In this edition of the ITS Coffee Break, hosts Ken Newquist and Courtney Bentley announce that faculty can now access their Spring 2007 courses in Moodle and ask for feedback on the potential use of the online world Second Life at Lafayette. In Tech News, they have an update on the controversy over Facebook's Beacon advertising program, remember the Commodore 64 and visit the virtual Shakespearan world of Arden. Help news has some tips on how to better use RSS and a warning for Mac OS X Leopard users who run MySQL on their computers.
Getting the Podcast
There are several ways to get the podcast:
- Download the MP3 directly
- Subscribe to the Soapbox podcast rss feed using an aggregator (you only need to do this once; subsequent shows should download automatically)
- Subscribe to the Soapbox feed via iTunes
Show Notes
ITS Coffee Break for Friday, Dec. 7, 2007.
ITS News
- Spring Course Load for Moodle Completed
- The Spring 2007 courses have been loaded into Moodle and are now available for faculty to begin working with. Students will be enrolled in courses two weeks before the start of the semester.
- Second Life at Lafayette?
- A number of faculty at Lafayette have expressed an interest in experimenting with Second Life. If you're interested in using it in your class, or just want to know more about the online community, e-mail us at itsblog@lafayette.edu.
Tech News
- CNN reports on the 25th anniversary of the Commodare 64, still the single bestselling computer system of all time.
- CNN: Commodore 64 still loved after all these years
- We followup on the Beacon controversy. The problem was, if a beacon announcement showed up, and you ignored it, it would opt you into the system. Now you must opt-in explicitly, and you can choose top opt out of everything using a single “don't share my stuff” checkbox in Facebook. Go to Privacy > Privacy Settings for External Websites.
- CNET: Rough seas nearly sink Facebook's Beacon
- Via Liberal Education Today: Shakespearean massively multiplayer online game, has been released. The game is free, and requires the use of the game Neverwinter Nights. One problem: it's not fun. (which the developer freely admits)
- From Engadget: “You know those handy mailers that you've been sending back to Netflix for ages as you eagerly await the next few flicks in your queue? Apparently, those buggers have cost the US Postal Service a staggering $41.9 million in additional labor costs over the past two years due to their “nonmachinable nature””
Help News
- RSS Reader Advice Offered
- From Internet Duct Tape: An overview of RSS, including what it is, why you'd use it, and instructions on using it with Google Reader. Includes a link to a user-friendly video demonstrating how RSS works.
- MySQL broken under Leopard
- From MacResearch.com: Apparently, Leopard breaks preference pane for MySQL that the official version installs. As a result, you need to start and stop it via the command line.
- Oodles of Moodles
- A bunch of Moodle workshops are scheduled for December and January.
- Register online.