Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Ten CSS tricks you may not know [Edubloggers Links Feed] 9:41:44 AM      Google It!.

University of Phoenix puts Technology at Learning’s Forefront. Survey coverage of the University of Phoenix's operations in Spokane, Washington, with an emphasis on the use of simulations. I note this because it marks the clear incursion into another state. Washington State University, based in Spokane, isn't even mentioned in the article. I wonder whether it's feeling the pinch. Via ADL. By Paul Read, Spokane Journal of Business, February 10, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily] 9:39:08 AM      Google It!.

E-learning XML Editor Project (eXe) from EduForge New Zealand. I wanted to blog this innovative project for a while now. Ever since Brent Simpson (University of Auckland) visited UBC in January and introduced us the project, I have paid a close attention to it. Brent has released the first copy of eXe program on Jan 10th. I downloaded a copy and tried it out; the result seems to be pretty impressive. It works exactly the way Brent described it when he was in Vancouver. Here is my understanding of how the current version works: once you download the setup file, it will install a local web server on port 8081. The server comes with a web based WYSIWYG interface and a XML node based file management system. It enables the content experts to author web content without connecting to a CMS or becoming proficient in HTML or XML markup language. The content generated using eXe can be then ported to any LMS in standard XML based format. The application is developed in Python, a very realiable programming language. When you use the tool, you may notice there are pre-defined behaviors and topic names assigned to each nodes in the application like objectives, case studies, preknowledge activies, reading activities etc. However the CSS section does not seem to be completed yet. Click HERE to goto the eXe download page, and navigate around to learn more about the project. [Edubloggers Links Feed] 9:36:52 AM      Google It!.

NewPRWiki - Resources.NorthernVoice05 [Edubloggers Links Feed] 9:25:44 AM      Google It!.

Blog Software Comparison [Edubloggers Links Feed] 9:24:20 AM      Google It!.

New Open Source VoIP PBX [Slashdot:] 9:09:01 AM      Google It!.

College students launch online auction - eSchool News. At the end of each semester, Bentley College sophomore Shahzad Zia usually offers his used textbooks to the highest bidder on the most popular internet auction sites. This spring, he plans to list them for a more exclusive community--and save money in the [Online Learning Update] 8:59:59 AM      Google It!.

Li-Ion With 300% More Power, Minutes to Recharge [Slashdot:] 8:58:43 AM      Google It!.

Google Maps pushes the envelope. The instant Google Maps appeared, a lot of us knew right away that we'd never use MapQuest again. Google's mapping and direction-finding service is a stunning improvement. The maps are gorgeously readable, and they fill as much of the screen (or the printed page) as you give them. Scrolling the map works in the most natural way, by dragging the image. The mapping service dovetails with local.google.com, which finds businesses by city or ZIP code. In direction-finding mode, each step along the route offers a link that, when clicked, pops up an enlarged view of the intersection. What rich and smart client technologies enable this magic? DHTML, JavaScript, CSS, XML, and XSLT. As is the tradition when Google launches a new service, curious hackers immediately took Google Maps apart to see how the magic was done. The best early analysis came from Joel Webber, who worked out the details of image tiling, dynamic updating, and route plotting. Among other interesting discoveries, he found that the application uses the browser's built-in XSLT engine to transform packets of XML received from the server into search results, displayed as HTML. ... The W3C can bless this approach or not, but with Google Suggest and now Google Maps, Google has thrown down the gauntlet. The modern browser is an XML-aware client. Savvy Web developers have known about these features for a while, but now Google has legitimized them and pushed them squarely into the mainstream. My guess is that we'll see an explosion of pent-up creativity as more Web developers discover, and begin to exploit, the full power available to them. But wait, there's more. If you append the term "output=xml" to any Google Maps URL, the server will send back an XML packet. APIs? We don't need no stinking APIs. In 20 minutes I was able to build a proof-of-concept app -- made from snippets of HTML, JavaScript, and XSLT -- that accepts city names or ZIP codes and displays information about local businesses. [Full story at InfoWorld.com] Events moved a bit too quickly for this column. By the time it hit print, the output=xml party was over, but another one had started as people dug into the JavaScript capabilities exposed by Google Maps. The screencast I made to demonstrate the route animation hack described here has proved so popular that I wish I'd cleaned it up a bit better. If you've watched it, you know that the audio is sketchy. For the record, here's what happened. I recorded the video in Camtasia and then, following the procedure described here, I rerecorded a playback so I could fast-forward and rewind while laying down the audio. All went well until I produced the Flash output. Normally Camtasia's encoder does a great job with screen videos, compressing them down to well under a megabyte a minute. But this four-minute video turned into a 50MB .SWF file! I guess the encoder doesn't do well with the irregularity of maps. ... [Jon's Radio] 8:56:15 AM      Google It!.