Universities and the Web » tools

Thank Microsoft It’s Monday

Billy — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:22:51 +0000

One of the irritations in my work is receiving word documents for updated webpages with no indication of the content that’s been updated within it. A two-page word document for a staff profile might have two or three changes in it but I’ve got to check every word against the webpage to find those changes. The alternative of recreating the page from scratch is even more time-inefficient.

So I was made up this morning to find this 4-step tutorial describing the process for comparing two separate documents in Word. I can see me using this a lot!

Capture full webpage screenshots

Billy — Tue, 18 May 2010 17:11:28 +0000

Anyone working in web has to include screenshots in reports regularly. When the webpage is longer than the screen I’ve been using Photoshop to put together the final image. So I was pleased to see this Lifehacker article yesterday highlighting a tool for easily capturing full page screenshots.

Typically, on reading the comments to the article I realised that everyone seems to already have various methods and tools for doing this. Thanks for letting me know! I’ve now installed the Pearl Crescent Page Saver for Firefox and life has got that little bit easier..

National Archives release images under no known copyright restrictions

Billy — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 17:15:19 +0000

I’ve mentioned Flickr’s Commons before as a great source of historical photography for online publication, but it does tend towards US organisations/interests. So it’s great to see today that the UK National Archives are adding images to the Commons under no known copyright restrictions.

Not just photos either. There’s a set of historical documents, another includes seals and artifacts.

Directions to campus code snippet

Billy — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:30:40 +0000

Another (potentially*) really handy bit of code from Google, this allows you to embed a form in your contact us/directions information allowing users to get directions from google maps to your specified location. My example below gives directions from any address to Southampton University:

You can specify a multiple choice for end locations.

*Unfortunately, I’d choose against using this at the moment as it seems to have problems with uk postcodes, I can’t imagine this remaining an issue for long.

Why use Google Apps for Education – free web seminar

Billy — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:50:09 +0000

A growing number of US universities and the University of Sunderland are already using Google Apps for Education to deliver email, instant messaging, calendars and document collaboration.

Next Thursday, 25 June 2009, Google are delivering a free live Google Apps for Education webinar (10am PDT which I think is 6pm British Summer Time)

iTunesU given a higher profile on iphone 3.0

Billy — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:03:54 +0000

There’s a lot of excitement about the iphone finally getting cut and paste and the ability to do such mobile basics as picture messaging and contact sending/receiving, but it’s great to see iTunesU getting a much higher profile on the latest version of the operating system.

For the first time you can now access iTunesU directly through the phone, with Warwick University the first option on the homepage when I tried it. Expect to see usage rise over the next few months, although with such limited screen estate, it’s going to be more important than ever to build good relations with Apple and get those high profile feature spots.

The Prelinger Archive – ephemeral public domain film collection

Billy — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:46:18 +0000

JISC Digital points to a great collection of public domain videos made available through the Prelinger Archive. The archive covers ‘ephemeral’ films – advertising, educational, industrial and amateur. There’s over 2000 films, so next time you need to illustrate content on management and General Motors, the private life of a female cat or the magic of transatlantic travel, this is a great place to start.

A Research Last.FM?

Billy — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:05:39 +0000

Hailed by TechCrunchUK as a Last.FM for Research, Mendeley provides organisation and collaboration software for researchers.

Jurn – journal search

Billy — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 08:41:26 +0000

A simple implementation, JURN uses a Google Custom Search to search through over 2300 handpicked ejournals in the arts and humanities. There’s also a JURN blog, with an About page that explains what is and isn’t included and an excellent ‘Short guide to free academic search‘, illustrating starting points for various types of search query.

Edu Checkup video reviews university websites

Billy — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:55:19 +0000

Great tip from Mike Nolan, Nick DeNardis at Edu Checkup provides video reviews (54 so far) of university websites. You can suggest a site, the current review for University of Oxford seems to be the only UK one so far.