Portable Applications

Wouldn't it be nice to have access to some of your favourite software applications from any computer (running on the same Operating System (OS) as yours)? Chances are that when you are using another computer those favourite apps are not available, or they could be a different version. There are two distinct ways that you could go about using the same tools regardless of the computer you use.

1. Collaborative on-line tools
   
2. Portable Applications on your USB flash drives (requires that you run the same OS)
   

Now with the advent of larger capacity USB flash drives you can now travel with your favourite tools. According to Wikipedia : "A portable application, or portable app for short, is a software program that does not require any kind of formal installation onto a computer's permanent storage device to be executed, and can be stored on a removable storage device". A quick search on the Web will reveal a wealth of free portable applications.

Here is a list of my favourite applications that I regularly use.

Suggested list of Portable Applications

• Audacity Portable (A simple audio editor and recorder)
  
• FastStone Capture 5.3 or (Site 2) (A powerful, lightweight, yet full-featured screen capture tool that allows you to easily capture and annotate anything on the screen ) (N.B. the latest version of Capture v6 is Shareware)
  
• FastStone Image Viewer 3.5 (An image browser, converter and editor)
  
• FastStone Photo Resizer 2.5 (Convert, rename, resize, crop, rotate, change color depth, add text and watermark to images in a quick and easy BATCH mode.)
  
• Flv-Player S A powerful version of Flv-Player)
  
• OpenOffice.org Portable (word processor, spreadsheet, presentations with Microsoft compatibility)
  
• VLC Media Player Portable (An easy to use media player that plays most audio and video formats)
  
• 7-Zip Portable (File archiver and compressor)
  

A New Way of Searching for Videos

Did you know that the fastest growing segment on the Internet is, the uploading, viewing and downloading of video files, from large full length movies to small clips (some legal while others are not) posted on sites such as DotSub, Blip, TeacherTube or the perennial favourite, YouTube. ! (BTW, according to Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T, "the Internet's current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010" (read the full article) and videos are using up a good part of the pipe).

By far, the most widely video site used is YouTube but, with all of these video files out there, how do you search and find those gems, (tutorials, demos, etc...)?

If you are searching YouTube you can use their built in search engine or you could use the iDesktop.tv Web site. iDesktop.tv brings you a better way to search and watch YouTube videos and yes, you can download YouTube videos!

"The various content and popularity of YouTube are indisputable but iDesktop.tv gives you the opportunity to manage that content in many possible ways:

Features / Benefits

• The REAL Web 2.0 Experience
  
• Interface, designed to be used just like every other desktop application
  
• Fast flexible searching, displaying the results with option to resize them, so you can watch YouTube videos on a plasma TV, sitting in your sofa - will look just as perfect!
  
• Managing Playlist - create and save playlists to watch later or share them with friends! You have all standard features for shuffle and repeat mode, buttons to go to the next or previous video and to clear the playlist, with scrollable menus
  
• Watching multiple YouTube videos at the same time - you can have more than one player open - all made easy using standard functionality - dragging and resizing the windows, minimizing them within the tray - never been easier!
  
• Pop out player for simplified watching, in another browser window
  
• Download YouTube videos as avi, mp4 (ipod), mov, 3gp and 3gp2 (mobile), wmv, flv, exe (built in standalone player) - all converted on the fly. That gives you the chance to save all your favourite YouTube videos on your computer, iPod, iPhone or other device and watch them whenever you want.
  
• Drag and Drop interaction - Allows you to drag videos around to create a new player or playlist.
  
• Choose from 12 themes - set the way the site looks according to your mood
  
• View the video in fullscreen format
  
• Share videos with friends - send url's and recommend videos to friends through e-mail
  
• Get the URL of each YouTube video
  
• View the last 50 videos played
  
• Create and manage a list of your favourite YouTube videos and watch them whenever you want just with one click
  
• View YouTube adult content
  
• Import playlists and favourites from your YouTube account, or any account you subscribe to or a channel provider
  
• Dim the background while watching videos
  
• View the video in 4 different ratios, 16:9, 4:3, custom and the video's original
  
• Refined searching options. You can sort your results by relevance, date, rating or view count"
  (http://www.idesktop.tv/ (About))

Tech Tuesday: Smart Ideas

For those who attended the workshops on Smart Ideas v5, here are some links to sites that could help you.

Smart Ideas Update v5.1 for Vista (licensed by OSAPAC)

Nipissing University ITeach (Tutorials)

SMARTboard Links to Engaging Learners

Smart Ideas Templates

Helping Mother Earth on Earth Day and Every Day!

Do you want to reduce your carbon footprint while surfing the Web?
Well here is an interesting way in doing this without leaving the confort of your chair or even sacraficing the use of your favorite search engine, Google or Yahoo.

• Each time you use ecocho as your search engine, you'll be helping to slow climate change.
• How? For every 1000 searches that users make on ecocho.com, up to two trees will be grown to offset carbon pollution emissions
• Switching to ecocho.com doesn't alter or slow your search. Search results are displayed via technology you already know and trust - Yahoo and Google
• ecocho.com is the world's first known search engine that enables users to offset their own carbon emissions for free
• ecocho.com is an international initiative to reduce global warming. The service is multi-lingual and is being rolled out globally.
• Trees are grown via official Government-accredited projects.
• KPMG will run quarterly and final year-end audits on the amount of carbon credits purchased and "retired" by ecocho
• Yahoo and Google have both given their support to the project, contributing the search results for the site
• ecocho.com aims to contribute 70 per cent of revenue back into carbon offset credits, for the growth of trees
• Now everyone can help reduce global warming by switching to ecocho.com as their internet search engine (http://www.ecocho.ca/lang_en/whats-ecocho.php)
  

For more information visit the ecocho site at http://www.ecocho.com, depending on where you live, you will be redirected to your countries site, (ecocho.ca, etc...).

IT SummIT-VI Recap

The IT SummIT-VI: Collaborative Learning & Social Networking was a great success! There were over 150 participants who attends the nine different sessions.
Congratulation to Chris in wining the iTouch. As mentioned in the closing remarks, all participants will be receiving their USB memory stick via the pony as soon as they come in.

A big thank you to all who presented and those who helped.
We hope to see you next year.
Gabe