I like this video a lot. It is inspiring me to use it in my English classes as well as suggest it to my professors in my IT Management class. Twitter can have a place in the classroom.

Twitter in the Classroom video

I read this interesting article today in the Economist. It traces the rise of Open Source software and all the hurdles it has overcome. Just as Open Source is gaining credibility and stability, along comes cloud computing. Will it threaten Open Source, enhance it, or destroy it. Will the future be more Open or proprietary?

Read the article:
http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13740181&subjectID=348963&fsrc=nwl

Is GIMP as good as Photoshop? Can GIMP replace Photoshop? How powerful is GIMP? I hear these questions all the time. My answer is really who cares. For the average user GIMP has more power and functionality than they will ever need. For most average users of Photoshop this is true as well. I don’t really care to add to the debate except that if you are a small business or an individual for whom the price tag of Photoshop is a concern, and in this economic climate who isn’t concerned with price, take a good look at GIMP. It has come a long way, it is much more user friendly, and there is a lot more support than before. Here are 2 more tutorials on how to use GIMP.

How to make a photo black and white but preserve on color element

GIMP Color Effects on a B&W Photo – More DIY How To Projects

How to reduce or eliminate motion blur in Photographs

Reduce motion blur using The GIMP – More DIY How To Projects

Dropbox- Easy File Sharing

I recently started to work on a contract for a company to make a “Getting Started” type screencast video tutorial for their site. While they are not far from my home I will not go to their offices very often. My video size will be within emailable limits but it will be fairly large. It could take a long time to send.

They already have in place Dropbox folders. Dropbox, is a great file sharing application that adds a folder to your home directory automatically once you set up your account.

A free account gives you 2G of space. When you want to share a file simply drag and drop the file into your Dropbox folder. No FTP no stress and you get a nice green checkmark to indicate when it is finished.

You can also send a link to others to share the folder with them. Perfect for remote teams. The info about the file will tell you about recent revisions and by whom.

They have a nice set of user forums that provide lots of help when you need it.

You can also move items into the Dropbox so you can retrieve them remotely when you would like. For example, let’s say you are going to be away and you are not taking your computer with you, I know blasphemy, but it could happen. You could place some files that you might need to work on in the Dropbox folder on your computer and then log into your Dropbox account from a public terminal and see those files and work on them. It’s not the most elegant solution but certainly practical.

Another big benefit is that it is cross platform. Mac, PC, and Linux distributed teams can easily play well together, or at least Dropbox will not interfere with how well they play together.

Here is another review of Dropbox.

As I continue to use it I will continue to report on how useful it is, but so far so good.

The Weekly Review is an absolutely essential step to continuing on the path to getting things done. I was pretty consistent in doing it at the beginning of my drive to implement GTD. Then I had a falling off as they say. I began again and felt really good and in control of my time and projects.

Recently I had a lot of work to do and projects to complete. While I like routine and try to faithfully do the weekly review, I barely did one for the last 2 weeks. Why? Because I was busy getting things done. I had 2 projects that were pressing and needed to be finished so I think I did a mini mental weekly review.

I just made sure that I could really clear everything off my plate this past week so I could devote my entire week to finishing my projects. Isn’t that what the weekly review is for? At first I thought, no don’t skip the weekly review, it’s a bad habit to get into. But then I thought, well if I were skipping it to make room for skiing or Facebook, then yes, it is a bad habit, but it was for real live work.

Lesson learned: Be flexible. If you do GTD to get things done, then don’t stop yourself from getting things done just to strictly adhere to a regimen.

The Weekly Review, do you fear it? Do you do your Weekly Review? What do others do for their Weekly Review? Here are 5 more links to help you do your Weekly Review:

1. http://johnkendrick.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/the-five-ws-of-a-weekly-gtd-review/
2. another one
3. another one
4. another one
5. another one

Travel Screening

Privacy

Blog about privacy and the EFF

more privacy

I hope some of this was helpful.

This week is a real mixed bag of things. Very little order but they are all still good.

12 Resources for Free Open Source Software.This post contains links to great Firefox extensions, visual and video tutorials for Open Source tools, Free tools for web developers, and much more.

Generate cool web 2.0 stripes to use as a background here. Adjust a few values and you get your customized version or you can browse already created stripes and use those.

Create tiled backgrounds here. Instead of using stripes for your backgrounds, try this pattern making background generator. Again you can adjust a few settings for your own custom background or browse the backgrounds created by others. Add depth and warmth to your site with these backgrounds.

Try these great Photoshop tutorials. There are millions of Photoshop tutorials sites out there. Many are useful and many are not. This site has tutorials to show you how to make: Tattoos Come to Life, Electrifying Energy Beams, a Phoenix Hair Effect, and many others.

CSS Tricks is my new favorite site for CSS trickery. The most recent article shows you how to add a calendar icon to your WordPress blog that is visually appealing and also shows the number of comments on that post. Sure you can get a plug in but try designing it yourself using this tutorial.

WP Candy has made a fantastic WordPress Reference guide. It is indispensible for those trying to design their own themes for WordPress. It is downloadable and the printable form is a pleasure to look at and easy to use. Useful for learning basic PHP and the Loop of WordPress.

That’s all for now. Do you have some useful resources?

As I work online and discover new and useful resources for every aspect of web design I will include the most useful links I find here. If you find something useful that I might include you can send it to me through del.icio.us, I know that you can just write delicious.com now but I prefer the old school way. My delicious user name is okpeery, send it to me via network, maybe you have to add me as a friend first though. Here are this weeks web design links, loosely related counts too.

• How many HTML elements can you name? A fun online timed test. Try it out.
• Easily share blog posts with many social networking sites with Share This.
• Quickly access the wealth of info on Wikipedia without navigating the site with this Firefox add-on Wikilook, learn how to use it efficiently here at Mozdev.
• Are you starting a business, not just a web design business, see how to cut your startup costs at GigaOm.
• Want to see a more detailed description of how your favorite sites are coded? Firebug is a Firefox add-on that gives you much more than “View Source Code” can give you. You can see the CSS, HTML, DOM, and scripts associated with any given site. FirePHP lets you access the PHP files too. Want to duplicate some mind blowing effect you saw on your favorite site, let Firebug and FirePHP help you.