Attention all SLAIS students and faculty,

With all the positive feedback and suggestions from our last Cool Tool Day, we’ve decided to have another event! All are welcome, no previous tech skills or knowledge required. If you want to give an informal 5 minute talk about a “cool tool” you like using or heard about, a sign up sheet will be posted soon.

The date: November 9, 2010… the time: 12:30 – 1:30… the location: Terrace Lab

Coffee and cookies will be served in the SLAIS lounge right after the event!

For those of you who missed the last event, here’s a recap of who presented what.

Welcome to our new website. It is like the old websites, except singular!

If you missed our Cool Tools Day in October, well, I’m sorry. Here’s what we talked about (also available as a PDF). Just to show there’s no hard feelings.

Bronwyn’s “iTunes & Audio Podcasts”
Visit iTunes website for free available podcasts including:

• TechNews TodayThis Week in Tech (TWIT)
• MacBOOK weekly
• This week in Google
• Search Engine – net neutrality and copyright
• Spark from CBC radio – lifestyle and tech

Alex’s “Pure Text“
For Windows users:

• Application stevemiller.net/puretext
• Keyboard shortcuts that allow you to maintain font and formatting when copying & pasting text

For Mac users:

• Visit alternativeto.net (similar to the process of using Firefox add-ons)
• Browse site for applications you want to use
• Select application and then click on “Visit Website”
• Download application to your browser

Franklin’s “Data Visualization: Many Eyes“

• Website: http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/
• Good place to find data sets
• Good place to share data sets (warning: no way to keep data sets private so careful about uploading data sensitive documents)
• Can do tricks with mapping
• Provides options for visualizing data (example: using tag clouds, word trees, bubble chart, etc.)
• Alternative website: visualizing.org (It is free, but new – so it is still being built)

Will’s “UBC Blogs & UBC Wiki”
UBC Blogs:

• Digital Learning Commons
• All you need is your CWL to make a blog or website
• Social media aspect to blogs are groups, forums, profiles, friends, etc.
• About 6000 people are using the service now
• Built using WordPress
• Supports custom CSS in themes
• Consider it a content management platform (rather than a blog platform)

UBC Wiki:

• Functions on Media Wiki software
• It is not private, anyone can edit
• Based on philosophical ownership, not structural
• Your CWL should last “forever”

Jonathan’s “WilsonWeb”

• Audio capability for reading/hearing articles off of WilsonWeb interface
• Can download audio files as well as text
• Can listen to audio while following along with the html text (words are highlight as they are read)

Trevor’s “OneNote“

• Virtual notebook
• Can organize into binders – notebooks – pages
• Can type anywhere on screen/page (not line-based)
• Can keep all different kinds of documents/files in one page (so that you have all related documents in one place)
• Can link from it
• Takes good snapshots of pages & will include url of html pages (only difficult doing this with pdfs)
• Can keyword search through ALL One Note documents at once
• Autosaves along the way (no save button)
• Create shared notebooks
• Can draw on page
• Saves time in filing
• visitmix website – works with silverlight

Schuyler’s “Search Shortcuts in Google Chrome”

• Edit search engines
• Can set up keyword shortcuts for different sites
• Add to google toolbar add to chrome search
• Example: type “gs” for google scholar
• Might be able to do sim in FireFox
• Another tool is Yubnub
• Can set Yubnub into Chrome search bar and execute yubnub commands directly into your search

Schuyler’s “Dropbox & GoodReader“

• Backup option
• Stored in the cloud
• Can stop using usb keys (all you need is access to the internet)
• Can invite collaborators to your folders
• For iphones, load GoodReader to navigate into your Dropbox account

Frankin’s “Portable apps“

• Website: Portableapps.com
• Legitimate site
• Can store on usb key without having to download applications onto the computer’s hard drive
• Good way of getting around restrictions of downloading