Category: Miscellaneous

Our community mourns the loss of Jens-B. Augustiny

Today I received the following email from Jens-B. Augustiny’s son Herbert:

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

Last Saturday my father, Jens Augustiny died. You are entered in his
address database and because of this you are receiving this sad news. For
details please refer to the attachment.

Since we are not sure whether we can address all friends, business partners
and customers, we ask you to forward this message to other people which had
contact with Jens.

Best regards

Herbert Augustiny

I was deeply saddened by the news of Jen’s passing. My heart felt condolences to the Augustiny family.

jens1

jens2

Snagit for OS X gets an update

 

Snagit 2.2.0 UpdateSnagit has been my “go to” app for on OS X for all things screen capture. This update adds some nice features that I have been asking for. Snagit in combination with Camtasia 2 for screencasts are the most used tools now in my “educators toolbox”.

 

 

Mac-cessibility Network: All Things Accessibility for Apple Products

On the October 13, 2013 episode of the legendary MacCast, Adam Christianson interviews  Josh de Lioncourt, a blind Apple products user. Josh is part of the Maccessibility Network which focusses on accessibility of Apple products:

Maccessibility is devoted to connecting, compiling, and providing easy access to the best resources for blind, visually impaired, and other disability groups using Apple products. It is maintained by a dedicated group of visually impaired volunteers, who are Apple enthusiasts themselves.

Maccessibility began in 2007 as a project on Lioncourt.com to provide news and informational materials to low and no vision users of the Mac platform. Additionally, it served as a resource to dispel false information regarding the accessibility of Apple products.

As somebody who relies on accessibility on both OS X and iOS I am surprised I didn’t know about the Maccessibility site sooner. Many thanks to Adam for a great interview with Josh and for his awesome MacCast podcast.

 

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”.

 

Technology Complacency – I’m in a good place

This is the first time in many years that I am not feeling the need to upgrade my desktop computer, laptop, smart phone or  tablet. I’m not even feeling the slightest urge to to get new kit of any kind. My 27″ 2011 iMac is running great, my iPad mini is awesome, my 2012 Macbook Pro laptop is way more than I need on the road and for teaching and my iPhone 4s still works great.

In the past I would feel the effects of the Steve Jobs “reality distortion field” and feel compelled to upgrade. No more. Maybe it’s the “turning 50” thing?

Everything is working, and working dang well.

How about you?

Please pray for a truly special young lady and her family

From my friend and ICS community member Chris Byrne:

My 17 year old daughter Grace, a senior honors student in high school who is dual enrolled at the University of Georgia, was running with friends after school last Friday.  When crossing the street, she was struck by an SUV.  She is now in the intensive care unit of a local hospital being treated for severe brain trauma.  Grace is a multi-sport athlete at her school with varsity letters in Tennis and Cross Country, and was the MVP of the Junior Varsity Soccer Team.  She turned to tennis as a sport after breaking her foot too many times playing soccer.  She has also completed two half-marathons, the most recent in October (the picture of her is after that race).  The outpouring of love and concern for her from our community in Athens has been unbelievable because she has touched so many lives and made such a difference in her young life.

graceathhalf

Our family firmly believes in the power of prayer and are asking people to pray for our beloved daughter and her sister.  Specifically we are asking that people carry a walnut, which represents her head and when people see or touch the walnut to say a little prayer that her head be basked in a healing light.  Her friends have started a Twitter hashtag of #Walnuts4Grace

From my inbox: Domino based URL shortener

Today I received an email from a customer who was looking for a Domino based URL shortener and I was wondering if any of you could help them with some guidance:

Hi Bruce,

Are you aware of any Domino based URL shorteners that do the following:

Core Requirements

  • Shortens URLs
  • Customise a short URL
  • Does not require authentication
  • Provides metrics on click throughs (like on bit.ly where you add a “+” to the URL to get metrics)
  • Share button / bookmarklet that shortens the URL and creates a web page with the link
  • Has an API (JSON would do) for other services to send long URLs and retrieve short URLs, call for metrics on short URLs etc.

Desirable

  • Reserve custom URLs – e.g., “Bank CEO” etc..
  • Gathers IP addresses to determine location of users
  • Determines browser type
  • Determines OS type
  • Admin interface to manage the above.

I have seen http://xpag.es – this seems close but doesn’t do the metrics, custom URLs, API etc.. We currently have something on a dev server but it is based on OS software and we have a strict policy on using such tools. We would like a quick win – something we can put onto our Domino servers to provide an analogous service. Please let me know – I am hoping you may have something available (LinkJam does too much and doesn’t seem to shorten the URL), or you may know of something from your network.

Please let me know if you know of such an application or would be willing to offer your services to code one up.