Internet Explorer 5 for Mac

Microsoft drops support for IE 5.

In accordance with published support lifecycle policies, Microsoft will end support for Internet Explorer for Mac on December 31st, 2005, and will provide no further security or performance updates. Additionally, as of January 31st, 2006,
Internet Explorer for the Mac will no longer be available for download from Mactopia. It is recommended that Macintosh users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari.

Revisions in Wikis

Someone made an interesting commented recently on a Kairosnews post about Wikpedia about revision:

"the big question of revision: how do we (people who write on wikis) get past the 80/20 rule of revision? Can you distribute the task of proofing for unity and coherence? Or will it always be that 80% of the people do 20% of the work while 20% of the people do 80% of the work? This is the same problem that Yochai Benkler calls 'low-cost integration' in Commons-Based Peer Production."

In my (few) experiments with wikis, I have found that this does tend to happen. Someone or a few people get to the wiki first and do most of the work. Then others often arrive and just tweak what the first people have written. This raises a few questions for me if I want to use or encourage others to use a wiki as a pedagogical too: Does the "80/20 rule" occur because peer editing is foreign and takes some time to warm up to? Is it something about the work being open and on the web that keeps people from making major revisions? How do you create an environment where everyone is contributing equally? Or is that even desirable? Maybe the 80/20 rule is how peer-editing and group projects work in real life too.

PowerGramo-The Recorder for Skype

Through this company, you can record Skype conversations:

PowerGramo-The Recorder for Skype: "PowerGramo is a powerful realtime recording solution for Skype. You can record and replay any Skype call easily and simply."

There's a free and Pro version ($20), the main difference being that you can record conference calls with the Pro version. Looks like it is Windows only, though... um... Skype is crossplatform guys.

via Weblogg-ed

Creating PDFs for free on Windows

The tech liaisons had an email exchange recently about creating PDFs from Word Documents on Windows, because a faculty member wanted the ability to do this but did not have the full version of Acrobat. Mac OSX has this feature built in (through the print dialogue), but Windows does not... of course.

In my blog reading today, I came across a solution for Windows users:

CutePDF - Create PDF for free, Save PDF Forms, Edit PDF easily.: "This enables virtually any Windows applications (must be able to print) to create professional quality PDF documents - with just a push of a button!

FREE for personal and commercial use! No watermarks! No Popup Web Ads! "

I tried it out, and it seems to work just fine. Requires downloading two small executables, running them, and restarting the computer. After that, you can create pdfs through the print dialogue by selecting it as a printer.

JotSpot Tracker - Stop emailing spreadsheets

Something for those of you who might think social software is only for those of us in the humanities... A Spreadsheet Wiki (sort of):

JotSpot Tracker - Stop emailing spreadsheets

via Educational Weblogs

Yahoo swallows up another del.cioi.us Web 2.0 application

First Flickr, now del.icio.us... It'll be interesting to see where things go from here. Here's the announcement with some mixed (though mostly postive) reaction:

del.icio.us: y.ah.oo!: "We're proud to announce that del.icio.us has joined the Yahoo! family. Together we'll continue to improve how people discover, remember and share on the Internet, with a big emphasis on the power of community. We're excited to be working with the Yahoo! Search team - they definitely get social systems and their potential to change the web. (We're also excited to be joining our fraternal twin Flickr!)"

Podcasting is "Word of the Year"

According to Slashdot and many other sources, the New Oxford American Dictionary has declared "podcast" the word of the year for 2005.

Glide Effortless

David Pogue reviewed this today in the New York Times. Seems like it is worth a look:

Glide Effortless: "Easily and securely upload, manage, store and share your files online. Glide Effortless provides a portable desktop that links with your current desktops."