Technology Stuff

Some cool tech stuff today that I’ve started using.

1.SnapNDrag for Mac OS - lets you create an easy screen capture and just drag it to your desktop or wherever you want to put it.

2. Open Source Mac – a website not an app, but you can get some cool (like SnapNDrag above) and free apps for your Mac here.

3. iGoogle – I’ve just discovered the iGoogle homepage and all the things that you can do with it. I customized mine in about 15 minutes with half a dozen technology feeds (both Mac and Windows), a variety of baseball feeds, a half dozen different news feeds, This Day in History, clocks showing times around the world, bookmarks, Einstein quotes, a google map, and a number of other cool things. My iGoogle page is one of the first things that I bring up when I go on line now. How will my students respond to it? I’m not sure, but I’m gong to find out when we get back to class.

4. MyYahoo – same thing as above except that I like the layout more. Google does have a few more gadgets to add to your page than Yahoo does. I keep both open when surfing.

5. Bluetooth – Bluetooth came with my iMac but as I don’t have any other Bluetooth devices, I’ve never used it. My eldest daughter has a nifty little handphone that is Bluetooth enabled and we tried it out the other day. Cool. We quickly sent loads of photos and music back and forth. It was impressive. It almost makes me want to buy a new handphone.

6. A little Bluetooth device that plugs into your USB port that I found today at a local computer store. For 75,000 rupiah (about 8 dollars US), I just plugged it in, installed the software and had it up and running on my daughter’s laptop. Now she can easily transfer the photos that I send her to her handphone to show her friends.

7. Facebook. An old buddy is using Facebook to do a little log on where he is on his round the world trip following his retirement. I signed up and found two of my nieces on there. It’s fun and useful as well. I found all sorts of folks talking about Burma and was able to sign a lot of online petitions. This is one of the ways that folks can use the internet to support freedom fighters around the world.

8. RSS – I’m starting to get used to using RSS now to get feeds of things that I want to keep up with, and I think that I have gotten the hang of writing my own RSS code to update my cyberbali.com site.

With less than a week before I head back to Sumbawa for another 10 weeks, I’m regretting that I won’t be taking my iMac back with me. It’s just easier to leave it here so that I have a computer to use when I’m back for December break. I’ll just have to get used to using my Windows machine at home I guess.