Salman Khan is on a mission to educate the world.
The one-size-fits-all is a model in education that never worked. Learning is at different paces. Comprehension may take a few examples, not just one. And if you don’t get what’s being taught, that gap may never get filled, as the instructor keeps moving to the next topic and leaves that area behind.
Learning should be inspiring, exciting and fun, otherwise you don’t learn much.
Salman Khan’s notion that education should actually be education, and should be free, has taken a next step. If you’ve ever seen any of the thousands of videos available at khanacademy.org, and you own an iPad, you will want to download the new free Khan Academy app.
The videos have a very entertaining delivery of information and graphics that keep you interested in the subject matter. Khan felt that videos help take away anxiety and allow you to learn at your pace in a more relaxed enviroment. Not to mention allow you to review areas over and over if needed.
The subject matter on the Khan Academy site is vast and interesting, and there’s something for all ages.
For more info see here: Khan Academy app
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To my friend Mary Grey: I will miss that “Hiya Babe” every time I saw her, but still hear it. I will miss the “Sorry to bother you” phone call, that really wasn’t a bother at all. I’ll remember her fiesty personality, and absolute-graceful resolve.
GG-BM
(Mary would know exactly what that means.)
Love you much Mary.
I want to make you aware of a funny and sad (if you take it too seriously) site called “Screenshots of Despair.” People upload screenshots of some of the most depressing screens, popups, and other computer responses.You’d almost thing they were written by the folks at Despair.com (who make far too much of my wardrobe.).
For example, from some social site, there’s a screenshot which shows the title “Friends” and underneath says “You have no friends yet!” I guess at least the “yet” means they hold out hope for you! Another favorite is a button that says “Submit to job”. Yeah, I think most of us are resigned to that.
So check it out – there’s a lot of shots up already. And you of course can contribute as well. Sign up for their RSS feed and never miss a distressing screen shot again!
Mad Magazine has been around for nearly 60 years. I freely admit that I’ve been reading it nearly that long. I was probably 8 or 9 when I snitched my first issue from my cousin Dean. After that, I used my allowance to buy it (25¢ Cheap!) whenever I found it at the drug store. What can I say? It has always appealed to my warped sense of humor.
On Friday, March 30th, 2012 we lost one of our own. Our beloved member Mary Grey has left us and we are deeply saddened by this loss.
Mary has been a long time member and friend of MacGroup and me personally. She has always been there for us and helped the group by volunteering since the early days.
Both Mary and her loving husband Joseph have always been a ray of sunshine and we have many happy memories of Mary throughout the years.
We will miss you Mary and our prayers go out to Joseph Grey and her daughter Catherine.
The Mass will be today Monday, April 2nd 2012, 10AM at
Our lady of Fatima
13500 Oak Park Blvd
Oak Park
248 5452310
I know it’s been a while but she is back because ……..
F R I D A Y !!!!
I missed writing this blog. It’s one of my pleasures in life sharing my insights and thoughts on backing up and preserving yours and my data. It’s crucial and important to take care of this function that is needed for peace of mind with your computer. That issue is paramount for me.
There are others that write blogs that travel from technical to social. I participated in a dialog in a social blog and because it’s hard to convey feelings in text, I was misinterpreted and because of thatI have decided to refrain from social commentary and stay with only technical blogs after this blog is completed.
Without picking any one issue, in the past week there have been a lot going on in the news that has been quite controversial. Perhaps rather than having to be the first to Tweet or post to Facebook something that is not accurate, or feelings based on hearsay, perhaps we should use BACKUP for a second and get the correct info before reacting. I am just tired of the obsession to be the first to Tweet, Post, or report a story without being clear on facts.
Pay me now or pay me later
In the past month I have assisted a few folks with data problems on their computers. In most cases, they did not have an adequate backup. So far I have been able to recover the data for the user, however, it cost a price to get this data back. A price that is more costly then the cost to buy and use backup devices. So the choice is yours. Backup now and save your data and your money. Or have data possibly recovered and pay a higher price later.
Entertainment Selection
Brent Spiner is so good at doing this. Check it out.
Radio Days
Please join us this Saturday on 760 AM WJR between 3-6 PM for the “Internet Advisor” for all things tech and internet. Tune in to Foster,Gary,Ed, and I. We would love to have you and look forward to you listening.
C ya!
I went on a call to a client’s house over the weekend. His complaint was a common one – “my computer is slow.” I went over to take a look, and as I expected, the slowness was caused by downloading and installing too many background programs. This is stuff he never uses, and doesn’t even realize he’s getting – for example, he had four tool bar add-ons in his browser. The companies putting these things out must know they are crap – why else do they sneak them in? Often, while downloading something you want, there will be a tiny checkbox somewhere, already checked, saying something like “Yes! I want the CrapTastic.com Toolbar so they can drag down my system!” (OK, not quite in those words…)
But even scarier than that – I noted that TeamViewer was installed on the system. That in itself is not an issue – TeamViewer is a very useful program it allows a tech to, with permission, connect to a computer and take control. But my customer is not tech savvy, and has no use for this unless someone had him download it to remote in.
Just as I was about to bring it up, he did – “What’s that ‘TeamViewer’ on my desktop?” I explained what it was for, and asked if anyone had been remotely connecting to his computer. “Oh, yeah, now I remember – Comcast called and had me load that.” He said Comcast had called because they detected problems with his computer and wanted to check it out. So he downloaded and installed the TeamViewer software as the “tech” asked and turned over control of his system (oy!).
Fortunately, he doesn’t do any banking from the computer. But after rummaging around a bit (and I hope he didn’t find anything!), he told my customer that he had “65 viruses” and that Comcast could remove them for him – he just needed to hand over his credit card number to get started.
That set off a warning bell for my client – he said he wasn’t going to hand over his credit card, as if he was really from Comcast, he could just bill the account. He said then he hung up and closed out TeamViewer.
I warned him in the future to never turn over control of his system to anyone he didn’t call first. Comcast does now offer services via remote control, but they will bill your Comcast account, not ask for a credit card. I don’t know if they use TeamViewer or some other tech, but in any case you should never turn your system over to someone who has called you, and you shouldn’t hand out important info like credit card numbers. As the systems themselves get better and better protected, it’s important that we – the human element – stay on guard as well for these type of attacks.
I did check his anti-virus/anti-spyware that I had installed before – it was still working fine, and the history showed no issues (yes, this is a Windows machine). And lest you think this is just done by lone wolves – take a look at this blog post about iYogi and see why you have to be on guard.
It has been a while since I shared any of my favorite iPad apps, but I have one utility-type app that I seem to use frequently. Posted. It’s a simple, inexpensive ($1.99) app that has one use only — delivery tracking. (They have a free version that you can try first.) Whether you are sending or receiving a package or envelope via UPS, DHL, FedEx or Priority Mail (and a bunch of others), if it has a tracking number, this is what you want. Last Friday I packed my old Kindle into a Priority Mailing box and sent it off to my sister in Arizona. From the time it left our local Post Office branch until it was delivered at 4:03 PM this afternoon, I was able to keep track of where it was. Whenever the tracking label was scanned, Posted kept me notified of its location. I have it on both my iPad and my iPod touch. Enter the tracking information on one and it automatically syncs with the other.
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At the last MacGroup Afterglow, I brought up how Photo Stream was getting there but still had a weird quirk. For those of you unfamiliar with Photo Stream, it’s an iCloud feature added to iOS 5 that takes any photo you snap – including screen shots, or downloaded graphics – and makes it (nearly) instantly available on all your iOS devices and your Mac (if you have OS X 10.7 Lion and the latest iPhoto). It’s not on by default; you have to enable it.
For some folks, the initial implementation was not useful. People like Terry White, who might take 100 photos in a day, found their Photo Stream overwhelmed with photos they didn’t want – because everything went in, and there was no way to delete from the stream. Apple would do that, rotating the pictures in 30 days or after 1000 pictures. On the other hand, for people like me – who take maybe 100 photos a year – it was fine.
But recognizing that having no control over the stream was not optimal for a lot of people, Apple added the ability to delete photos from the stream in iOS 5.1. But here’s the quirk – you had to do it from iPhoto if you wanted it deleted everywhere. If you tried to delete from your device, say your iPhone, you’d see this:
Terry said that he didn’t get that message. He went to his iPhone, selected “Delete” on a photo in his Photo Stream, and got this:
Huh? Steven Gold, another MacGroup member at the table, said he was also getting the message I got. So we started looking at options in iCloud and Photos on the device, but couldn’t find anything other than “on” and “off” for Photo Stream. Terry thought it might be an iPhoto setting, so I checked when I got home. While there are a lot of settings for Photo Stream in iPhoto, I couldn’t find one that had anything to do with this.
But I did find the answer – “the Google” (as we old folks say) is your friend. I found this blog post, and in the comments, a commenter named Gerry had the answer – pictures taken before iOS 5.1 are only deleted from the iOS device you are on (unless done in iPhoto, which deletes from all devices always); photos taken with iOS 5.1 are deleted from the entire photo stream from any device. Steven and I had been deleting older items, while Terry had newer ones.
So thanks Gerry – not sure why it’s implemented that way, with a weird combination of the two releases, but there we are.
I’ve had my .mac email address since Apple first offered free email service. When they started charging for MobileMe, I was one of the few who didn’t complain. I live by the phrase ‘no such thing as a free lunch.’ Someone always has to pay the bill. I like having my .mac address. I can change internet service providers and not worry about sending a change of address to everyone. I’ve never completely trusted Gmail, and don’t even mention yahoo mail. Every time I hear of someone’s email account being hijacked, it is invariably a yahoo account. Definitely not acceptable.
My .mac account has been super steady until recently. MobileMe service outages were rare and never more than a couple of hours for planned maintenance. I could access it from any computer, any location. Then came iCloud. Now, it’s great that it is free, but along with eliminating the fees, they also eliminated photo galleries and websites. Give it back! I’ll pay! Gladly!
Another glitch (at least in my book!) is that on my iPad, I must use the Mail app to access my email. Can’t do it with Safari. Try it with Safari and it offers to set up Mail for you. I recently was in a position where I had to use a semi-open wifi system for several days. Certain ports on that system were blocked — ports that Mail on the iPad uses. Web browser on my Nook Tablet had no problem accessing my email on the same network. Really, Apple?
The corker came last Friday when my email was offline. Huh? Password rejected? Huh? Friday is an important mail day for me. Launched Safari, then Firefox, and while I could login to iCloud, I could access everything except email. Checked with my iPad & Nook — same result. I checked Apple’s iCloud status page to see if any problems were listed, and everything was listed as A-OK.
I proceeded to spend 45 minutes in online chat with two tiers of tech support. They were in the dark and tried all of the usual troubleshooting methods. Of course, the first suggestion was that I delete the account from Mail and add it back. Not gonna happen. I finally got through that the problem was the same across all methods of access, and since everything else on iCloud was working, the only thing that it could be was a server problem on their end. After 45 minutes, the only answer they could give was that the data is “being moved to another server mailstore in order to guarantee performance and security.” My email was back up by Saturday morning, but after haunting the Apple Support Communities discussion boards, it seems that a lot of people are going through the same thing, and have been for some time now.
I can understand problems with a new system, but Apple needs to be honest about it. Let the tech support people know about it. Put a message on the status page that says “Everything appears to be working on our end, but we understand that some of you may be having a problem. If so, let us know and we’ll get it fixed.” People may get upset, but they get more upset when facts are hidden. And if we have to go back to a paid system, let’s do it. I will gladly pay for a consistent service. But above all, please be honest with us. I don’t want to go through the hassle of making Gmail my primary account, but if things don’t improve, I may be force to do it. Please, Apple, at least level with us.
With the introduction of the “New iPad” and Apple stock soaring to new heights, along with a “projection to hit $700 per share” before the end of the year, Apple is clearly at the top of any tech talk and with it thoughts of Steve Jobs, come to mind. This coming Wednesday, March 21, PBS will televise “Steve Jobs: One Last Thing”, to gain unique insight into the mind that even the FBI labeled as ‘far-reaching and visionary.”
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