I wrote about backups and storage a few weeks ago. There were some questions about media and long-term storage.
Ad Terras Per Aspera has a nice article that goes through the history of CDs and DVDs and offers suggestions on what to use for archiving.
TeacherTube is a free video streaming site that hopefully won’t be filtered by your school’s content filter.
There is a limit of ten minutes per video. That should be enough for most student videos but doesn’t match the sixty minutes available on other services.
Looking around the site I found tutorials and PowerPoint presentations. It must be a new site. Most of the categories have less than 100 videos. Over time, this could turn out to be a valuable site.
One of the first things I talk to my new students about is online social networking. Almost all of them have posted to one of the popular sites: MySpace, Facebook, Bebo. Some of them have posted things that may not be appropriate for a public classroom. 
We talk about permanent archiving sites like Archive.org
With all the web crawlers out there, my blog gets cached by one of them within 24 hours of each of my posts. That can make it hard to “take something back.”
The Web Worker Daily has a story about developing a positive online persona. They outline a proactive approach to creating positive content that is likely to be found by a Google search. In the future it is likely that employers will check Google to see what they can find about potential employees. The article made me realize I had not purchased my own (full) name domain. Two dollars later, it’s now mine.
When I was a kid, there was a guy with the same name as my dad but he lived in the next county. He was close enough that the local paper would pick up the story when he was arrested for DUI or drug possession. Our refrigerator always had a clipping or two that was a laugh for anyone that visited. With the Internet, you should know what is out there, even if it is about someone in the next county.
I have gotten my share of email spam and phishing messages, but this is a new one for me. Yesterday I had this Skype message pop up. I had to do a double-take to make sure it wasn’t something that was real. At the bottom of the message was a link that went to a phishing site.
Tech criminals are becoming more creative. I can understand how the inexperienced can fall for some of these gimmicks.
I use Internet Explorer for just about all my browsing. Firefox is just as good, but I prefer IE. It is like my choice in an automobile. I prefer to drive a Honda even though a Toyota is probably just as good. I simply like the look and feel of a Honda better.
I do use Firefox often. The unpredictable nature of the Internet makes having two browsers a real life saver at times. Here’s an example. When I do something in a browser that is going to require extended input, I use Firefox. When I grade papers, Blackboard has a page that lists all my students and I can easily enter all the student grades for one assignment on one page. If the grading process requires me to do anything else like check a web page, open a document, click a link in an email, that second browser will protect my work.
I can’t count the number of times that I have lost “form” information because another process took my browser to a new page and lost my form data. Since IE is my default browser, I don’t have to worry about an outside process changing my Firefox page. That alone makes the two-browser environment worthwhile.
I also use Firefox as my non-authenticated browser. I have so many sites that require authentication; I have IE automatically log me in to many of them. If I want to see what my delicious links (or some other site where I have an account) look like when I am not logged in, I use Firefox. Don’t point back to my post about passwords and my “security freakishness” and say that remembered passwords aren’t OK. My machine is locked any time I am not typing on the keys.
I find the two-fisted approach to browsing is handy. I even have Opera
http://www.opera.com
if I need to have a third iron in the fire.