Seems like a lot to me considering that microsoft is now competing with free software like Google Docs and Open Office. On the mobile front MS is competing with just plain apps from several companies. Article
Now for my students – please remember you get a huge discount at your school on MS products like office (among other software). So before you graduate, go to the bookstore and buy your $20 copy of Office because once you leave the price goes up a few hundred dollars:)
This is an interesting article in usatoday this weekend. Apparently this company is looking for employees with ‘online personalities’ regardless of what they can do. While I think the article is a bit extreme I do see this becoming a trend. Whether we like it or not, an abundance of followers on social media platforms equals credibility. If you’re planning on boosting your social engagement on a platform like Instagram, you can easily buy Instagram followers here. However I just was having a discussion this weekend with a colleague and we were discussing how ‘recommendations’ within social media sites like linkedin were not very valuable as people who did not know either of us had recommended us and added skills to our profile in hopes that we would do the same to theirs. Here is a quote from the article:
“The paper résumé is dead,” says Vala Afshar, chief marketing officer at the tech firm Enterasys Networks that is in the process of hiring a six-figure, senior social media strategist based on tweets. Afshar refuses to even look at résumés. “The Web is your résumé. Social networks are your mass references.”
Beginning Monday, job prospects can begin tweeting for the job, which he hopes to fill by April. “I believe the very best talent isn’t even looking for work,” Afshar says. “They’re mobile and socially connected and too busy changing the world.”
Think of it as a 140-character job interview. Even the folks at Twitter are a bit surprised. “I don’t think we’ve heard of that before actually,” says spokeswoman Alexandra Valasek in an e-mail.”
“It didn’t matter to me what they’re like in an interview setting,” Biebert says. “All that mattered was their online personality.”
What do you think?
Here is the solution to a DVD that will not burn. (Keep in mind I am only providing this information for users who legally own DVDs, not pirates).
1. Insert DVD into MAC and let it play.2. When the actual Movie (not commerials/menu/etc) starts playing, move your cursor to the top of the screen where the menu is (might need to press mouse) and choose Go->Title and look down the list to find the title that is checked. Keep that number fresh in your head.
3. Open up Handbrake and press cancel – Do NOT select a source
4. Select File->Open Source->Select your movie
5. Enter the Title number in the box that pops up
6. Now rip away….
Linkedin recently sent out emails this week letting users know if you were in the top 1%, 5%, or 10% of the most viewed profiles for 2012. Its smart as many people are now tweeting or sharing the fact that they were chosen. So how do the numbers break down? Well there are 200 million users so you can do the math:
1% – 2 million
5% – 10 million
10% – 20 million
I was in the top 5%:)
Link to mashable article about it
Here is my presentation (well poster) for Pete & C 2013. This year it is on developing apps for the K-16 classroom. I start by discussing the most difficult ways then get into how to do it using simple and free methods
Artificial intelligence seems like it is far off but there are efforts to understand how humans think and apply that to technology. Here is a cool project called the Human Brain Project. The project involves over 200 researchers and will take 10 years to map and simulate the human brain. With 1.6 billion in funding I would hope it is successful. If this does work I can only imagine what we can do with it. Here is a video on it from mashable
There is a cool free service called facewash that does just that. It cleans up your facebook page so that it is ‘interview’ ready. It can also search for keywords and delete posts containing them. This might be easier than going through years of posts to determine what is professional or not. This free service is a must for all college students applying to jobs.
This is a problem most of us who run any kind of database run into. How do I keep out spam? Of course there is an easy solution which is that you as a moderator approve each user request that comes in to determine if its a real person or bot but who has time for that? I know I do not. That is a full time job when you are running several applications requiring user registration – especially when 1000s of bots would try to register each day. So here are the things you can do, and these are specifically for phpBB forums but can be used for any software that requires registration and I am going to say whether these things are effective or not:
Non effective ways to prevent spam (bots just tear right through these but they still might help a little bit. Just do NOT rely on these):
– Email activation
– Captchas (the images where you write the numbers/letters that you see in the box)
– Asking for special characters on username/password
– Confirming email address
Effective ways to prevent spam
– Few registration attempts – this gives the bot less times to guess
– Questions – this will pretty much stop all spam. You need to ask questions that the computer will not know. Please not that bots have lists of 1000s of questions so you need to ask questions that are specific to your site only but is easy enough for your user base to answer. 2+2 is not good. But the last name of the author of this blog is ____, would be a good question. I have found these block nearly 100% of my spam. If you do start getting spam that means your questions are too easy.
– Using a service like akismet, which is awesome but doesnt currently have a plugin for phpBB. This works great for wordpress though.
So how do you add those questions in phpBB to prevent spam? There are two way and I encourage you to do both:
Method 1:
in the Admin control panel go to->spambot countermeasures->available plugins->Q&A->configure. From here you would create your questions.
Method 2:
In the admin control panel go to->users and groups->custom profile fields->then you would create a new field. From here make sure you require the question at registration.
For an example of a forum using these methods, check out my surfing forum and try to register: http://www.njsurfingclub.com/messageBoard
I am not happy about this. They are just making is harder for the consumer and this whole who owns which phone is ridiculous when the user is the one who pays for it. Hey thanks for ruling in favor of the phone carriers though. From Mashable:
“Starting this Saturday, January 26th, 2013, it will become illegal for users to unlock their mobile phones for use on carriers other than who it was originally intended for. That means buying a Samsung Galaxy S3 on AT&T and performing a carrier unlock on it to use on T-Mobile will technically be breaking the law.
I should clear one very important thing up — the process of unlocking your phone refers to the act in which you apply a code or a software process to allow your phone to run on like-minded networks, a thing only professionals like Mili Unlocks should try. This does not prohibit us from doing things like rooting our Android phones and unlocking our bootloaders.
This doesn’t mean we’re nearing the death of unlocked phones, of course. Carriers can still unlock or grant users permission to unlock mobile phones, users can still buy phones which come unlocked out of the box, and if all else fails — well, chances are there won’t be task forces of active police and military bodies looking to enforce these things like they would drugs and weapons.
Despite all that, though, we’re still just as bummed about this news as we were when the additions were first added to the DMCA. Users feel their independence from the control of their wireless carriers slipping away from them in many forms, and being told that you could be prosecuted or sued for unlocking your own phone is about as extreme as it’s going to get.”
http://phandroid.com/2013/01/24/unlocking-phones-illegal/
Here is a great chart that compares the most popular forum software: bbpress, miniBB, phpBB, SMF, and vBulletin. I personally run phpBB for most of my forums but really like bbpress and SMF as well. vBulletin is great but its expensive compared to the others which are free.