Have you ever wanted to send a person one URL that shows everything you are up to in the web 2.0 world? Ever wanted to see what your friends were up to, but they had way too many subscriptions to services like blogs, YouTube, Twitter, del.icio.us, etc.? Well now you can do these things with FriendFeed. I just started using this service and I like the way it’s set up. It’s free to sign up and all you need to do is type in the URL’s of your own page with services you use or your username for those services. You can also subscribe (like you would with an RSS feed) to other peoples’ feeds and add them as a friend.

I know a big question I get from time to time is “I have signed up for way to many things and I am having a hard time advertising all the things I am signed up for, I want to be able to give one webpage to all my colleagues to show them my work in different web 2.0 mediums”. I believe this is the tool for you. Check it out, it’s easy to use and very powerful.

I moved over to Office 2008 for my work Mac recently. I started to notice a pattern with .doc files I downloaded from the Internet. I would double click on the .doc file, and Word would open, but not the file, just a new blank document. If I downloaded the file from Safari, double clicked, it worked. I tried to drag the .doc file (downloaded via Firefox), onto the word dock icon, and still it did not open. Then I found this following explanation on Mactopia:

If you use the Mozilla Firefox or Camino Web browser to download a document that is saved in the .doc, .xls, or .ppt file format, the document will not open if you double-click it or drag it to an Office 2008 application icon in the Dock. To make sure that the document opens correctly, use Safari to download it or open it from within an Office 2008 application. To open a document from within an Office 2008 application, on the File menu, click Open, and then locate the document that you want to open.

Check out more issues with Office 2008 here: Known Word Office 2008 Issues.

I hope this helps.

Update: Found a fix for my woe. I had to download a Microsoft Office update for Mac. It works now! You can find it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c75db26d-d3bc-49a4-8951-de27ae58b5a1&DisplayLang=en

I have been reading up on Speed Geeking (check out the definition here at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_Geeking ). I think this would be a wonderful way to introduce new faculty and staff at any organization to their IT staff. This would also be a great refresher for others that have been with a company or educational institution for years to meet the new staff members in their IT group. I am thinking about proposing a Speed Geeking event at my work. I think it would be fun If you are interested in Speed Geeking, you might be interested in Lighting Talk and Pecha Kucha as well.

I recently wanted to batch upload 38 users into a Blackboard organization. So I opened TextEdit in Mac OSX, filled in the proper information : “org ID”,”user ID”,”Role-S,P”. Every time I uploaded the text file, received an error. I tried to save it out as different formats (like ASCII), but still got the same errors (I think Blackboard did not recognize the hard returns in the text file). I tried to create the same text file in Notepad in Windows and I did not receive any errors. But I wanted to do this in Mac OS X. What program can I use in OS X to achieve this same success I had in Windows?

I decided to look for another text editor to create this file. I found TextWranger: http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/index.shtml. I created the same text file in TextWranger. Now I will give a step by step on how I saved the file:

1. Type in the info for the Batch Enroll file:

“org ID”,”user ID1″,”Role-S,P” *hard return
“org ID”,”user ID2″,”Role-S,P” *hard return*

2. Go to File—-> Save As

3. Click on the Options button

4. For Line Breaks, choose DOS

5. Click OK

6. Choose a place to save it and click Save.

Load this file into Blackboard and you will not receive errors when enrolling the users. Enjoy!

To view the screencast, click on the link below:
Batch Enroll Users In Blackboard 7 Using TextWrangler for Mac OS X

This is a screencast to go along with my Google Docs form tutorial that was posted earlier. Enjoy!

Create Google Forms and Embed into Your Webpage

 

Here’s a brief walk through on how to import data from a text file and create an Excel spreadsheet with the data in it.
1. Open Excel
2. Click on the Import button or go to File—>Import
3. Click the Text File option.
4. Click Import—> Choose the text file with the information
5. Click the Get Data button
6. Step one of the Import Wizard–Under Original Data type, choose Fixed Width.
7. Click next
8. Step two-Drag the lines to match up with your data (you should not have to move any lines). Click Next.
9. Step three- Under Column Data format, choose Text. Choose new spreadsheet file.
10. Click Finish

Screencast: How to Create a Spreadsheet from a Test File with Data

 

If you are currently using quick capture and your video looks super pixelated when you view it, try adding &fmt=18 at the end of the video’s url. When you add this at the end of the url, the video is a H.264 encoded clip at 480×360 resolution with a bitrate up to 850K (good for iPhone viewing). YouTube has been trying to up the quality of their video. Adding the &fmt=18 a was posted on VideoHelp.com’s website (go there to learn more). I would like to thank Suzanne Carbonaro for bringing this solution to my attention :-).

I recently created templates so I can create different address books for my Thunderbird and Zimbra address. All I did was export my address books as a .CSV file. I then cleared any contents I had in the spreadsheet. Now, I can fill in my info and i have the proper headers that will be brought into brother Thunderbird and Zimbra. This is a great way to move around your address book.

If you use two different email clients and you don’t want to recreate your address book in one on the other system, you can export the file and them simply import that file. The template is good if you are starting from scratch or if you have a long list of new emails for a certain group, you can just copy and paste that information into the template and then import it. I have the two templates already created and you can view them below. Enjoy!

Zimbra Email Address Template: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pH9M6WjhZVJIhWZCgsaRNBg

Thunderbird Email Address Template: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pH9M6WjhZVJJVjSluc6J6eg

This tutorial will walk you through how to create a map using Google Maps (and finding latitude and longitude coordinates).

1. Go to http://maps.google.com

2. Type in an address you want to find.

3. To find the latitude and longitude coordinates, type this in the address bar: javascript:void(prompt(”,gApplication.getMap().getCenter())); It will appear in a new window.

4. Click on the point and select: Save to Maps (you will need a Google Account to save this map)

5. Type in a title and a description for the Map (on the left hand side)

6. You can create points on the map by clicking on the placemark tool at the top left of the map.

7. To link or embed this map into a webpage or blog, click on Link to This Page at the top right of the map. You can customize the map size by clicking on the Customize and preview embedded map link.

I recently experienced gross aggressive driving. How gross? So gross I called my local barracks of the PA State Police to report it. It all started on Tuesday April 29th. At around 8:20am on I-95 in PA, a driver was severely tailgating me. I couldn’t get over so I drove the normal speed limit. The driver then proceeded to almost clip the back of my car, hold down the horn when they passed me, flip me off, then almost clip the front of my car. Traffic started to slow down due to the early morning commute, so I got their license plate and the make of their car (because they were in front of me, smart of them, I know):

PA Plate # EYP 6439
Make: Buick LeSabre early 2000’s
Markings: Faulkner dealership sticker, back window Philadelphia Soul Indoor football team sticker, a license plate frame of the Philadelphia Soul, and 2 bumper stickers: My Dog is Smarter than your Honors student and Hang in there America: 1/29/2009