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Find A Tutor Online

May 1st, 2007 by Eric

TutorLinker is an online marketplace for tutors. A user can find a tutor based on geography, subject matter, or pricing. The site has a pretty slick Google maps mashup that allows you to see where tutors are located.

As of right now, there is not a wide distribution of tutors, but as the site grows this will change. Right now the search is limited to location, which is somewhat limiting as well.

All in all, a pretty slick idea. Hopefully the site will take off, and more regions will benefit.

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Assign a Custom Icon to Your Flash Drive

April 27th, 2007 by Eric

You can assign a custom icon to your USB flash drive quite easily. This is especially useful if you have more than one flash drive in use. To assign an icon, just find an .ico file that you want to use. Favicons from websites work, as do most other .ico files. Name your .ico file autorun.ico and put in in the root directory of your flash drive. Next, create a text file called autorun.inf in the same directory. The autorun.inf should contain:

[autorun]
icon=autorun.ico

That’s it! Now you have a custom icon for your USB flash drive.

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Backup USB Drive on Insertion

April 25th, 2007 by Eric

This is a great way to backup a USB flash drive. After adding this batch file to your flash drive, just click the backup option to copy all files to your local hard drive.

Step 1: Create the folder you want to backup to (Mines c:\removablebackup)
Step 2: Create the backup batch file for your USB key. You can do this by inserting the following in a textfile and saving it as backup.bat. An example is provided below:

@echo off
echo ——————-
echo Removable Device Automatic Backup
echo ——————-
echo No Rights Reserved, do whatever you want with this.
xcopy “*” “c:\removablebackup\” /Y /E /R
echo Backup Complete!
Pause.

Make sure you change the section in bold to reflect your individual backup location.

Step 3: Place the following in a text document, and save it directly to your removable drive as autorun.inf:

[autorun]
action=Backup
open=backup.bat
label=Backup
includeRuntimeComponents=True

Step 4: Your done! Now whenever you insert your USB key you should see this nifty backup option:

You can also add the /D flag to the xcopy command to only copy new/changed files.

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Google Notebook

April 24th, 2007 by Eric

Google notebook functions as an online version of the versatile notebook. It allows you to capture and organize pictures, text, and other web content. You can then organize these them into sections, add your own notes, etc. Browser extensions are available that make adding content to your notebook very easy. As with all Google products, you can leverage the power of Google’s search technology to quickly find any note. Another really neat feature is the collaboration capability. Much like Google Docs, you can open up your notebook to others, allowing them to add and make changes. Finally, you can publish your notebook by making it a public web page. Overall, Google Notebook is a pretty slick tool for capturing disparate web content.

Google Notebook

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Online file converter

April 20th, 2007 by Eric

Zamzar is a pretty slick site that allows you to convert a file from one format to another. You can upload five files at a time and convert amongst 150 different file types.

This is great for converting PDF files to MS Word documents, or turning your iTunes .aac files into .mp3

Via

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Free photocopies…

April 10th, 2007 by Eric

Apparently using the scanner and free printer in the library computer lab equals free photocopies.

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Scan Documents and Whiteboards With Your Phone

November 15th, 2006 by Eric

I’ve been known to take pictures of to-do lists with my phone for later reference, but scanR takes the idea even further.  After registering with the site, just take a picture of your document and send it to scanR.  The picture gets cleaned up and converted to a PDF file for further use.  You can also scan whiteboards, great for those archaic drawings your professor throws up.  The quality of the scans isn’t real fantastic, but with higher quality camera phones on the way, things can only get better.

scanR 

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Podcasting in the Classroom

November 14th, 2006 by Eric

The Wisconsin State Journal has an article discussing the use of podcasts for class lectures at UW-Madison. Currently, there are 76 podcasts being created on campus, mostly audio, but video is slated for the future. Along with the content created by professors on campus, a few professors are taking part in a pilot podcasting project by McGraw-Hill Higher Education. McGraw-Hill is providing audio and video podcasts to supplement textbooks authored by the professors.

Professor in an iPod

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iPod University: Student uses for the iPod

November 9th, 2006 by

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