Archive for the 'PLE' Category
Posted by Randy on 27th October 2009
I am finding the open source NetBeans development tool really great for my PHP programming work. It really saves time by catching the simple typo and syntax mistakes I commonly make. Please to code suggestions and other elements are helpful too. Part of what makes it so great is the connection that the project developers have with the programming community — as an example of that read this post. It is exactly this type of close connection to a user community that makes open source so powerful.
NetBeans for PHP : weblog
I spent talking about PHP development in NetBeans almost whole session. After the session there was a long discussion (more than 1 hour) and some people complained about formatting…As a result I have decided to look at this and to try to fix as many bugs as possible. Because there is not much time for NetBeans 6.8, I would like to ask you for help.
NetBeans 6.8 Beta Coming; Does Oracle Care? | NetBeans Zone
PHP
* PHP 5.3 support including syntax highlighting, code completion, code folding, and navigator
* Symfony Framework support
* FTP/SFTP improvements
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Posted in Open Source, PHP, PLE, Technology, Web, blog, project | Comments Off
Posted by Randy on 26th October 2009
The WordPress Exploit Scanner plugin scans system files, posts/comments and plug-ins for suspicious stuff. If you have a blog site that you think may have been compromised it can’t hurt to give it a try. I ran it on a couple of blogs I administer and I’m happy to report that everything looks fine. One of the things the plug-in looks for is hidden code in your site, especially hidden style elements. This is a way that spammers can insert code into your site — but there are lots of legitimate reasons for these elements too. So the report can look a little alarming or overwhelming at first, so run it when you have some time to scan over the output report. A good tool to keep handy for when needed.
WordPress Exploit Scanner
This plugin searches the files and database of your website for signs of suspicious activity. It will not stop someone hacking into your site, but it may help you find any uploaded or compromised files left by the hacker.
WordPress › Blog » WordPress 2.8.5: Hardening Release
We recommend that all sites are upgraded to this new version of WordPress to ensure that you have the best available protection…If you think your site may have been hit by one of the recent exploits and you would like to make sure that you have cleared out all traces of the exploit then we would recommend that you take a look at the WordPress Exploit Scanner.
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Posted in Data, PLE, Technology, Web, WordPress, blog, database, plugin | Comments Off
Posted by Randy on 21st October 2009
Take a look at this hack-fest example and tell me it doesn’t sound really cool. I have tried to sell the hack-fest idea to a couple of people, in a couple of different settings, with no success so far. Pick a problem, either outward facing — like environmental waste – or inward facing — like student mobile apps. Get some smart people together for a fixed period of time and turn ‘em loose. Let’s do it! What needs fixing around here?
Hacking as a Way of Knowing | NiCHE
In the spring of 2009, Edward Jones-Imhotep and I invited a few dozen people to a three-day, hands-on hacking workshop to explore the problem of environmental waste….If you would like to do something like this yourself, or if you’d like to arrange a similar workshop with your friends, here are the steps to take…
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Posted in Lifestyle, PLE, digital, mobile, student | Comments Off
Posted by Randy on 19th October 2009
A great post by Jim Groom at UMW on the use of WordPress multi-user to aggregate content via technologies like RSS. Places like universities are complex places with many affiliates who all have needs for their own web identifies, and control over these identities. These can range from grant-funded projects to various centers to faculty research sites. But there is also a need to be able to pull this content and re-mix it in various ways for various audiences. For instance faculty research sites that feed content to a department site that highlights the latest doings by their faculty. Jim describes this all better than I’m doing here so go read his post. We have something similar running with MU here, although we haven’t really started to employ it in a production way yet (too much beginning of the year stuff to work through!) But the bottom line is what sounds really complex is actually pretty easy to set up from a technical standpoint, and pretty cheap from a hardware/software cost perspective, when you use a tool like WordPress MU.
The Future of WPMu at bavatuesdays
So you offer a Bluehost like setup for faculty, and if that is too much, allow them to map a domain, take control of their own course work, and encourage an aggregated course management model that pushes students to take control of their digital identity and spaces by extension.
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Posted in PLE, Technology, Web, WordPress, content, digital, management, project, rss, student, students, universities | Comments Off
Posted by Randy on 19th October 2009
Website Magazine’s listing of top sites for web pro’s has WordPress.com in the top ten — and twitter only number 12. Not sure what it means, if anything, but it is interesting to see what their “proprietary method” thinks is important.
Top 50 Websites for ‘Net Professionals – Website Magazine – Website Magazine
Website Magazine’sTop 50 rankings are a measure of a website’s popularity. Ranks are calculated using a proprietary method that focuses on average daily unique visitors and page views over a specified period of time as reported by multiple data sources. The sites with the highest combination of factors are ranked in the first position.
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Posted in Data, Lifestyle, PLE, Twitter, Web, WordPress, blog, content | Comments Off
Posted by Randy on 14th October 2009
Making a commitment to a PHP framework is like committing to exercise everyday — you know you should do it, but tomorrow always seems like a good time to start — and of course tomorrow never comes. I’ve been debating between CodeIgniter and Symphony for a couple of months. And not making up your mind is another good way to put off actually doing something. I attended the PHP CodeWorks conference last week and the CodeIgniter session was pretty good. The first point Ed Finkler made was that it really doesn’t matter what you pick — get whatever works for you. CodeIgniter does have a successful commercial company, EllisLab (makers of expression engine CMS) behind it, plus an active developer community. I believe the upcoming new version of ExpressionEngine is also being built on top of CodeIgniter.
To help push me over the edge, Packt Publishing has a CodeIgniter book out. I know I’m old fashioned, but I find the structured presentation contained in a well laid out book very helpful when learning something new. And so far this book is well laid out. It isn’t super code heavy, which I find can slow things down. If the book provides pages of code examples, which you need to re-create in order to really understand the examples, and things don’t work out well due to typos or operator error, you can get lost easily. The book has short, simple examples to illustrate the points — perfect for testing and experimenting. And short enough to find an error when they come up. So I’m working my way through the book. This time I’m really going to start!
So after all this, why use a framework? In the CodeIgniter book, the author keeps making the point that you write less code. But that assumes you don’t do anything to speed development of a web site (like use include files for page headers) which I expect most developers already do. One real advantage is for a team of programmers, as the framework helps structure a standard way of building your web applications. And CodeIgniter is nice in that it has a structure, but isn’t so restrictive as to force a whole new way of working — making it easier to adapt this to existing database structures or web projects. And even as an individual it helps enforce a best practices approach — i.e. escaping user input, using object orientated techniques and keeping presentation, application and database layers separate.
CodeIgniter for Rapid PHP Application Development
This book explains how to work with CodeIgniter in a clear logical way. It is not a detailed guide to the syntax of CodeIgniter, but makes an ideal complement to the existing online CodeIgniter user guide, helping you grasp the bigger picture and bringing together many ideas to get your application development started as smoothly as possible.
CodeWorks 2009 — Touring PHP conference San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Washingon/Baltimore, New York
Welcome! CodeWorks 2009 is a series of two-day conferences for PHP developers and IT managers organized and run by the publishers of php|architect Magazine.
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Posted in PHP, PLE, Technology, Web, application, cms, conference | Comments Off
Posted by Randy on 14th October 2009
I just signed up for a new forum service on building the Herreshoff boat Rozinante. Wouldn’t it be cool if when you signed up for something like this, you could tell it to figure out who you are from all your other social network memberships? Glen Jones has an article on A List Apart, showcasing a new javascript library he’s created that does exactly that? It might feel a little creepy when you see what it can get – try it out here — but it is all available to someone via Google anyhow. And it seems to me that this ability to be recognized as an option, utilizing all your existing social capital would be an attractive option for users — maybe students using a university-based social network system (like buddypress?) Some interesting possibilities here…
A List Apart: Articles: Discovering Magic
Ident Engine discovers and retrieves distributed identities and user-generated content to help you build a little magic into your user interfaces.
Try it out! Enter your profile URLs into the lifestream and combined profile demos.
Ident Engine – Combined Profile
Please enter the web address of a profile page. This could be on Twitter, FriendsFeed, Flickr, Digg or any other web profile page.
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Posted in PLE, Technology, Twitter, Web, content, flickr, student, students | Comments Off
Posted by Randy on 12th October 2009
OK, so we’re all trying to figure out what, if anything, social media is useful for — other than having fun and wasting time with friends and family. The New Media Consortium has put together a site reviewing what they’ve been experimenting with. We have a group here that is viewing a webinar on October 27 on Effective Use of Social Media for Student recruitment ( if you’re in New Haven and want to join us just let me know.) I’ve had some success with Twitter in advancing business interests, but nothing I’m ready to wrap an official company strategy around. I really like LinkedIn (especially for helping students/alumni with career networking), but it seems like Facebook gets all the attention. And don’t forget blogs — not quite as sexy as Twitter or Facebook perhaps, but still finding a place in college communication efforts. Talking with peers, experimenting, and exploring — that’s a type of progress, right?
M.I.T. Taking Student Blogs to Nth Degree
Dozens of colleges — including Amherst, Bates, Carleton, Colby, Vassar, Wellesley and Yale — are embracing student blogs on their Web sites, seeing them as a powerful marketing tool for high school students
NMC and Social Media | nmc
n our research work for the Horizon Report, the NMC has been tracking Social Networking/Social Computing since 2005 and we have made extensive use of social bookmarking, photosharing, and Web 2.0 networking tools for our events.
NMC 2009 Summer Conference Social Media Recap | nmc
However I wanted to record, primarily for my own sake, while fresh in my mind a recap of the social media tools we used (and other related factors) for our conference.
Listen and Watch Closely: The Effective Use of Social Media for Student Recruitment WEBCAST « New York Times Knowledge Network
Educational institutions are looking for the best formula to effectively deal with the plethora of social media available. In fact, no one has drawn a bead on this moving target– and new platforms constantly crowd into the space.
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Posted in Learn, LinkedIn, PHP, PLE, Twitter, Web, Web 2.0, conference, education, facebook, new media, photo, social networking, student, students | Comments Off
Posted by Randy on 12th October 2009
If Google Wave lives up to even half of the hype surrounding its closed beta release it still will be an awesome product. Some are raising the notion that is could bring a number of web 2.0 concepts together and become a new tool for personal learning systems — and replacing the traditional course management system. But then again moving things to the Google cloud is not without its concerns, as recent outages highlight. And it may be that Wave doesn’t live up to its hype — time will tell.
The Wired Campus – Could Google Wave Replace Course-Management Systems? – The Chronicle of Higher Education
Google argues that its new Google Wave system could replace e-mail by blending instant messaging, wikis, and image and document sharing into one seamless communication interface. But some college professors and administrators are more excited about Wave’s potential to be a course-management-system killer.
Amazon Web Services Gets DDoS Attack and the Client Waits – ReadWriteEnterprise
An apparent DDoS attack on Amazon Web Services (AWS) over the weekend left a web-hosting code service down for about 20 hours before the problem became resolved.
Geeks Try Google Wave, Have Mixed Feelings
Google Wave is one of the most-hyped new product launches in recent memory, but now that thousands of lucky people are getting to try it out – early reactions are mixed. If the hard-core geeks aren’t sure if they like it, that could spell serious trouble for mainstream adoption.
First impressions of Google Wave ~ Stephen’s Web ~ by Stephen Downes
So, for now, it’s just a glorified content editing tool – and as that, not a very good one. Hoping for better down the line. This, meanwhile, is Liam Green-Hughes’s response: “Hype aside, as this is often no more than a distraction, my first impression is that this potentially is a very useful tool. I am looking forward to the system being opened up so anybody can register on it and use it, then being able to try it out on an actual project with many other people.”
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Posted in Learn, PHP, PLE, Web, Web 2.0, blog, campus, education, higher education, management, systems | Comments Off
Posted by Randy on 7th October 2009
I have been following the Bates Online Media blog for about a year. They have been blogging as they’ve worked through a pretty dramatic redesign of the college web site. The fact that is built on WordPress is probably the least important feature (but the WordPress geek in me does thrill just a bit at the news.) With my eldest now a freshman at Springfield college, we all spent a lot of time as consumers on college sites — and from the user perspective the Bates site is very smartly laid out, and is easy to use. Nice to see such a great end-result after a careful and productive planning process.
Bates College goes beyond the usual homepage redesign with Home 4 running on WordPress | collegewebeditor.com
We have been managing the site in WordPress since the beginning, first as a proof-of-concept with student assistants at WordPress.com, then as a working prototype with WP 2.8 software on an external hosting service, and now hosted on a campus Web server…The slideshows are handled with NextGenGallery, with the overlays via Thickbox and jquery. We’re using a number of plugins to enable shortcodes for editors along with WP-Table Reloaded for organization of tabular data originating in DabbleDB. We had over 30,000 views on launch day — about double the load of an average day — all served by WP-SuperCache.
Bates College
Bates Views is a site of thoughtful text, images, audio and video. Click a category below to expand
One Bates. Many Journeys. « Bates Online Media
I’m sharing the current draft of a vision paper on ways such an education might be expanded through online collaboration.
It’s 12-pages long, so here is a PDF version (2.1 MB download). It’s an evolving draft, so please send comments and suggestions for improvements.
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Posted in Data, Design, PHP, PLE, Web, WordPress, audio, blog, blogging, campus, education, planning, plugin, plugins, student, video | Comments Off
