Meeting with the Sloodle folks to talk about integrating SL and Moodle.
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Edward Tufte talks about the interface design of the iPhone. Two interesting points he makes in the video:

•  To clarify, add detail.
• Clutter and overload are not an attribute of information — they are failures of design.

I’m curious what you’re reading these days…what are your favorite, must-visit on a daily basis websites?

So I’m getting first lookat the OLPC laptops that just arrived. This is pretty exciting to get our hands on one of these. I thought I’d share my first impressions of the device.

• The keyboard is a bit tricky to get used to. In some ways the HP 200LX keyboard was a bit better than this, however with with a modified  keyboard/finger stance, I can type relatively quickly.
• The trackpad works pretty well. It did start doing something erratic in that every time I would start to use it, it would reset the cursor location the bottom, right-hand corner of the screen. Reboot fixed it but it seems to recur after a while on this one.
• I thought I’d try hooking up an external keyboard and mouse to the laptop today and my ability to navigate the OS greatly increased. Much of my frustration or lack of efficiency with the interface seems related to the clumsy keyboard and trackpad.
• The screen is great on these little laptops — I love that the screen goes into a reflective mode when the backlight is completely off which means this thing should be useable in broad daylight.

That’s it for now. I’ll update with more info later.

I caught up on my RSS feeds last night and found a score of great links and articles to share with y’all.

• Sylvia over at genyes.com shares on to blog or not to blog (so that’s the question!?).
• Tom, over at tomubuntu.com, has a great refresher on using OpenSSL for encrypting and decrypting files.
• Feel the need to GTD? Merlin has some good tips for getting started.
• A hysterical look at geeks of shapes, sizes, and colors. Which one(s) are you?

Interested in more? Check out my shared items and delicious links.

Ok, I love Moodle, but sometimes it really drives me crazy! Ever since 1.6, upgrades are a bear. Everytime I try to upgrade to a version in the MOODLE_18_STABLE branch, it chokes — whether one of the continue buttons fails to work half-way through the upgrade, or I click on the unattended mode, it never seems to work (1.8.2+ this summer and 1.8.3+ this week). I always end up installing a copy from the *_RELEASE branch instead but then I wonder if we’re going to encounter an issue with security patches and updates. There has to be a better way! Are there any Moodle admins out there who have suggestions about how to get this under control. I’d be happy to operate from CVS if that would be best — I just need it to work!PS — I know you Moodle folks found my post on wikis before so if you find this one, I’d love some advice on best practice for upgrading :-).

It never ceases to amaze me how Google continues to add the value-add to their products. Gmail is far and away the best web-based email application available today. It blows away all other web based email applications that I have used in the last 10 years…Outlook Web Access, Yahoo, Hotmail, Rocketmail, Squirrelmail, and Horde all pale in comparison. Here’s why Gmail’s on top:

• Keyboard shortcuts: I live all day long using my laptop(s) and it’s critical that I can navigate quickly between emails. One fingered archiving and replying is brilliant. Gmail combines the accessibility of the web, with the keyboardness of Mutt.
• Integrated chat: I don’t have to run an additional client to be accessible via chat — open up one browser window and I’m connected to my personal enterprise email as well as my professional chat client. Also, today it would appear that Google announced the ability to access your AIM chat via GTalk in GMail, so now I can stay in touch with not only my GTalk friends & colleagues, but also my friends who have AIM accounts. Now that’s value-add.
• Anywhere email. With GMail as my primary email account, I don’t have to worry about which client I have loaded on a particular computer nor which platform I am accessing the account from. I don’t have to worry about IMAP access to my Exchange server not being quite up to snuff. I don’t have to worry about developing an anti-spam solution…no, with GMail, anti-spam is there and it just works.
• Google Docs — with my Google account, I have immediate access to gigs and gigs of storage where I can store all sorts of web-based word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation files. In addition to having browser-based access to these documents, I can also invite other colleagues from around the planet to collaborate with me on these docs. No training, no costly apps, no training them how to use a wiki…it’s just there, and it works, and it’s free.

So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to switch.

Mark Shuttleworth has posted some good thoughts on why Ubuntu is a great option on the desktop. 

Christmas is coming…

Note the date on the milk jug!

Originally uploaded by mcksean

Turns out that IMAP is now available in GMail. This is probably old news and I guess I’ve been using it on my iPhone without know it. For more information check out their help document on setting it up.