Sylvia Currie :: Blog

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/11/twitter-updates-

• N85 - first thoughts.: Once I’d figured out how, exactly, to get the SIM card in - I then tried to g.. http://tinyurl.com/688dy3 #


• BBC & GMail work fine on the N85, University VLE works. Sort of. Not tried the chat or anything, and the layout’s v. sprawly. #


• Virtual Worlds.: The BBC’s click have a report this week on Virtual Worlds - looking at Twinity and .. http://tinyurl.com/59n7vs #


• N-85 TV: Just been testing the video - by watching a BBC trailer. Very impressed! Now wondering how I find.. http://tinyurl.com/69vtm6 #


• @dajbelshaw oh yes, my Gmail’s gone up to 7268 MB too, can’t say I’d noticed the chat, as I keep it disabled anyway. in reply to dajbelshaw #


• just about to go & listen to @stephendfry reading Harry P. while lying in my bath. #


• @mberry LOL! I see I’ll be seeing you in Brighton on Monday. in reply to mberry #

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http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/11/n-85-transferrin

I decided to try to copy my contacts list from my phone to the N85, it all seemed to go smoothly, the Nokia PC Suite moved the contacts etc. However, when I then wanted to send a text, it wanted to know the message centre. I guess were you to get one on contract, with its own sim, rather than taking a (payg) card in/out of an existing phone, it would already know its message centre - rather than having to put the card back in the other one & copy (manually) the centre number down.

I’ve now located some instructions - for things like enabling the predictive text (which wasn’t in the material that Nicola pointed me to, nor was it in the help files on the phone - at least, not that I could locate!)

The particular phone I’ve got has an EU plug … I’d thought I’d got an adapter at home, though, of course, most of my adapters are for me going to the EU, not to plug EU things in. Luckily I remembered that one of my other devices has a dual plug thing on the end - an EU plug plugged into a UK one. (Could do with more of these sockets!)

(Taken at CAU in China)

The text seems to have gone fine, now that I’ve added the messaging centre.

I never did seem to be able to get iPlayer content on it, but I was able to play some ITV previews. However, from reading the iPlayer site, as it’s necessary to download & then transfer to an N95, I wonder if it’s the same for an N85 (which would be a pain, having to install the full iPlayer, rather than using the Flash streaming). Or, perhaps I should just try another programme.

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http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/11/n-85-tv/

Just been testing the video - by watching a BBC trailer. Very impressed! Now wondering how I find iPlayer.

I’d been wondering how I selected whether I was using my SIM card to connect to 3G, or the wifi connection when going online. I’ve now realised that when I go straight to the Internet, it wants to use the sim (which, being a mere pay as you go one) doesn’t support it - and it tells me there’s a packet error. However, going to the WLAN icon & saying I want to browser from there, lets me. Just found “Have I got news for you” I hope it’s going to work!

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http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/11/virtual-worlds-2

The BBC’s click have a report this week on Virtual Worlds - looking at Twinity and Near Global.

Both Twinity and Near Global have much better graphics than Second Life.(perhaps explaining why I can’t get Twinity to work on my home PC!). I rather liked the ghosts of people in Near Global; rather than Twinity encouraging you to make an avatar look like you - with your name. It will be interesting to see what actually happens - given that some SecondLife users try to have a name as near theirs as possible - and to make their avatars look as close as possible; others will go the opposite way.

I managed to get Twinity installed on my work PC, but it wouldn’t work - I blame the firewall, however, I’ll try again with work laptop and home network.

In Near, they’re going to only have the “right” shops in the right places. Wonder what they intend to do when the shop doesn’t want to participate.

They’re in the video clip - the first item.

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http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/11/n85-first-though

Once I’d figured out how, exactly, to get the SIM card in - I then tried to get online. It did tell me it was on the Wifi network at home - though when I was browsing, it continually had a “G” in the top corner - which made me wonder how it was actually getting the data.

I did managed to read some emails - Gmail has a fairly good mobile interface, though not sure that I’d have wanted to write a particularly long message; wonder how I can turn predictive text on (and, indeed, if it works online)

The instructions are all in Swedish … and for some odd reason, Nokia UK doesn’t have the instructions for the N-85 on the website - plenty of others in the N-series, just not this one.

Back to the attempting to guess Swedish &/or intution!

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http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/11/drawter/

I think this is going to be the last “new tool of the day” - Drawter for planning page layouts and then generating the HTML/CSS to support them. It’s not an end point - for example, the max width would seem to be c. 640 px - and not possible to use % for layout. However, it can generate the starting point for CSS etc, which can then be edited.

There are quite a few hidden options - some hand coding will probably still be required, but it’s a good learning opportunity.

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http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/11/storytlr/

I’d signed up to Twistory, after reading about it last week, and really rather like it. When I first signed up, I wasn’t tweeting that much. However, fairly shortly afterwards I was at ReLIVE08 & there was a very active back channel. Suddenly Twitter started to make sense & then I wanted to feed all the #Relive08 tweets into something like Twistory, but wasn’t sure how. Sheila has just posted about using Storytlr to do just that. And it lets me add more than just a twitter search.

I added my Twitter a/c, Flickr & then two RSS feeds. However, when I came to create a story (it would be useful when you have to add ‘end date’ if ‘today’ is prefilled & you only have to edit it if required) - it only offered my my Twitter/ Flickr accounts - though the RSS feeds were already in the story - whether I wanted them or not.

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http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/11/etherpad/

I saw Etherpad on Jane Knight’s blog a few days ago - and thought it sounded good - though didn’t sign up at the time. Yesterday, someone else reminded me of it - so I thought I’d have a look. Unfortunately, it seems that too many others have thought the same as me - so it’s reverted to a closed beta, whiel they work out load issues. It seems pretty powerful from everything I’ve heard - especially when there are more than one editors simultaneously.

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http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/11/nokia-n85/

I’ve just got mine on trial from http://www.womworld.com - am going to see what it makes of my pay-as-you-go card later on (lets hope that it’s charged, as the charger in the box is EU - while I have a US adapter for my OLPC, all my EU ones are at home. )

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http://terrya.edublogs.org/2008/11/26/competencies-for-online-teac

Larry Ragan, Director of Faculty development at Penn State’s World Campus has put his flip camcorder to good use over the past few months, cornering various ‘experts’, practitioners and generally experienced online teachers. He  asked each to describe one core competency for successful online teaching.
He has uploaded about 30 of these 1-3 minute videos to [...]