Services like Mozy Home offer a free online backup solution for Windows and Mac users. But what about Linux? As usual, no Love for Linux.
Enter Dropbox. While still in closed Beta (for Windows and Mac), Dropbox has enormous promise. It will offer 2gb of online storage space, syncs in the background, and according to this article by Lifehacker, now offers clients for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Give the Linux client a try here.
I have been thinking more and more lately about harnessing online tools for education and the classroom. I have grown disillusioned by “traditional” software; its usually cumbersome, has little if any social emphasis, and is expensive and not open-source.
In the course of searching for alternatives I came across this post, which has sparked my interest. Some of their recommendations can be implemented on the individual level–setting up a class blog, for example, or a google page. Others require institution support (I tried out Moodle on my server tonight, and while I was impressed, it was overkill for hosting one or two courses).
A Temporary Solution
My classroom needs are actually fairly limited; email announcements, reminders, a document repository, all easily accessible. It would be nice if it was cross-platform. It would be nice if it would provide email notifications. It would be nice if privacy could be easily managed. RSS feeds are probably a pipe-dream, but would be an excellent feature. Oh, and hosted on someone else’s server.
Turns out, drop.io (mentioned here) provides all of these features. It really is amazing how something so simple could be so incredibly powerful and versatile.
So here is my wish-list for drop.io. (1) Slightly more (free) space. (2) Sync to a local folder. (3) File overwrites (if you add a file that is already there, it overwrites that file).
For those of you who have not yet discovered the internet archive, now is a good time. In addition to public domain books, the archive includes a lot of free and legal live concert (bands that want to be included send a statement to the archive, which is on file for legal purposes). As a Béla Fleck fan, this is good news for me, as the ‘tones have a liberal sharing policy.
The Live Music Archive now also includes streaming.
So why not have a taste? Here’s the Flecktones at Planting Fields Arboretum in 2002:
And, while not the best recording, here’s a local show at the Mann Center last month:
Web-based applications are a handy way to stay organized and get-things-done both on and off campus. The advantage of web-based applications is that they are accessible anywhere there’s a computer, and are are usually free.
Here is a list of 10 handy web-apps that are perfect school (and office) needs. A couple are particularly noteworthy: google calendar, remember the milk, zotero, and evernote. Keep an eye on my blog for an upcoming post og google calendar and remember the milk, along with Gmail and Mozilla Thunderbird.
I have never used it, but check out this post about a newly released web application that helps busy folks schedule meetings. It looks like it would be great for the frazzled pastor, and it syncs with Google Calendar, which is certainly a plus.
The ESV blog has new banners available for your web site, blog, email signature, or any other medium that allows users to paste HTML code (facebook, myspace, friendfeed, etc.). Get the code here.
Check out this list of handy websites for writers. Here are a couple that I have found particularly useful:
SparkNotes Ultimate Style. The web’s ultimate guide to grammar provides a searchable database of topics and an easy-to-search A-Z list of common questions.
MIT OpenCourseWare. MIT offers dozens of free writing courses through their OpenCourseWare program. Course topics include short story writing, fiction writing, expository writing, technical writing, essay writing and poetry.
Also be sure to check out the Internet Archive, which contains a ton of resources in the public domain. It is a great place to look for old books, lectures, etc. And while your browsing, you can download live music (or go here, particularly if you like bluegrass or the Grateful Dead)!
You will need a good Bittorrent Client to download large items from the Internet Archive.
Going back to school? Getting ready for school is more than just pens and pencils nowadays. Summer is the time to take a software/webware inventory. This post offers some advice on web applications that might come in handy. I would only make one change: replace their recommended bibliography application EasyBib with Zotero, which, while not technically a web-app, promises web syncing in the near future and is much more robust than EasyBib.
A future post here will describe the steps I have taken to sync Google and Remember the Milk with Mozilla’s excellent Thunderbird email program. Want to make sure you catch this up-coming post? Then subscribe to this blog!
