Lagniappe

Why Microsoft and Adobe are laughing all the way to the bank

Chuck Davis — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 21:44:00 +0000

I recently got an email from a friend. She is looking to purchase a new computer. Apparently a friend of her's works at Dell and he spec'ed out a pretty decent machine at a good price with his discounts.

Then she asked about software. Will Adobe Photoshop work on this computer, and how much will it cost? I did a quick survey of Froogle, Amazon, and Adobe's own web site and determined that a legal copy would cost pretty close to the list price of $650. This was almost as much as the cost of the computer.

Cool Free Software #3

Chuck Davis — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 00:16:00 +0000

I've been meaning to write reviews or descriptions of the cool free software I've found lately, but I've found so much of it recently that I've been unable to write descriptions. I'm going ahead and publishing this page to get the list out, and hope to be able to come back and annotate it later.

New applications (or ones I've recently discovered)

World Wind
Audacity
Filezilla (FTP program for Windows)
Fetch (FTP program for Mac; free educational license)
Nvu
OpenOffice
Yahoo Widget Engine
Flickr - includes application for mass uploads (uploading a whole folder or more) at a time; limited free account; unlimited account for $25/year. Easy editing, tagging, group sites, security, CD or DVD backups

Major updates to applications I've mentioned before (in Cool Free Software #1, or Cool Free Software #2):

RSSOwl
Google Earth
Google Desktop

Writing for the web

Chuck Davis — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 23:41:00 +0000

It has become passe that writing for the web is different from writing for paper.

shorter

use links

link guidelines (from airhigh/knowbility)

link text should make sense out of context, in a list of links.
descriptive link text lets the user know where the link goes. [indicates to search engines that you know what you're talking about]
links to the same place should have the same name; links to different pages should be different.
Test the links out of context
Raw links ( where the link is http:// followed by the URI) are difficult for those using a screen reader to interpret. The screen reader reads the URI and usually doesn't convey any information.
Avoid duplicate adjacent links

lead with your most important stuff

Giving Up or Getting Real?

The Secret of Impressive Writing? Keep It Plain and Simple

How Users Read on the Web (Jakob Nielsen)

Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective: How to Write for the Web (Jakob Nielsen)

Happy Birthday, Web

Chuck Davis — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 17:41:00 +0000

This weekend (through the Christmas holiday, depending on how you interpret it) marks the 15th birthday of the World Wide Web. Both the concept of hypertext and the Internet had been around for a long time, but on November 12th, 1990 Tim Berners-Lee wrote a formal proposal for the World Wide Web to his employers at the CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) particle physics lab. On November 13th he wrote the first draft of a web page.

During the Christmas holiday of that year, Sir Tim (he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 2004) built all of the tools necessary for a working web, including a web server and a web browser. In August of 1991 a web server at CERN was put on the Internet.

Growth of the Blogosphere

Chuck Davis — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 22:50:00 +0000

Have you updated your blog lately? Do you have a blog? If you don't, you will soon.

An analysis of recent data from Technorati by Nicholas Carr (It beats talking to yourself) indicates that if you don't have a blog, you will in a few years. In fact, at the current rate of growth, everyone on Earth today will have a blog in 3 and a half years, no later than 2010.

Technorati has issued it's latest report on the continued growth in the number of blogs. The number has been doubling every 5 months for at least the last 36 months.

Typography Rant

Chuck Davis — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 23:03:00 +0000

For at least the last 20 to 25 years, most offices have been preparing most of their documents on computers rather than typewriters (with the exception of completing forms). Some people don't seem to realize this and use a computer as if it were a typewriter. It's not.

Two spaces after a period.
Way back in "the old days," we all used typewriters that only had a single typeface (or font), ... Courier. In the Courier typeface, every character occupies the same amount of space (sometimes called a monospaced font). When using the Courier font, the correct way to distinguish between the end of a word and the end of a sentence is to use 2 spaces at the end of a sentence. Fonts other than Courier (and Monaco) do not use the same amount of space between different letters. These fonts automattically adjust the amount of space between letters depending on what letters are adjacent to each other and the correct amount of spacing at the end of a sentence is automatically added.

When using fonts other that Courier or Monaco, use only one space after a period at the end of a sentence. The font automatically adds the correct amount of spacing.
Book titles and scientific names should be italicized rather than underlined.
The only reason book titles and scientific names were ever underlined in the first place is because with our old typewriters, and their unchangeable Courier font, we were unable to produce italicized letters. Underlining was meant to be a note to typesetters that these words should be italicized. Since our computers are capable of using an italic typeface, we should use italics, rather than underlining to denote book titles and scientific names.
Tab Stops.
Don't even get me started on tabs and runs of spaces.

Projecting La Porte ISD Bandwidth Needs

Chuck Davis — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 00:24:00 +0000

Prior to the 1996 bond election, La Porte ISD (my employer) had a leased 56 K (56 kilobits per second) connection between each campus and the central office. Teachers that could justify it their principals (5 or 6 throughout the district), had dial-up (24 K) connections to their personal Internet accounts in their labs. TENET (The Texas Education Network) began supplying free Internet accounts to teachers in 1992.

As LPISD began to install Local Area Networks in 1997, the district acquired a T-1 connection to the Internet (1,540 K) through Region IV Education Service Center that could be used by any computer in the district that was on the network. Individual dial-up accounts were no longer necessary. This is approximately the time when LPISD put up their first web and email servers.

Up until about the year 2000, this was all of the bandwidth La Porte ISD had for 7,000 students and approximately 600 teachers and administrative staff that use the Internet. If you have a "Roadrunner" cable or a DSL connection, you probably have this much bandwidth into your house today.

As most of the campus local area networks were installed, we upgraded our internet connection in 2000 to an OC3 fiber optic connection (155,000 K). We currently use 5 -7 K during a typical school day, and occasionally "burst" up to 30,000 K.

We pay for 3,000 K, burstable to 10,000 K per month.

Year	Kilobits per second (Kbps)
Prior to 1997	56
2000 - 2003	1,540
2000 - 2003	2 - 4,000 (up to 8,000)
2003 - 2006	5 - 7,000 (up to 30,000)

The majority of teen Internet users create, remix or share content online

Chuck Davis — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 16:33:00 +0000

Fully half of all teens, and 57 percent of teens who use the Internet, could be considered Content Creators, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Some interesting findings from their survey include:

33 percent of online teens share their own creative content online, such as artwork, photos, stories or videos.
32 percent say that they have created or worked on webpages or blogs for others, including groups they belong to, friends or school assignments.
22 percent report keeping their own personal webpage.
19 percent of online teens keep a blog, and 38 percent of online teens read blogs.
19 percent of Internet-using teens say they remix content they find online into their own artistic creations.

Pew Charitable Trusts' Press Release
Full Report - Teen Content Creators and Consumers

Disclaimer

Chuck Davis — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 02:18:00 +0000

These web pages represent the facts as I know them at the time. Of course, they also express my opinions. To the extent that the facts are wrong, let me know and I'll be happy to post a retraction. To the extent that my opinions are wrong, I reserve the right to change them. Links usually lead to content on other web sites and I'm not responsible for any content/problems/issues you find with them.

The opinions that I express here do not represent the position, policy, or whatever of my employer. I work for La Porte Independent School District, a public K-12 school district, about 30 miles SE of Houston, Texas.

I dont think anything here violates any existing copyrights, but if it does, let me know and I will investigate and remove the offending item if required.

Shuttle "Return to Flight Task Force" and PowerPoint

Chuck Davis — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 12:23:00 +0000

The Shuttle "Return to Flight Task Group" has released its final reports:

A summary analysis of the reports can be found on the Spaceflight Now web site.

Quoting:

“Another lack of rigor cited by the panel - one that also was cited by the CAIB - is the widespread use of PowerPoint presentations in lieu of actual engineering data and analyses.”

Cool Free Software #2

Chuck Davis — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 00:01:00 +0000

One of the neatest pieces of software I've seen come along in a long time is "Google Earth." One of the neatest things about it it that it's free.

Google has assembled a huge database of satellite and aerial photography and laid it on top of a globe that you can rotate, tilt, and zoom in to. The detail is amazing. Kids can actually manipulate maps by dragging the map to scroll and moving a slider bar to tilt or zoom the map. Maps can be rotated, for instance to look at Texas as viewed from Mexico, California, or Louisiana. Teachers can save placemarks for student assignments or projects.

Welcome to Lagniappe

Chuck Davis — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 22:52:00 +0000

Welcome to Lagniappe. "Lagniappe" (pronounced LAN-yap) is a cajun term for "something extra," or a small gift presented by a merchant to a customer when they made a purchase (in other words, an extra or unexpected benefit).

(Lagniappe entry in Dictionary.com)

Cool Free Software #1

Chuck Davis — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 23:13:00 +0000

Google Desktop Search is a free application that you download from Google and install on your computer. When you install the application and go to Google's web page, they add a link to the top of their search box for you (called "Desktop") and index particular file types (Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader, Text files, Media files, etc) on your hard drive.

The big advantages of Google Desktop Search are that:

it searches your email files (from Microsoft Outlook) as well as your data files
its fast

More free software that I like will be listed here in the future.

Google Desktop Search