Being the father of five children under the age of 16 years old, with a home that has three computers, four iPhones and three iPod Touches, I’ve been experimenting with software over the past few years to trying to reduce the likelihood of porn inadvertently showing up on their screens. After trying some commercial software for content filtering a couple of years ago, that ended up slowing down our old computer, I have found something that doesn’t kill our computer, and as an added bonus is FREE – OpenDNS.
OpenDNS allows you to filter web content and block adult websites on the internet by simply changing the DNS servers that your computer or router uses. While not full proof (no solution is), it quite works well. After you’ve setup an account, you can specify the kinds of web sites you want to block or allow. You can also specifically allow web sites that may be grouped in a category you have blocked. You have all the control that you could ask for. If you want you can install on one computer in your home to let OpenDNS know if your IP address changes, so that it can continue to filter based on the criteria you’ve set in their control panel.
If you want, you can also enable logging so that you can keep track of the websites computers in your house are visiting. This all happens transparently, without having to install any software on your computers, iPods or iPads.
The easiest way to protect all the computers and internet devices in hour home is to manually change the DNS servers that your internet router uses to the two OpenDNS servers. If you want to change your DNS settings now just use the following:
- 208.67.222.222
- 208.67.220.220
If you need help figuring out where to change the DNS settings for your router, OpenDNS has a great tutorial that shows you how on their website.
OpenDNS along with Dropbox and two services that every home should seriously consider using. OpenDNS is completely free, and Dropbox is free up to 2GB of data backed up. Enjoy!
48.483174
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Tags: education, Family, iPad, iPhone, mobile, Smart Phones, software
I have been an advocate for eBooks for a couple of years now, but in spite of the the flexibility and features that eBooks provide, my relationship with them is not always as loving is it could be. Let me start by listing all the things I love about eBooks:
- Portability: Being able to take a dozen books with me when I go on trips is wonderful (and taking them without breaking my back). Being able to have my book with me whenever I have my iPhone with me is great, especially when I’m stuck in a doctor’s office, or on a bus.
- Ease of Purchase: No need to travel across town to go to the book store. I can buy books on my iPhone or computer, and then have instant delivery to all my devices.
- Instant Dictionary Access: With some books in particular, being able to simply click on a word and instantly get a dictionary definition has made a high difference in my reading comprehension and enjoyment. Last summer I read the 20 book Master and Commander series, and found the dictionary feature to be invaluable as I was introduced into all sorts of archaic English and old nautical terms.
- Ability to see where other’s have highlighted parts of the book (in the Kindle app): This is a great flag to let me know when I should slow down and really pay attention when I’m reading. This would be particularly helpful when reading text books.
- Syncing bookmarks between devices. As a person with multiple reading devices (and iPad and iPhone) being able to switch back and forth between the two, and have them both keep track of where I am in the book is an extremely handy feature.
- Lastly as a person who’s eyes are starting to grow older, I can envision a day when I will appreciate the ability to increase the font size of the books I’m reading, without have to purchase a large text book.
In summary, eBooks have a lot of great things going for them. What is there not to like? Unfortunately a few things… Now for my list of complaints that turn my relationship with eBooks rocky from time to time:
- DRM is Evil! Most of my complaints below would go away if Digital Rights Management (DRM) software was not used when publishing eBooks.
- Cannot copy and past a paragraph into an email or to Facebook.
- I cannot choose the eBook reader I want to read my eBooks in. If I buy an eBook from Amazon, I have to read it in the Kindle reader. If I buy a eBook from Apple, I can only read it in the Apple iBook reader. I should be able to choose which app I want to read my books in no matter what store I’ve purchased it in.
- I can’t put my eBooks on my bookshelf at home to show off to visitors what books I’ve read, and what some of my interests are for (I guess that is what GoodReads.com is for).
- Apocalypse protection: If I’m away from civilization for some reason, and cannot charge me electronic devices, my beautiful eBook readers turn into pretty paper weights.
- For some people the color screens on tablets are hard on their eyes. For them, color eBook readers are a no go.
So yes, I do love my eBooks, but as in most relationships there is definitely room for growth and improvement. While I’m waiting for eBook vendors to improve I’ll enjoy reading books on my iPad and iPhone and try to ignore the shortcomings.
48.483174
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Tags: ebooks, education, iPad, research, Work
Introduction to the Survey Results
In addition to the technology questions we’ve been asking UVic Law students over the past nine years, we decided for the second year in a row to ask some extra questions about the mobile technology that students are arriving at Law School equipped with. This survey was completed by 139 incoming and transferring law students, which is a strong 90% plus response rate.
Executive Summary:
- 84% of incoming law students own “Smart Phones” that can browse the internet (up dramatically from 50% last year), with 42% of the total being iPhones, 13% Android and 27% Blackberry’s.
- 19% of students own tablet devices or ebook readers.
- 98% of students own laptops, and 16% own both a laptop and a desktop computer.
- 50% of student laptops are Mac’s, up from 44% last year.
- The average laptop price stayed basically the same as last year at $1,186, which is down from $1400 in 2007, and from $2,100 in 2004.
- The students’ average typing speed was was 60 wpm.
- 72% of all students bring their laptops to school almost every day.
- 55% of students use Gmail as their primary email account (up from 49% last year), 9% use UVic email and 22% Hotmail.
- 60% of students identified MS Word as their favorite tool for collaborative document editing (down from 67%). 30% favor Google Docs (up from 27%) and 2% OpenOffice.
- 58% of students report backing up their primary computer on a regular basis. 60% of those backing up do so to an external hard drive and 25% to a cloud storage solution.
- 97% of students use Facebook (up from 91%) and 92% (up from 80%) would like to see law school events and activities published on Facebook as well as through the online faculty calendar. 25% use Twitter, 21% use linked in, and 16% use Google+.
Smart Phone / Cell Phone Ownership
84% of students own “Smart Phones” or phones with built in web browsers that allow them to surf the internet on their cell phones. That is up dramatically from 50% of smart phone owners last year.On the other end of the spectrum, 2% of students do not own a cell phone at all. This is significantly lower than the 11% of our sample of all law students who reported no cell phone in the spring of 2010. Just as laptop owner ship has been close to 100% since 2007, cell phone is now almost 100% as well.I suspect that over the next two or three years close to 100% of students will either own a smart phone, an iPod Touch, an iPad or Android tablet device.From the library’s perspective this is an important area to watch, as there are a number of interesting new technologies (like QR Codes) that could potentially enhance the library’s services that depend on library patrons having access to the internet on their cell phones along with a camera.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Apple, backup, collaboration, ebooks, education, iPad, iPhone, mobile, Smart Phones
You can’t put a hyper-link on a poster, sheet of paper or bookmark, but you can put on a QR Code. It is a much easier and more accurate way to link to a web page than to type a URL into your smart phone.
How can I use QR Codes?
Using a QR Code reader on your smart phone (like the Google App on an iPhone or Android phone) you simply take a picture of the QR Code and the reader redirects you to a mobile web page or some other resource on theinternet. Depending on what you download, you’ll be able to:
- Read a web page with text and pictures
- Watch a video
- Listen to an audio file
- Download an app
- Register for an event or buy tickets
QR Codes are commonly used on posters, in print ads, on bookmarks, on business cards and even on web pages.
My current favourite QR code reader for the iPhone is the Scan by QR Code City (search for “Scan” in the App store). For all other smart phones, I’d suggest trying the free Neo Reader.
Enjoy!
P.S. Here is handout with QR Code information. Here is a bookmark sheet to go along with the handout.
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Tags: education, iPhone, libraries, mobile, QR Codes, Smart Phones, software, Work
No matter what you think of Al Gore’s politics, his latest book, “Our Choice” points toward the direction that authors and publishers should be heading. Text combined with images, video and interactive graphics, make this e-Book a much more compelling product than a the equivalent physical book. I personally enjoy reading on my iPad, but all of the books I read in my Kindle reader are identical to the print copy (except that I can change the font size, and have a built in dictionary). The price is also right: $5 for the e-Book compared to $17 for the a physical copy.
My first reaction to the Our Choice app (for iPad and iPhone only at the moment) was that it reminded me a lot of CD Rom products from the 1990′s. Call me crazy, but I loved the Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia because it not only included text and pictures, but added videos and interactive charts. I enjoyed the media rich CD Rom products that came of of the mid 1990 confluence of CD Roms, color monitors and speakers all shipping standard with PC’s.
So what is different this time around? For starters the form factor of the iPad make for a much more pleasant reading experience than sitting in front of a computer screen. In addition, the navigation interface that the iPad’s touch screen makes possible is intuitive and natural. Push Pop Press is the company that wrote the software for the book, and from what they’ve said, they hope to make their tools available so that others can publish media rich tools. Watch the video below to see how the “book” works
It was a wonderful experience reading Our Choice. Not all books, especially novels, need videos and interactive charts, but for some books (like school text books in particular) these bells and whistles make a huge positive difference. I hope to see more book in a similar format in the near future.
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Tags: Apple, ebooks, education, entertainment, iPad, iPhone, libraries, mobile, publishing, Work
I recently returned from a Law School Technology conference, and while there I learned how easy it is to create ebooks from documents in Microsoft Word or HTML formats. Elmer Masters lead a session called, Creating eBook Version of Your School’s Law Reviews Using Open Source and Free Tools (see the video here).
The ebook creation process was so easy that during the session I download, installed the tools, and created an ebook of my conference notes before Elmer had finished his talk. For anyone interest here is the process:
- Download Sigil, the free and open source ebook editor for your operating system.
- Install Sigil on your computer.
- Open the word document that you’d like to turn into an Ebook.
- Save the document as an html file by going to “File” -> “Save As” and then selecting “Web Page (htm)” in the drop down box. Then press the “Save” button.
- Launch Sigil, and right mouse click on “Text” folder in the left hand column, and select “Add Existing Items…” Add the html file you just “Saved As” from word.
- Now press the “Save” button on the Sigil tool bar, and you are done!
You might want to go to the Sigil “Tool” -> “Meta Data” menu to add a title and author to the book to make it look a little more professional looking, but other than that, you’ve created your first Ebook! Congratulations! If your document is long enough, you can insert chapter breaks to make it easier to navigate.
You might be wondering how you get this ebook on to your iPad or iPhone. All you need to do is either email the ebook to your self and then open it on your mobile device, or if you use Dropbox, move the ebook into Dropbox and then open it from Dropbox on your iPad or iPhone. If you’re a kindle user, you should have an email address than you can send file to in order to add them to your Kindle device.
For your reading pleasure, here are my CALI 2011 Conference Notes in ePub, PDF and Google Doc formats. Happy reading!
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Tags: ebooks, education, iPad, iPhone, libraries, OpenSource, publishing, Smart Phones, Work
Creating and using good passwords is the digital equivalent of flossing our teeth. We all know we should do it, but it’s time consuming and not easy to do. The good news is that it’s possible to create strong, but easy to remember passwords.
So, which of the following two passwords is stronger and more difficult to crack? Which is more difficult to Remember?
B!g1——————–
TisHw4k.%sQxWE,rUbnD<Ww
Believe it or not, the first password is both stronger, and for most people easier to remember. It’s hard to see, but the first password is one character longer than the second, and because of the way hackers try to crack passwords, it is more secure than the second. The first tool that hackers use when trying to guess passwords is a dictionary attack. Because neither password is in a dictionary, that attack will fail. At that point a hacker will fall back to a brute force attack, where password length and character mix is important for making a password hard to crack.
So how should you choose your password?
- Use a memorable word or phrase that has upper case, lower case, number(s), and symbol(s) in it.
- Pad that with a character to make the password and then pad it with a random character so that the password length is about 25 characters long.
- Another example of a strong password is: D0gsD!g………………..
For more information, and to check out how secure your password is from a brute force attack, check out this excellent resource from
Steve Gibson at GRC.com which was the inspiration for this blog post.
Passwordmeter.com is also another great resource that help you to know how strong your password really is. If you’re really interested, here’s a
podcast Steve did where explains in detail why this sort of password is so effective.
48.483174
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Tags: education, software, webapp, Work
How to sync and edit documents from my desktop computer on my iPad is a question that I’ve had ever since I purchased my iPad in April of 2010. The good new is that I finally have a good answer, and ironically the apps that facilitate the editing and syncing are ones that I’ve used for years now, one of which has just recently come to the iPad and iPhone… or at least recently came to my attention. Here’s the equation:
Dropbox + Documents To Go = iPad Document Nirvana!
Here is what you need to turn your iPad into a document editing & syncing machine:
Step 1: If you don’t have a free Dropbox account already, then now is your excuse to finally download and install it on your desktop computer(s). Dropbox is a cloud service that synchronizes files between your computers, and keeps them up to date. It runs on Mac’s, Windows & Linux. For example, I have dropbox running on my Mac laptop and Windows desktop computer. So when I save a file to my Dropbox folder on my desktop computer, that file gets save to my account on the dropbox server on the internet. The next time I turn on my laptop, it checks to see if any files have changed, and then if they have, download the changed files to my laptop. It is a wonderful service if you use more than one computer (or computer & iPad/iPhone). The use of Dropbox is free for up to 2GB of data, and then $10 per month (for $99 per year) for 50GB of data. I personally subscribe to the 50GB plan because I store all my family photos there along with all my documents, but I digress.
Step 2: Install the free Dropbox app on your iPad (or iPhone, or Blackberry, or Android phone if you have one) via the Apple App store. Enter the same user name and password that you setup your Dro
pbox account with on your desktop computer.
Step 3: Again via the Apple App store, and install Documents To Go Premium – Office Suite. Make sure you get the “Premium” version for $16.99, as the basic version does not sync files with Dropbox (or Google Docs). Once you’ve installed the app, press the “Online” button on the bottom nav bar, and then the app will ask you what type of account you want to synchronize with. Select Dropbox, enter your account information, and you set.
That’s it! You’ve now turned your iPad into a legitimate business machine so that you can word process & spreadsheet on the go, and sync everything back to your desktop computer. Enjoy!
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Tags: collaboration, education, Google, gtd, iPad, iPhone, mobile, research, Smart Phones, software, Work
What are the top 4 Things you can do to save electricity in your office?
- Turn your computer off at night if you aren’t already.
- Even better, change the power settings on your computer so it goes to sleep after 15 minutes or 20 minutes.
- Turn your lights off when ever you leave your office.
- Next time you buy a computer, seriously consider purchasing a laptop (they use about 1/4 the power of a desktop computer).
Do you know how much electricity you use in your personal office or cubicle? Do you know how much energy your desktop computer or laptop uses? If you are like me, you probably don’t know. Over the past year I’ve measured how much electricity the different electric and electronic devices use so that I can make better decisions as I try to reduced my personal energy foot print (I use a device call the Kill-A-Watt to measure the electrical draw of each item).
Below are the power draws of all the electrical devices in my office (here is spreadsheet with a longer list of home and work electronics & their power draws):
- Lights On: 64 watts
- 27″ iMac Computer in Use w/ 2nd 24″ monitor (both screens at 50% brightness): 142 watts
- 27″ iMac Computer idle (both screens asleep): 60 watts
- Computer speakers on: 6 watts
- MacBook Air (screen 50% brightness): 14 watts
- iPad charging: 10 watts
Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: education, environment, research, Sustainability, Work
Do YouTube and Facebook distract students? Of course they do! On the other hand, can YouTube and Facebook help students with their school work? Until recently I wasn’t sure, but after my partner’s experience with a professor who wasn’t a good teacher, and seeing how YouTube and Facebook saved her and her classmates from poor grades, I’m convinced that these “digital distractions” can be, if used intelligently, excellent Learning Tools.
Being the father of two teenagers, the husband of a partner that has recently gone back to college, and Systems Administrator at a University Law Library, I have a front row seat on how technology is used and abused in the service of homework, research and education in general. When my partner found herself in a college class teaching challenged professor, I was amazed at how she, along with her classmates, used technology to compensate for the poor classroom instruction. Her learning process for each class was as follows: Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: collaboration, education, Family, Google, libraries, webapp, Work
Being the father of five children under the age of 16 years old, with a home that has three computers, four iPhones and three iPod Touches, I’ve been experimenting with software over the past few years to trying to reduce the likelihood of porn inadvertently showing up on their screens. After trying some commercial software for content filtering a couple of years ago, that ended up slowing down our old computer, I have found something that doesn’t kill our computer, and as an added bonus is FREE – OpenDNS.
