure.

My Page Order - Rearrange the order of your pages with a simple drag-and-drop interface, easily putting them in the order of your choice.

Nextgen Gallery - An advanced image gallery that allows your images to expand with ease and have captions under each.

No Self Pings - A nice little plugin that keeps pingbacks from showing up in your comments section when you link back to your own blog entries.

Recent Posts - Adds a sidebar listing of your most recent posts, which is handy for people who surf in from search engines to your older posts.

Share This - The well known little green button that will allow your users to send articles to various social networks, email them to friends, and more.

Similar Posts/Post-Plugin Library - We list these two together because Similar Posts does not work without the library plugin. Similar posts will insert a list of posts at the end of each post that may be of interest to your readers.

StartPress - A customizable stats package that lets you easily set just how much information it collects, reducing the amount of strain on your install.

Twitter Updater - Sends a message to your Twitter timeline each time you post a new blog post.

Viper’s Video Quicktags - Helps ease the insertion of videos from sites such as YouTube, MySpace, GVideo and more.

WordPress Mobile Edition - Strips your blog of the normal theme and pictures so that it just shows up as text and links on mobile devices such as a BlackBerry, easing readers’ navigation.

WordPress.com Stats - A stats system that helps you reduce the load on your server by using the WordPress.com servers to keep track of your stats for you.

WP-Polls - Easily create polls to get feedback from your readers about their thoughts on a story or something you consider doing to change your blog.

WP e-Commerce - As people use WordPress for far more uses than as a blog, plugins have popped up that help with those other functionalities. WP e-Commerce allows you to add a shopping cart to your site for just a few items up to thousands.

WP Sticky - A useful plugin that makes one of your posts “sticky” so it always appears as the first post on your site, which gives you an easy way of explaining your blog to new readers that come in to the site.

WP Super Cache - Caches your pages as static HTML files as opposed to PHP files, which can take longer to process and display on your site.

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New OneNote resources for teachers - Come git' em' while they're hot!

2008-07-06T23:54:00Z

As I mentioned a few posts ago, Microsoft released a bunch of new OneNote resources for teachers at the NECC 2008 conference in San Antonio. Without further ado, I'm going to point everyone to them in this post.

First, off, here is the new OneNote Teacher resources on the Microsoft.com Education Site. This will contain lots of great resources for OneNote and teachers so make sure to bookmark it and check back regularly. I'll be sure to let people know when new things appear here as well.

Second, for those educators or administrators or IT folks who want to understand at a high level, what "OneNote NextGen Learning" is all about, watch this new Flash video about OneNote in the digital classroom.

Over the next week or two I hope to cover more of these in detail in this blog, but today I'll mainly be posting the links.

Introducing the OneNote 2007 Toolkit for Teachers

Click here to download the OneNote 2007 Toolkit for Teachers: If there's only one resource that you start out with, make sure it's this one. The toolkit is a OneNote notebook with templates, how-to articles, teacher-focused OneNote feature explanations, training videos, lesson plan examples, and other resources to help teachers start and then master the use of OneNote in the classroom. My recommendation is to:

Download and go through it
Share it with other teachers
Put in on your school's internal network for others to use
Tell your faculty and principal about it
Tell your administrators about it

OneNote "How-to" training videos for teachers

Next up, we have a new set of OneNote training videos created specifically for teachers. Each video is just a few minutes long and there are a range of topics starting with the basics and moving into screen clippings, Outlook integration and all the way up to shared notebooks and collaboration. There are 29 short videos in all to choose from. Just go to the OneNote Teacher resources page and scroll down towards the bottom and you'll see all of the videos.

Try sample notebooks

Check out these OneNote notebooks to get some ideas of how to use OneNote in school and in your personal life.

Teacher math workbook: Example of how teachers can store their workbook information for math classes in OneNote.

Digital portfolio: Sample digital portfolio of a teacher that contains multiple sets of student work, stored and organized within OneNote. Includes homework, quizzes, tests and projects.

3rd grade teacher's mathbook: Sample of a teacher’s workbook for a 3rd grade math class.

Student school workbook: Sample notebook for a university student.

Shared notebook for a group project: Example notebook to manage shared project information.

Student personal workbook: Sample personal notebook for a student.

Student's semester notebook: Example notebook of how a student could organize their work and activities.

New employee handbook: Example of a new employee handbook for a company. This could easily be tailored for new students or new teachers.

That should be enough to keep everyone busy for a while :-) I'll keep posting over the next week or so and go through the OneNote 2007 Toolkit for Teachers in more detail on a section-by-section basis.

Have fun!

Online Keyboarding Activities for Schools

2008-07-02T16:17:09Z

Here is a list of several online keyboarding activities for kids. Cost and time are always issues in education and these resources are free to use and provide ready made activities to assist students as they learn to use a keyboard.

Growing With Technology (This site is organized by level and incorporates digital citizenship activities as well)

Dance Mat Typing (Organized by level)

e-Learnign for Kids

Free Typing Games

Gamequarium Keyboarding Games

Type Racer

Keybr

Peter’s Online Typing Course

Touch Typing

Nicely said: Google Maps for mobile with voice search on BlackBerry Pearl

2008-07-02T15:33:00Z

Posted by Jonathan Matus and Luca Zanolin, Google Maps for mobile voice search team

On the Google Maps for mobile team we're always experimenting with new technologies, so we're happy to announce that we've started testing voice search as a new feature. Starting today, you can speak your business query instead of typing it on a select group of BlackBerry devices (Pearl 8110, 8120, and 8130, US only). Voice search in Google Maps uses the same speech recognition engine as GOOG-411, our free directory assistance service.

Using your voice to search for businesses is super useful in situations when you can't type, when the name of the business is long, or when you're not sure how to spell it. In other situations -- when you're in a library or a rock concert, for example -- typing makes more sense. Keeping that in mind, we designed this feature to allow you to choose whether to speak or type. Get it now on your BlackBerry Pearl by visiting http://m.google.com/maps on your mobile phone, or learn more here.

Using voice search is as simple as 1, 2, 3:

Press "0" to center the map view around your location
Press the left-side key and hold it while you say the name or type of business you're looking for (for example, "pizza")
When you're done speaking, release the left-side key, and our voice recognition technology will figure out your request and find the business you've been looking for, no typing needed.

This feature is experimental, which means a couple of things. First, similar to other voice-recognition technologies, the accuracy of voice recognition will improve over time as more people use the voice search feature. Second, the feature is currently only supported on 8110, 8120 and 8130 BlackBerry Pearl models in the US. Third, we'd love to get your feedback on it -- feel free to leave your comments below.

Family Tree: Possibly the largest online genealogy service you’ve never heard of

2008-06-28T05:15:06Z

Duncan Riley via The Inquisitr shared by 5 people

New York City based Familybuilder, the company behind the genealogy service Family Tree, has turned one, and it’s possibly the largest service of its kind you’ve never heard of.

Unlike competitors who offers genealogy as a stand alone product, Family Tree is offered as a social networking site application, and currently supports Facebook (it was the first genealogy service on FB), Bebo, MySpace, Hi5, and Orkut. Familybuilder’s Family Tree leverages the social graphs of the social networks it resides on, allowing users to find and communicate with relatives, build family trees, preserve family history, track family activity and more.

The company has taken two rounds of funding, $250-$500k in seed in August 2007 and an additional $1.5m in February this year.

Facebook apps can be a dime a dozen, and I’ve had an aversion in the past to covering them, but what struck me with Familybuilder is an impressive range of numbers from a company I’d previously not heard of. Family Tree has over 16 million profiles built in the Familybuilder network with over 3.5 million users and growing. Over 2 million new family tree profiles are being created every month. According to comScore, Familybuilder is the 4th most trafficked online genealogy service as of March 2008.

Perhaps it is by its very nature (a social network site app) that Familybuilder isn’t getting more publicity (I looked, its under-reported for its numbers). Sometimes a shiny site and Silicon Valley address can work is ones favor, and Familybuilder has neither. What ever the reason, with numbers like this, it’s a company we’ll be watching in the future.

FamilyBuilder

Ward Meeting–Some Internet Info

2008-06-29T20:00:40Z

My bishop asked me to talk today in a combined Relief Society, Priesthood, and Youth meeting about good resources on the Internet.

I decided to split the discussion into three areas:

Avoiding the Bad
Finding the Good
Adding to the Good

I created a site that has links to everything I showed and discussed as well as the slides I used. It might be a little out of context since you likely were not in attendance, but maybe you’ll find something helpful there too. Enjoy!

http://someinternetinfo.bogusboy.net

Bookmark:

Edmodo Nearing Launch

2008-06-27T20:47:44Z

I just wanted to let everyone know that Edmodo is almost ready for launch. Nic & I have been hard at work trying to finalize the beta. It's been a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get to this point. We wanted to launch quite a while ago, but unfortunately life has gotten in the way.

Technically Edmodo hasn't been that difficult to build, but when you work day jobs and can't work on something all day long, responsibilities somehow make you deviate from your goals.

The delays have not been a bad thing, they have been exciting times for Nic and myself. Nic graduated college, started his first real job, and bought his first house all while working on Edmodo when he can find free time.

Photo Credit: William Couch
The photo is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Touch Feels Its Way Into Computing

2008-06-11T00:12:12Z

Years from now, will we look back at the iPhone and touch-enabled Windows 7 and blame them for the thin film of muck covering our screens and the thick layer of skin on our fingertips? Yesterday it was the latest iPhone, and today Hewlett-Packard announced a $1,299 all-in-one touchscreen home PC.

Look, I know Bill Gates has a vision for touch and speech navigation, and I’ve already admitted that touch is pretty compelling on a mobile phone, but when it comes to the PC, who over the age of five wants to touch the screen? Check out the photo of the little girl gliding her little digits across the new desktop PC. Touch is a cool idea for phones and other devices that aren’t on display or have large screens, but as a UI for a PC, I tend to think we still need something standing between us and the monitor.

That being said, touch is only going to become more prevalent. HP said last year’s TouchSmart PCs were so successful that they helped goose slowing desktop sales. HP uses the touchscreen capabilities in Windows Vista and also has written its own software, which includes writing notes in a calendar, accessing weather and the ability to flip through photos quickly. It’s more than navigation; it’s like an electronic message board for the family. However, third-party applications that take further advantage of touch are still few and far between. An HP spokeswoman didn’t give any additional information, but said the company is open to working with third-party developers of touch applications and that more details will follow.

The hope is that once touch becomes enabled in more devices, programs that take advantage of it will emerge. Everything from fun apps such as putting together an animated jigsaw puzzle to mimicking the turning of a page when scrolling through a web site could be fun. Right now there’s little to make it valuable beyond device-specific applications such as web browsing on the iPhone or photo flipping on the HP PC.

Touch could help create a simple UI for controlling a connected home through one computer, managing everything from lighting to HVAC. And that is most likely where touch will become important. Not for multipurpose PCs, but for more utilitarian tasks such as a family calendar embedded into a refrigerator where a keyboard might not be practical, or a home security system that’s integrated with heating and cooling and managed in one place. Touch allows for a less complicated software interface that might actually encourage you to program your thermostat.

The building blocks are already in place, with everything from higher-end sensors to enable truly transparent screens for less to the manufacturing of large-scale displays dropping in price. HP didn’t disclose their touchscreen hardware providers, but Synaptics and Cypress Semiconductor have products that can be used to build touchscreens.

Cheaper hardware moves touch where it belongs, inside appliances or in specialty objects such as the Surface table, rather than as an interface on a device you use for work and sometimes as a TV. Touch might enable advanced computing in places where it’s sorely needed and provide added simplicity much like it did on the iPhone. Just keep it it off my desktop, please.