It's hot here. Hot everywhere. And
getting hotter...
In St. Louis the power failed yesterday for over
500,000 residents in the middle of a 100+ degree
heat wave. The national guard is evacuating
residents to "cooling centers." Each year, we
exhaust 1,000,000 years worth of fossil fuel.
Above normal ocean temperatures are generating
killer storm cells. It is past time to start thinking seriously about global
warming.
Today we have, mercifully, just a couple items in
download news. We have a couple of new training
opportunities from @ONE and Microsoft. Dave,
continuing his "getting ready for Fall" theme will
cover publishers' course cartridges in his
Blackboard Feature of the Week. He presents
it as a riddle. Haydn will speak on student
frustration and what to do about it. My
tech-talk-topic will address creating PDF documents,
and promote our Palomar College PCPDF service.
We have multiple gizmos this week, all having to do
with iPods, and especially the well dressed iPod.
Floyd Update (skip if you don't care about
Pink Floyd): The
Pulse DVD (amazon - with free
preview video) is terrific, and cheap, $14 at
Costco. Well worth having. Disk 2 is a
performance of Dark Side of the Moon in its
entirety. Sam Brown and a couple of other
terrific backup singers add the female vocals, and
the solo on Great Gig in the Sky, but still--and
ever still--not with the same impact as the original
by Clare Torrey. The other outstanding feature
of the concert is the lighting, as usual with the
Floyd. The lighting director (Marc
Brickman) got his name second on the credits, after
the overall director (David
Mallet) and well deserved it.
Palomar Tech and Download News
-
If you are thinking of getting the
Office 2007 beta preview, better do it
before July 28. Starting July 28, "a
nominal fee will be assessed to cover the cost
of providing the product to you" in the words of
Microsoft.
-
Microsoft Private Folder 1.0 is no more.
Last week MS released this value-added piece of
software as a free "special offer" to those
willing to validate their copy of Windows using
the Windows Genuine Advantage program. In
a nearly unprecedented move, Microsoft bowed to
the agonized whine of hundreds of network
administrators who said, basically, how are we
supposed to manage our networks if you give
users a convenient and simple way to hide and
encrypt their data? (Read about it at CNet:
"Microsoft's
privsate folders become a public headache"
and "Microsoft
shutters Windows private folders").
We liked the product so much we created a
how-to
article on it but, alas, to no avail. If
you were lucky enough to download it in the
brief window (no pun) it was available--you have
it. Otherwise, want to buy a copy??
Talk about a collector's item...
Training Opportunities
- Microsoft webcasts
- Tuesday, July 25, 9am -
First look at Outlook 2007
- Thursday, Aug. 3, 9am - Experience the 2007
MS Office System (part
1)
- Tuesday, Aug. 8, 9am - Experience the 2007
MS Office System (part
2)
- Thursday, Aug. 17, 9am - Experience the 2007
MS Office System (part
3)
- The @ONE system announced three new desktop
seminars for August:
- Two other @ONE instructor facilitated,
online classes of interest are:
- Microsoft is offering free eLearning on the
Office 2007 family of products through their
eLearning Portal. You can choose from
any or all of 10 different eLearning courses and
will be granted free 90-day access. Course
on the new Access, Excel, InfoPath, OneNote,
Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, Visio, Groove, and an
overall course on the Office 2007 interface are
offered.
- For those just beginning to look at their
Fall 2006 Blackboard course shells, and perhaps
staring at the vacancy, there are a series of
screen videos created by the Academic Technology
department which will help you along your way.
Access them at the PCOnline
Faculty Services page.
Blackboard Feature of the Week - David Gray
Another in the getting ready for Fall series,
Dave's topic this week is publishers' course
cartridges. He breaks it down into three
sections:
-
Why Course Cartridges are better than Sliced
Bread.
-
Why Course Cartridges are worse than a Poke in
the Eye with a Sharp Stick.
-
How to get a Course Cartridge.
Resources
PCOX Vodcast Episode 2: Course Cartridges [mp4 -
8:20]
Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time =
11:26]
Teaching with Technology - Dr. Haydn Davis
Haydn's topic today is "Student Frustration and
What to do about it." He discusses an article
by
Tim Dotson who presents ideas on why students
don't post to discussion boards, continuing from
last week, and then segues into the concrete steps
instructors can take to engage their students and
allay student frustration.
Resources
Notes from Haydn's presentation [pdf -
24K]
Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time =
11:09]
Tech-Talk-Topic - Terry Gray
Converting documents to PDF
The
PDF format is a simple, universal,
platform-independent way to distribute documents
over the web, via email, on CD, and in print. Not
only is the exact layout of the original document
preserved, including page breaks and margins, but
Acrobat can be used to enhance documents by adding
bookmarks, links and navigation aids, document
read/print/modify security, and magnification of the
document can be achieved without special front-end
processing.
So how does one create PDF files?
There are several ways. We will discuss
five:
Acrobat. Full-time faculty and staff
at Palomar are licensed to have Adobe Acrobat
installed on their work computers. This
license has not been extended to part-time faculty,
nor does our IS department permit installation on
home computers, even for full-time faculty.
If part-time faculty wish to purchase the full
version of Acrobat, the least expensive vendor is
probably
Software-one. Their academic price
list has the pro version listed at $149.08.
CompUSA charges $299.99 for the standard
version and $449.00 for the pro. (We are
licensed for the pro version at Palomar). Of
course, all computers in campus computer labs
contain the full pro version, so a no-cost
alternative is to simply come to a lab and perform
document conversions. In Academic Technology
we maintain a
faculty technology center with
workstations that have Acrobat pro installed and
also have scanners available for scan-to-PDF
operations.
Creation of the actual PDF using Acrobat can occur
in multiple
ways. The simplest way, assuming you are using
MS Office to create your document, is to use PDFMaker, which is a set of macros built-in to
office. Simply click the PDF icon,
or click on the Adobe PDF menu and choose
"Convert to Adobe PDF."
If you know you have installed Acrobat on your
system, but do not see these elements in Office, it
is probably because you installed Acrobat prior to
installing Office. If you see the menu entry,
but not the PDFMaker icons, it is probably because
the Acrobat toolbar is turned off. Go to View
> Toolbars to turn it on.
An alternative, separate, and I feel better
method, which will work with any program, not just
with Office, is to print to PDF. When you
install Acrobat, it installs a postscript printer
driver which shows up as an installed printer in
your list of available printers. To create a
PDF from any program, open the document you want to
converts and choose Print > and choose Adobe PDF as
the printer. No physical printing will occur.
The document will be "printed" to a PDF file.
I have seen several Word files that would not
convert with 100% fidelity using PDFMaker, but would
using this latter method. It has the further
advantage of working with any program and not just
Office programs.
We have a screen video that illustrates this
procedure:
Converting a Word Document to
Acrobat (PDF)
Online services. An alternative is
to submit your document online for conversion.
Adobe offers this service, giving you 5 free
conversions and then a for-pay agreement at $10 per
month.
PDF Online is another such service.
What these services lack is the ability to control
security and many other document properties that can
be set with the full version of Acrobat, but in a
pinch, they will do. Let me hasten to say that
Palomar has its own such service, however, that will
not charge authenticated users or nag you with unwelcome
marketing messages.
Free downloadable software. There
are a couple packages worth considering here.
CutePDF Writer and
PrimoPDF. Reviews give PrimoPDF the edge
by far. It is powered by activePDF, the same
company that powers Palomar's own conversion
service. The problem with free, downloadable
software is that it is a come-on to for pay products
and is used as a loss leader by marketers, or worse,
adware vendors. Install free, downloadable
software at your own risk.
PCPDF. Palomar supports and manages
a free online service for our employees only
(authentication required) called
PCPDF. The
following is a screen video on how to use it:
How to use PCPDF
(requires
flash player)
PCPDF supports over 180 different file formats,
and seems to be very reliable. Its drawback,
as with all the free versions, is that it does not
offer the same range of control over the output
document as the full version of Acrobat. If
you want to apply security to the document, create
bookmarks, annotate, or edit or
control other technical aspects of document
production, there really is no good substitute for
the full version.
Conclusion. If your document
production needs are complex, use the full version
of Acrobat to create PDF documents. If you are
full-time, it can be installed on your work
computer, if not, use the faculty technology center
or one of the campus computer labs to convert your
documents. If you do not have sophisticated
document manipulation needs, it is simple to use our
free, online service called
PCPDF.
We will be providing a workshop on using Adobe
Acrobat Fall 2006.
Click here for our training schedule,
here for
specifics on the workshop.
Resources
Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time =
15:09]
Gizmo of the week
This week our gizmo(s) are on the list of the "10
oddest iPod accessories," from Business Week
Online. I have picked three:
| 1.
|
Tunebuckle:
the nano belt buckle - take your iPod
anywhere and keep your pants up at the same
time! [mycellworld.com
- $19.95] |
 |
| 2.
|
The bullet
proof iPod case - made in Japan. And
they say gun violence is not a problem
there. Stand by... [privately made,
and not for sale, so far] |
 |
| 3.
|
The powder
room player, better known as the "toiletPod"
- an iPod dock which also dispenses toilet
tissue: four--count them, four--waterproof
speakers and a universal tissue holder.
[from iCarta - available in July, no price
specified] |
 |
These are great, but why stop at the merely
functional? Of greater interest is a new line
of clothing for iPods called, what else,
iAttire. Each costume is hand made, and
the prices aren't even that bad. The cowboy
costume shown below goes for $39.95.
(Source:
msnbc and
podcasting news)
Music
The
music for today's show was provided by
Magnatune.com,
and is used through their Creative Commons license
for podcasts. Today's album was Making
Circles by
The Seldon Plan. "The
Seldon Plan gets its uniquely dimensional indie pop
sound from a seamless combination of bright, lilting
melody and a searching, brooding undercurrent of
rock and emo influences."
They have been featured on All Songs Considered and
are getting a lot of big-time press.
We
used tracks 3: "Westchester;" 2: "Making
Circles;" 10: "New Instant;" 5: "Apertif;" 8: "Eyes
Closed;" 9: "Your Unmuddied Past;" 6: "Holding
Patterns are Slow;" 4: "Top Left Corner;" 1: "A
Rhyming Dictionary;" 11: "Checkered Flag."
Visit
magnatune and reward them for their generosity,
and if you like this album, buy it. Magnatune is not evil!
"When we ask
for advice, we are usually looking for an
accomplice." ~
Marquis de la Grange
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for July 21, 2006 - Episode 25
