Author: Bruce Elgort

You’ll find this technology professor – an award-winning instructor at Clark College – working hard to inspire and challenge his students with meaningful web development and programming experiences. With a skinny vanilla latte (no foam) in hand, Bruce loves to tinker and test the boundaries of existing and emerging technologies, to then guide hungry minds through memorable, educational journeys to showcase with passion the ever-evolving innovations of society. An industry leader, Bruce is known for co-developing Elguji’s IdeaJam software, and is recognized by IBM as an ‘IBM Champion’ for being an innovative thought leader in cloud technologies.

Camtasia 2 Update for Mac

TechSmith released version 2.5 of their Camtasia 2 for Mac software. Here are a list of the fixes and improvements:

Enhancements in Version 2.5.0

  • Added a share history window
  • Added Facebook and Twitter buttons in the share history window using the built-in social features of OS X 10.8 and later.
  • Improved capture frame rate by leveraging a new capture method on OS X 10.8 and later
  • Added an integrated color picker and a user preference for those who prefer the system color picker
  • Added a “Mix to mono” option which is useful when all the audio is in the left or right channel, and you’d like it in both
  • Added the ability to lock tracks to prevent edits from affecting the media on the track
  • Added the ability to turn tracks off, which hides the visuals and mutes the audio on the track
  • Added the option to use linear interpolation for key frame actions
  • Fixed an issue where the Media bin thumbnail was black for images larger than 5000×5000
  • Allow user to press Shift key after mouse down in order to make a range selection
  • Added the ability to use the Shift key with the comma and period keys to fine tune a timeline range selection
  • Limit the max width of an arrow to 100 to prevent rendering errors
  • Fixed an issue where the timeline didn’t auto-scroll when dragging the edge of a media clip to extend its duration
  • Disabled context menu items that will not work for offline source files in the media bin
  • Fixed an issue where keystrokes are not recorded correctly when the system is configured with JPN language settings
  • Fixed an issue where the canvas width could be selected but typing would not change the number in the edit box
  • Fixed an issue where a project could get into a corrupt state where it could not be saved or opened
  • Fixed an issue where thumbnails in the media bin could appear stretched
  • Fixed an issue where a freeze region effect is added to entire media rather than a set duration when added from the context menu
  • Fixed an issue where control + click did not bring up the contextual menu for an effect in the asset bin
  • Fixed an issue where repeated use of cut and undo could lead to a crash
  • Fixed an issue where the zoom slider could get stuck at a particular zoom level
  • Fixed performance problems when 2 stacked clips have a freeze region effect at the same time
  • Fixed a crash when exporting an annotation that has a device frame applied to it
  • Fixed an issue where dragging an action to the end of a media does not move it to the end unless you first zoom in on the timeline
  • Fixed a crash when exporting to Screencast.com using a project that contains markers
  • Fixed an issue where not all mask properties were red when in global edit mode
  • Fixed a crash when entering the captions view on systems where the “Arial” font is disabled
  • Fixed an issue where the lock aspect ratio in the Adjust Canvas dialog was not working correctly
  • Fixed an issue where you couldn’t tab between the input boxes in the Adjust Canvas dialog
  • Fixed a crash when trying to split media with multiple actions selected

I’m a big fan of this software and use it in my course development for Clark College and highly recommend it.

Connect 2014 Call for Abstracts is Now Open

The Connect 2014 conference agenda is built with one objective in mind: offering value to each individual attendee. Our mission is to have you walk away having learned something you cannot learn anywhere else AND having learned something that you can put to use in your business setting immediately. Last year over 350 top-notch speakers—clients, partners, and industry experts—shared their business stories and technical expertise with thousands of attendees, resulting in the highest session ratings in the history of the conference. The bar’s set high, but we’re ramping up to do it again at the 2014 conference!

…

Sessions will focus on the following areas:

  • Messaging and Collaboration
  • Social Networking
  • Exceptional Digital Experience/Exceptional Customer Experience
  • SmartCloud
  • Mobility
  • Smarter Workforce
  • Content Management
  • Business Analytics
  • Smarter Commerce
  • Governance, Risk & Compliance

Submit your session abstract here >

Fill in the blank

The other day Voker Weber shared his thoughts about BlackBerry and he stated the following:

The sentiment. BlackBerry smells of old. People want new. iPhone. Maybe Android. Once people have made up their mind to divorce you, it’s a tough thing to turn around. It’s no longer good enough to be good enough. You have to be way better.

Now let me change the above to this:

The sentiment. ______________ smells of old. People want new. iPhone. Maybe Android. Once people have made up their mind to divorce you, it’s a tough thing to turn around. It’s no longer good enough to be good enough. You have to be way better.

Unfortunately, I can think of dozens of products and services that can be filled in the blank. The world has certainly changed over the last decade and sometimes no matter what a company and/or organization does, they can’t turn it around.

Shiny and new are the “new black”.

 

What advice would you give students who are pursuing careers in web development?

Tomorrow I begin teaching the following 4 classes (80 students in total) at Clark College:

  • HTML Fundamentals (2 of these)
  • JavaScript
  • Introduction to Programming and Problem Solving (Python)

My question to you is what advice would you give these students regarding pursuing a career in web development and/or programming?

Thanks in advance for your comments.

Please join me in welcoming three new OpenNTF Directors

OpenNTF announced earlier this week that there were three new Directors elected to the OpenNTF Board. They are:

  • Paul Withers
  • Nathan Freeman
  • Mark Leusink

I have the privilege of knowing and working with Paul, Nathan and Mark on many occasions. I’m confident that their knowledge, experience, creativity and vision will continue to infuse momentum into OpenNTF. Please join me in welcoming them to OpenNTF.

Please also be sure and thank Ulrich Krause and Julian Woodward for their time serving as Directors on the Board. Both Julian and Ulrich are both amazing individuals who I personally admire immensely.

As I announced in July I will not be returning to OpenNTF as a Director/Chairman of OpenNTF.  I will however remain as an Honorary Director and help OpenNTF in anyway I possibly can.

 

Source Control for Notes, Domino and XPages

A few months back FoCul Ltd. launched a wiki to collect all things related to source control for IBM Notes, Domino and XPages application development:

Source Control has many many advantages for both developers and organisations but it is a complex subject. At FoCul we have been running a project to adopt Source Control on our XPage projects. There is not much documentation about Source Control with DDE and getting this far has been both a difficult and rewarding process.

We don’t have all of the answers and we are still very much learning how it all works. We wanted to share what we have learned and also create a forum where others could share their knowledge so that the ICS community could maybe develop some best practices in this important area.

— Sean Cull

FoCul Source Control Best Practices Wiki

FoCul Source Control Best Practices Wiki >