GorillaMask.net: Real Life Super Mario Bros. Re-enactment
This is one of the funniest things I have seen in quite some time. For everyone that loves the classic video games or just really enjoys creative thinking this is some great fun to watch!
GorillaMask.net: Real Life Super Mario Bros. Re-enactmentfrom CNET News.com
Getting Things Done and ResultsManager
School is out and one would think I would be more relaxed than ever, however the exact opposite has occurred. With the last few internships failing on me I am frantically scavenging for new ones. I also have this website with an enormous amount of projects, demos and articles I would like to complete. There is also that
Note Talker Contest which I have hit a wall with along with my goals of cleaning and reorganizing my room. I also need to backup last semesters class data and numerous other projects!
It seems school was actually a bit less frantic with classes, studying and a few posts on DorkoTech every now and then. It took up a lot of time but the actual number of "projects" attacking my mind was nothing I couldn't handle. School provided a lot of the structure and there were very few loose ends.
This scenario has recently transformed more into a run away train, on the loose traveling 100 mph, drenched with spikes of fire ready to pierce through the oncoming nuclear power plant it is ready to collide with. If I didn't do something a colossal explosion would have erupted within my brain. I had to sit down and actually think about what was going on what I was going to do to overcome these feelings.
The first thing I did was pick up
David Allen's Getting Things Done book. I've heard so many success stories stemming from this work of genius but never picked it up. The reason was that during the school year I had a pretty good system that worked very well for me. However that old system was now failing with this new change and increase of actual projects. I knew something had to be done and a reworking of my old organizational skills was required for my survival. I raced through the first chapter today and already see myself nodding my head to many of the things he writes about. I also love all the little encouragement quotes and sayings in the margins which keeps my brain focused and prevents my ADD personality from naturally searching for distractions. It gives me something to focus on without venturing too far from the actual book itself.
With an increase in projects I think this may give
ResultsManager the perfect opportunity to show off it's stuff. I am still working on a second article about
ResultsManager and a possible Dorko Demo demonstrating the setup a student would go through to use
Gyronix ResultsManager as a program to organize classes. Although I feel
ResultsManager may not be entirely helpful in my current class schedule and organizing I do feel it can help me now as I have many loose ends and actual projects I would like to accomplish. I am going to email
Gyronix soon asking them to extend my trial. They recently sent me an email asking me if I needed an extension and feel I really could use the added time. I got one extension so I am feel I may be pressing my luck but I was unfortunately unable to really test out
ResultsManager during the last few weeks of school. I was busy worrying about finals and a flood of material coming at me at the last minute. Attempting to throw
ResultsManager into the mix would have lead to an immediate explosion within my brain. It's be like adding gasoline to the already hot fire. My mind and body were already spread thin and I just didn't have the time to devote any real energy to the application. Since I am having trouble with the internships I unfortunately have a bit more time on my hands so anything productive I can do would help with the coping process. Really looking into the inner working of
ResultsManager I feel would be a good use of my time.
Also since I am now engaged in
David Allen's novel I feel I will be more familiar with the Getting Things Done (GTD) style and will have more of the tools required to take advantage of
ResultsManager. I think my new more project oriented schedule will allow both these tools to become a more dominating force in my day. I'll keep you updated and post about my journey with these two utilities and look foward to untangling that mess of projects and creating some really great things!
Dorko Demo: MindManager Active Desktop
This is
my first Dorko Demo! It's technically not my first video or my first experience with
Camtasia Studio but since I have a lot more videos in store, and not all of them will feature
MindManager, I figured it would be appropriate to add a nice little nickname to all screencasts I create with
Camtasia. They will feature a broad assortment of software demos, tips and tricks and whatever else I decide to come up with. I am thinking about even making a single page for all my Dorko Demos so that you can get to them all very easily.
This first Dorko Demo was inspired by the several emails I received regarding my MindManager SE video that kicked off that excellent Note Talkers/MindManager Contest. (I hope your working on entries!) In the video I demonstrated my ability to incorporate a MindManager Map onto my Active Desktop. This allowed an actual MindManager map to sit there and interact with me without even opening the program! I though it was very creative idea and many of you did as well!
What I did not show is how I actually went about creating the MindManager map and the whole procedure of getting it on the desktop so you can interact with it. When you saw the video you saw it already there and witnessed me clicking away and sharing its features. The easiest way then to address those emails was to create a video demonstrating the actual process so that everyone can allow MindManager to take over the desktop!
So here is my first Dorko Demo demonstrating how to create a MindManager Active Desktop
Dorko Demo : MindManager Active Desktop Demo
Internet Explorer Plug-In required to view embedded map
Internet Explorer Plug-In
Here is the html file to create the web page if you don't want to make it yourself!
MindManager Active Desktop html file
Notes:
I didn't notice this part when making the video but when you view the source from the web it adds this little section. Your number is probably different but you don't need it and can delete it if you want.
Also some of the and letters that you need to replace may be hard to read with the low quality of the video (trying to keep the size down) so I took some screen clippings of those sections so you can see them better!
Replace this part with the name of your map. Remember to keep the Quotes
Replace this part with the file name path of where your map is saved on your computer. The default location that MindManager saves maps is a folder called "My Maps" under "My Documents" but you may have set a different location.
Again if you have questions or have problems please leave a comment or email me and I'll do my best to help you out!
Good Luck and Have Fun!
Tablet PCs in Education
Rob Bushway from
GottaBeMobile pointed me to a Blackboard blog from
Melissa Chotiner. She posted recently about the use of Tablet PCs in education. This is an inreasing theme and one I am glad to personally observe and be a part of. In fact I think I find a new Tablet PC blog every day and for awhile questioned whether another blog like
DorkoTech could actually be of any benefit. However I've decided I can provide new perspective and opinions on this increasing field.
Melissa mentioned the
Student Tablet PC and I think sites like that as well as mine can be considered great ways of getting the word on on Tablet PCs and increasing students awareness of such valuable technology.
From
GottaBeMobile.com
New RSS Feed
RSS stand for Really Simple Syndication but sometimes it is just not that simple. There are so many different versions of
RSS that most of us have given up on actually writing our own and just use the features of our favorite blogging tool that can create it for us automatically. I use blogger which actually creates a feed for me using the Atom format. I started using
feedburner a while back but never really played around with the settings or anything like that. I actually just used it hoping it would create a true "RSS" feed for users that had readers that may not support the atom format. Well today when I was working on my Active Desktop video I tried to make a smart part RSS feed for my blog and received a polite error informing me that
my RSS feed was not valid. How bad does it look if your sitting making an Active Desktop video with RSS feeds and people can't even add your own blog to it! Well realizing this was a problem I started playing with the
feedburner settings. Altering some settings
my feed is converted into RSS 2.0 format. It now works with the
MindManager smart parts RSS feed creator. So you may want to update your
RSS feed if you actually subscribe to it. The old one should still work but if you have problems please let me know and I'll see what I can do to make it work for everyone. The Active Desktop video should be done by tomorrow.
Facebook is Growing Up
Facebook Me! It's a phrase a lot of college students here but that phrase may no longer be exclusive just to students. I don't know exactly how many student are on facebook but it has to be a lot! The college networking website has expanded to the High School field and now seems to be venturing out into the business world. It seems some
Microsoft employees now have the ability to log on. With so many college students on the network it makes sense for large corporations to get involved in the possibility of matching up future graduates with employers. I don't know if this is the route they're going or if they are just looking for a new way for employees of large corporations to interact. Whatever the reason, sites like facebook and myspace are increasingly becoming incorporated into our lives.
TechCrunch » Facebook Goes Beyond College, High School Markets
Annotating Images
Since my adoption of
MindManager I have been able to create some very nice notes. I can visually organize facts, create hyperlinks to web pages and make relationships and connections to assist in my learning. However there are still some features in
OneNote that I really do miss. One of these features is the ability to directly mark up and annotate figures. Since I worked with E-Textbooks this semester many of the figures and images were easy to extract and insert into my notes. It is easy to insert an image in both
OneNote and
MindManager but where
OneNote wins this battle is in its ability to interact and directly write on those inserted images. So I am partial to
MindManager but still want to annotate and insert pictures! What’s a guy to do?
This is of course is not just a limitation of MindManger but is just one of those barriers in the Tablet PC OS. Currently adding text and inking images is not as seamless as it should be. I have seen effort from Microsoft to improve the interactions of users with pictures and a Tablet PC. Microsoft Max has intrigued me from the beginning and I still would like to evaluate it sometime soon. (I’ve learned by now not to play with beta software on your tablet if it contains all your class notes and files) Hopefully in the next upcoming version of Vista these hurdles will be overcome. But Vista is due out who knows when and you have a Tablet PC now and want to mark them up! Again what to do?
To solve this problem I have come up with many solutions and I am sure you have many of your own but I’ll share just a few for now.
Your first option is to open up the image on your screen, take a screen clipping and then annotate it with you favorite screen capture tool. If you have a Tablet PC and the Microsoft Experience Pack then the clipping tool is very nice and lets your annotate it very quickly. SnagIt is another option. It is a much more sophisticated screen capture tool but it seems to lack in the inking department. It’s superb for working heavily with screen clippings but what may be to complex for someone that wishes to simply circle or mark something very quickly. Personally there are times I would like to just draw a funny face on a friend and email it to them!
You could use a program like Autodesk SketchBook (formerly known as Alisa Sketchbook) to accomplish any of these feats. The program allows you too add an image and draw just about anything you can think of all over it. With paintbrush, pencil and pen settings it’s aimed towards more professional projects but could be used for simple annotation. However the overkill button once again goes off the search for something a bit simpler continues.
P’Ink is another program that interests me. I don’t know all too much about it but it seems to be specially designed to handle and annotate digital pictures. It’s on that list of programs to look at and you may find it interesting. It probably is a suitable choice but I just don’t know enough about it to use it.
My latest solution is free in that it uses the Snipping Tool from the Microsoft Experience Pack but bypasses the actual snipping part! If you use the Snipping Tool you’ll know that after you have made you selection/clipping and added your annotations you arrive at the send to button. At this point you have some options. You can email it, copy it to the clipboard, save it or edit it. Previously when I used the snipping tool in conjunction with MindManger I would just copy it and then paste it into my MindManager map. If I wanted to keep the annotations so that I could use the image with the annotations later I would save it, then insert or hyperlink to it in MindManager.
I really disliked the process of opening the picture, taking a screen clipping, making my annotations and then finally being able to insert it. What if I could just skip the whole clipping part and go right to the annotating? Remember the editor window button? If you recall, hitting this button will bring your clipping to an editor. From here you can highlight, erase, lasso move annotations, or add additional ones! It’s a simple and easy way to add ink annotations.
I really liked this editor and started wondering if you could open images and edit them from within the editor itself. It turns out you can! Just go file, open and you can start navigating through your computer. You may need to change the file format at the button since it looks for a snipping tool file first, but after doing that you should be able to open GIFs, PNGs, JPEGs and Bitmaps. Once you have the file open you’re free to annotate away. You can then save it as new file or rewrite the original. I’ve also been able to change and save as a different format that that of the original. I should note that if you save it in any format other than a Snipping Tool File (*.snip) you will not be able to edit any of your annotations later on. Saving it in those other formats burns the ink to the image and thus it becomes a part of the image and can not be edited. With this in mind you may not want to save over the original.
Once you are done annotating, you can now go ahead and insert it into MindManager or to the destination of your choice. Your ink on the image won’t be searchable or anything along those lines since MindManger can’t see the ink, it only sees it as in image. However you do have a marked up document with ink annotations in a MindManger map. I can perform this maneuver quite efficiently now, however it still takes more time than I would like, but at least its there. OneNote still wins this battle of editing images with ink directly but at least MindManger can go into the fight no longer empty handed. I really wish MindManager could handle images and ink better but until it then this is the next best option for me. It also allows me to quickly edit and annotate any picture and get it where I want!
I should note at this point that the Snipping Tool Editor gathers all you clippings and stores them to memory. If you start editing a lot of images and don’t close them you may end up acquiring many images in memory which could start to effect performance. Here is what the help file has to say…
The Snipping Tool Editor collects all of the snips you capture while Snipping Tool is loaded in memory. For example, if you snip and e-mail from the Snipping Tool menu, a copy of the snip is also collected to the Editor, where you can later modify, save, or discard the copy. Or, you can ignore the copy and it will be discarded when Snipping Tool is unloaded from memory the next time you log out or reboot.
Note: If you use Snipping Tool heavily, the Editor will accumulate a large collection of snips, in which case you may want to periodically select File, Close All or File, Exit Snipping Tool from the Editor to clear this collection and free up computer memory.
With this Snipping Tool Editor knowledge at hand you may now be asking yourself how to open it without actually making a snipping? I mean the purpose of all this was to easily annotate images. Well this was my train of thought so I immediately went to the help section of the Snipping Tool and finally came to the section about the Snipping Tool Editor. After reading through the features I came to a “Tip for advanced users.” This tip tells you exactly how to create a shortcut and open the editor directly.
You first are going to need to find your shortcut to the snipping tool itself. This may be found on your desktop but probably is tucked within the Microsoft Experience Pack Folder on the start menu. If you have trouble locating it let me know! I’d be glad to help. Once you find it I like to send it to the desktop. (Rick Click on icon, send to, send to desktop as shortcut)
Once on the desktop it’s time to edit the target. Right Click on the icon you just made on the desktop and click on properties. You should now see a window that looks like the one on the right. Fine the target line. Go to the end and enter “ /e” (That is include the space but not the quotes. Your target line should now look like the one below. Click apply and then ok. You can easily rename your shortcut anything you would like it. You can then add it to your start menu, add it as quick launch icon or leave it right there on the desktop.
Where ever you put it you now have access to free ink image editor. I love SnagIt and actually used it for all the clippings in this post, but you can’t ink with it as naturally as you can with the Snipping Tool Editor. The Snipping Tool is also free to anyone with a Tablet PC. If you want something simple to quickly add annotations to images that are inserted into MindManager or just want to draw a goofy face on a friend then the Snipping Tool Editor may just be the tool for you!
What is TEO 3 and Einstein Technologies?
What is
TEO 3.0 and
Einstein Technologies? That was actually my first question when I saw a new post on my RSS reader from
Student Tablet PC. I had heard of
TEO 2.0 and
Einstein Technologies before but I never had any interest. I saw it mentioned on
Tablet PC Buzz every now and then and people seemed to talk about it highly but again no peak of interest emerged. This was probably because I knew the program was an add-in for Outlook. After all
TEO stands for Tablet Enhancements for Outlook. One would think I'd immediately be drawn to it because of my Tablet PC love but at the time I really did not use Outlook all that much so what could it do for me? I really only had two email accounts and Outlook express could handle that just fine so I never even really bothered to load up Outlook 2003 for quite some time. One may ask why I didn't use Outlook at first. It's actually a pretty long story but let's say I became incredibly frustrated with it when I tried to use it with a Pocket PC to manage my classes and schedule. Outlook just does not work well for students in my opinion.
GoBinder is actually my choice at the moment, although I am trying to get away from it. So what would cause this Outlook hating dork to all of a sudden have a change in heart about Outlook and
TEO....how about a girl named Tracy Hooten over at
Student Tablet PC and
her review on the latest
beta of TEO 3.0
Tracy's great review has inspired me to look into TEO. Although I can't try out the latest beta I can try out the current version. In seems almost like going backwards but you have to be a registered owner of TEO 2.0 to try out the beta. Since I have never played with it before I don't think it would be wise to shell out some dough just to try TEO 3.0 out. So hopefully I'll have some time to at least get an idea of what TEO is all about. If I end up loving it I may just buy TEO 2.0 right away but only time will tell.
Check out Tracy's excellent review of TEO 3.0 from Einstein Technologies and you too may join the club of users giving it so much praise.
For more information of TEO 3.0 check out their web page as well as two great ink shows about it from GottaBeMobile!
TEO 3.0 Exclusive Preview InkShow
from GottaBeMobile
TEO 3.0 Research Assistant InkShow
from GottaBeMobile
MindManager Active Desktop Update
Recently I have received a few emails regarding my latest
MindManager video, (
MinManager Takes Over the Desktop) where I demonstrated my use of
MindManager and its incorporation as a clickable map right onto my desktop. What I did not do is demonstrate exactly how I went about doing this. I understand that there is more to it than meets the eye and since so many of you have asked I figured it would only be appropriate to create a little tutorial via
Camtasia Studio.
I am assuming there were probably no problems in the actual creation of the map but getting it to actually show up and work could provide some difficulties. If there are any particular parts or problems with the setup that have you scratching your head drop a comment or
email me and I'll make sure to emphasize that part of the procedure.
I only have a few more days of school and will then have some time to work on it but I just wanted to give everyone the opportunity to add questions before I started the project. I plan to have the tutorial up by the end of the weekend so hopefully that is not too long of a wait.
I also re-uploaded the original
MindManager Takes Over The Desktop video and decreased the quality and size. The first one was around 50 mb and after a 10 GB bandwidth usage per day rate I decided it would be better for both my hosting service and everyone else to scale it down a bit. It's now around 9 mb now so it should load up MUCH quicker!
The Bottom Line on E-Textbooks
This article makes another good point against the whole e-textbook concept.
"
Even so, most students aren't interested, because the books can't be sold back"Slashdot | DRM Lite for Electronic TextbooksThe full article from
The New York Times can be found
hereThe Bottom Line on E-Textbooks
Detroit Basketball!
You'll often hear me complain about the cold weather here in Michigan but this time of year it really heats up in Detroit. Living in Auburn Hills (home of the Palace where the Pistons place) and a short drive from Joe Louis it's really exciting to have some great sports team! (Let's forgot about the Lions and Tigers for a moment!) This year we are very lucky to have two awesome teams! The Pistons and Red Wings both finished in top spots during the regular season and the play-offs are on their way. I have just a few more days of school and then it's time to chill with friends and watch Detroit try to make two runs at a championship! I can't wait!
Let's Go Detroit!!!
Note Talkers Contest Extended
I was very pleased to here that the
Note Talkers Contest was
extended today! I hope the contest has brought more attention to the
Note Talkers site and
MindManager software as well as all of their sponsors. I know I personally was glad to hear that the contest was extended since I have been crazy busy with school comming to an end. I also have finals on Monday and Tuesday and having some more time to work on my
MindManager maps lets me put it off for a few more days and concentrate on finals instead!
I should be back with lots of updates as soon as I finish this semester and I look foward to writing a few articles about
ResultsManager, my semester with ebooks and about my complete school year experience with a Tablet PC.
Will Tablet PCs replace Textbooks?
Will Tablet PCs replace Textbooks? I personally don't think so! This
quick post from
PC World really caught my attention today. Bill Gates proclaims that "In fact, we see a day where every student, instead of their textbooks, will simply have their tablet computer connected up to the wireless Internet." Ohh Mr. Gates if only you were a student!
I started this semester with the hope of bringing the dream of digital textbooks to a reality. After all they are cheaper, you can carry them everytwhere you go and actually make a lot of sense on paper. I even wrote an enthusthiastic
article before I began this jouney with ebooks. Now that semester is comming to a close I am expecting to write an article describing my feelings, observations and conclusions about ebooks and their ability to replace those heavy textbooks. I would love to cry out and rejoice how wonderful they are but without going into too many details at the moment let me just say we have some time before I see students turning to their tablets and leaving behind the textbooks.
I even experienced two differnt formats of this ebook world. One was purchased through SafariX and required an internet connection to view. The other was in the Adobe PDF format. As an individual that likes to adopt new and innovating technology I regretfully must tell you that I feel neither is an adequate replacment to those medevial textbooks. I have lots of reasons to back up these feelings and plan to share them in an article when school is finished. I currently have a lot of students eagerly awaiting my analysis so I really want to spend some time writing it all up but for now just wanted to share the thoughts of a student who has actually done the whole ebook thing for an entire semester.
Go ahead and
read the article yourself but stay tuned to hear the real story behind digital textbooks!
Will Tablet PCs replace Textbooks from PC World
MindManager Update
I don't know exactly when the
latest update was released but when I was checking up with Eric Mack at
EricMackOnline I saw him commenting on some
MindManager news. I then decided to check to see if there were any updates this morning (By going to help, check for updates in MindManager) and sure enough there is an update! SP1 build 6.1.809 has many updates including a Lotus Notes hyperlink, that Eric hinted about, as well as some overall performance improvements. For the full list of updates and information check it out
here!
I'll let you know if I see any improvements myself when I have a chance but for now if you own
MindJet MindManager go ahead and
download the latest
service patch!
ResultsManager Ignorance?
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting with
Kyle McFarlin, a
Gyronix Implementation Consultant. He was gracious enough to offer to go over how to use
ResultsManager in a college setting. This was after I had complained about not finding much use in for its price tag of $285. In fact I recently came across a blog from
Walter Terry that criticizes individuals like me for being ignorant in our inability to see the true value in
ResultsManager. After our meeting I admit I do have a greater appreciation for
ResultsManager but it is not for everyone. I still take offense to those that accuse me of getting caught up on the details and failing to see the big picture and I question his appraisal of others.
For one students fall into a category that have some of the most complex schedules on the planet. Those in the business world and with steady jobs may fail to see that our jobs as students do not have days with clear starts and endings. In fact there are weeks that go by where the border between one day and next are often blurred by long nights of studying and early morning classes. I even have a few classmates that are going back to school and have a family, another job, classes and dance lessons to juggle. With so many things coming at them from every direction it may make sense for one sit up on their soap box and proclaim that ResultsManager or any other planning software tool will provide them with great success. Unfortunately every individual’s situation is different and just because something works for one does not mean it will work for everyone else.
For example, MindManager works very well at organizing many of my classes and schedule but I have a few friends that really would obtain no true value from using it. They have systems of organizing that work and allow them to be successful and I would never parade around shooting off comments that they “just don’t get it.” If MindManager or ResultsManager works for you, great! Share you knowledge and experience with others and let them see all the amazing things it has allowed you to accomplish. But if someone sincerely tries your approach and it does not coordinate with their lifestyle realize that it just may not be for them. There are those out there that do fail to find the true value in certain applications but there are also others like myself that simply can not benefit from your amazing discovery and this does not make us ignorant.
I may be taking his post a little too sensitive but it really bothered me for some reason and for whatever felt the need to say something. I of course agree that many people fail to see the true value in ResultsManager and I personally hope to clarify and explain its usefulness in future posts. I started earlier last week with my first brief article and when school starts to calm down and I have some more time (hopefully before my latest trial wears out!) I plan to continue explaining and dissecting ResultsManager. I guess I just have a different approach than Mr. Terry.
Facebook Me! It's a phrase a lot of college students here but that phrase may no longer be exclusive just to students. I don't know exactly how many student are on facebook but it has to be a lot! The college networking website has expanded to the High School field and now seems to be venturing out into the business world. It seems some Microsoft employees now have the ability to log on. With so many college students on the network it makes sense for large corporations to get involved in the possibility of matching up future graduates with employers. I don't know if this is the route they're going or if they are just looking for a new way for employees of large corporations to interact. Whatever the reason, sites like facebook and myspace are increasingly becoming incorporated into our lives.
You could use a program like Autodesk SketchBook (formerly known as Alisa Sketchbook) to accomplish any of these feats. The program allows you too add an image and draw just about anything you can think of all over it. With paintbrush, pencil and pen settings it’s aimed towards more professional projects but could be used for simple annotation. However the overkill button once again goes off the search for something a bit simpler continues.
You'll often hear me complain about the cold weather here in Michigan but this time of year it really heats up in Detroit. Living in Auburn Hills (home of the Palace where the Pistons place) and a short drive from Joe Louis it's really exciting to have some great sports team! (Let's forgot about the Lions and Tigers for a moment!) This year we are very lucky to have two awesome teams! The Pistons and Red Wings both finished in top spots during the regular season and the play-offs are on their way. I have just a few more days of school and then it's time to chill with friends and watch Detroit try to make two runs at a championship! I can't wait!
I don't know exactly when the latest update was released but when I was checking up with Eric Mack at EricMackOnline I saw him commenting on some MindManager news. I then decided to check to see if there were any updates this morning (By going to help, check for updates in MindManager) and sure enough there is an update! SP1 build 6.1.809 has many updates including a Lotus Notes hyperlink, that Eric hinted about, as well as some overall performance improvements. For the full list of updates and information check it out here!
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