Monthly Archives: February 2010

Feb 18 2010

Preying on Human Greed …

… and stupidity.  Here’s a picture of the inbox for one of my email accounts.

image

The little red flags indicate an unread message.  Gee, I haven’t ready any of these.  And, believe it or not, there are a whack more messages that never even make it to my inbox.  I have a rule that indicates that any message with a URL in it (for this particular account), gets filed away elsewhere.  The logic there is that more and more spammers are including links where you can “download updates” or “information on products”, etc.  More often than not, they let you download a file which may contain malware or the link just takes you to a webpage with advertising on it so that they get another hit and send a bill to the advertisement provider.  Sigh.

But, as I look at what’s left over, I’m smiling at what human frailties they are attacking.  Oooh, there’s an unsolicited business proposal.  I could get rich there.  I’m sure that the folks at Pfizer are really giving out their well researched products at a price of 70% off.  The Facebook folks are concerned about my account agreement.  So concerned are they, that they sent me multiple reminders.  Oh, and I like the fact that the person with the Japanese Yahoo address paid my delivery charges.  That was awful nice of him.  Gee, I didn’t know that I had a SWIFT ATM Card.  Sounds like there’s something up with my payment.  But, the best thing was kicking myself for four years to get a bachelor’s degree in Math and then another year for Education.  I could have just made a phone call.  And, why would I want to support my district’s Haiti relief drive?  I could have just provided my credit card number to that christin person.

In this day and age, only a greedy or silly person would actually open any of those messages.  It’s just a matter of highlighting and deleting them all.  Fortunately, you may never even see messages like this.  Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and any other service that you use probably has a pretty sophisticated piece of software that sniffs out these messages and either deletes them or throws them into a Spam folder for you so that you don’t have to sit through it.

So, don’t be greeding or stupid.  When you see messages like this and you have the ability, flag them as spam or junk so that you don’t get them again.  At the very least, just delete them.  Don’t let your curiosity get the better of you and open it only to find out that there’s a virus attached.

A report from Microsoft indicates that 97% of all email is spam so be thankful that you don’t have to wade your way through them all!  For more details and a global perspective of spam, check out this article.

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Feb 18 2010

links for 2010-02-17

Feb 17 2010

A Custom Bing Search

Google has a method of injecting a custom search into your website.  I’ve created one and it sits here.  It’s a great way to create a custom search rather than search the wide open internet.

You can do the same thing with Bing.  And, it’s so easy.  Just head over to this page and decide what kind of search you want.

For example, a basic search gives you code that looks like this.  If you read carefully, you do have to insert a value to indicate the language of choice.  I’m assuming that you’ll use English and so the value of 1252 does the trick.  Copy the entire code and head to the webpage where you want your search and switch to code view.  That’s the view that gives you the HTML coding.  Just paste the text and save it and you’ve got yourself a custom search.  Sometimes, finding just where to paste the code can be interesting as there are lots of goodies in HTML to confuse.  If that’s the case, what I do it go to design view and type something like “INSERT CODE HERE” so that it stands out from the page.  Highlight that and paste over top of it and the code goes in the right spot.

<!– Web search from Bing–>
<form method=”get” action=”http://www.bing.com/search”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”cp” value=”1252″ />
<input type=”hidden” name=”FORM” value=”FREEWS” />
<table bgcolor=”#FFFFFF”>
<tr>
<td>
<a href=”http://www.bing.com/”>
<img src=”http://www.bing.com/siteowner/s/siteowner/Logo_51x19_Dark.png” border=”0″ ALT=”bing” />
</a>
</td>
<td>
<input type=”text” name=”q” size=”30″ />
<input type=”submit” value=”Search Web” />
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>
<!– Web Search from Bing –>

So, the site above generates this on your webpage.  Of course, good egomanics always test it by searching for themselves first.

image

Bing offers you options as well.  Perhaps instead of searching the internet, you just want to search your site.  Use this code instead.  Make sure that you tell Bing what site to search.  Mine appears in red below

<!– Site search from Bing—>
<form method=”get” action=”http://www.bing.com/search”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”cp” value=”1252” />
<input type=”hidden” name=”FORM” value=”FREESS” />
<table bgcolor=”#FFFFFF”>
<tr>
<td>
<a href=”http://www.bing.com/”>
<img src=”http://www.bing.com/siteowner/s/siteowner/Logo_51x19_Dark.png” border=”0″ ALT=”Bing” />
</a>
</td>
<td>
<input type=”text” name=”q” size=”30″ />
<input type=”submit” value=”Search Site” />
<input type=”hidden” name=”q1″ value=”site:www.gecdsb.on.ca/d&g/” />
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>
<!– Site Search from Bing –>

So, why not add some additional functionality to your website and make it easier for your visitors to find things?  If you can copy and paste, Bing has made it very easy to add search to your site.

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Feb 17 2010

links for 2010-02-16

Feb 16 2010

A Microsoft Monday

It was a pretty cool day to be connected yesterday.  With the Olympics in full speed, there are so many resources that are available and I typically make my start at the CTV Olympics page.  It’s a great launch pad to take you to the latest and greatest stories from the Olympics games and you can actually get stories with a Canadian slant.

I have my laptop open and look over the lid to the television where the actual game coverage is happening and then I notice it.  The website is “powered by MSN” which you see quite a bit but right next to it is an offer to download a Custom Browser.  Sure enough, there’s a customized version of Internet Explorer to support the games.  It comes as no surprise that the multimedia from the site is delivered by Silverlight.  After all, this is “powered by MSN”.  if you’ve never played with Silverlight, it really is interesting and Bing maps are incredible when you take a look at them using the 3D Aerial feature.  So, with all of the Silverlight enhancements, it’s worth the download to get them.

But, there’s much more.  Into the browser, go ahead and inject what Microsoft is calling slices and have immediate access to video, headlines, and pictures right from the favourites bar.  On top of this, a whack of additional favourites are added to get the whole browsing experience.  This adds a whole new perspective on participating in the games.  if you’re a Windows user, you need to check this out…

Later in the day, the world was all buzzing about the Windows Phone 7 Series.  Now, I’d heard rumblings from our favourite Microsoft ambassador over the weekend and over Mexican food.  He was secretive but told us to stay tuned.  So, we found out about it yesterday.  You can actually take a test run at this website.  Click on the Windows icon to get an idea of what the future of mobile phones might look like.  You’re going to say “Xbox?”  You can run “Xbox on a telephone?”  While the product isn’t ready for sale, it looks especially inviting.

There are already movie demos talking about the advantages over its competitors — like having multiple applications open.  I like that concept.

So, just like the Olympics bombards us with media from all angles, I felt the same yesterday with my explorations into the world of Microsoft.

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Feb 16 2010

links for 2010-02-15

Feb 15 2010

Having a few friends over

Last night was a huge moment in Olympics as it applies in the Canadian context.  Sure, Canada wins medals at Olympic games all the time.  Not as many as we really want but the gold won by Alex Bilodeau in the Moguls event was so special because it was the first time that a Canadian had won a gold medal during a games hosted by Canada.  For that, we’re incredibly proud on this Monday morning.  Stories are all over the front pages of Canadian media and rightfully so.

Yes, it’s a pretty big deal.  I was going to embed a video but…

You can head over to TSN and watch it there though.

So, how did you enjoy the event?

Around our household, it was a great family event.  I’m in my chair; my wife and sister-in-law are on the couch; Bubby is in the other chair and we’re focussed on the incredible imagery and comments about the expertise of the athletes and how our knees could never handle the stress.  The couch and the rotating people assuming their positions make it incredibly unique.

But, I also had a few friends over for the event – virtually.  In addition to the group of us in the rec room, Twitter had opened the doors so that anyone who was connected at the time could share in the event.  So, in addition to the family, I’m enjoying things with good friends online.  The likes of @kellypower, @baded, @ITLynda, @techmental, @jasondeluca, @aforgrave, @digitalnative, and probably more are watching and wooting it up as we get closer to Bilodeau’s run.  After his run, we’re tweeting with our fingers crossed.

When everyone has run, we’re cheering in the rec room and online as well!  What a great party!  What a fantastic event!  And I didn’t have to buy extra chips and salsa for the guests!

It’s already a great memory and will be one of those moments that you want to have the answer to the question “Where were you when …”

I was with family and friends!

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Feb 15 2010

links for 2010-02-14

Feb 14 2010

Where do speakers come from?

Locked in a meeting room yesterday with six other people, we spent a nice Saturday reviewing submission proposals to speak at the Computer Science and Information Technology Symposium.  Since I’m now connected, I have access to my calendar and can point out that the date is July 13ths and the venue is the Google campus in Mountain View, California.  At the end of a very long day, we feel that we’ve put together yet another spectacular day for Computer Science and Information Technology teachers.

Sessions range from specific computer science topics to pedagogy topics to cutting edge new technology topics to addressing Advanced Placement to trends in the discipline to actual programming concepts to …

I’m always in awe in the specialties and the topics that are put forth in the proposals to speak at events like this.  When the day is done, the presenter might walk away with a coffee mug and the opportunity to have a little face time with colleagues.  It’s the face time that’s really important because it’s from this that reputations are created.  Many times as we were reviewing things, the comment from one of our reviewing team would be “Oh, I saw so and so present at blah, blah, blah” and the conversation continued from there.  It’s considerably easier to make decisions when you have a history to go along with the written proposals.

But, there will be some presentations given by people who are taking their first steps into public presentation.  It’s an exciting process for them and the committee really likes innovative and new approaches to any particular topic.  The logic is that if someone is interested enough in that coffee mug to write and submit a proposal, there are bound to be enough other people who are interested in the same concept.

And who knows?  This may be a launching point for a teacher to more speaking opportunities and maybe the beginning of something new and exciting.

I then think back to Wednesday when I met with our district’s computer contacts at the beginning of a three day marathon.  We start each session with introductions to each other and talk about a particular topic.  This time, the topic was “How do you share what you learn at these meetings with staff?”  We all recognize the importance of managing time in our lives and many of the tactics used was to create a summary and post it to the school’s conference on the FirstClass system.  It’s a great use of the conferencing feature of the system.  You post once; people can respond; the message sticks around for some time for later reference; and it’s a commonality for everyone in the school.

But, there were other options.  Some ask and get an opportunity to do a demonstration at a staff meeting.  Some find a particular topic so interesting to a particular group of teachers that they hunt down their colleagues for a little private coaching.  Some hold lunch and learn sessions and invite staff members to a little professional learning over a jelly sandwich.

As I think about all of this, I marvel at what just it means to be a teacher.  We’re just so happy to share whatever expertise that we may have with others.  Why?  Typically, because we believe that we grow and feed from each other.

There are also some people that really like the concept of public speaking and make it their life’s work.  You just need to take a look at the offerings at a speakers’ bureau like this one to see that.  I was recently looking for speaker for my boss and got side tracked by a name that I recognized and was curious about the fees.  The fee was more than my annual salary plus you had to fuel this person’s private jet to get them to your site.  That’s a pretty nice gig if you have access to an airport to accommodate this purpose!

This probably isn’t realistic for the bulk of us who like to present and share with our colleagues for coffee mugs.  Obviously, though, things of that scale are possible.

Who knows?  Maybe from the humble classroom coaching situation or from behind a podium at the Google campus, the next great speaker commanding a big salary may emerge.  Or, even better, a group of educators may be inspired to do new things for students.

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