Jen’s Twitter Updates for 2009-06-29

Posted by Jen - 28/06/09 at 03:06:00 pm

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Jen’s Twitter Updates for 2009-06-29

Posted by Jen - 28/06/09 at 03:06:00 pm

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Jen’s Twitter Updates for 2009-06-26

Posted by Jen - 26/06/09 at 03:06:00 pm
  • [Best MJ tweet so far] RT @CobraCommander: "I'm looking at the man in the mirror. I'm asking him to change his ways." #
  • RT @courosa: "100 Incredible Lectures from the World’s Top Scientists" http://twurl.nl/2yng5c #
  • RT @courosa: ""Over 500 million of Audio Tracks. 100% Free and Legal." – http://allmusic.fm/ #

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Twubs.com Conference Suite: Perfect tool for Twitter in the classroom?

Posted by Jen - 23/06/09 at 03:06:51 pm

I’ve been looking for an ideal tool for using Twitter in the classroom, and I think I’ve finally found it. My initial preference was for Tweetchat.com for its spare, clean interface, but it’s a little *too* clean in some ways. It doesn’t make it easy to multimedia tweet directly from the Tweetchat interface. One could easily get overwhelmed by the number of Tweets related to a given hashtag. There’s no way to moderate which Tweets show up on a projector.  There’s no way to differentiate question tweets from comment tweets from resource-sharing tweets.

Twubs.com’s Conference Suite, which is free for the moment while it’s in beta, seems to solve those problems and more. And honestly, I would have never noticed it because it was hidden behind the “Hosting an Event?” link on Twubs.com, and I wouldn’t really consider my classes “events”. But the Twubs.com CEO @tferraro (twitter.com/tferraro) was nice enough to walk me through the features, and it’s still highly relevant to the classroom.

Some of the highlight features:
–Ability to project a simplified, show-me-only-the-Tweets-and-nothing else interface.
–If students are sitting in front of individual computers, the Twubs.com interface makes it super easy to tweet multimedia (video, TwitPics, etc.) without having to leave the hashtag feed.
–Your projected Tweets can be moderated in lots of ways. You can pre-select certain Tweets to show up (excellent for selecting student questions or comments for display as a jumping-off point for a class discussion), you can moderate how often new Tweets will show up on the projection (from every 5 seconds to every 2 minutes), etc.
–Ability to show a separate feed of just questions, designated with their own hashtag. For example, if your regular hashtag is #hashtag, your questions-only hashtag could be #q-hashtag. Super useful if you want students focusing on your lecture and not getting sidetracked into investigating resources in other people’s Tweets.
–Can have Twubs within a single hashtag so that sub-groups can use the same hashtag but still differentiate each other. So, for example, let’s say I am teaching two sections of the same class with the same curriculum. They could share a hashtag but be in two different Twubs.

All in all, pretty exciting stuff. I plan to keep blogging it as I implement it. Stay tuned

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First experimental post with Posterous.com, a "blog by email" service

Posted by Jen - 22/06/09 at 11:06:33 am

Today I’m playing around with Posterous.com (http://www.posterous.com/). It’s a new blogging service where you email whatever you want posted to post@posterous.com and somehow, magically, it shows up on your blog. And if you set a Posterous account, you can email your content to post@yourusername.posterous.com and thereby get the post to show up not only on your Posterous blog but also wherever else you say to put it–like your Twitter feed, or your Facebook status updates, etc.
 
In other words, I may never have to log into the damn Wordpress Dashboard ever again. Hallelujah amen!
 
So here goes nothing! Just a little update on Skyler’s 60 days at Dillman College. I figured a photo and a video of Skyler would be a good test run.
 
Here’s Skyler standing on the Dillmans’ fancy 3-horse slant with living quarters rig. PS–that’s not me standing there. :) I was further back taking the picture to show my mom how huge this rig is (and to help her recognize it next week at Encore Horse Trial).

And maybe if we luck out, this will be a video of Skyler schooling XC on June 21:

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YouData: Surprisingly fun, on-target, income-generating way to waste time on Internet

Posted by Jen - 19/06/09 at 11:06:51 am
I am very wary of Internet get-rich-quick schemes. It took me nearly 5 years to sign up with Ebates, which turned out to be real (the $15 check they sent me in March cashed into my account no problem). In fact, I am so wary of referral systems that I’ll warn you right now that this is a referral link to Ebates.

But today, thanks to a tweet from @Freebies4Mom that pointed to her descriptive and highly persuasive blog post about YouData, I signed up for YouData, a service that uses a user-supplied profile of information to generate links that might interests you, then pays you to go to those links.

I’m impressed so far. I made $1.04 in about 3 minutes of link clicking, which apparently can be deposited right into my PayPal account. They are delightfully anal about making sure that you’re a real person, insisting on confirming you with both an email and a text message to your phone.

And since the YouData survey is so detailed, they send you to links that you’ll actually like. My first link-thru was PerpetualKid.com, which was full of just the kind of zany stuff that I love to buy, like a NunZilla. Love!

Excerpts below are from Freebies4Mom’s blog, which I really recommend reading if you’re not yet sold on YouData. Otherwise, go to YouData and sign up!.

clipped from freebies4mom.blogspot.com
Many of my readers can be earning free money just by viewing ads on Freebies 4 Mom! I’m serious – I’ve just added YouData to the right sidebar. You get paid when you view ads that appear in this box. I signed-up recently and after one week they deposited $4.43 in my PayPal account. That’s money I earned just for quickly glancing at a few ads! I want you to earn that money too!
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Wanted: Horse Boarding near Columbus, preferably northeast of city!

Posted by Jen - 16/06/09 at 02:06:44 pm

I had a “duh” moment today as I was re-posting my Craigslist “horse board wanted” ad for the third time.  There’s some cranky farmer who trawls the Columbus Farm and Garden section flagging Horse Board Ads, and it finally occurred to me that maybe I should use my blog as an outlet.

So if you know of a great boarding facility northeast of Columbus, Ohio–like maybe in New Albany, Johnstown, Westerville, Galena, Blacklick, Sunbury, etc.–please visit my wanted ad and shoot me some suggestions! I have one place in mind that’s just a smidge too spendy for me (meaning it’s about $100 shy of my monthly mortgage payment), but if I end up boarding there, at least I’ll know that I did the best comparison shopping possible!

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Swiffer WetJet: Cheaping and Greening it Up

Posted by Jen - 16/06/09 at 06:06:57 am
I finally gave in yesterday and bought a Swiffer WetJet. I am very anti-mop, and since hubby and I are buying a new house in Columbus with hardwood floors, something had to give.

There are lots of ways to cheap up and green up your Swiffer, most notably to use reusable/washable pads rather than the disposables, use some kind of cheaper but disposable pad on the bottom, and figure out how to refill the Swiffer bottles (which try to prohibit you from opening them, but it’s totally doable. Excellent Instructables tutorial here about how to open your WetJet bottle and unlock it for future refills.

I am still obsessed with my Firefox Clipmarks add-on, so I clipped a a few of the better tips from Thriftyfun’s excellent page about cheaping up the Swiffer WetJet. Try to ignore all the idiots who buy into the Swiffer/pet liver failure myth and soak up the good stuff here!
Fortunately, the nice folks at Thriftyfun.com figured out YEARS ago

clipped from www.thriftyfun.com
Make Your Own Swiffer Pads

My Recipe

Our SJ’s squirt broke, thanks to my kids. But I just use a combo of 1/2 vinegar, 1/2 water, with a few drops of rosemary oil to clean the floor. Doesn’t give quite as nice a shine, but sure is cheap, and smells SO much better than the chemical SJ solution. (09/28/2004)


Refilling the Bottle

To easily reuse the Swiffer cleaning bottle, cut small hole (about 1/4 inch) into bottom (part that sticks up when inserted in the Swiffer mop). GO to local hardware store and buy small rubber stopper (under 50 cents). When you want to refill with your own cheap cleaning solution, take out stopper and use funnel to refill. (12/06/2004)


Bay Diapers
Getting a bag of baby diapers saves money over buying the Swiffer pads. They’re made to absorb large amounts of liquid and are a lot cheaper than the refills. (12/06/2004)
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Awesome List of Firefox 3 Addons – and not just for academics!

Posted by Jen - 15/06/09 at 12:06:54 pm
I like to think I’m pretty “with it” when it comes to Firefox addons, and the lists of best/newest/awesomest addons don’t usually impress me. This one totally did! Lots of addons I’d never heard of that are genuinely useful. In fact, I used one of my new addons, Clipmarks, to clip some portions of the list below! Clipmarks lets you clip whatever portions of a web site interest you for printing, emailing, blogging, etc. I am posting this blog post right from Clipmarks!

Thank you to @dianadell on Twitter for pointing me to this!

clipped from www.bestcollegesonline.com

50 Firefox 3 Add-ons That Will Transform Your Academic Research
  • ShareThis: Share any type of online content with your friends, family, and colleagues with ShareThis.
    		•
  • Morning Coffee: Organize your websites to open up in tabs as part of your daily routine.
    		•
  • Who Is This Person?: With this add-on, you can highlight a name on any web page and find information on that person on a variety of different sites.
    		•
  • FireGestures: Create customizable mouse gestures that will help you browse faster in FireGestures.
    		•
  • ErrorZilla: ErrorZilla turns 404 pages into a useful page with links to the Wayback Machine, Whois, Google Cache, and more.
    		•
  • FoxyProxy: Stay safe and anonymous by using this add-on that automatically switches your internet connection over proxy servers.
    		•
  • Open IT Online: Open your documents and images in Firefox with this add-on.
    		•
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    Couch to 5K: There's an App for That!

    Posted by Jen - 14/06/09 at 07:06:51 pm

    Ugh, been spending so much time with my Twitter feed that I hardly have time to blog!  Anyway, just a quickie today.

    c25k1I took two years off from riding in high school to run on the track team, and it was one of the best experiences of my life.  Unfortunately, I was dumb enough to STOP running–and once you stop, the best way to get going again is a well-thought-out interval program.  The Couch-to-5K at Coolrunning.com is just such a program.  Unfortunately, doing it with a regular stopwatch means constantly babysitting your watch, which encourages boredom and bad form.

    Imagine my delight, then, when I discovered this iPhone/iPod Touch App for the C25K!  You set your Playlist to whatever music/audiobooks/other audio distraction of your choice, turn on the C25K app, and it will briefly interrupt your playlist to tell you to walk, run, or otherwise interval yourself!  Sweet!

    Try it.  Love it.  Download it.

    Or if you really really love it, you could help beta test new versions of it.  Click here for that.

    Happy trails!

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