WebedtecH

Say Goodbye to Adobe Creative Suite | MakeUseOf.com

Varun over at Makeuseof.com has compiled a great list of alternatives to the Adobe suite of applications. Now I do like Adobe products, but being a “frugal” guy when it comes to software I’m always into other options.

I had it.  I know I did.  Now I can’t find it.  My precious little 8 GB thumb drive that I kept personal information, portable applications, and associated “stuff” on has gone on walkabout.  Now, I’m not worried so much about the personal info since everything was encrypted on the drive (everything of importance that is) but just the raw inconvenience of not having it is bugging me.  Luckily a while ago I started backing up the contents of the drive on a regular basis.  I’ll explain how…but you Mac users are on your own since my process only works on a PC.

The solution was simple enough.  I wrote a batch file (oh take me back to the good old days) that would copy anything that had changed on the drive to my hard drive with a single command.  Here’s the contents of the batch file (ironically called flashback.bat):

Since F: is the drive letter my flash drive is always assigned to when I plug it into the computer it’s easy to designate the batch file to copy all the contents of the drive.  The cool parts come from the switches at the end.

These two switches are enough to do a complete automated backup by just running the batch file.  If you want a smarter file add the following one:

This way only those files who have been modified since your last backup will be copied, making it process much faster.

No matter how you do it, get into the habit of backing up your portable drives in case they get lost, stolen, consumed by a canine, etc.  You can never be too careful.

Tags: backup, thumb drive, usb, data, portable

I decided to go back and try the Flock web browser again for it’s blogging capabilities. Since it’s now out in version 1.1 I thought my odds were good this would be a proper solution to streamlining my writing efforts. Here’ s the key to my situation:

I have tried to get into the habit of writing posts in advance and queuing them up each day. If I can get about two or three days ahead in my writing I don’t feel quite so bad when the real world creeps in and interrupts my precious schedule. The dilemma arises from the fact I haven’t found a good editor outside of the default one in Wordpress which allows me to change the timestamp when publishing. If I can set the timestamp in the future, I’m all set. (If you know of something PLEASE let me know.)

My alternative is to post blogs to my site without publising them and then going back to set the schedules all at one time. While this isn’t optimal it certainly is liveable. I was hoping the Flock browser would provide that functionality, but alas it does not. For all the features of the new browser version, without that it really doesn’t offer me more than what I have built out in Firefox with a vast array of extensions. I’m now trying a desktop blogging client called w.bloggar which seems to have the post but not publish option as part of it’s suite. Well see as soon as press the button on this post…

UPDATE - Sweet…looks like this puppy is going to do the job quite well. As soon as I configured my settings to use Wordpress rather than custom I gained access to the Advanced Post settings which include the time/date stamp! Let the blogging commence!

(Even better…this thing runs from a USB Drive! Now if I could only find mine…)

UPDATE 2 - Hmmm…time. Seems that if I schedule something for a specific time the system adjusts it to Pacific Time even though I have the Wordpress Time Zone set correctly. I’ll just need to keep that in mind for the future posts.

I’ve always been a big advocate of using collaborative software for teachers and administrators due to the time constraints and geographic separations of those roles in most cases. Unfortunately, I still hear, “we can’t use that, it’s not the exact same as Word, and we’re deciding on a form”.

I’ll agree that Google Docs is not exactly the same as Word, but I’ll challenge the notion you cannot use it to design a form for your use. You just need to remember which part of the form you’re collaborating on. If you use Google Docs to rough in the structure of the form and concentrate on the content to be included, you can come to a consensus quite rapidly. Once the discussion has settled, you then export the “final draft” from Google Docs to Word and create the final form.

Remember, collaboration is most often about the content…not whether or not two lines meet at the right spot.

It’s not often that a company on the web surprises me. No matter how many promotional efforts are made to say “we care about our customers” or empty promises are issued, they usually wind up disappointing in the end. I can happily say that Ning.com has impressed me. Let me explain…

I posted recently about my concerns regarding using Ning, the social networking platform, in an educational setting due to features such as embedded advertising and links to other Ning sites that cannot be suppressed. I’m not the only one who has voiced these concerns. The response startled me though.

I received an email from a representative of Ning the day after I posted the blog entry.   Phil M. was kind enough to inform me that Ning “happily removes advertising for education networks where the students are in grades 7 - 12.”  The fact they are willing to remove the advertising is less impressive to me than the fact they are watching for comments about their service in the educational space and are willing to go to the effort to ensure their branding is coming across correctly.  Now to be completely honest I was aware of Ning’s willingness to remove the advertising and have had it done on a social space I am already running (but I didn’t know it was public knowledge.)

There is an extensive debate in the education space about the value of social networking for students and schools.  I have my own opinions as does everyone else so I won’t clutter the air with them right now.  But since I do know Ning is listening, I’ll make this recommendation:  integrate collaborative tools such as documents and files through partnerships with companies like Google and Zoho and you’ll have a much more compelling argument for the educational world.

As I said, I’m pleasantly surprised by the response…so keep it up Ning and I see a bright future for you in education.