Uncategorized

Hot off the Presses: MLX Special Collections

Alan Levine aka CogDog on September 17, 2003

This is the first glance at a new part of the Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX), what we are calling MLX Special Collections:

An MLX special collection is a set of packages associated with a specific project or program. We created this functionality to provide unique MLX URLs that would generate a listing as well as to provide a search functionality in the project web sites.

As prototypes, we have created a few collections for projects such as Systemic Reform In Science (SyRIS) modules and an internal Learning Grants program.

This is all part of our tireless campaign to build in services and value to different programs and groups within our organization.

Bascially, all items added to the MLX now have a field in the creation form. If the item is to be associated with a special collection, the person entering it inserts a 4 character code (just like the discount codes you enter when submitting a rental car reservation online) that “tags” the package for association with the collection.

Once in place, we can do all kinds of things…

Blog Pile

Under the Flash and Gee-Whiz of Online Learning– a student experience

Alan Levine aka CogDog on September 15, 2003

Thank Jeremy Hiebert for sharing via his blog Old-School Adminstration of Online Learning’ÄÝ . Jeremy is very favorable of his online learning experience at Memorial University, which is a miracle considering the administrative hurdles placed before him. It is amazing students manage to learn online despite that our institutions are still operating in the wrong […]

Uncategorized

OtherBlog MovableType Plugin

Alan Levine aka CogDog on September 15, 2003

Just came across the nifty MT Plugin: OtherBlog. This allows MovableTyple blogs to be able to include content on the same server. Plugin based way of including posts/info from other blogs on the same installation. I’ve yet to even try it, but I can already think about our BlogShop a way to provide a “super-blog” […]

Uncategorized

Way Cool Tool for Getting out of the Blog Style Box

Alan Levine aka CogDog on September 11, 2003

This looks rather useful for weblogers who are still mired in the out of the box templates: Firdamatic: the Design Tool for the Uninspired Webloggers “is an online tableless HTML layout generator that allows you to create and customise layouts easily only by completing forms, making creating skins for your Firdamatic-based layout a breeze.” Not […]

Blog Pile

Sharable BlogLines

Alan Levine aka CogDog on September 10, 2003

Awesome, this is a step up in usefulness for Bloglinesthe online RSS aggregator. You can now make the collections of feeds you post on BlogLines public, and thus collections of feeds can be shared via a simple URL. Actually I had submitted this as a suggested feature when I looked at the site a few […]

Uncategorized

Hey (Hic)… this Merlot is tasting better…

Alan Levine aka CogDog on September 10, 2003

Okay, this dog is going to anger management. After our recent barking on Sipping MERLOT’s RSS Feeds: Is this Boone’s Farm or Dom Perignon?, we enjoyed some good discussion with some MERLOT insiders. The bottom line is that MERLOT still has a fabulous wealth of intstructional resources, and should be on the Bookmark list of […]

Uncategorized

Stupid Practice in Email Virus Protection Systems: Stop Spamming the Innocent

Alan Levine aka CogDog on September 9, 2003

This dog is angry. Spam is a reality, some 40% of email traffic. But there is absolutely no reason for the email scanning systems put in place to be sending reject emails back to accounts when the viruses generating them are spoofing (forging) the emails. I cannot be the only person wasting work time deleting […]

Blog Pile

RSS feeds from my.OAI

Alan Levine aka CogDog on September 9, 2003

Dynamic RSS feeds are available now from searches performed at my.OAI, the tool for digging through a series of idatabases available as Open Archives. my.OAI is a full-featured search engine to a selected list of metadata databases from the Open Archives Initiative project. All searches performed at my.OAI, even is guest mode are returned with […]

Uncategorized

Some Changes around the CDB dog house

Alan Levine aka CogDog on September 7, 2003

I’ve been tinkering a bit with the site here- getting into adding new MovableType templates and moving commonly used code pieces into modules, but more or less, this is mild hacking away until it works.

The additions include some new categories:
* MLX – about the Maricopa Learning eXchange)
* RSS – all the stuff posted about using RSS and the experiments we have done around here
* Using MovableType tips and other things we learn along the way.

All categories, of course, have their own RSS feeds.

This was in tandem with moving the top navigation from a series of horizontally spreading links, to a drop down menu navigation for going to the categories. This in turn led to adding more pieces, and some of these in turn caused even more dribbles of changes…

Blog Pile

iSight – Great App, Great Packaging

Alan Levine aka CogDog on September 6, 2003

Still getting used to my new iSight, a nifty fireware camera for Apple OSX computers coupled with iChat AV allows beautifully clear, sharp, audio/video chat via broadband connections.

Not only is it well-designed in typical Apple fashion (oops, there goes my bias), but what I also enjoyed was the cleverness of the package it came in and a refreshingly small but clear instruction guide which unlike 90% of other computer manuals, makes sense to most humans without leafing thorugh 90 pages of gibberish in 18 languages.

Let’s open up the box…