Category: Software
October 13, 2010, 08:00 AM ET
Location-Based Gaming for Education: Try Gowalla
[Note: This is my my final post for
ProfHacker. Y'all have fun out there.] At first glance,
Gowalla might seem like just
another location-based check-in service, or game, in the same vein
as Foursquare or something
else that the kids these days are playing with their iPhone, Android phone, BlackBerry, Palm
device, or iPad. But there's a difference—a pretty big
difference, if you ask me—and that is the underlying ethos of the
company and its service. By that I mean there's no
"douchebag" badge, and checking in at a professional conference
with your friends won't award you the
"player, please!" badge. Now, I'm no prude, but those sorts of
"achievements" turned me off using Foursquare (plus the lack of
anything to do besides check-in and achieve what was likely to be a
meaningless mayorship—and see who else was in the room, which I
could do by looking around with my actual eyes). ...
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October 8, 2010, 11:00 AM ET
UberStudent: An Academic-Oriented Linux Distribution
A few weeks ago, the good folks
at LifeHacker ran a post on
a new Linux distro called UberStudent. Readers can learn more
about
UberStudent and the philosophy behind it at their site (the
tour is worth a look).
Given that UberStudent is specifically designed for academic work (calling itself "Linux for Learners") and is, in their words, "Built from Freedom and Strength to Promote Computer Fluency," I couldn't resist taking it for a spin. It does sound very ProfHackerish, after all.
So I downloaded the live CD and went to work installing it on my MacBook. (I installed it in a dual-boot system using these instructions from LifeHacker and ignoring the Windows bits, but all of the screenshots in this post were taken of an installation running in VirtualBox.)
The installation process
Installing UberStudent was simple and straightforward. It involved: (1) Downloading and burning the .iso ima...
Read MoreOctober 8, 2010, 08:00 AM ET
Using TripIt to Organize Travel
One of the perks of academia is the opportunity
for occasional travel to conferences, archives, or
field-work. But keeping travel plans organized can be
difficult amidst writing deadlines, grading, and the blizzard of
email that we all sort through on a daily basis. If you have
a Smartphone, there several apps out there that might help simplify
things for you. I recently discovered TripIt, and it
was love at first use.
TripIt is a free program for BlackBerry, Droid, or iPhone that organizes all of your travel information (flights, hotel reservations, rental cars, etc.) into a single itinerary. It is easy to use from the get-go and does not require account numbers for your reservations. You will, however, need a map application on your Smartphone (if you do not have one pre-installed on your phone, GoogleMaps is a free option). Once you have installed TripIt, all you need to do ...
Read MoreOctober 7, 2010, 03:00 PM ET
Back Up and Cull Your Tweets with Tweet Library
Last weekend's Archiving Social Media
workshop, sponsored by the University
of Mary Washington and George
Mason's Center for History and
New Media, focused on the problems and opportunities social
media such as Facebook, Twitter, and others pose for archivists,
historians, and anyone interested in studying contemporary life.
(See also Travis Kaya's writeup
for Wired Campus, or the Twapper Keeper record of the event,
or Mark Sample's
blog post as the event was wrapping up.)
Many of us may not (currently) need to think about the longterm scholarly implications of social media. Instead, we might find ourselves plagued by a simpler problem: Where's that tweet I posted six months ago? Or that picture of my kid that I accidentally deleted from my phone before syncing? Or the livetweeting/rubberneck tweeting from that conference I attended a couple of months back. Anyone who uses social me...
Read MoreOctober 5, 2010, 03:00 PM ET
Online Tools For Collaboration
Over the last
year or so I’ve been involved with two different collaborative
projects, each of which has required keeping up with an array of
people, tasks, documents, and deadlines. Furthermore, each of these
projects involve people I don’t see every day or even every week.
As a result, it can be tricky to keep track of who’s doing what by
when. Email certainly isn’t the answer. Nor are weekly or bi-weekly
meetings in which everyone reminds everyone else what they’re
working on. Instead, we’ve come to rely on a combination of online
applications focused on the aforementioned tasks, documents, and
deadlines. Assuming that communication by phone or email is already
worked out, here are a few things one can do to manage
collaboration.
An online calendar
Google Calendar is a very user-friendly tool. At the beginning of the semester, map out what you’d like to get done and by...
Read MoreOctober 5, 2010, 08:00 AM ET
Success and Community-Building: DH Answers One Week In
A week ago in this space,
I announced Digital Humanities Questions & Answers
(@DHAnswers), a community-based Q&A board you can
participate in for free, sponsored by the Association for
Computers and the Humanities (ACH) and in collaboration with those of
us at ProfHacker.
Goals of DH Answers include:
- broadening the community by introducing people to topics related to digital humanities;
- serving the needs of multiple types of community members (not limited to or by academic discipline or rank);
- creating a friendly and inviting space where people can help each other with questions about languages, tools, standards, best practices, pedagogy, and all things related to scholarly activity in the digital humanities (broadly defined).
In just a week, nearly 200 people have registered with DH Answers, and there are close to 300 responses to questions across the topics of:
- Applications, Tools...
October 1, 2010, 11:00 AM ET
Revisiting Using Google Documents in the Writing Classroom
little over a year ago, I wrote a post titled
"Using
Google Documents When Others Need Paper." Since then, Google
Documents has undergone some significant changes. Perhaps the most
notable is the new document editor (which is now the default for
new accounts, unless I'm mistaken). That's a welcome change; the
new editor more closely resembles a desktop word processing
application than the previous editor did, which makes it feel more
familiar to new users.
A second change was not so welcome. One of the best features of the original Google Documents was the ability to compare different versions of a document (click on any of the images that follow for larger versions):
That feature made it very easy to see what changes had been made to a document, and by whom:
With the advent of the new document editor, the ability to compare different versions of a document suddenly...
Read MoreSeptember 30, 2010, 03:00 PM ET
Hacking Multiple Campus Offices
I have the dubious honor of
having two offices. Yes, dubious. As of the beginning of this year,
I've got an office at MATRIX: The Center for the Humane Arts, Letters, and
Social Sciences (where I serve as as Associate Director) and an
office in the Consortium for Archaeological Research (where
the archaeology faculty in the Department of Anthropology live).
While this setup is absolutely necessary, it can be challenging at
times. Don't get me wrong, having two offices can also be
rewarding. I'm very fortunate in that both office locations are
filled with great colleagues who I like being around. I also
recognize that I'm probably in the minority in this whole
multi-office setup thing. Most scholars only have a single office.
It's also a rather sad fact that many scholars (especially at the
lower end of the academic food chain) don't even have an office of
their own. This having been said...
September 28, 2010, 08:00 AM ET
Five Nifty Tricks in Google Chrome
It's likely that somebody's already told you about
the wonders of Google's browser, Chrome. That someone may even have
been Julie, in her post Using
Google Chrome and Chrome Extensions for Speed and Productivity.
Chrome's got an awful lot going for it: it's fast, it's
lightweight, and it's super-stable—and as web applications become
more complex, that last is increasingly important. If you've ever
had Firefox crash when you've got multiple tabs open, you'll know
what I mean. In Chrome, each tab and window runs as a separate
process, and so the worst that a bad Flash application can do is
cause the tab it's in to fail.
But beyond simple stability and speed, Chrome's got a lot of options available. Here are a few nifty tricks that might help make your browsing experience that much better.
1. Extensions
As Julie discussed in her earlier post, Chrome has hundreds of available
Read MoreSeptember 24, 2010, 08:00 AM ET
Using Picnik for Some Image-Editing Fun
Dear readers, I believe I've done a great
disservice to you all. Despite mentioning the Picnik online image editing software
in two separate ProfHacker posts (Productivity
Through Firefox Extensions, from back in the day when I used
Firefox, and Using
Google Chrome and Chrome Extensions for Speed and Productivity
after I switched), I've never written about Picnik proper. I feel
bad about that, because I like the application, its ability to grab
photos (and send them back) from wherever you store them—Picasa, Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket, your computer, and so
on—and the availability of an API for even more "photo
awesomeness" (as they say).
Believe it or not, the core functionality of Picnik is free. You don't even have to register to use the tools; if you want to take it for a test drive, you can upload a photo, work with all the crop, resize, rotate, effects, and font tools that are ...
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