Firefox Add-ons
August 31, 2008
As mentioned previously, Firefox has many useful add-ons that increase its usefulness.
Let’s talk about three of them.
If, like me, you are always bookmarking useful sites as you surf the web, it can get frustrating if you aren’t always doing it from the same computer. I had bookmarks on all the computers in the Teachers’ Room, as well as my laptop and family computer.
No more. Foxmarks is a utility (created by Mitch Kapor, if you’re old enough to remember Lotus Notes) that allows you to synchronize all of your bookmarks. If you’re using Firefox at work, bookmark a site and when you go home, your Firefox there will sync with the Foxmarks server and update your Bookmarks file. Very cool. Always find what you’ve found before.
This one is in response to Ayelet: If you have the need to e-mail an URL (a web address) or a portion of an interesting article, E-Mail This! is a simple add-on. It works with either a Yahoo! or GMail account. Once installed, set it up with your email address. Right-click the desired web page and you will see an “E-mail This!” option. Click on your e-mail program and it will open another tab with your e-mail and automatically insert the URL into the body of the message. If you highlight a section you want to save first, and it will paste the URL and the selected section into an e-mail.
Video Download Helper lets you download Flash video from sites such as Youtube. Find an interesting video, click the rotating icon next to the address bar, and Firefox will download it to your computer. (I will post later on viewing, converting and burning this file to disc.)
Protection
August 31, 2008
Do you have up-to-date anti-virus software on your home computer? If not, you’re really asking for it.
The following two products have been highly-rated, and they are free for home use.
Living Out of a Digital Suitcase, Part 1
August 26, 2008
We’ll be discussing special Freeware packages that allow you to run programs off of your flash drive instead of installing them on your computer. That way, you always have your programs with you, so you don’t have to worry that the school/home/Internet café computer doesn’t have OpenOffice Writer, etc.
First off, you can do this with the drive the school gave you, unless your drive is full of pictures or music, which take up a lot of room. Text files are tiny. But you really ought to go out and buy a bigger one.
If you have an InkStop nearby they have Kingston Flash Drives for pretty cheap. A 1G (Gigabyte) drive costs about $7.00. A 2G can be had for $15.00. Any good electronics or office supply store probably has a good selection. Or shop online on www.ecost.com. (Go to Memory & Storage, then to USB Flash. ) All brands are pretty reliable.
First off, when you set up your drive, give it a name. That avoids the “I can’t tell which one is my drive!” issue that many of you have experienced. How about giving it your name? That way, if you accidentally leave it in the Teachers’ Room, it can be identified. How do you rename the drive? It’s as simple as store-bought pie. Open ‘My Computer,’ find and right-click the drive, click rename, and call it whatever you want. Watch the video and then do try this at home.
Now go to Portable Apps and download the basic program. Choose Suite Standard if you have at least 350 MB free on your drive, and you want all of Open Office on your drive. Choose Suite Light if you can only spare 100 MB and can live with AbiWord as your word processor, and without the other programs of the Open Office Suite.
Once it downloads, double-click it and let it install on your stick. Once it is set up, you can stick it in any USB drive and the program will start automatically. (Click here for a home demo.)
Join and Split .pdfs, Part II
August 26, 2008
I think I touted PDFMerge too early. After working with it for a while, I find it is not that useful of a program. It is devoid of instructions, and I still can’t figure out how to split pdfs with it.
I would like to make amends and recommend a different program, PDFTK Builder. It is super-simple to work with, it’s free, and it does exactly what it is supposed to do.
Why would you want to split a pdf? Until this morning, I had no answer to that question, but I just found one. I wanted to scan some hand-written notes, written on both sides of the page. Our copier will scan documents and convert them into pdfs and e-mail them to you, but it doesn’t scan two-sided documents the way it does for copying. So I had to make a file of odd-numbered pages and then one of even-numbered pages. With PDFTK Builder, I was able to split them up into individual pages, re-order them, and then reintegrate them as one pdf file.
Internet Archive
August 19, 2008
In the spirit of free information, check out the Internet Archive. Thousands of free videos, music, audiobooks, and texts.
Get Firefox – Now!
August 18, 2008
If you’re still trailing the pack, using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, you really should try Mozilla Firefox. Hundreds of programmers are out there designing really neat add-on programs to extend Firefox’s functionality.
Later, we’ll talk about some really useful things you can do to enhance your teaching using Firefox, like downloading online videos from YouTube (there are actually many educational nuggets hidden away in that vast wasteland).
We’ll also list many great add-ons, all for free.
Free software for Digital Photo Editing
August 13, 2008
Link and Split .pdf files
August 12, 2008
Useful (and free) utility for Windows. Does just what it says. Why would you want it? Maybe you made a bunch of 1 page .pdfs for your class, and now you want to post them all for the exam. Instead of re-scanning them, or making a whole bunch of links on your blog, use this program and you can make one big .pdf for your class out of your multiple .pdfs.
