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By robert, March 1, 2010 9:57 pm

Following the posts I’ve read by Doug Belshaw and others, I had a think about which software/websites I use on a regular basis.  I try to match my software at home and work since it makes me more productive – but I’m sometimes limited by the fact we run clunky old Windows XP on our school laptops.

Firefox

I know Chrome is quicker but every time I use Chrome I end up moving back to Firefox.  I love the extensions/plugins available for Firefox and have a very similar set on both home and work computers.

Firefox extensions I have on both PCs.

Live Mesh

I tried Dropbox but first I became annoyed when it kept syncing MS Office temporary files (because I work straight out of my drop box).  Then I exceeded the amount of space they offered for free – but I only needed around 4-5Gb storage and I’m not paying for 50Gb that I’m not going to use.

I moved to Live Mesh and it works flawlessly.  Files are synchronised between my work folders and home and school, and updates happen without any user intervention.   Add a net book to that mix and it becomes even more useful (also allowing you to remote control another PC on your ‘Mesh’).  You can also access your files from your Live Desktop should you find yourself working on a different PC.

Office 2007 and 2010

The new ribbon interface.  You either love it or you hate it.  I love it – and now I’m used to using it I couldn’t go back to the old version of Office.  I am the only member of staff at my school running Office 2007 (and I use the beta of Office 2010 at home) and I hope to convert my colleagues at some point in the future! 

GMail (Google Mail)

Feature rich, spam free and hosted in the cloud, Google Mail is useful because I can access my email from any computer (and also from my phone/iPod etc).  For those who don’t like web email it supports POP3, IMAP and SMTP so can be used with a desktop email client if you prefer.   Although I tag my emails, the search feature comes in useful for finding those emails where you only remember snippets of information.  I use Google Mail as a client for my work based Exchange mail, and prefer the interface to any of the desktop clients I have tried. (The to-do-list whilst basic is pretty handy too)

Google Reader

I started using Google Reader to keep track of blogs and news sites I like.  Google Reader pulls in RSS feeds and can then be accessed from anywhere.  Interesting articles can be emailed to friends, or shared with other users (and mine are even imported into Facebook!).   The addition of Google Buzz added a new layer of functionality to Reader and you now see articles/posts that your friends (who you follow) have shared.  Google Reader keeps me up to date with educational and news feeds.

Windows Live Writer

Part of the Live Suite available free of charge from Microsoft.  This is a useful piece of software for writing blog posts offline (and publishing them to your website).

Other software/sites

Google Calendar (I’ve tried lesson planning again this year using Google calendar. I kept it up for a over half a term but still ended up going back to a paper diary).  The SMS reminders are useful for reminding me of appointments when I’m not near my email.

Twitter.  I have a PLN (personal learning network) on Twitter but I’m still not convinced that this is a must-have tool.  A significant majority of people I follow are broadcasters rather than being interested in a two-way conversation, and most don’t reply to tweets directed straight at them.

What software do you use every day?  What software couldn’t you do without?

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By robert, February 17, 2010 10:06 pm

We have a camcorder at work that records straight to DVD.  Of course the price you pay for this convenience is a lack of flexibility.  I needed some clips off a handful of old DVDs to use in a presentation.  I needed clips off the DVDs in the easiest way possible and in a format I could re-edit easily (using Windows Live Movie Maker for simplicity).

VLC

I managed to grab several clips using VLC following these steps.  First of all enable advanced options

Then play back your video/DVD.  Click on the red button to start and stop recording.  The recorded file is saved in your documents folder.  It is possible to change the output video format, however the defaults worked fine with movie maker. [Mac users – I believe you press Shift & Command & R instead]

Unfortunately I had problems with one of the DVDs so I had to use a different method.

Handbrake and K-Lite pack.

I installed the K-Lite pack to give me codecs I would need later on.  (Without the codecs from this pack windows movie maker was not able to use the audio on captured files in AAC format).

Handbrake is simple to use, but the files it generates will probably need some editing/trimming unless you need the whole DVD.

(You can also use handbrake to convert DVDs into a format suitable for an iPod/iPhone just by changing the preset at stage 2).

That’s all there is to it.  If you are grabbing clips from DVD make sure you own the copyright or else you could get into bother!

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By Rob, February 9, 2010 8:57 am

My friends ask me why I blog, and why I make the time for blogging.  Sometimes I wonder myself why I blog.  I’ve posted blog posts that have hundreds of hits, and ones that hardly register.  Sometimes I get an email or message about a blog post, but usually I don’t.   I carry on blogging, even when I don’t get any feedback, because I know somebody, somewhere will read what I have to say.

This is a collection of extracts from my logs over the last few months showing some of the more interesting visitors to my site (I’ve removed the IP addresses myself).  The bottom image shows visits from Microsoft and Google following an Outlook web access vs Google rant I had (#GoneGoogle).

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By robert, February 8, 2010 6:03 pm

I’m issued with an email account with Outlook Web Access (OWA) for my school email address (hosted by EMBC).  I don’t actually use it much – I prefer to use my Google Apps Gmail account as a client for my work address in preference to Outlook (which I just can’t make myself like) or the Outlook web interface.

I’d only recently noticed that the interface you get depends on the web browser you use.  If like me you use Firefox as your primary browser at work, a huge chunk of functionality is missing already (gee thanks Microsoft!).  The screen grabs below give an idea of the differences.

Straight away I’m using a clunky interface that looks like something from the Nineties to manage my email.  Compare that to Google mail which looks the same in IE, Firefox or Chrome (and I have all 3 browsers installed on all my laptops!).

I was going to write a comparison of the two platforms but it’s hard to find an aspect that OWA excels at.  Contact management is a joke, the PIM functions make me want to stab myself with a biro in frustration and anyone who has used Google mail knows the advantages of tagging mail versus folders.

Most teachers work as much from home as they do from work, if not more.  I know I do.  I like to have access to my emails from home and when I visit other schools.  All of my email that is, not the last two or three in my inbox.  I never take my laptop home – who’d want to use that piece of junk in preference to my own modern machine – which means I need access to email in the cloud.   Look at the generous mail allocation I get from work versus Google Apps email – I can search through archived emails and contacts with ease using the Google interface, without having to fire up a desktop mail client to achieve the same result.  It might help if EMBC gave you a reasonable amount of space – 100Mb is nothing, I’ve sent more email than that in a day!

(Compare that to the standard space allocation provided with Gmail and you see a world of difference.)

Fortunately Google Mail will retrieve emails from my work address, and send replies that look as though they have come from my work address, so I don’t have to soil my hands with Outlook Web Access (or a desktop client).

Until Microsoft comes up with a better interface that works well with Firefox, and EMBC can give us sufficient storage, I’ll continue to use the Google mail interface as my primary mail client.  What’s your email client of choice and why?