Group items tagged

"Google just mistakenly announced updated versions of its Google Drive apps for iOS and Android that will go live within the next couple of days. Google has since deleted this post, but the updates are scheduled to arrive soon. Both native apps are getting a slew of new (and necessary) features that will make them far more usable, but most importantly, the iPhone app will soon allow you to edit documents right in the app. "

"Last night, robots shut down the live broadcast of one of science fiction's most prestigious award ceremonies. No, you're not reading a science fiction story. In the middle of the annual Hugo Awards event at Worldcon, which thousands of people tuned into via video streaming service Ustream, the feed cut off - just as Neil Gaiman was giving an acceptance speech for his Doctor Who script, "The Doctor's Wife." Where Gaiman's face had been were the words, "Worldcon banned due to copyright infringement." What the hell?"

A decidedly low tech device, the humble pencil, is providing some tongue-in-cheek insight into current education debates via Twitter. In the past 24 hours, educators have tweeted the hashtag #pencilchat thousands of times. The tweets are undeniably witty, but they also reflect the frustration teachers feel over everything from schools' technophobia to budget cuts, which may make #pencilchat the best-and most clever-education allegory ever.

The Federal Government has released a smartphone application to provide quick and easy access to information about emergencies and disasters across the country. The DisasterWatch app can be downloaded for free and contains the latest public information via a direct feed from emergency response teams in each state and territory.

"Create A Custom Online Newspaper Page" ... by bringing in RSS feeds on topics of your choice

"Over the last 12 months both Facebook and Twitter have quietly removed RSS links from their webpages, eliminating an easy way to receive notifications without the need to interact with the services directly. Meanwhile Google+ has never offered RSS feeds. Of course it's clear that these social media services have an interest in killing off RSS. They all want to usurp its role as the web's universal subscription platform and become the de facto gatekeepers of the web."

Skylines, a photo search engine based in Amsterdam, launched a new product today, a widget that users can customize to show a real-time feed of photos on their website. Through Skylines's widget, users have access to more than five million photos being added daily from various platforms including Twitter, TwitPic, Instagram, Yfrog and Lockerz. The widget, which can be added to any website or online publication for free, displays real-time photos on any topic of choice

Google has released a completely visual programming language that lets you build software without typing a single character. Now available on Google Code - the company's site for hosting open source software - the new language is called Google Blockly, and it's reminiscent of Scratch, a platform developed at MIT that seeks to turn even young children into programmers. Like Scratch, Blockly lets you build applications by piecing together small graphical objects in much the same way you'd piece together Legos. Each visual object is also a code object - a variable or a counter or an "if-then" statement or the like - and as you piece them to together, you create simple functions. And as you piece the functions together, you create entire applications - say, a game where you guide a tiny figurine through a maze.

"ScreenCastify was the star of my Google+ feed yesterday. It seemed like everyone was talking about this new Chrome tool that allows you to create screencast videos in your browser even on a Chromebook. With ScreenCastify installed in Chrome you can record everything happening in a tab in your browser. "

This could be a useful tool for bloggers

"Makers and alpha geeks have found meaningful applications for the internet of things but there is still a big gap between them and the average user who doesn't want to hack. How do we design for everyone?"

More Seth Goden observations on the death of so many things we hold traditional, (well sort of).

"I was asked by a colleague in another school the other day if I could give her a snapshot into what I actually do, and what the role of an ICT Integrator actually looks like (from my perspective anyway). Apparently she wants to talk to her school leaders about having an integrator on their staff and was trying to get an idea of what the role would entail from someone who does it..." A great read from Chris Betcher continuing on with the theme of what does an ICT and an e-Learning coordinator do.