2007-07-18

Goodbye York

I'm sitting on the train speeding down towards London (with a slight delay), and thinking about the last three days. It was another very successful and interesting IWMW meeting, and my head is filled with interesting ideas and innovations that I would like to take forward in my institution. But this is the problem. There is just so much information that one takes in in these three days, that it is difficult to decide where to start.

I think that everyone aggreed that Alison's ...

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2007-07-05

Contensis Working Group

It's almost here, the Contensis working group between universities that have decided to use the Contensis CMS system. It'll be interesting to find out what other universities have done with it and what projects they have been pursuing with the CMS.

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As for CCCU, we are still at the beginnings of implementing Contensis. We have used it for our staff intranet (StaffNET) which is now slowly up and ...

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2007-06-25

Palm Wi-fi ESU

Ever tried to connect a Palm T|X to a WPA Enterprise Wi-fi network? Well, if you tried, you soon realise that it does not work. The standard edition of the software on the Palm T|X does not come with the support, which is rather annoying. In order to be able to connect to the EduRoam network that is used around the country, I have to purchase an extra driver the costs around £4. That is not that bad really because afterall it is only £4 but it's the principle that it is not included in the ...

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2007-06-19

New site published

I have published a new sites for new clients.

Hovemere LTD

Gynäkologenpraxis Altenhundem ...

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2007-06-12

So you think you can do .NET?

I've been working with .NET technology for about 2 years now, starting with VB.NET and in the last 9 months moving towards C#.NET because of work commitments. I never had any professional training, apart from a 4 day training course with Learning Tree International
which seemed more like an exercise in drag 'n' drop within VS2005 rather than programming as such. Now, I'm waiting for my training programme to be approved by my seniors. But I have chosen advanced training courses, such as ...

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2007-06-07

AJAX: OnClick Text Fade

I've recently been playing around with the the fade effects that you get from script.aculo.us and instead of using it as a slideshow like most other sites, I've adapted it slightly to change text on a page with an OnClick event.

View example (click on "next" that is on "New Developments" in the red box on the right.

I always try and find good and simple ways of using AJAX libraries ...

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2007-03-05

Last.fm Rocks!!!

I have been using Last.fm for over three weeks now and I am very impressed with it. For all you music lovers out there, this is a great way of discovering new music that you actually like! ...

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2007-03-05

FOWA Day 2 - 21.02.2007

After a very good first day of talks, discussions and networking opportunities, what would day two of the FOWA hold? Luckily none of us went home disappointed, bacause the line-up of speakers was great ... although I was not too keen on some of the "open mic" ones.

First up was Mark Anders from Adobe presenting two new products.
Flex
We know that Flash content looks great, but it is not renowned to be a powerfull application ...

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2007-02-22

FOWA Day 1 - 20.02.2007

Welocome to FOWA (FutureOfWebApps) 2007

Here are ...

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2007-01-17

Quick Update

As you can imagine, trying to get anything done over the Christmas period is a nightmare. And hence my delay with postings. It has dawned on me that since I am going to be away from the world internet, for the next two weeks, I should quickly publish an update on my site.

Since the last posting I have completed two projects.

1. Kerala Brochure

Kerala Brochure

2. ...

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2007-01-17

Sys not defined - ASP.NET error

This has been creaping up in my project for quite a while. At first I ignored the error as it was not interfering with my development. But the day has come, and I had to deal with it.

In general, at first glance there was nothing wrong with the .NET pages and it was building the site ok, but once deployed, the trusty old FireBug informed me that there was a problem - a javascript error emerged "Sys not defined". ...

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2006-12-12

.ico

There has been a problem with the favicon.ico once Internet Explorer 7 came round the corner. It just stopped displaying it. I think that it has been much stricter with the file type and all of us who used to save a 32x32 px favicon, as gif and then changed its extension to ico, suddenly encountered problems.

But now there is a plug in that you can download for photoshop, that lets you save as .ico.
...

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2006-12-12

Flash FLV streaming

Seems like I don't need to play around with the server.

This time I used Flash Professional 8 and used it's improt movie function, which seems to do everything for you, including generating the flv file and linking it to the exported swf with the control to play, stop etc.

Flash player with control example

Enjoy :-D
...

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2006-10-26

Searching for an identity

My webspace has collapsed for a couple of months and I lost my web-pages, email connection, and other online features that i have been working on. Some might think that this was a disaster, but what I have found is that it finally seperated me from my web presence that I created about 4 years prior.

Now my site is back (with a vengence?). But I have now the problem of re-designing it. As quite an experienced web-designer, that should not be a problem for me, right? Well ... it ...

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2006-10-26

XML and VBScript Development

If there was one technology that broke through barriers in the last two years, to me, I would have to say XML and the integration of XML and Java, to create the, now almost infamous, AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). Combine that with a dose of PHP, ASP, or ASP.NET (depending on your ISP) and all there is that may stop your development is your own imagination!

In my next project, I will build my own interface to dispaly this blog, feeding from the XML that Blogger creates ...

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2006-06-22

Institutional Case Studies

What does openness mean to the Web Manager

RANDY METCALFE, OSS
http://www.opensource.org/

Moodle?

open source VLE (virtual learning environment) ...

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2006-06-22

Discussion: What does a prospectus represent?

Example of wrapping ==> As courses or as subjects

What about printing a customer specific prospectus?
Form --> what are you interested in?
Art
Social life
Design
Society
Sport activities
etc

Then the CMS generates a Xml which is then imported into Quark XPress & Printed
= MyProspectus

Case ...

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2006-06-22

John Gibley -> Managing standards - Delivering a Quality Assured Web Environment

In this presentation, John is focusing on management (ISO) standards - his organisation has just implemented it!

Institutional Webservice: collected adjectives

interactive, young, brilliant, reliable, big
chunky, slow, uiineven, big, desperate, dull, unfinished, outdated, anarchic, labyrinthine, moribund, disparate

there is an overall impression of negativity from web managers

quality = satisfy stated or implied needs ...

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2006-06-21

Scott Wilson, CETIS, Learning & Teaching with Web 2.0

The idea of web 2.0
PERSONAL <==> GLOBAL

But there are issues with this with learning and teaching because WEb 2.0 is about transparency and about sharing, the question that needs to be asked is:
How much would a student want to share with the other students? --> MARKING!!!

STUDENT PORTAL
Could a student build his own website ==> PERSONALISED HOMEPAGE with relevant links
Ajax Drag'n'Drop. But like with any services make it easy enough to join.
...

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2006-06-21

Paul Miller, TALIS, Library 2.0

96% of people visit the library
67% know/use libraries to get online
89% trust libraries (more that any other institution)
27% people visit library sites!!!

oreilly .com/go/web2
talis.com/resources
daveyp.com/blog

The idea: PUT A BLOG (technology) OVER THE LIBRARY
...

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2006-06-21

Being Web 2.0 in 30 Minute Steps - Brian Kelly, UKOLN

Please search Google for "IWMW2006"

RSS, OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language)
Mashup like SuprGlu, Technorati.com

SEO strategies --> Blogs, etc

Main sentence that came from Brian's ...

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2006-06-21

Developing a Web 2.0 Strategy - Michael Webb, University of Wales

Think.com (great site for kids)
Bebo.com (associate your institution with a blog etc without having to support it

Use art and design students, media and film, computing games to develop some of the look and feel for the new webservices. These are the guys with the ideas.

ACCEPT THE WORLD OF PERPETUAL BETA - OR RATHER EMBRACE?
Can you do it as a research project?

...

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2006-06-21

From IWMW2006 - Emerging Technologies in the Real World

Web 2.0 - it's everywhere!!


These are the technologies 17-25 year olds are accustomed to:
Myspace.com, Messaging, Mobiles, Flickr.com, RSS, iPod, Blogger.com, Podcasts, Feeds, Tagging, social bookmarking

BBC News => Lecturer uses Podcasts instead of lecturing in a theatre (make a link)

This target group (17-25 year olds) are fashion conscious and driven by this popular culture. I think that ...

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2006-06-02

Druhy mesic v anglii

Uz mame druhy mesic za sebou, a porad jeste cestujeme sem a tam, a cekame na zpravy kdy a jak se budeme moci stehovat. Pred par dnama jsem to vydel docela optimisticky, kdyz jsme dostali vypis z rejstriku. Mel jsem pocit ze se budeme stehovat uz za par tydnu. Ale pravnici si zase neco vymysleli a musime cekat na dalsi dokumenty ... atd atd ...

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2006-05-05

Ajax from start to ...

First let us begin with a short definition from Wikipedia to get our head round this one.

Asynchronous JavaScript And XML ... (AJAX)
... Ajax is not a technology in itself, but a term that refers to the use of a group of technologies together

Here are some more development ...

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