Group items tagged

yWriter is a free, highly rated, novel writing program that I found through a very complimentary review in PC Magazine. It is for the PC. Just save your file as an RTF with chapter headings and it will import right into ywriter.

This fascinating tool for writing novels has other applications for writing books with chapters.

Movie Maker 2 is a great entry level moving making program for the PC -- and MovieMaker comes FREE with your PC. (I highly recommending updating Movie Maker before embarking on a project!) I love atomic Learning, and this should be a great tutorial.

"August 1, 2011, 5:51 pm By Rachel Wiseman College students with very poor vision have had to struggle to see a blackboard and take notes-basic tasks that can hold some back. Now a team of four students from Arizona State University has designed a system, called Note-Taker, that couples a tablet PC and a video camera, and could be a major advance over the small eyeglass-mounted telescopes that many students have had to rely on. It recently won second place in Microsoft's Imagine Cup technology competition. (...) The result was Note-Taker, which connects a tablet PC (a laptop with a screen you can write on) to a high-resolution video camera. Screen commands get the camera to pan and zoom. The video footage, along with audio, can be played in real time on the tablet and are also saved for later reference. Alongside the video is a space for typed or handwritten notes, which students can jot down using a stylus. That should be helpful in math and science courses, says Mr. Hayden, where students need to copy down graphs, charts, and symbols not readily available on a keyboard. (...) But no tool can replace institutional support, says Chris S. Danielsen, director of public relations for the [NFB]. "The university is always going to have to make sure that whatever technology it uses is accessible to blind and low-vision students," he says. (Arizona State U. has gotten in hot water in the past in just this area.) (...) This entry was posted in Gadgets."

Atmosphir is a free video game / creation tool for Mac & PC. Design mode lets you create enormous 3D platforming levels filled with fun gameplay elements like power-ups and fireballs, while Play mode lets you explore through the thousands of diverse user-created challenges being uploaded every day.

A new RSS reader has come on the scene called Fever. It lets you say "how hot" certain feeds are for you and also looks at the web and predicts the hottest things for you to read. I'm on my ipad this weekend so I can't buy and install fever (I think it resides on a Mac -- looking for a PC version now.) This is basically software that one person designed that is getting some buzz in tech circles for usability and making RSS feed reading manageable again. Worth a look.

This is a must try site which provides an amazing 3D world which teaches English and maths core skills. Players race against two other randomly chosen online players of a similar level. The questions start out very easy and adapt to the performance of the player. The questions are read out and some are displayed on the screen. The player just clicks on the correct multiple choice answer to increase their speed. There is a download for PCs and Macs as well as apps for iPad and Android. There are teacher accounts which allow you to make logins for lots of children quickly. When there log in students will be asked to design an avatar. Because the resource requires a sizeable download it takes a little time to set up, but because it runs on your local device game play is very smooth and quick. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

This is a truly amazing iPad app and 'soon to be launched' download for PCs which replaces a whole TV crew and studio. Capture your video and audio use like adjusting the sound levels, an in-build teleprompter and green screen effects to make spectacular footage. Edit your video directly in the app and add images, websites and Twitter feed as cutaways sections of the screen. You can publish online and export to YouTube. Download the app at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/touchcast/id603258418 http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Video%2C+animation%2C+film+%26+Webcams

A superb Windows app which turns your touchscreen PC into a powerful note and sketch pad with a huge range of tools.

The demise of Britannica is being pontificated but I agree that it wasn't Wikipedia that killed it. I don't totally agree with this author in that the PC killed Britannica because it became our information portal through the Internet.

Solution for not being able to play Youtube videos inside of Facebook on a Power PC chip Mac computer. It is so easy and it works.

If you have a PC and want to write offline and then upload, Windows Live Writer is your option. It is actually a very powerful (free) tool for blogging. Here's a blog post about why Scott Hanselman uses this app for his blogging. I've used it off and on but am using it even more now that I have a Surface Pro. I used to draft on my ipad in Blogsy but the biggest issue I had was adding links and full compatibility with wordpress - I can do it all on my Surface Pro using Windows Live Writer. This post links to the app and the why-to from this blogger. It works with wordpress, blogger, and more.

If you're not already using Dropbox - you should. They had a developer conference and will likely end up everywhere in every app. Some very cool things coming. Just like Evernote - who has a powerful "trunk" features where developer work is showcased - Dropbox is going to find that opening up to development opens a whole new marketplace and ingenuity beyond what they have in house.  Some info from the wired article.  "But after all that single-mindedness, Houston and Ferdowsi now want to let their baby sing. Today, at Dropbox's first-ever developers conference, the company is officially launching a new set of coding tools designed to push Dropbox into every corner of your digital life. Not content to stay sequestered inside the box, the company's co-founders are unveiling ways for developers to meld their service with every app on every device you own. For the first five or so years of its existence, Dropbox was synonymous with its "magic folder." Save your files in the Dropbox folder on your computer, and they "magically" reappear in your Dropbox apps on your phone and tablet and in your Dropbox account on the web. Now, if developers take to the company's new tools, the service will escape the confines of this folder, fusing with third-party apps running on practically every computer and smartphone operating system. Houston wants Dropbox to become the "spiritual successor to the hard drive." He says the hard drive needs to be replaced because so many of us are doing so much computing on devices that don't fit the traditional paradigm for working with files. Users don't interact with files on iOS, Android, or the web the way they do on PCs. Apps don't have "open" or "save" options that launch a separate window where you tap through a folder tree."

This is a fab suite of programming tools and toys from Microsoft Research. The site using HTML 5 which means that it works across most devices from PCs, Apple, Android and more. It has a get tutorial section to get you started and you are able to pick apart coding from other public projects. You can share your finished scripts and programmes with a link to play on most devices and even export it to the Windows Store. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

Google now is worth installing on iPad and iPHones and you can get it even if you don't have a Droid phone. This instruction at PC mag tells you how, but it is part of the Google Search app. Download that and follow these instructions to set it up. There are privacy concerns so I wouldn't do this with students. Educate yourself but you might just get a handy personal assistant.

Tool for mixing music.

This program comes highly recommended. Only the pay version lets you save music, but you can play with this flash interface to see how it works for mixing music - recommended for middle and elementary PC users.

Create free online music clips for use as ring tones, in podcasts, or other media projects. Arrange loops, record your voice, or upload your own mp3's to create your music. This could be a useful tool for creating music on a PC without Garageband.

Thanks for sharing!

Great news for you PC users who love your iphone or itouch - you can now synch all your google cal's to your itouch -- OH BABY, this makes my weekend!

Fascinating way to create virtual servers.

This software lets you take one host PC server and this lets you virtualize servers. In Walton County - have 100 servers and 60 are virtual. All independent and have their own IP address and appear completely independent -- they have 6 blade servers. This does cost money. This would let me move the Accelerated Reader and Accounting system to separate "virtual servers" and if one needed to reboot, I could reboot a "virtual server" and not the physical server. This is from an expert IT - Jack Higgins, Network Analyst - Walton County schools in Atlanta, GA -- met by accident in the Atlanta airport. A lot of these bookmarks are from him!

ZOMG! Amazng FREE software for making yearbooks! Mac & PC compatible! SCORE!

Permalink for a list of 157 Free Applications for the PC and MAC. This list includes all of the top apps, and some that may suprise you. If you are into open source or freeware, this article from PCMag is a must read.