Archive for the ‘internet’ Category

Memolane is an web application that turns all of your tweets, facebook posts, picasa pictures, youtube videos etc. into a timeline that you can easily search. Alongside the currently supported services such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, Last.fm, Foursquare, Instagram, Tripit, YouTube, myspace, vimeo and wordpress, you can also add RSS-feeds.

What is Memolane?

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Our course on New Media & Web 2.0 Applications started today – we’re very happy to welcome 15 people from 5 different European countries!

In the afternoon we’re going to the archaeological museum. Until that time, we’re having great fun with the different options offered by Moodle’s Groups and Groupings.

Here we go folks! With day 1 of the Moodle course behind us, we’re gearing up for some serious work with the database functionality.

Expect more news soon! And if you really can’t wait, why don’t you follow us in Facebook or Twitter…;-)

Only a couple of weeks before we’re starting our course on New Media and Web 2.0 applications, the people at WordPress.org have released Gershwin – the latest version of their tremendously popular WordPress. Version 3.2 not only brings us the completely new default theme Twenty Eleven,  it also brings us peace of mind.

The editor has a new Zen mode, where in full-screen mode all the buttons, bells and whistles disappear from the screen (until you move the mouse cursor to the top of the screen again, that’s when the most commonly used functions are accessible again). Like… this:

So tell us…seriously…what could be less distracting than a completely empty page, eh? (Okay, it may also be a bit intimidating if you have writer’s block, but let’s not go there. )

What’s new? Well…it’s a bit faster, again, support for PHP4, old versions of MySQL and Internet Explorer has (finally) been dropped. Without having done any benchmark tests, it feels like pages load somewhat faster, and the administration section seems to be snappier, too. It certainly looks cooler than in the previous version! The default Twenty Eleven theme gives you an idea of some of the possibilities of HTML5, and I’m sure that in the not-so-distant future we’ll see many more themes popping up everywhere that will make the most of HTML5.

And oh yeah, from now on they’ll start doing partial upgrades – no need to upload the entire installation anymore, every time there’s an upgrade. While we at LLIT don’t really have anything to complain about with our current provider, people working elsewhere might not be as lucky as us. (An example, you ask? Well… FTP’ing the contents of an archive as small as that of WordPress from the comfort of your home to the servers there can easily take 4 hours to complete. Obviously the auto-update function doesn’t work, for “security reasons”.)

So far, this upgrade has been a good one – no broken plugins, etc, and everything seems to work just a bit better. Again. I can’t wait to see what they’ve got planned for 3.3…

Last week a new version of WordPress was released – we’ve told you before how much we like it, and this upgrade promises nothing but more goodies, so it goes without saying that we were very curious to find out what all the twitter talk was about.

The procedure is simple: login into your WordPress installation, and hit that “Please update now” link. Well… Hold your horses for just a second. This release is just a bit different, you see…

What’s new?

This release features a lightning fast redesigned linking workflow which makes it easy to link to your existing posts and pages, an admin bar so you’re never more than a click away from your most-used dashboard pages, a streamlined writing interface that hides many of the seldom-used panels by default to create a simpler and less intimidating writing experience for new bloggers (visit Screen Options in the top right to get old panels back), and a refreshed blue admin scheme available for selection under your personal options.

There’s a bucket of candy for developers as well, including our new Post Formats support which makes it easy for themes to create portable tumblelogs with different styling for different types of posts, new CMS capabilities like archive pages for custom content types, a new Network Admin, an overhaul of the import and export system, and the ability to perform advanced taxonomy and custom fields queries.

Check plugins

Sounds cool, eh? That’s what we thought, too. Before you go for the update, though, listen to our good advice just for a change, and check if your plugins are compatible already. If not, disable the ones that are not compatible with this release yet, and then upgrade. If you don’t, you’ll run into the same problems we had – you’ll get a very nice error thrown your way (Call to undefined function wp()) , which will crash your site completely. We’ve never run into problems before while updating WordPress, but this time we had to revert to the previous version to find out what had gone wrong, exactly. Not nice. Of course those fine people at WordPress can’t be held responsible for the coding of plugin authors – we get that.

A lot of the work put into this release takes place in the background. 820 issues have been fixed, and changes brought about by the new features (admin bar – really cool, the internal linking – finally, the post formats and custom post types, etc) clearly have a more than serious impact on existing plugins.

Solution?

The solution is easy: either you disable whatever is not compatible, and check by enabling them one by one, or you just wait for the authors to update their plugins. We’ll leave it up to you.

Joomla is back with a brand new version – 1.6, and it’s become more powerful, offering more control and more options than ever before. Developers will like the fact that the system went through a major code overhaul, making it even better for the production of websites, intranets and other applications for small, medium-sized and large companies. Simplicity is its strength, and with this version the Joomla team have taken a big step forward, staying well ahead of the rest of the competition.

Hundreds of volunteers contributed for months to bring you this wonderful piece of software, which is still freely available as open source software. Thanks a billion, all! Your work is greatly appreciated by this non-profit!

What’s new in Joomla 1.6?

• Better access control for viewing and editiong of content, with definable user groups and access levels.
• A completely user-configurable category structure (no more messing with sections!), allowing for simple or complex, multi-layered categories.
• Improved extension management, allowing you to install several extensions in one simple go, or to update existing extensions with a simple click of the button.
• Improved language support for the development of multilingual websites.
• Configurable start and end dates for the visibility of modules; more control over where modules are visible.
• New templates, and a semantic template markup, pleasing both to the eye and to search engines.
• More creative possibilities thanks to the template styles.
• Hundreds of other new functionalities to improve your workflow and productivity

You’ll understand that we won’t be rolling out a new version of our website just yet – we’ll wait until the application deadline for our Comenius & Grundtvig courses is over, if you don’t mind!

Embedit.in is one of those applications you just have to write something about -it’s a web application that provides embed codes for just about any document or site you would like to show on your site: pdf files, Office or WordPerfect documents are now actually shown on your site in a nice and customizable little player, as you can see in the full post, so there’s no software required to view documents. Read the rest of this entry »

The European Commission offers grants for courses listed in their Comenius/Grundtvig course database, covering course fee, travel & subsistence. With the application deadline of 14 January approaching rapidly, we would like to draw your attention to some courses the non-profit organization Let’s Learn IT has to offer.

Course overview

1. Moodle at School: Installing & Deploying a Course Management System for Language Teachers (BE-2010-128-003)
   This one week course, which takes place in Athens, Greece, from 10 – 17 July 2011, will give you everything you need to know in order to not only install but also configure and manage your own Moodle Course Management System. Additionally, you will also learn how to effectively implement all of its features in your daily teaching practice.
2. Tools for teachers: New Media & Web 2.0 Applications (BE-2010-130-003)
   This one week course, which takes place in Ghent, Belgium, from 24 July – 31 July 2011, will give you an overview of many New Media applications (such as Blogs, Wikis, social networks, etc), and show you how you can effectively implement all of their features in your daily teaching practice. Having completed this course, you will be able to create improved learning materials that will appeal to young & IT-savvy students.
3. Training for the Future – Improving Education with Blogs & Wikis (BE-2010-131-003)
   This course takes place in Ghent, Belgium, from 21 – 28 August 2011. As blogs and wikis abound on the web, it is essential teachers as well as students learn how to work with them, and how they can implement them in their daily teaching practice. Creating a blog or wiki can easily happen in a matter of minutes it does take more than that to turn your blog or wiki into a successful learning experience.

If you think these courses might interest any of your colleagues, then please share this information with them. For more specific information, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Preregistration & information

People who are interested should preregister for our courses as soon as possible via our Preregistration Form. Full details regarding the courses are also available via the overview of our international courses.

Application Deadline

The application deadline for Comenius – Grundtvig courses comes very early this year (14 January 2011). It is therefore very important that you submit your application for funding before 13 January 2011. For country-specific deadlines, please inquire with your own National Agency.

Everybody who followed our previous advice to upgrade, please upgrade again, especially if you have remote publishing activated.

While others need not worry immediately, it’s always a good idea to install security upgrades. You can download the latest version from their site.

As always, and since version 3, upgrading should be relatively pain-free (just go to your Dashboard and hit the upgrade link). According to their site, here’s why you should upgrade:

This release fixes issues in the remote publishing interface, which under certain circumstances allowed Author- and Contributor-level users to improperly edit, publish, or delete posts.

These issues only affect sites that have remote publishing enabled.