education & tech

Internet has changed and keep things changing every day. Five years now, I had the opportunity to meet young interesting people worldwide, thanks to the hacks it was possible to introduce to the old Blogspot platform.

All of these talented guys had stop working on the new Blogger platform, although they still keep blogging on particular issues developed by Google people and its Blogger in draft fancy project.

Some remain giving out advice on how to teak Blogspot templates. We used to collect all templates we thought deserved special attention. Lately, however we've also give it a stop. The reason, there are lots of templates out there where you can pick and start running your own blog almost immediately. Great bloggers provide this missed assistance nowadays: BlogU , Beautiful Beta and Bloggerbuster.

It's hard to explain in a single post, all three new features offered since last week in Blogger in Draft, at least we can begin with the explanations from Flisha Fernandez, who's currently finishing her last year of Masters in Computer Science at the Ateneo de Manila University. Random Detoxification is her blog and she's worked out one of the features we've talking about here. How to embed a Comment Box in Blogger.

Head over her blog to learn how to deal with it. Be aware, though, this how-to works only with Blogger in Draft enabled, " If, however, you downloaded a customized Blogger template from another site or made your own changes to the template, doing this won't work", she explains.

What are the blogs you've found useful in order to built your blog on Blogger?

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The human brain is arguably God’s greatest creation – it has the ability to continue growing in intelligence and sponging up knowledge for as long as you live. All you need are the catalysts called enthusiasm and a willingness to learn. Though we are inundated with phrases, nuances, pronunciations and words from one or more languages from the time we’re born, there’s no doubt that if we up and moved to a different country where a totally new tongue is spoken, we’d learn the local lingo in just a couple of months.

Being a linguist offers various advantages – at work, you can interact with people from other cultures more freely, on vacation you can fit right in if you speak the language of the locals, and of course, generally speaking, you can show off your multiple tongues in the presence of the opposite sex.

The best way to pick up a new language is to be surrounded by people who speak only in that tongue at all times – desperation and a sense of survival force you to learn the lingo or be left out. But there’s no need to move to Rome in order to be able to speak fluent Italian, not with Second Life around. The virtual world has made headlines for various things, one of them being the ease with which foreign languages are taught and picked up by interested students.

The advantages to learning a new tongue on Second Life are many:

- The courses are more cost-effective than those offered in the real world. Some of them are even free of cost.
- There are instructional videos which teach you the right pronunciation and diction, things you would find hard to pick up from a book of phrases.
- Voice chat options allow you to correct your pronunciation.
- You can interact with other students and probably set up a study group so you can practice what you’ve learned using other members.
- And best of all, there are virtual cities that communicate entirely in foreign languages. So if you’re learning French, hang around a French community and practice what you’ve learned. It’s the next best thing to (and much more economical than) moving to France!

That Second Life has 5,000 language students and 1,000 instructors, numbers which are growing by the day, is itself a testimonial to how this application which began life as a virtual game, morphed into one of the best online, interactive educational tools of our time.

(*)Sarah Scrafford is an industry critic, as well as a regular contributor on the subject of Capella University review. She invites your questions, comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address: sarah.scrafford25@gmail.com.

Fields turn green and flowers bloom, birds return from their long winter migration. The sounds of summer soon begin, with children laughing and enjoying the most popular pastimes. Are they? Unless your kids count on organized football leagues, pee wee baseball, swimming, kids just don't seem to play 'pickup' games or get involved in elderly family conversations like before. The reasons can be as different as families we have, but taking away the enjoyment of summer and the freedom that allow kids to create, invent and discover new games and sports, we as teachers and parents, are preventing our children from discovering themselves and acquiring life skills that can ultimately improve their chances of future success.

It has often said that television is the modern day babysitter, and more and more heads of households are relying on the 'boob tube' to entertain youngsters and keep them safely indoors. As if the hundreds of channels available on cable TV aren't enough, most children now have access to computers, entertainment consoles and handheld video games.

Many (even ourselves) are choosing to play virtual sports rather than get together in the park, school playgrounds or visit your family or friend('s) for a quick game of ball. Before it gets completely out of hand and after we lose more obese children or have shootings and killings in the educational world, parents and teachers as well, should limit and encourage kids to use less time spend on using the most current technology and if necessary, encourage them to go out and play. Kids just don't do it anymore.

But once they find the computer or TV are off limits and the Playstation is put away, they will quickly realize that the best way to enjoy this summer is to play outside and have old fashioned fun. What do you think?

Technorati: kids, sports, summer, school, health

Two posts of fellow bloggers had been in our spotlight, not the one about selling a Twitter account which bids in eBay over pass the one thousand dollars and going up!

One of these post was written by Sumesh and he claims that most bloggers are only echoing the blogosphere, in fact, he says "Blogs like TechCrunch and ArsTechnica often get inside scoops of upcoming events, and post them to their blogs." but justify at the same time, that echoing for large blogs as the well know TechCrunch.

This assertion comes in had with that one written a while now by Rubel and that we commented here. Certainly we have to agree with both Sumesh and Rubel about the laziness and the echo chambered situation; unfortunately, as the same Steve wrote on these days about how the blogosphere was plagued by marketers which of course damages the quality of what's been said in the blogosphere, because those persons are interested not in info and freshness of content but hits and advertisement. Some had make prognosis of the over saturation of Internet into ten years. How this spam blogs and mirrors and the best cases are helping to this phenomena? I invite you to scratch an answer.

Now, if blogosphere is being affected by unimportant blogs, what will happen with those who decide to migrate platform, erase a blog or simply open an account, but after a few days or months decide it is not worth to keep writing on their respective pages? The answer is being elaborated by a prestigious Spanish network, the Spanish Blogger Union (UBH), the editor of this mega blog thinks nobody should erase a blog and her post is addressed particularly to free hosting blogs such as Blogger and Wordpress. Carmen, the editor suggests, she'd found many cases where old domains were re-owned for people who are not doing a good use of the Internet. When people erase a blog in Blogspot, somebody else can get the subdomain, a matter that it's not an issue in Worpress because they don't allow new users to take over old subdomains.

From our personal experience, we can add not only you shouldn't erase your blog but when editing content don't just change it, write o note that explains you had introduced some change either, the post or title of a post. Why? Because it will be prejuicial of other bloggers who already wrote a link back to you.

Have a wonderful weekend and please, head over lifestream and follow our conversations there.

Technorati: micropersusion, techzilo, ubh, blogger, wordpress, tips

Jeremiah Owyang is a Web Strategist based in SF Bay Area and I've been subscribed to his feed a while now and of course reading everyday his updates. With today's posts he comes to conclude something everyone is doing but not in technical terms as he's put it, read and pay close attention:

Recently, I was at a swanky restaurant in SF, a CEO was picking up the tab so I could order whatever I wanted. I asked folks on Twitter “what should I order at Restaurant X” I received several responses, and immediately noticed a pattern and ordered the ribs with confidence, it was a success.

I frequently ask questions about what people think about in the news, I often receive popular opinion back from politics, tech issues, and other question. There’s a lot of gray answers here, but it’s a quick way to scan and obtain the variety of opinions about a particular topic. This method fuels the start of my initial research phase, I can get all the ideas on on a table, then hone in on the ideas that matter.

Lastly, referral content is shared, topics spread and people will offer up new suggestions, related content that isn’t necccearily going to be found in a web search.

Again, I have my account in Twitter but normally I am not using it and exploiting as many experienced ones are doing it. I guess, Jeremiah's post will oblige me to re-think my posture in about this so popular microblogging tool and now a 'social computer'

Technorati: twitter, jeremiah+owyang

I won't provide detailed information here about all the Photoshop Brushes but I would like to introduce to you a very resourceful blog and webpage where you can find all (or almost all) information about graphics and illustration explained in a easy way in tutorial and how-to explanations that even the inexperienced can catch it in a fly.

Photoshop is so far, the most popular graphics editing program. Produced by Adobe, its latest version is CS3. Having hundreds of plug-ins, brushes and gradient packs, Photoshop is increasing in utility every day.

Why am I writing about graphics-illustrations.com? The answer is the picture below.

Silvia is the person behind all this work, she's Croatian and before establishing graphic-illustrations. com she was writing for blogspot hosting blogs but even when she's concentrated in her page she also holds two more pages Blogffiliate, Squidoo Photoshop Brushes and BSilvia.com where she continues working with Photoshop graphics (over 600 dollars you might need to get it) and where tallking about her home country, she points out:

...for many Croatians it’s just not easy to go to Croatia, spend time to find the old roots. And even if you go there for a few days the weather is lousy, it rains or it’s too foggy to make a nice shot of your ancestors place.

Silvia was holding a contest for Entrecard Cards and still is offering for free some over here. And that's how we met Silvia and how she was able to design some Entrecards, as that on top right of our page.

She's all into business but we haven't paid a buck and we are not being paid for this review. It's the quality of her job and the social networking which compel us to write about Silvia. She's updating her page every Monday and Thursday, so stay tuned and in the mean time check out her newest Valentine Photo Contest!

Technorati: photoshop, brushes, graphics, graphic+illustrations, how-to, tutorials, blogging

A few days now, I was reading some posts about a new term that it's becoming viral in the Internet: The Micro celebrities. At least, that's how Scoble define a blogger with a deep knowledge in particular field of expertise. You all know, we have millions and millions of blogs and in all different languages, but how is it possible to become a celebrity just being a blogger?

First of all you need to have guts to keep up with your writings and the process of searching new and updated information. Not the info you can get from the very first blog but trusted sources that respect privacy and copyrights where is necessary. No wonder your reader don't leave comments, they will leave them after you show expertise or authority. Watch out the Lazysphere.

First thing you need to do is host a blog. Yes, that's easy you might say. What it's hard to find is the name and the field you're going to cover. You don't want a simple personal blog for such a celebrity. So, consider Kyle Eslick, as to how find a good domain name. Look for these topics: The Domain length, Memorable, Easily Spelled, Includes Keywords and Avoid Plurals. Then, if you still need help, subscribe to a wide community bloggers where you are going to get support for keep going. A good resource is Bloggst.

Make yourself noticed online, but most importantly, don't get discouraged if someone comes to tell you that your writings 'stink', that they disagree with you in many points or in the worst case scenario they steal your postings. Muhammad Saleem, gives a good sample of what's going on with Bloggers exposure:

"...the problem you start having is that if there is a relatively young and insightful blogger who is going up against an already established blogger with an extensive audience, it’s incredibly difficult for the younger blogger to break through."

It's terrible hard to become a millonaire but it's as hard as a blogger can be a celebrity, knowing the millions of millions are better than you and similar quantities are worst than you. YOU are the best blogger, ever! Keep that in mind.

Update:
Aditya Mukherjee also writes about two different things bloggers should be watching in the blogosphere: "It’s about time we differentiated between popularity and quality."

GIMP is an open-source image editing program. It is supported by a huge open-source community that is open in every aspect. As the author of this post quipped: "what better way for me to admire GIMP than by presenting a list of some amazing, beautiful and stunning brushes?"

Support Techzilo and his hard work in favor of Open Source, heading to Digg and make his job well known.

Please, go and Digg it now.

It's being sad that precisely today when Steve Jobs was to deliver his speech Twitter let down all its users. I wasn't affected because I had no time to follow up this event live but people in the other side of the world, they even went to sleep in order to catch up Jobs intervention. Check out what Mike Bogle in Sydney had to suffer ( http://www.techticker.net/2008/01/twitters-starting-to-get-my-goat.html).

As I said, many people was anxious to hear what Steve Jobs had to say. We wait patiently and read the Keynote Live hosted by Duncan Riley.

In San Francisco though, Louis Gray spotted eight types of MacWord Watchers:

1. The True Believers.
2. The Mac Rumors Psychos.
3. Ye Olde Macolytes.
4. The Corporate Spies.
5. The Windows Bigots.
6. The Secret Mac Wannabes.
7. The Bloggers and Rumormongers.
8. The Curious iPod/iPhone Owner.

Ha!. When watching Apple events, think that not only Big Dad might be watching over.

Read More...

Free hosted blogs in Wordpress still can have google docs embed in their templates. That's what I've discovered after trying to upload a gift my sister sent to me for Christmas. For those bloggers leaving Blogspot, I have to tell them, this is one of the reasons I still 'survive' in Blogger.


Learn how to do it: [http://www.killertechtips.com/2008/01/06/how-to-embed-google-docs-presentations-in-your-site/]

Trying to catch with Kirk and Improbulus. Thank you!

Tips and workarounds are placed in two post and whether you are a teacher or student, you better pay attention to these unblocking hacks if you allow me:

Getting around shool site blocks - Scobleizer.


Access blocked websites at school or work - Amit Agarwal.

Free Web Proxy Unblocker -SiteUnblocked.info

This is note today hit all sites and blogs I guess. And being an active user of Firefox I can be less than happy. Why? Because as they justify the mobile platform for Firefox, all people now a day use Internet in their mobile devices, so far FireFox is the most popular open-source browser; and, many companies already run Firefox in their phones such as NokiaN800, Ubuntu Mobile, and the Intel Internet Project.

Hector Russo during his daily searching had found a very useful tool in terms of online collaboration built by former students of Berkeley University. The project is called Vyew and as owners say: "Vyew is a FREE online meeting service that brings people and content together. Use Vyew to host LIVE conferences or collaborate over time, asynchronously(a fancy word for 'at your own convenience')."

Now, what this dating thing has to do with technology? Nothing. It's just a way to close this post with something very human and just in case some of our readers still need some guidance or advice in this field. Are you tired of online dating?. Check out the 25 ways to find a date offline, single oriented, though.

haven't time to write much these days but while browsing my Google Reader Subscription I've came across something you all bloggers might be interested, the problem of duplicate content when in search the results come from your feeds. Joost de Valk has being following the trend in Europe and gives some recommendations of how to avoid this problem with your blog articles:

...In my opinion they do lead to duplicate content problems too, so there’s really only one thing you can do, and that’s block ‘em. But I’d like to block those feeds without loosing the nice side effect of their links going into my posts

Now, the duplicate content can be also caused by spam and specially if you're not paying hosting as is the case with Blog spot blogs. In order to understand better the situation I would like to suggest check out the PhD Thesis from Pram Kolari who has plenty of information about this matter.

This post stroked me hard. The problem is that everyone agrees Technorati is on the chopping block but people that were on Technorati’s Top list are not precisely on the Techmeme Leaderboard and now word of mouth is saying that Techmeme threatens Technorati. What do you think? My own experience, I don't like the positioning of my blog from Technorati!

Maybe you didn't come for this library stuff. However, being and educated person as I am thinking you are you cannot walk away without reading what's going on with this new tip, the wikipedia's growing pain.

Finally, this is out of context definitively. This is a blog anyway. Shame on AT&T, I am a subscriber but not for Internet service. What the hell is wrong with these guys. Do they forgot they're making businesses in America? Free speech, duh!

When I say 'even myself' that's what I really mean it. Easy explanation of what you should be doing in order to rank high for the crawling search robots. Talk of Search Engines Optimization is not easy at least you're an experienced web developer as our dear Techzilo for example, but the article I am about to quote is easy to understand and I am paying attention what's Joe Hayes is saying:

"...any search engines goal is to return the most relevant results for the user’s query. Your site must be more relevant for that particular search than any of your competition. Once your site is crawlable or otherwise search engine friendly, it pretty much comes down to backlinks. All things being equal, the site with the most (relevant, powerful, and in quantity) backlinks will win. Things like the age of the backlinks, sudden surges in recent backlinks, relevancy (have I mentioned relevancy?), and strength of the backlinks among the things that play a part in how your website ranks today. Once you get top 10 exposure, writing the best content should get you to the top eventually.

Can you please add any other factor I should be considering to rank high?

I remember when I was studying for HS tests and the time I used to spent trying to memorize facts that I've never used after. Being a good student meant to get higher grades and getting high grades meant to recite everything exactly as the teacher said.

The question is: How to learn more and study less, because as the author states, the time spent studying not always means learning. The answer is what has been called Holistic Learning, much related with the Holistic Education. There are some tools that can help you shift your learning habits so they become more holistic, why not give it a try:

1. Visceralize, take all of your senses and connecting it to information.
2. Metaphor, these are literary devices that link two things that normally don’t go together.
3. Ten Year Old Rule, “dumb down” an idea enough so it seems obvious to yourself.
4. Trace Back, relate that idea to another concept in your subject.
5. Refresher Scan, quickly link that information back to existing ideas through viscerlization and metaphor.
6. Compress Information, find ways to group information into smaller chunks of memory through pictures or mnemonics.
7. Write, cribble and use abbreviations to link the ideas together.

As I watched the video went to Yahoo for seeing the new features and what I've found is the "n" and "c" but not the "t" for text messages! Anyone can explain that?


Thanks to Digital Inspiration

I don't like to yell nobody just to be heard or use Gmail with emoticons/smileys just to look kool as many of you will be thinking. This post pretend to show you some issues still Blogger has to work on.

Error Performing Your Request bX-vjhbsj. Is one of the most typical issues TonNet has to face once in while trying to republish a post or editing the template.

Once you cache get to know what language are you using to blog, Blogger neglects to switch a different one, something so obvious that shouldn't need a drop down box!

If you already had bought a domain through Blogger you must be happy whether all the process of redirection is working but if you tried *.mil as an option then you might get into trouble.

Surely you are using Firefox (if not is time to get it) and even when this browser works beautifully we still have some tricks to learn, have you ever tried a faster way to type Internet addresses? Go and grab it!

Have a wonderful beginning of week!

Last night I had an argument with a female coworker, she' s a nice person a nice single girl. However, we just got into that kind of male-female conversation and sudently all turned a disaster. I am expceting to meet her today and try to clarify things. I really like her and I truly respect her. She's kind of my keepsake! Excuse the expression for now.

I am not a american native or so but I try to write in English and precisely I found interesting what in this blog, her author had to say about her experiences about the concept and definition of Avoid the Noid. I think we all should avoid the Noid when productivity is the key.

She also has an interesting idea. Did I mention her blog is Adsense Tracker? Well, she is into this project, called I Review, Do You?. I am not putting the button yet, sorry young girl but what I want to say is that this blog is new and the approach that it is taking is what makes it interesting. "Every blogger wants traffic. I spend tons of time doing things to try to generate visits to this site and you probably do the same for your blog." has being said in Adsense Tracker.

Do A I begging for a review? It's all up to you. But be known that our pourpose is to bring traffic to our blog through a cooperative community effort. Think of not only the great contacts you would make and the aditional visitors you would get but also all of those wonderful backlinks. I am not saying it, she is the girl!

I've already dugg it but I would like to share this link with you because certanly many people is running to Facebook just to get a piece of this big social cake.

I've jumping around with all socialnetworks that had been launched. I am part of LinkedIn, Peopleized, Spicy not to mention iLike, Twitter or Pownce. But one that make me stop, think and stand is Facebook not only because it's for college students but all people looking for contacts, information and sharing. However, using professionally this socialnetwork application has other connotations:

If you haven’t gotten drawn in by the hype, it may surprise you to learn that many people have already found Facebook to be an essential addition to their web working toolbox. Why? Because the Facebook social networking experience can be precisely what you want to make of it. Think of Facebook as a professional tool, and that’s what it is. It doesn’t matter how millions of high school and college students are using Facebook to get out of doing homework.

Follow up all others interesting post Judi Sohn has written in Web Worker Daily. As for me this is one of the most important ones.

Update:

Facebook is so over.