Smart Whiteboards in schools

At my daughters elementary school, a couple of the classrooms we went to during the curriculum night had what they were calling a Smart Whiteboard.

Doing some research when I got home, it seems to be a product from a company here and what the whiteboard does is allow you to write on the whiteboard interactively.  You can also be running Windows (it appeared) and by tapping on the whiteboard, you could simulate a double click with a mouse and active menus and such.

The teachers I saw used it to control (ugh) PowerPoint presentations, but it was VERY cool looking technology.

Even my wife said “We need one of those!”

It actually reminded me a little bit of the Windows Wall software, or even a wall version of the Surface technology from Microsoft.

Neat stuff.  Not sure I see a use for it outside the classroom, but definitely in the classroom it could be useful.

There was another company, called Mimio that has/had a product like it, but with the Mimio product, you could have it send the notes written on the board directly to a PC.  Now that’s useful, especially for brain storming sessions, or code reviews, or whatever.

Technorati Tags: Smart Board,Mimio,Whiteboard

Saving you after doing something stupid

Sometimes, I delete files I shouldn’t.  Usually, I have backups, and so it isn’t a big deal.

I shoot softball and baseball mostly.  Today, I shot a soccer game for some friends.  Took about 400 action shots.  Came home, as as part of my normal workflow, downloaded them from the card onto the computer, and the automatic process is that the files are then deleted from the card (it’s automatic).

Normally that’s fine.  I usually then pull the files onto an external drive that I have and start working on the ones on the hard drive.

Sadly, I had left my external at work.  So I went past my normal workflow and import the files into my normal working software BreezeBrowser.

I had hilighted all the photos in BreezeBrowser because  I was going to quickly go through them and delete the cruft.  I noticed that the first shot was out of focus and wanted to delete it.

That’s where things went terribly wrong.

I had forgotten to notice that all the shots were hilighted.  When I hit the delete key, they all got deleted from the disk.

Since I have the trash turned off, they went into never never land.

After having a mild coronary, I remembered that about a year ago had purchased a piece of software called PhotoRescue .

It saved me.  It undeleted all the shots and I was able to get on with my workflow.

Check it out.  It’s really useful for undeleting from a card in an external card reader.

Technorati Tags: PhotoRescue,Nikondigital.org,Workflow

ITunes 8 – Genius Lists – Bizarre

I downloaded ITunes8 yesterday and installed it on my home machine.

ITunes8 has a new feature called ‘Genius Lists’, which if you select a song, and then select ‘Genius List’, it will search through your music library and set up a playlist that is supposedly like the song you pick.

I picked a song called Outside the Wall from Pink Floyd, The Wall Album.

Here’s what it chose for my Genius List:

Outside the Wall – Pink Floyd
Freewill              - Rush (ok, seems reasonable)
Saturday Nights All Right – Elton John (huh?)
Levon                  - Elton John (huh?)
El Condor Pasa     - Simon and Garfunkel (huh?)
Love in Vain         - Stones (seems reasonable)
<and a bunch of others songs that were just well, weird choices>

I’ll have to try it a bit more to see if it works any better.

Technorati Tags: ITunes8,Genius Lists

Players who holdout (with current contracts)

NFL players, NBA players, MLB players, whatever, who have current contracts and holdout for “contract renegotiation” should immediately be cut.

There are enough people who want to play that should be able to play, and not be in cut in place of someone who has the audacity to hold out for more money when they have a current contract.

Unbelievable.  Witness this guy

 

Technorati Tags: NFL,NBA,MLB,Holdouts,Contracts

Fedora or UBuntu under VirtualPC?

I’d like to learn a bit about Linux.  I thought I’d install UBuntu or Fedora 9 under Virtual PC, but when I do, I get the following error message:

 

I can’t seem to find anything about it on Microsoft’s site.  Anybody have any suggestions?  I’ve got a Core 2 Duo E8200 @ 2.66ghz.  2 gig of RAM.  Virtual PC is running under Windows XP SP3.

I’d really like to get this working.  But when attempting to run either flavor of Linux, I get the above error.   If you have a thought, please leave me a comment.  Thanks!

Technorati Tags: VirtualPC,Linux,Fedora,UBuntu

Comcast to impose bandwidth limits

Comcast apparently will be imposing a bandwidth limit on cable subscribers starting October 1st. 

I’m a Comcast subscriber.  I’ve been pretty happy with the service, although I really wish that uploading was faster than 128k.  My download speed is fast, but uploading is not. 

Does anyone know of a way I can monitor what my usage is for bandwidth per month? 

My connection goes through a router, but that router does not have logging with regards to traffic.  So I’m in need of something that will track my usage with regards to traffic amounts.

Thoughts?

Technorati Tags: Comcast,Bandwidth,Usage