News & Notes

NEWS:

• Check out my restaurant reviews on Yelp.

How To Make Shorter URL’s

What is a URL? A URL is the address of a webpage in the world wide web or internet. It’s short for Uniform Resource Locator. No need to go into what that means.

For example, to get to Pueblo High School’s website you have to type the URL www.pueblowarriors.org in the web address box in your browser.

Example of a URL in address box. (Circled in red)

It’s a short and simple address so that our visitors can memorize it easily and return to our website.

From time to time we are on a website we would like to share with our students or colleagues that unfortunately looks like this:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Pueblo+Magnet+High+School&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=38.22949,61.787109&ie=UTF8&hq=Pueblo+Magnet+High+School&hnear=Pueblo+Magnet+High+School,+Tucson,+AZ+85713&ll=32.186945,-110.978994&spn=0.039952,0.060339&t=h&z=14&iwloc=A

That’s the web address for driving directions to Pueblo. What you normally do is copy and paste the URL into an email or document. Unless they all have photographic memories, they will not be able to memorize that URL for future reference. That’s where URL Shortening comes in handy.

What basically happens is that these online services assign a shorter, easier to remember URL to the long and complicated like the one above. I personally use bit.ly for most of my needs, but what I like about tinyurl.com is that I can personalize my own name to the address.

Screenshot of the Bit.ly website

I went ahead and copied the long URL above and pasted into tinyurl.com since I wanted to personalize it and this is what it looks like now:

http://tinyurl.com/pueblomap

or

http://bit.ly/8Ie3NH

What a difference huh?

This comes in handy when you want your students to visit a specific URL on any given assignment or when you want to share a web address that you want them to easily remember.

There are many online website that offer this service for free and offer additional paid features that you don’t need. Here’s a few:

• tinyurl.com
• bit.ly
• is.gd

Here’s a link to the Top Ten with a nice breakdown of the services they offer.

How To Add Signature In Microsoft Outlook

If you are tired of typing your contact information in Outlook everytime you type up an email, here is a tip that will help you with that. I’m using Outlook 2007 as an example and it’s basically the same for all versions of Outlook.

Once logged in to Outlook, go to Tools in the Top Menu & select Options.

In the Options panel, click on the tab labeled Mail Format and select the box that says Signatures. Your panel should now look like this:

Example of Signature Panel

You will be clicking on New to add a signature on the panel above. It will ask you to name it. If you see in my example above, I created two signatures.

One is my MAIN signature which goes on every new email I send.

The second is a REPLY signature that is used whenever I reply to an email.

I do this because I don’t want my main signature every time I reply. My reply signature has only my name on it. It’s good email etiquette, you don’t want you main signature all over the place. Especially on those emails you go back and forth with the sender. It can make it difficult to read.

You have the options of adding a picture, a link and to format the text as you wish. Always remember that simple is better.

Make sure to set your defaults on the right side as shown on the example. Those options designate which signatures you want Outlook to use for the specific tasks I mentioned above.

Now, every time you type up a new message your customized signature will automatically appear.

Say Hello To Baby Madeline Michele

Stacey wanted to share some pictures of the newest addition to the Hackett Family. Say Hello to Baby Madeline Michele!

Madeline Michele Hackett was born to proud parents, Stacey and Ben Hackett, and proud brother, Logan James Hackett at Northwest Hospital at about 8:35 a.m. on Friday, October 2, 2009. She weighed in at 9 lbs. 2 oz. and measured 21 inches long! Wow!

Logan holding his Baby Sister Madeline Michele

Mom, Grandma and Baby Madeline Michele

Congratulations!

Say Hello To Baby Benjamin

Another Laundry Room Exclusive!

Video:

Wendy Hug had her baby over the summer and wanted to share these pictures with us:

Baby Benjamin

2 Days Old

Benjamin Kawasa was born June 14 weighing 6.9 lb and stretching 18 1/2 in.

Congratulations Wendy!

Almost Free Music Downloads

It’s been around for quite a while now, but check out MP3Panda for downloading legal music. At 5 cents,  a nickle, you can download some of your favorite tunes.

I know what you’re thinking, is it legal?  Apparently yes! I copied the following text from Cheap and Legal Dowloads which offers other downloading alternatives too.  CLD states:

Legality of MP3Panda
It’s worth highlighting MP3Panda is perfectly legal. Russian legislature enforces compulsory licenses, which means that a company can get the license to distribute and sell music as long as they pay for it somewhere. In the US if you plan to sell a certain CD, you have to negotiate with the labels, and that’s why the original Napster got shut down by the courts – they violated the law by not obtaining the licenses from the RIAA mob.

In Russia if you prove that (a) you keep track of what you’re distributing (log number of downloads) and (b) you pay to the collection agency, you’re legal to distribute any music you want. The collection agency (ROMS and FAIR, quoted in the Wall Street Journal article) will then re-distribute the money to the copyright holders.

The only catch, if you want to call it that, is that you must pay upfront. When you register you must select the amount of money you want in your ‘bank’.  If you select the $20 option, it basically means you have $20 in your account to spend on music. In iTunes it’s the opposite, you pay as you download.

Lets do the math, at 5 cents a song that equals to 400 songs! Compare that to 20 in iTunes. It’s even cheaper when you purchase entire albums. Purchasing entire albums is more cost effective when downloading “Greatest Hits” or “Best Of” type albums which most artist release.

Also note that the selection is not as big as iTunes. (10 million compared to 2 million)  Browse the site first and see if most of what you like to listen to is on there. Interested? Read on–>

Registration

The registration process is simple and secure. All you need is an email address and credit card.  If you select the higher dollar amount options, you will notice you get additional dollar bonuses for music.

Downloading

Purchase Entire Album or Single Song

After you log in, start browsing for the song you wish to download. (Entire album if you wish too) You can listen to a 30 second preview of the track by pressing on the litte panda next to each track. (Please note that the preview is NOT the quality of your download) Click on DOWNLOAD button and it will prompt you the amount that will be deducted from your account.

Window that prompts you for payment

You will then need to go to your DOWNLOADS section and  right-click the link Download and choose Save Target As…(or Save Link As…). Select where you want the file to download and depending on your connection speed an MP3 file with the song name will appear. All the ordered files are available for download within 48 hours. You’ll have to order these files again to be able to download them after that period.

Download Link

After your file downloads to the location you selected, you can import it to the music player of your choice. If you import to iTunes, usually the album artworks pops up automatically. If it doesn’t, follow these instructions to do add it.

This service certainly makes listening to your favorite music more affordable. Here’s a blog that explains it a little more.

I Jailbroke My iPhone 3G

After much internal debate on whether I should Jailbrake my iPhone 3G or not, I took the plunge on Sunday. You may wonder why I had not done it already? I don’t know if it’s just me, but every set of instructions I read were to complicated or risky. Simply not worth the hassle. When I’m unsure of something technical, I usually just wait.

A friend of mine emailed me the Gizmodo Post on instructions on how to do this. I read them over and they were the first instructions that seemed simple enough to make me do it.

It took me a few downloads and restarts on my iMac and I was ready to run QuickPwn for Mac OS X. After about 10 minutes the iPhone rebooted and I started loading programs on Cydia. A weird feeling of betrayal comes over you for a second. Then you start using programs you’ve been missing and you feel like Neo from The Matrix. Jailbrake = Unplugged! Why has Apple or AT&T decided to keep us from these basic features you find on every other phone?

The final process of the Jailbrake

The #1 reason I Jailbroke my iPhone was for video capabilities. (Come on Apple! Probably AT&T…) The first programs I installed were Qik and Cycorder. Both programs are just what I was missing from my iPhone. Instant satisfaction!

I played around with other applications like Snapture, which I will purchase, and Winterboard. I like some of the features of Winterboard but I don’t want my iPhone looking like a MySpace page. So I kept my default Springboard.

I also tried the Cut & Paste application called Clippy. Although it’s in Beta, it works remarkably well. (Again, Come on Apple!)

This comic describes how I feel about my improved iPhone:

Before you start passing judgment, I also Jailbroke my wife’s iPhone and she loves that she can now play her childhood’s favorite game Mario Bros and record her dog Cochi playing around.

For now I am happy with the 4 apps on my Jailbroken iPhone. I haven’t seen any lag or experienced any crashes on my iPhone. If you are debating whether to Jailbrake or not, the Gizmodo post is easy and harmless. I encourage you to try it. In keeping with the Matrix theme, Morpheus compares it “to trying to free your mind.”

Make sure you run a new back-up on iTunes of your iPhone before trying this. Worst comes to worse, you can ALWAYS RESTORE.

Thanks for the URL himess33.