Disqus - Friends of matt24

Re: XP to be euthanised despite poor Vista sales

Mike Bogle — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 05:39:56 -0000

Hi Rohesia :) Count me in as a reader! What's your URL?

Re: XP to be euthanised despite poor Vista sales

Mike Bogle — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 05:02:43 -0000

Thanks for the link :) I'll be sure to drop by for a gander. I'm actually the opposite in terms of forums and blogs. I use forums to gather and disseminate useful information but I'm more likely to devote hours to a blog.

I definitely enjoy helping people out but I'm not likely to end up someone with thousands of post contributions. I'm what you'd call a behind the scenes man ;)

Re: Wiki’s and Mass Collaboration

Mike Bogle — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 00:05:00 -0000

It's definitely become the poster child for successful democratic content generation. The main question I'm hoping to answer is how they managed to reach critical mass - because most sites don't.

What I mean is, when a project is first starting out it won't have the brand name that everyone immediately recognises. So how did they manage to attract and maintain the user base necessary to drive the momentum and sustain the growth of the index until such point as the name "Wikipedia" was itself enough to inspire participation?

This is looking to become a major research project for me :)

Re: Blogs in Education

Mike Bogle — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 03:52:30 -0000

One of the schools at my uni does have a blog hosting program, and I'd bet other universities are beginning to do the same. But again, it's not the presence of blogs alone that piques my interest. What I want to know is the extent to which blogs are being integrated into coursework and other learning and teaching or research activities - and particularly how this has been implemented, and what the results were.

In the case of the English course I mentioned, the instructor advised her students to go with an off-campus provider - either Blogger or Wordpress - rather than IT services on campus.

There are issues that arise with externally hosted student blogs of course, so I suspect the more courses using blogs at an institution the more the Powers That Be will want to gain more regulation and control.

Re: Blogs in Education

Mike Bogle — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:40:50 -0000

Hi Rohesia,

As usual I started writing a brief comment to your question, but it's turned into a whole other post:

Blogs as vehicles for discussion

Cheers,

Mike

Re: Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

Mike Bogle — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:38:06 -0000

Hi Kate ;) Very good point about Google Reader. There are so many different options it's really hard to keep track of them all and how they work - so I'd forgotten.

I only just moved from Google Reader after using it for quite some time. It did almost everything I needed it to, except work offline.

It's a great offering for this area - and its ease of use is fantastic for new users. So I recommend it as the first port-of-call - at least to try out anyway.

Re: Wading into Learning Styles

Mike Bogle — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 07:29:35 -0000

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the links - I'll be sure to take a look :)

I'll be particularly interested in the digital learning styles.

Cheers,

Mike

Re: Privacy in a Very Open Internet

Mike Bogle — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 01:11:13 -0000

Interestingly someone who stumbled through here didn't like this post too much and said something to the effect of "well if you don't want people knowing about you, then don't use social software."

Her language was much less polished and carried with it serious negative undertones, but on a basic level the point is true enough.

On the other hand she also seriously missed the point of this post, which is to be careful and consider the ramifications of your content before it's made public.

I'm a firm believer in the power and value of social software not just in education, but to bring people together from across cultures and nationalities. The new web is an incredible thing.

The situation need not be black and white - e.g. use it or don't. My point is that this technology is extraordinarily powerful and valuable, but needs to be used wisely.

Re: The Trouble with Twitter: Automated Tweets and Self-Publicity

Mike Bogle — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 03:50:33 -0000

Amen to that Frank. As I said, certainly there will be people in the Twittersphere who are plain abusers of link-spam, but they won't or shouldn't get followed by anyone who has a problem with link-spam.

In the absolute worst case there's also the block button. But truth be told I've never had to use it, so I don't even know what it does.

When you are on the avante garde of eLearning and educational technology all related information is valuable, whether it is original content or links to published studies. I welcome links personally.

That said, I'm sure not everyone is in this category. But again, this is the power of choice. Don't like someone's tweets? Don't follow them.

Thanks for stopping by BTW, I'll be adding you to my blogroll :)

Cheers,

Mike

Re: A reflection on “Learning objects, repositories, sharing and re-usability”

Mike Bogle — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:45:43 -0000

Hi Anonymum,

Thanks for the invitation :) Believe it or not I'm already a moderator there. And yes, the people there are fantastic, friendly and really helpful. I highly recommend people check it out - especially if you're new to blogging!

Cheers,

Mike

Re: Microsoft the benevolent dictator

Mike Bogle — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 02:01:05 -0000

Hi Mike,

Long time no see, hope all is well :)

You're too right re: licensing versus ownership - I stand corrected. Thanks for pointing that out.

This reminds me that I've never actually read the end user licensing agreement for XP or any of Microsoft's other products. Methinks it's about time I did.

My fear in all this is that Microsoft could start to change the licensing terms to the extent that these "friendly" worms - or other questionable business practices - are legitimised, and what was once a worthwhile purchase suddenly becomes something you choose to uninstall because the real price of running the software is too great.

It's not fair, but it's possible I suppose. That's business when you control a 95% share of the desktop market - or whatever it is...

Cheers,

Mike

Re: Edublogs.org Plagued by Outage

Mike Bogle — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:13:19 -0000

Hi Kate,

I completely agree. Unfortunately as your post today highlighted ("Dependence on Web Apps")

"...as more and more of the popular web tool sites are experiencing downtime and outages or loss of data (examples: twitter, voicethread, edublogs, wikispaces)…….how much should we rely on these services for the bulk of our work?"

In my neck of the woods - on-campus providers of eLearning services and support - this conversation is absolutely in the front of our minds right now.

The rise of the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) has afforded a tremendous amount of flexibility and opportunity for staff and students to carve out their own learning systems online using a wide range of applications. This effectively opens to door to access to far more options than an institution or school could ever hope to run and support on their own.

However as the edublogs outage today illustrates, there are serious implications to be considered in doing this.

When staff begin to use externally hosted services they are taking student data and placing it in the hands of people who don't work for the institution. While these providers don't want outages anymore than we do, their motivations and priorities are inherently different than those of academia.

The situation as I see it is schools and universities must start to be demand driven rather than supply focussed. It is the responsibility of the institution to ensure student data and privacy are protected in all activities - online and offline - and this will mean starting to offer locally hosted instances of popular external applications.

In the case of blogs, Wordpress is opensource and freely available. It is also the pseudo-industry standard blogging platform. Therefore institutions should be looking to install locally hosted instances on institution-run systems. Not only will this insure the data is protected via back-ups and well within the control of the institution, it will also enable policy makers to guarantee the intellectual property rights remain in the hands of the schools.

End-User Licensing agreements aren't something everyone reads carefully, and it's an unfortunate possibility that in hosting school/uni data off campus instructors would open the door to use of the content in ways that wasn't originally intended by instructors and students.

Re: Edublogs.org Plagued by Outage

Mike Bogle — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:28:02 -0000

Hi James,

Thanks for the clarification. I'll post a correction with your comments. Glad to see you guys are back up and running too.

Please don't take my comments as criticism either. As I said, I help support applications, so I know the occassional hiccup is unavoidable.

Furthermore Edublogs is a fantastic thing for educators and has created an invaluable network through which collaboration and discussion can take place.

Best of luck to you!

Cheers,

Mike

Re: Edublogs.org Plagued by Outage

Mike Bogle — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 05:16:42 -0000

Hi Kevin,

I quite agree. Especially for people new to technology, there is the expectation that applications will always work and will never fail. Even after working in the industry for a number of years now I'm still caught off guard and seriously annoyed when one of my favourite app's goes belly up. Just take Twitter for example.

I must say though that the fact James went out to several blogs (including mine) to actually address and respond to the complaints being leveled against the app was a seriously classy touch.

Some might call that damage control; I call it fantastic customer service.

Cheers,

Mike

Re: Rumours of GTalk Update

Mike Bogle — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:40:19 -0000

Hi Kate,

Yeah I think they've left us poor locally-installed chat client users in the lurch, but it's good to see they seem to be working towards resolving that.

I'll definitely keep my ear to the floor for any updates :)

Cheers,

Mike

Re: Pageflakes as a Blogging Portal

Mike Bogle — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:32:09 -0000

Hi Gail, Welcome and thanks for the kind words :) I've got a strong user support background, which is undoubtedly responsible for my approach to covering tech topics. I really enjoy taking complex concepts and helping people understand them. Not necessarily glamorous, but oh-so necessary.

My motto has always been:

"If there's an easy way to explain a complex topic, use it. Otherwise you're just trying to look smart."

I'll try to keep things interesting. If there's ever anything that you'd like to see covered please let me know :)

Cheers,

Mike

Re: Flickr video finally?

Mike Bogle — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 07:46:15 -0000

Hi Kevin,

From the comments I've seen on many of the posts covering this story, the rumor seems to have stirred a great deal of controversy. Particularly amongst Flickr fans who don't want to see the app become another YouTube.

This seems to support the notion of fundamentally different community attitudes between Flickr fanatics and YouTubers.

I'll keep my ear to the ground on this one and will post any updates that I read from reputable sources :)

Cheers,

Mike

Re: Screw you guys, I’m going home!

Mike Bogle — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 00:37:01 -0000

@Kevin - I love open source, but it does require a fair investment of tinker time and the learning curve can be high - especially if you start venturing into the commandline. I'm slowly acclimating to the shallow end of the terminal but constantly find myself over my head. Still, it's nice knowing I've got full control over what's happening (and full accountability for any stuff ups)

@Kate - You'll find as well that there's no set-and-forget option either. You'll be prompted to install the browser each and every time you run the Apple Software Update. Perhaps they're trying to wear people down until they give in...

@Rohesia - Tell me about it :( Security updates and patches to software I've chosen to install is one thing, brand new software I've not opted to use is entirely another.

Re: Virtual Windows XP on Ubuntu via VirtualBox

Mike Bogle — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 21:02:50 -0000

Bugger :( Thanks for the warning on that. I'm still planning on experimenting with VirtualBox, but at least now I know not to beat my head against a wall trying to get games to work.

Would it make a difference if the games were really old. For example the ones I play most are 90's classics like Baldur's Gate I & II.

Cheers,

Mike

Re: Virtual Windows XP on Ubuntu via VirtualBox

Mike Bogle — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:53:58 -0000

Yeah BG does require Direct X. So from the sound of things it's a no-go for gaming. Perhaps there is a trick to using WINE that I've yet to discover. I'll revisit that this weekend methinks.

I'll also take a look at FreeDOS. Thanks for the heads-up there :)

Re: Virtual Windows XP on Ubuntu via VirtualBox

Mike Bogle — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 05:05:40 -0000

Update: I managed to get Baldur's Gate working on VirtualBox install, but so far without the sound. I haven't pursued this much further yet, but I didn't tweak anything on the installation so it was relatively painless there.

I also got it working on WINE, but there is more tweaking needed here. For some reason I can't run in full-screen, otherwise it freaks out my monitor. Strangely enough it's trying to run it on 85 MHz, where as I've got Ubuntu configured for 60.

I'm not sure where the 85 is coming from; I couldn't locate anything in the Configure WINE settings.

I did see something in the forums that sounded similar but haven't pursued the investigation yet.

In the meantime I've found using the Emulate a Virtual Desktop option in the Graphics tab circumvents the problem. Unfortunately the problem there is the cursor isn't stopped at the edge of the virtual desktop, so I'm having trouble playing the game a bit.

I did have this working on full screen when I'd been using the Hardy Heron version of Ubuntu, but reverted to Gutsy to try out VirtualBox. Not sure if that influenced the problem, but it's possible.

Re: Virtual Windows XP on Ubuntu via VirtualBox

Mike Bogle — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 10:20:21 -0000

RE: Audio - found the setting. Just open the VirtualBox settings and go to Settings --> Audio and tick "Enable Audio". I'm not sure what the various options mean, but I chose OSS and found it worked successfully.

NB: The virtual machine can't be running at the time, otherwise the Settings option will be greyed-out and not clickable.

Re: Virtual Windows XP on Ubuntu via VirtualBox

Mike Bogle — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:23:14 -0000

I have two games from the Elderscrolls chronicles but have never really gotten into them too much after realising there was no end to the game. I spent hours the first time I played Morrowind trying to figure out what I missed so I could finish it.

Call me old school but I like to see some credits and have a sense of completion after a while :)

That said I might try installing it just to see if it's even possible. So far the only games I've installed are from the 90s. Not sure how VirtualBox would handle more contemporary stuff.

Cheers,

Mike

Re: VirtualBox Runs on Hardy Heron

Mike Bogle — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:59:26 -0000

Hi Jan,

Actually I didn't install VirtualBox on Hardy Heron; the installation was already on my machine when I upgraded. I originally installed it on Gutsy Gibbon using the 'deb http://www.virtualbox.org/d... gutsy non-free' download from the Sun website. Then I followed the steps outlined on this YouTube clip here:

“How to run Windows XP on Linux Ubuntu with VirtualBox“

In my case when I upgraded to Hardy I had no idea whether VirtualBox would even work. I found the program started ok but the virtual machine wouldn't load and instead displayed an error. All I did in Hardy was follow the instructions outlined in the error to reconfigure VirtualBox and found it worked. The fact you're trying to perform a fresh install is a different matter entirely and I'm afraid I don't have any experience in that respect. Though we can try and work this out together if you like.

That said though, are you aware of the fact you have to enable certain hardware elements in the VirtualBox settings area before they will become available to the virtual instance? For the record, they are available by highlighting the virtual machine in question, clicking settings, and then choosing an option from the left menu.

Note the virtual machine can't be on, otherwise the settings option will be greyed out and unclickable.

In my case I believe the networking settings were enabled by default, but the sound wasn't. I found once I ticked Enable Audio and chose the ALSA Audio Driver option I was able to hear sound in the virtual machine. There are options for both in the VirtualBox settings area and that's where I'd look first if you haven't already.

That said I hope you don't mean your main Ubuntu wireless settings and sound are gone! Do you?

I'm happy to try and troubleshoot this issue with you if you care to provide a bit more detail on what's happening and what you've done in the preliminary setup process.

Cheers,

Mike

Re: The enigma of open source sociology

Mike Bogle — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:55:56 -0000

"The best open source projects are about scratching the collective itch."

That makes sense. In fact I think the same sentiment is echoed in a book I'm currently reading ("Open Source - Technology and Policy"). I highly recommend it by the way...

I can certainly see where the passion and dedication comes from then, but importantly as well, why the quality of the software is so high.

You would arguably see more effort and thought put into software that developers intend for themselves than that which they have no vested interested in.

Good points, thanks Matt :)

Cheers,

Mike