Apple has a built in way of taking a screenshot on your iPhone. (Which explains how I’ve inadvertently gotten a screenshot in the past.)

Hold down the Home button and the sleep/power button on the top of the phone for 1 second. (Keep in mind that holding down this button combination for 10 seconds can cause the phone to reset. Also this requires a 3G or newer iPhone running iPhone OS 2.x+.)

Here’s a screenshot of what my site looks like using the theme. (Unless you have an iPhone to access it yourself via the iPhone’s web browser.)

Source: Brandon

Brandon's Website on the iPhone

I downloaded Alan’s script that uses Greasemonkey (for Mozilla) and made a change to match the way I’ve been doing citations on my site.

I commented out the way Alan does his attribution, and inserted what I use on this site:

+ '<br />Brandon\'s Blog Citation<br /><textarea rows="5" onClick="this.select()" name="ccatttxt"><div id="mura-citation">Photo Credit: @' + '<a href="'+ photolink + '" title="' + phototitle + '">' + usernick + '</a>/flickr</div></textarea><br /><br />';


So when I go to a flickr page with a Creative Commons licensed photo, I see a small box at the bottom of the left column.

Photo Credit: @muramatsub/flickr

Flickr CC Attribution Helper Script

Which produces HTML which looks like:
<div id="mura-citation">Photo Credit: @<a href="http://flickr.com/photos/80185247@N00/2612619153/" title="Napkin">muramatsub</a>/flickr</div>

That I then include with the photo I’ve linked.

Alan also talks about how he downloads images from Flickr that he uses on his site. I do something similar. On my computer, I’ll keep a copy of the URL directly to the image until I’ve had a chance to write the article or otherwise use the photo. I think modify the filename to include “flickr” and the “username” before I upload or use the photo. This tells me the site I got the photo from (“flickr”) and which user’s photo I’m using (“username”). As Alan points out in his article this is all good as long as the user’s account is still active (or Flickr continues to exist). I think the site Don of the Education Technology that is Changing Alaska blog suggests, Imagestamper is also an interesting way of tracking licenses.

But, I saw a link to the video below about a “live” (well somewhat live) magazine cover mockup for the iPad. And I immediately though about the advertisements and magazines in movies like Minority Report.

Source: Brandon/Jesse Rosten

Live Magazine Covers on the iPad

Some articles have focused on the interaction aspects between the iPad as a step towards those in Minority Report, but what struck me by the video was where once static content (or, shudder, advertising) might go in the near future.

Many magazines that have been print-only since their existence now have the opportunity to immerse their readers in interactive video, sound, and motion.

Source: Rosten, J. (2010). Going Vertical. Retrieved on March 26, 2010 from Jesse Rosten Website: http://jesserosten.com/2010/going-vertical/

Here’s a video of the advertising in Minority Report.

funky-star

Network Fail

I’m at yet another university that has locked down their network so far that it gets in the way of doing simple things — like IM. For some reason the firewall and/or routers are not routing those ports. Great, thanks.

This is one of the reasons I like Google, they do everything in a web browser over port 80.

Source: Brandon/AIM Express

AIM Express - AIM in a Web Browser

(I really wish I could have my friends that can break through these network blocks in my bag when I travel to other universities to show folks how silly all this unnecessary security is…)

Two items on their list that are high on mine:

• More outlets, with better locations and that are surge protected. Both on the desk and on the nightstand.
• Reliable, high-speed Wi-Fi connections. I usually take an Apple Airport Express with me to form my own reliable wireless network. I don’t like being tethered to the desk just for a reliable network connection because of the flaky hotel wireless connections.

Here’s the pop-up dialog box I got when trying to log in from my Mac using Firefox 3.5.

Source: Brandon/WebEx

Why?

Um, I’m sorry WebEx, you’ve given me zero reason to let you have UNRESTRICED ACCESS to my computer. Why do you need it? All I want to do is participate in a conference, not necessarily let you do whatever you want with my computer.

Turns out if you hit “Deny”, there’s no feedback at all. I get back a mostly white screen. No error message saying I need to allow access, and so on. So, there’s no conference. Um, ok. Gee, thanks.

That’s bad programming, and bad communicating.

Ok, so I guess if I want to participate in the conference I have to say Ok. Over the next two hours, we were uncermoniously disconnected from the teleconference portion, probably when the 1 hour time elapsed. No warning. Buh-bye. And then after re-logging back in, and redialing the teleconference, at some point I got this warning message.

Source: Brandon/WebEx

4GB is apparently not enough

Um, I have 4 GIGAbytes of RAM in this computer, with over 2.2 GB free. How is it I’ve run out of memory?

Bad programming. Bad software.

The final set up is really quite sweet. A member of the university goes to https://blogs.lincoln.ac.uk for the first time and logs in with their usual credentials. The first time they login, they are signed up. That’s it. No sign up page needed. It’s as if they were already a member of the social network, which, being members of the university, they are of course. From there, they see the BuddyPress home pages, can join groups, change their profiles and, when they’re ready, create or join a blog.

Winn, J. (2009, February 17). BuddyPress: A university’s social network. Retrieved June 18, 2009 from ../learninglab/joss Web site: http://joss.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2009/02/17/buddypress-a-universitys-social-network/

Aside: I’m not sure I really like the BuddyPress user interface nor how much WordPress MU seems to lag behind the regular WordPress releases, but I do really like the notion of social network, collaboration and publishing platform.

Thanks to Brian Lamb’s post for pointing this out.

So, just shooting zombies is fun…but we need more purpose in life…

Um, why?

-or-

How can Skittles and your iPhone save the world from Zombies?

I just ran across this awesome augmented reality game for mobile devices from O’Reilly’s Radar. In ARhrrrr you have to kill zombies (and I guess…save townspeople…that “purpose in life” above). I’ve embedded the video below.

I always liked Zombie games…

Quote: Brian Hayes

A dandy blackboard

I found a source for a cgi that can be installed on any web server that lets the user write TeX expressions in HTML and have them rendered on the fly as images by a cgi processor. John Forkosh has developed two programs MathTeX (if LaTeX is installed on the server, math is rendered in higher quality) and MimeTeX (for all other servers).

And I found an article by published in March 2009 that sums up the state of Math on the web–basically the same conclusions I came to after an hour or so of poking around in May.

“The truth is, the basic protocols of the Web offer almost no support for rendering mathematics or other specialized notations such as chemical formulas. Presenting such material on a Web page often requires software add-ons or plug-ins to be installed by the author or the reader or both.”

Source: Hayes, B. (2009, March). Writing Math on the Web. Retrieved June 16, 2009 from American Scientist Web site: http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2009/3/writing-math-on-the-web/1

Note: his is a followup to my post on Math in webpages published about two weeks ago.