I found this neat little tool called WebNote. With the tool you can create a ‘virtual workspace’ in which you can easily post sticky notes to yourself. The website touts that this would be a perfectly convenient mechanism for leaving yourself notes during meetings, classes, etc. I like its simplicity and ease of use … and while it is currently demoed on a public server, it wouldn’t take much to host one’s own version with some permission/password control. Neat idea! Be sure to check it out.

Obviously, a lot has transpired since the GNU Manifesto, or the beginnings of the Linux project. While Linux and open source software have entered the mainstream, there seem to be those that see this emergence as problematic and detrimental to the movement itself.
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Sure it’s not related to educational technology … but this is monumental, and hey, it’s Friday.

See the full story from CBC or Euro2004.com.

Go Greece!!!

I’ve been really happy with my use of social bookmark managers such as Furl and Spurl. For educators out there, here’s a great list of 10 Cool Things to Do With Furl. Ahhhh … reinvention.

I was just notified of a somewhat controversial email tracking service from DidTheyReadIt.com (thanks George). The service allows the sender of an email to gather once difficult-to-collect information regarding if and when the email message was opened. With DidTheyReadIt.com, email messages are invisibly tracked, and once the email is opened, the sender is instantly notified with information related to the handling of the message.
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A while back I reported on what have come to be known as social bookmark managers or link loggers, citing examples such as furl, spurl and del.icio.us. Now I have noticed Hyperlinkomatic, which seems to be similar. I tried it out and it seemed to work OK, but some of the neat features found in the others (e.g., RSS, listed recent and popular links) didn’t seem to be there, or at least not very easy to find. I still like spurl and furl the best, but if you want to try yet another option, Hyperlinkomatic may be one to watch.

I’ve just discovered a neat file-sharing application from CleverCactus.com. The application allows you to easily setup shared folders on your computer and to specify which files/folders you would like to share with certain individuals or groups via the Internet. While P2P sharing is nothing new, this application is simple to setup, and allows easy-to-configure private access. Additionally, it’s available to Windows, OSX and Linux users (it’s Java-based).
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EthicalEmail.com describes itself as “the fastest growing anti-spam movement in the world.” From the information I gathered from the website, it seems that the free service is compiling a “do not email list” which it plans to deliver to the major North American spam producers. It seems, by US law, that once delivered, the spam houses have the legal obligation to remove all of the addresses from their spam lists. In other words, the goal of the service is to stop spam through legal methods, rather than attempt what everyone else is failing at … blocking spam.
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I recently heard about dropload.com. It’s a neat service that allows you to upload any type of file(s), up to 100 MB in size, and then have selected recipients download the file through a URL they receive via email. I tried the service last night for the first time, and it’s incredibly easy to use for the basic user (no need to worry about FTP), and it was very speedy (both uploading and downloading). If you need to transfer large files, and your email service won’t cut it, dropload.com is certainly a service that I would recommend.

A List Apart (ALA) is certainly one of my favorite resources featuring articles related to good web design techniques, especially those conforming to web standards. Today, ALA featured an excellent article which offers a couple of useful approaches to swapping XHTML text with an image of that same text. And with these techniques, no CSS hacks or image editors (e.g., Photoshop) are required. There are excellent ideas here, and the techniques are certainly simple enough for the ‘average’ web designer to understand.

The complete URL of the article can be found at:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dynatext/

I seem to be on a freeware kick lately, but there are some excellent freeware alternatives listed on this discussion board post.

While a lot of these packages are familiar to me, there are a few new ones, and it’s great to have these alternatives organized by the popular programs they may potentially replace.

Wink is a neat little tool designed for the development of online tutorials or presentations … and it’s freeware!

In the past, I have used more comprehensive packages such as Camtasia Studio or Viewlet Builder to create instructional Flash-based animations, and while Wink doesn’t offer all of the functionality, it’s a good start. And did I mention it’s free? Oh yah, I did.

Freeware is a wonderful thing … and if you are interested in more great freeware programs, check out The 46 Best Ever Freeware Utilities. Most are PC-only, but there are a few programs in the list available to other platforms.