Social network creation site Ning has recently announced they will be abandoning their free model. With so many people (especially educators!) relying on free software such as Ning to carry out their daily professional and personal functions, should we be wary of free web-based software such as this?
While I am not a Ning user myself (I am a Moodler), this scenario makes me lean more than ever in favor of services that you host on your own web server.
*I realize of course that I am writing this on a free blogging platform that could fold up and disappear at any moment. You don’t need to point that out to me.*
With the explosive sales and popularity of the iPad, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of Flash. The lack of Flash support for this device has been no secret since the moment it was demonstrated by Steve Jobs. With popular sites like CNN.com, Vimeo.com, and even the White House scrambling to make their sites “iPad friendly”, what does this mean for Flash? Should we be preparing an early grave for what was, up until recently, arguably the undisputed king of online video and interactive websites?
What do you think? Can Adobe recover from this? Does the fact that Android powered devices support Flash matter at this point? Is anyone else concerned at how easily Apple has been able to put the usefulness of Flash into question so easily?
While this is by no means the biggest collection of free online tools, this is a list of online tools for web designers that anyone from beginner to advanced webmasters may find useful. I will continue to update the page as I find/remember/design new tools.
Enjoy and feel free to share a link with me if you have an idea for a new category and/or link.
The bottom line is that you can get a laptop for much less money — with a full keyboard, DVD drive, U.S.B. jacks, camera-card slot, camera, the works. Besides: If you’ve already got a laptop and a smartphone, who’s going to carry around a third machine?
In everything you do, it’s possible to be an artist, at least a little bit. Not on demand, not in the same way each time, and not for everyone. But if you’re willing to suspend your selfish impulses, you can give a gift to your customer or boss or coworker or a passerby. And the gift is as much for you as it is for the recipient.
A former professor of mine shared a link the other day to a wiki on wikispaces.com with an amazing running list of 21st century tools. I’ve long been a fan of lists of great tools and this one did not fail to impress! What impressed me more was the fact that I had only heard of a small fraction of the tools on the list (I’d better get with it!).
From what I could see, the majority of the tools seem to be free. They fall into the following categories:
The obvious uses here are related to education, but I can see just about any member of the digital race finding something to simplify (or complicate) their day. While I haven’t quite had the time to experiment with every tool, here are some of the gems in my opinion:
Myna - finally a PC substitute for Garage Band, though not quite as full featured. Still worth a look!
Text to Mindmap - A deceiving simple tool that makes great mind maps for visual thinkers and learners. You can see by the example below how you can take a basic outline and turn it into an idea or content web.
PaperRater - Free alternative to Turnitin.com. Again, not quite as feature-rich as the paid sites, but feeding a piece of writing into it will give you a full report on what the site thinks of your spelling, grammar, word choice, and writing mechanics. Good first stop for students (and bloggers) to get a quick checkup on their writing.
Hope you check out the wiki and find something useful!
I know it was mine. When I first started using Twitter a while ago, I made the mistake of using it as a glorified “Away Message”. I was mainly following people I knew and people who started following me. Big mistake. There was never anything particularly exciting or engaging in my Twitter data stream and I could easily spend days or weeks away from Twitter without missing a thing.
Now I am back on Twitter and following a much more interesting crowd. I am following many of the nations leaders in technology and innovation. Now I am finding easily a dozen interesting articles and opinions via my Twitter feed in an average day.
So if you have been using Twitter and are not finding it rewarding, take a closer look at the company you keep. Ditch the people who are still posting updates about what they had for breakfast or commenting on the weather and start following a high class of Tweeter. You’ll be glad you did.
Move over PowerPoint! While Googling the other day for alternatives to PowerPoint, I happened to stumble upon a very unique presentation tool called Prezi. Prezi lets you design and deliver a presentation in a much more unique and visual manner than the bullet slides we have come to expect and lament from your standard ppt presentation (I’ve done it too).
I had the opportunity to present my Virtual Stock Market software to a group of teachers today at Kean University and I thought I would give Prezi a spin. I really enjoyed using it and I think it kept the flow of my message moving better than recent ppt presentations I’ve delivered.
I have embedded the presentation below. I must admit it is very minimalist and doesn’t hold up well on its own without narration, but it will scratch the surface of what you can do with Prezi. I’m looking forward to experimenting more with Prezi and incorporating it into future speaking engagements.
I’m wondering if this tool is fairly new or if I am just late to the party?
Social network creation site Ning has recently announced they will be abandoning their free model. With so many people (especially educators!) relying on free software such as Ning to carry out their daily professional and personal functions, should we be wary of free web-based software such as this?
With the 
A former professor of mine shared a link the other day to a 
I know it was mine. When I first started using Twitter a while ago, I made the mistake of using it as a glorified “Away Message”. I was mainly following people I knew and people who started following me. Big mistake. There was never anything particularly exciting or engaging in my Twitter data stream and I could easily spend days or weeks away from Twitter without missing a thing.
