Opera 9 Available

Yesterday, I think, Opera (the company) pushed out the finished version of Opera (the browser) 9. If you haven’t tried or used Opera before, this is a pretty good time to try it out. Opera could probably be considered the original ‘standards’ browser. While IE and Netscape were battling over features and market share, this browser from Norway was steadily creating a browser that followed the rules. Opera has become a browser that tries to do everything, similar to the way that Mozilla suite (they call it seamonkey now?

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Dreamweaver in Columbus

Thanks to those of you who attended my Dreamweaver workshops this week in Columbus. I have updated all of the class notes with the resources I mentioned through the days and have provided downloadable project files on the page from the second day. You can find these pages by clicking on 'events' on the right side of this page. We covered a LOT of stuff and I'm sure that you probably feel overwhelmed.

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Rock, Paper, Scissors

I’m in columbus, nebraska tonight between sessions of a two-day dreamweaver workshop that I’m facilitating. I turned on the TV, watched a replay of the US getting spanked by the czechs in the world cup, then saw the funniest thing I have seen in a long time: The USA Rock, Paper, Scissors League championship. A full blown sports broadcast complete with player back stories, expert analysis and guest referees. The winner, from Omaha, took home $50,000.

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I don't know what to think of this

MacPractice Uses Parallels to Bring Windows Dentistry App to MacMacPractice this past weekend announced an agreement with Synca Direct, Inc. to bring the company's Cadi dentistry software to Mac users via Parallels Desktop, which enables running Mac OS X and Windows XP simultaneously I knew this would happen. While it is a great thing to be able to run both OS X applications and Windows applications on the same computer, I do not like the idea that some developers will look at this as an opportunity to not write software for the macintosh.

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Google Browser Sync

Google Browser Sync is a new plug-in for Firefox that will allow you to keep multiple copies of Firefox (home, work computers?) in sync. Your bookmarks, history and cookies are all continually synced. Very cool – If you don’t mind google having a running record of everything you do online. Update: I played with it a little bit, hoping that maybe it would provide a nice way for a person to log into any installation of Firefox and make it theirs.

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Max 2006 Announced

Adobe - MAX 2006 has been announced. Max is the conference for anybody doing web development using Adobe (Macromedia) tools. There are tons of sessions covering ColdFusion, Flex, Flash and Dreamweaver along with other Adobe apps. It’s a fun time to meet other developers and sit shoulder-to-shoulder in sessions with people that work for big-time companies. This year it’s in Las Vegas at the Venetian - October 23rd through the 26th.

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Troubleshooting Web Pages with Safari

Here’s a great page describing methods of debugging web pages with Safari.

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Fun Flash Site

Freedom Interactive has a fun site that shows posterboard carriers walking through New York City trying to sell web sites.

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Scheduling Content Removal

Today I have started the first serious effort I can remember in the 8 years that I have been with Lincoln Public Schools to clean out all of the orphaned junk on the web site that has collected over that time. I have just completed one of the smaller sections of the site. I figure I removed over 70% of the files that were on the server in the five hours that it took me to go through it all.

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iTunes Encoding Alternatives

Every couple of weeks I encode the audio for the Board of Education meetings of Lincoln Public Schools an publish them in a podcast. While iTunes works very well as an audio encoding tool, it can be frustrating when podcasting. My audio starts as a track in a quicktime movie. I export that movie as a AIFF file, giving me a very large (1GBish) audio document. I then put this file into iTunes, right-clicked on it and chose to encode it as an MP3.

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O'Reilly Trademarks "Web 2.0"

Dale Dougherty from O’Reilly created the term “Web 2.0” to describe the recent rebirth of web development that has brought us cleaner interfaces as well as AJAX-powered behaviors. As a part of this, O’Reilly has organized a couple of Web 2.0 conferences around the topic. Now, O’Reilly is trademarking the term “Web 2.0” and people are very angry about this. If this were a company like Microsoft, I would have no doubt that they had plans to either lock down the term in a way that nobody could use it, or they would popularize it in a self-centered way that would bring more attention to them.

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New eMac?

AppleInsider reports that Apple is working on a new all-in-one Mac for education, to replace the phased-out eMac, and that Apple is targeting release in the "September timeframe" 2006. If so, Apple would catch only the tail end of the purchase cycle for the school year beginning this Fall, since many educational institutions, faculty, and students are already planning their next purchases.Mac Rumors: Apple Mac Rumors and News You Care About

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Which University Plays the Most Warcraft?

Which Universities have the most gamers? University of Washington tops the list forvisitors to MapWoW. Washington is known for its computer software and game development programs, so it's not too much of a surprise. Several other tech-heavy schools make the list including RIT, Purdue, Virginia Tech (Hokies rule) and Georgia Tech. A few big name schools win out on sheer number of students, such as University of Michigan, The Ohio State University, and The University of Texas (go horns!

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Adobe on Del.icio.us

Adobe has published a new link set up on delicious. They have product categories like After Effects, Acrobat and Dreamweaver, as well as content categories like Video and Design. They do not have ColdFusion up there right now, but they said that they are not done setting this up yet.

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Target being sued for an inaccessible web site

Sexton has joined the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) as a plaintiff in a lawsuit that charges Target with violating the federal Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act and Disabled Persons Act. The lawsuit, scheduled for a hearing next month at U.S. District Court in San Francisco, could have a broad impact because Target’s site is hardly the only one that could be accused of having access barriers, according to attorneys for the plaintiffs.

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sIFR 3.0 moving along

An alpha version of sIFR 3.0 is available. sIFR is a package of javascripts, css and flash files that allow site designers to replace html text with flash text, allowing for text in any font that is crisply anti-aliased. Version 3 supports new flash features such as drop shadows. LPS uses sIFR 2 for many of it’s page titles.

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iPod Vending Machines?

Macy's will dip its foot back into the retail consumer electronics market again by adding iPod vending machines to its stores this fall. The company plans to install Zoom Stores robotic vending machines stocked with iPods in stores across 32 cities according to The Buffalo News. The retailer stopped selling consumer electronics after the market proved to be unprofitable in its stores. The iPod Observer - Now Playing - Macy's Gets iPod Vending Machines

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Building Scalable Websites book (from creator of Flickr)

This comprehensive guide covers the design of software and hardware systems for web applications. Using scores of examples and leading-edge tips, it details proven methods for scaling web applications to millions of users. Topics include application architecture, development practices, technologies, Unicode, and general infrastructure work. Ideal for anyone ready to realize the cost and performance benefits available to web applications today. oreilly.com -- Online Catalog: Building Scalable Web Sites

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Engaged or Engraged

Weblogg-ed » Engaging Teachers Will Richardson considers a Mark Presky talk discussing how students are either enraged or engaged by teachers. Will asks how we get teachers engaged if we want students to be engaged. A teacher kicks off the comments by saying that they are enraged by the lack of support that they get – setting them up to enrage students.

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Local Paper Summarizes This Past School Year

10 things about this school yearJournalStar.com technorati tags: LPS, Lincoln

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