Posts Tagged ‘collaboration’

The iPod Touch has become my most valuable piece of technology.   Last week I added this gem from Nemustech.  Nemus Sync is a free utility that syncs Google Calendar with the Touch’s built-in calendar.  Syncing works in both directions.

You have to jailbreak your Touch before you can add this utility.  About a month after I bought my Touch I watched a couple of videos on YouTube and found easy to follow step-by-step instructions.

The average person can probably get by just fine with the built-in functionality of the Touch now that POP and IMAP email are included.  Some of my jailbreak additions include Wikipedia and Mobile Twitter which I use on a daily basis. 

If you do jailbreak your Touch, don’t do the automatic updates of the firmware.  I turned those off a long time ago.  I think it was the day I got the following message from Apple:

There is an upgrade for iTunes.  It’s called Safari.  Would you like to install it?

I had a flashback to 1996 when everyone was trying to get you to install “their” browser.  I don’t understand how Apple can do something like this and it goes mostly unnoticed.  If Microsoft were to try to push a browser out to an OS X machine that was upgrading a media player, it would be all over the tech news.

I’m not about to drink the Kool-Aid.

Recently I talked about keeping several computers, in different locations up-to-date with the latest versions of my files.  Microsoft’s Mesh has solved this problem.  Yesterday, I received my invitation to participate in the closed beta.  I didn’t have to pull any strings or call in favors to get the invite.  I went to the web site, filled out the request and waited for a few days.  It was worth the wait.

Once I had the account, I logged into the Mesh site.  I was presented with the picture above (without my computers that have been added).  I went to each of my computers and clicked the Add Device button.  A system tray program was installed and that computer was a part of my mesh.

Next I went to my Live Desktop.  This is where I can share resources between computers.  By clicking the Create New Folder icon a “mesh-share” is automatically created and shared among all the computers in my mesh.  A short-cut to this share is added to my desktop and any files dropped into that folder are automatically synchronized on each computer in my mesh.

I started with my presentations, since I have a lot of them.  I copied them into a mesh-share called Presentations.  Here is where it gets really cool.  From another computer I opened a PowerPoint that was in the mesh-share.  I didn’t copy it to the computer; I merely opened it.  I made an adjustment and saved it.  The final version was instantly available to all the machines in my mesh.

In Windows Explorer, a new right-click item is added to the menu.  It’s called “add folder to live mesh” and it permits any mesh member to synchronize a local folder with other computers on the mesh.

On top of the file synchronization, mesh adds a remote control feature to any computer on the mesh.  I can already do this with a combination of VNC and Hamachi.  I did test out the feature in mesh just to see how it works.  It was slower than VNC.  I also had a problem connecting to my home desktop with dual monitors.  The remote display was resized to the equivalent of one screen (half the normal size).  There may be a way to fix this, but I didn’t see the need to invest the time to research it as this remote control solution will be a backup for what I already use.

I am still playing around with all the features of Microsoft Mesh.  I will certainly add a post as I become more proficient in its use.

Last week at the eTech Ohio Conference, I attended John Schinker’s presentation.  He had told me ahead of time that he would be talking about the online community of edtech people that has boosted his overall quality of “edtech life” in the last year.

I found out he has become quite involved with EdTechTalk and is one of the hosts of the EdTechTalkWeekly podcast.  John said I should join for the live chat on Sunday nights at 7pm.  I did that tonight.  It was very worthwhile.   I was able to listen to the live podcast and watch the chat complete with URLs.  The speed round of URLs has something for everyone.  Tonight there was even an interesting guest speaker.

I plan to join them next week.

Not wanting to be left out of the rage called “twitter”, I am now setup. 

http://twitter.com/alvintrusty

NASA has released an RFI to develop a Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game that creates interactions that foster the creative and problem solving skills of our youth.  An MMO game is one where players interact with other players instead of computer controlled participants.  Instead of five or ten players, there are hundreds or thousands.  That’s the “massively” part.

This environment could permit students from all over the Internet to simulate a full scale NASA launch complete with separate launch and control centers, and even multiple spacecraft.  In an MMO game, every person visible in the simulation is controlled by an actual person.  This creates a much more dynamic environment because it is much less predictable.

Here is how the RFI describes the game.

A NASA-based MMO built on a game engine that includes powerful physics capabilities could support accurate in-game experimentation and research. It should simulate real NASA engineering and science missions in a medium that is comfortable and familiar to the majority of students in the United States today.

Exciting!