“Cookies” are generally harmless and oftentimes helpful bits of information stored by your Web browser when you visit many Web sites for the first time. Once a Web site sets a cookie in your Web browser, unique information stored in the cookie is used by the site identify you on subsequent visits. Because the site is able to set you apart from all of its other visitors, it is able to effectively customize itself according to your past preferences and recall information that you may have entered on previous visits; the reason that the Google search engine “remembers” how many results that you prefer per page or your favorite Web-based store is able to display the contents of your shopping cart from a week ago, for example, is due to the fact that cookies from these sites have been implanted in your Web browser.
It should be re-asserted that cookies are essentially harmless; they are not viruses or malware and cannot directly alter information on your computer. Many Web sites, in fact, will not function properly unless your Web browser is configured to accept cookies. Cookies are not, however, viewed positively by everyone. The use of “tracking” cookies by advertisers to monitor personal browsing habits is considered by some to be a violation of their privacy. In addition, cookies can in rare instances cause Web-based applications such as the Fordham University Portal to malfunction until they are removed.
Because of these concerns, it is advisable to be aware of how to control the way in which your particular Web browser handles cookies and delete cookies from your browser if necessary. This week’s screen cast will demonstrate how to configure cookie handling and removal in the Mozilla FireFox Web browser. Next week, I’ll do the same for Internet Explorer and Safari.
This feature that enables this is a portal “channel” called “My RSS”. Along with many other useful channels, this feature may be added to your personal Fordham University portal page as you customize it to suit your needs.
Although not as powerful as using a full-featured RSS reader such as those demonstrated in my previous posts on the topic (e.g. see posts demonstrating Google Reader, NetNewsWire, FeedDemon), using the “My RSS” channel can allow you to quickly check up on one of your most valuable RSS-enabled Web sites while conducting your daily business on the Fordham portal.
Documentation regarding the use of the Fordham portal as well as several screencast tutorials can be found on your portal home page.
-Jim
(behnke@fordham.edu)
Photo Credit RSS and MyFilesby technovore via Flickr
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
Most people don’t give much thought to what browser they use to surf the internet; in fact they might not even realize how many different kinds there are to choose from.
Why should you make the switch from using Internet Explorer to another browser such as Firefox? There are several good reasons: security, customization, and speed. Firefox is not only a more secure browser and faster than Internet Explorer, but it also allows you to customize your browser experience with add-ons to make your browsing experience easy and save you time.
Delicious Bookmarks integrates delicious into the browser. For all readers who are new to social bookmarking or have not yet signed up for a Delicious account, take a look at my previous post on “What’s so Delicious About Social Bookmarking?” for more information and resources on using Delicious.
Twitterfox: I primarily use Twitter to keep in touch and share resources with other educators. At work I use Twitterfox and Twhirl to keep up with the latest tweets (at home I prefer to use Tweetdeck). I’m planning a future blog post on the benefits of educators using Twitter, but in the meantime if you are interested in learning more then take a look at the Twitter tab on my Pageflake for some helpful links. If you are a Twitterer, please feel free to follow me (kris10_), I primarily tweet about education, technology, and math.
Download Statusbar: Instead of getting an annoying little pop-up every time you download something from the web, you’ll see a notification on the status bar of your browser. There are also many other features available to customize your downloads.
Session Manager: I like this add-on because it’s an easy way to restore previous browsing sessions. This is especially helpful after a crash occurs when I’ve got multiple tabs open!
Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar: I’m a big fan of being organized and this add-on lets me further customize the bookmarks toolbar so that I can not only use folders to organize my bookmarks by groups, but I can also add multiple rows.
Coral IE Tab: While most web pages that are created now are compatible with various browsers, sometimes websites need to be viewed in Internet Explorer. This add-on is a great way of viewing a page in Internet Explorer in a tab which avoids having to open up a new window.
Colorzilla: This handy add-on lets you get a color reading from anywhere inside the browser. If you are into graphic design or frequently use products like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, this add-on can save you valuable time when you need to match a particular color on a website.
FireFTP: If you are looking for a free and secure FTP client, this is an easy and intuitive option.
FoxyMeter: An unobtrusive way to keep track of the number of web pages you surf.
Additional Ways to customize Firefox:
Browse for Firefox add-ons by catagory or collection. There is even a collection add-on that will notify you when there are updates made to the collection. In addition to add-ons, you can further customize your Firefox browser by changing the theme, which is the way the buttons, icons, and browser looks. Personas are a new Firefox feature that adds an image to the top and bottom (status bar) of the browser.
NetNewsWire is a free RSS aggregator for Mac OSX created by Newsgator, the same company that produces the free “Feed Demon” RSS reader for Windows. In addition to NetNewsWire and FeedDemon, Newsgator offers “Newsgator Online“, a free Web-based RSS reader service that can synchronize with NetNewsWire or FeedDemon. This allows users of either desktop application to follow their RSS feeds when away from their computers and effectively create a backup of their RSS subscriptions.
For my third screencast on the topic of RSS feeds, I’ve decided to demonstrate how to use NetNewsWire’ to subscribe to RSS feeds, organize their subscriptions, and, in conjunction with Newsgator Online, create custom RSS feeds based on existing RSS-enabled content from around the Web. Custom RSS feeds are made using NetNewWire’s “Clipping” feature (also available on FeedDemon). For professors who maintain their own Web sites or Blackboard pages, this capability could provide a way to quickly share content from around the Web with students and colleagues who use RSS readers applications.
As we all know, it’s important to avoid infringing on copyrighted material. So, how can you find excellent quality images to use in presentations or on blogs without having to pay expensive royalty fees to use licensed material? The simple answer is to use the Creative Commons on Flickr. There are literally millions of excellent photos that have various types of creative common licenses that allow you to use them without having to spend money or sacrifice quality!!
How does creative commons work on flickr?
There are several different types of licenses to choose from, you should search for a photo with the license that best fits how you will be using it. Here is a brief description of the different types:
Attribution: Others can copy/distribute/display/perform copyrighted and derivative works based upon it but only if credit is given. Noncommercial: Others can copy/distribute/display/perform copyrighted and derivative works but for noncommercial purposes only
No Derivative Works: Others can copy/distribute/display/perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative works based upon it. Share alike: Others can distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the work.
If you have not signed up for an account, and plan on using Flickr images in the future, it might be worth it for you to take a minute or two to create a free yahoo account (Flickr’s parent company). One of the many reasons why you would want to have your own Flickr account is because you can conveniently keep track of images that you would like to use. When I am searching for images on Flickr I quite often find other photos that I would like to bookmark for later– since I have an account I can do this quite easily by marking it as a “favorite”. Take a look at the Newbie’s Guide to Flickr for the basics of uploading photos on Flickr or view a presentation that includes a step by step guide to signing up for a free account.
As detailed in my previous post on the subject, RSS reader applications can save a great deal of time and enhance productivity by providing a simple way to monitor novel content from a great many Web-based resources. In addition to allowing users to easily subscribe to and view current content using RSS feeds, RSS reader applications, such as the FeedDemondesktop application for Windows, often provide advanced capabilities for sorting and searching RSS-enabled information.
Produced the a company called NewsGator, FeedDemon is a free and provides features that users who have subscribed to a lot of RSS feeds in different subject areas will appreciate. It allows users to organize RSS feeds into folders, “flag” important posts for future viewing, perform keyword searches on feeds, and create saved searches to automatically monitor RSS-feeds from many different Web sites for particular keywords.
I’ve demonstrated some of these features in this week’s screencast.
Like e-mail applications, most RSS-readers have the same general features and stand out in certain areas. FeedDemon seems to have some excellent reporting capabilities. Google Reader provides integration with the other Google services for sharing feeds and searching for RSS-enabled Web sites. I will use NetNewsWire (Mac) for my demonstration next week.
What is your favorite RSS reader application? What do you think of “FeedDemon”?
We live in a world where time is precious and the amount of new information that appears every day on any given topic can be overpowering. RSS feeds and RSS reader applications can be very powerful tools for students and professionals who want to tame “information overload” while keeping up with the latest information in their areas of Interest and expertise.
What is RSS and why is it useful?
RSS, short for “Really Simple Syndication”, is a way for Web sites to publish content so that users of RSS reader applications, or “rss aggregators” can easily view links to the site’s latest content. Web sites with RSS-enabled content make their latest pages available to users of RSS reader applications by using links to RSS documents (also referred to as “feeds”, “web feeds”, or “channels”).
Links to RSS “feeds” on RSS-enabled Web sites are typically represented by images labeled as “RSS” or “XML” (short for “eXtensible Markup Language”, the type of code that makes up RSS documents).
In fact, you’ve probably seen them on just about every website you visit, but didn’t know what it was or what it was for!! For some slides on how to recognize feeds and find them on websites, view the short presentation on Slideshare by Kristen.
How can I use a Feed Aggregator to follow RSS feeds?
When RSS feed links are copied into an RSS reader such as Google Reader(web based), Feeddemon (for MS Windows), or NetNewsWire (Mac OSX), the user has “subscribed” to the feed and will be able to viewsummaries of the latest content from the subscribed Web site from within the RSS reader. By subscribing to multiple feeds in an area of interest, or “aggregating” feeds, users can user their RSS reader applications to browse, search, and sort content from many Web sites without having to visit them individually.
This capability can save a great deal of time and allow users to use information from the Web much more productively.
For this week’s screencast, I’ve created a brief demonstration of how to use the Google Reader RSS application to subscribe to an RSS-enabled Web site. If you are new to the idea of using a feed reader, it’s probably best to start out with using Google Reader. However; there many different feed readers available for any platform with a variety of interfaces. Here’s a chart comparing the different features of three popular feedreaders: Bloglines, Google Reader, and Newsgator with a list of pros and cons for each. If you are looking for a list of feed aggregators and tools, take a look at Mashable’s Ultimate RSS Toolkit. RSS feeds and RSS readers can be used to easily and effectively keep up with the latest news headlines, journal abstracts, blog entries, and organizational activities.
Are you currently using an RSS reader application to make the Web’s latest, greatest content manageable and useful? Can you provide any examples of great RSS-enabled Web sites? Please leave your ideas in the comment section or email them to me at jbehnke@fordham.edu or Kristen at treglia@fordham.edu. We would love to hear from you!!!
We had a great turnout of about 50 faculty members at our Spring meeting of the Faculty Forum on Teaching and Technology, first at Lincoln Center on Tuesday and then at Rose Hill on Wednesday.
Using discussion boards, preventing plagiarism, and using Blackboard were discussed at length at both sessions. The presentation on discussion boards along with resources and links have all been posted to the Faculty Forum on Teaching and Technology.
For those faculty who were unable to attend but would like access to resource materials posted on blackboard and would like to participate in future events, please send us an email and we will enroll you in the organization: blackboard@fordham.edu
Assignments given with examples of forums set up on the Discussion Board page 1, page 2, and page 3 (there is a PDF version available in the organization) as well as links to tips on facilitating discussion boards.
The universities’ “MyFiles” system provides all faculty, staff and students with up to 10GB of secure space to store , share, and back up their data files.
While the Web-based interface for MyFiles provides adequate functionality for backing up and viewing files, it is limited in the sense that you must in most cases copy your files to your computer’s Desktop before you can edit and save changes to them (Windows XP users can use Webfolders to get past this).
Once this connection is established, you will be able to open, edit, and save data to your MyFiles account without ever having to copy it to your hard drive; as long as you are connected, it will appear as if your MyFiles data is stored on your Mac instead of on the network.
For Mac users, this procedure greatly enhances the utility of MyFiles and will probably be their preferred method of accessing MyFiles data.
I’d very much like hear some feedback on this method of using MyFiles; let me know how it works out!
-Jim
(behnke@fordham.edu)
Photo Credit MacBook by kattni
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
