Changing Themes in Email

A few people have recently said that they don't like the new look of our email system. You can set a new "theme" to change the look, if you want.

• Click on the small gear icon in the upper right corner.
• Click on Mail Settings.
• Click on "Themes"
• Select a theme that you like.
• Click on "Inbox" on the left edge to return to your email.

If you want to leave feedback with Google about their changes, you can use their feedback form.

Electronics Shopping

Its mid-November now and that means a lot of people are shopping to replace their computer, iPod, TV, or what-have-you.  I thought it would be helpful to review some on-line shopping tips.  If you think that I missed anything, feel free to add it to the comments below.


General shopping:

• Check for coupons on RetailMeNot.com & DealCoupon.com
• Compare prices on many sites using www.google.com/products.
• Check product reviews to avoid problems. Amazon.com, Google.com, & Epinions.com are good for this.
• Watch sites like www.DealNews.com, www.Woot.com, and www.DailySteals.com for sales.
• Remember to include the tax and shipping when comparing costs between stores. I have often found that the store with the lower advertised price is not the cheapest once shipping is added.

Computer & electronics shopping:

• See the general list above.
• Check DealMac.com and DealNews.com for sales.  They even have Black Friday news.
• NewEgg.com is well known for good pricing.
• Some one-day-deal sites can be useful, but you'll have to check them every day.
• CowBoom.com
• DailySteals.com
• MeritLine.com's Daily Deals page
• Woot.com
• For cameras, check the reviews on www.Steves-DigiCams.com and www.DPReview.com.
• Steves-DigiCams.com also has a feature & price search that will suggest models and stores.

Check for academic discounts.

• Apple: http://store.apple.com/us-k12
• Dell: http://www.dell.com/us/en/k-12/df.aspx?refid=df&s=k12&cs=RC1084719
• HP: http://www.hpk12.com/

Email Improvements

Google has notified me of an upcoming change to our email system.  This should be happening within a few weeks, at most.

To learn how your cairodurham.org email is about to change, please look at this web page.  The video at the top takes less than 2 minutes and the descriptions in the page give a lot of insight.

PowerSchool 7 Login Problems

On October 14, 2011, PowerSchool was upgraded to version 7 for Cairo-Durham Central School District.  If you're having trouble logging in, check on the following:

• Macs must be running Safari 4 or higher (available on MacOS 10.4 or higher)
• PCs must have Internet Explorer 8 or higher
• If you use FireFox, it must be version 3.6 or higher.

If you're still having problems after checking the above, PCs often need all of their history, Cache, etc. cleared in order to work correctly.  You will only need to do this once.  See the picture below for a guide. It shows what settings to clear on Internet Explorer 8.

Forwarding All Email

Want to see all of your school email at your personal email address?  You can set it up to forward all incoming email to another address.

This may be especially useful for students who do not like to use their school email address but still need to receive email from teachers.

• Go to start.cairodurham.org.
• Click on "Email".
• Login.

• Click on the small gear icon in the upper right corner and then click on "Mail settings".

• Click on the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab.

• Click on the "Add a forwarding address" button.

• Enter the address and click the "Next" button.

• If it says that a confirmation code was sent, check the other email account for a new message.  Follow those directions.

• If necessary, switch from "Disable forwarding" to "Forward a copy of incoming mail to <your address here> and <keep Cairo-Durham Central School District Mail's copy in the inbox>"

Now send yourself an email message at your <you>@cairodurham.org address and check the other address to see if it arrived.

Email Searching

Ever have a hard time finding an email message?  Check out Gmail's search tools.

At the top of your email, you can type in a search for "SAT" and find everything that mentions SAT exams, but also anything with the words "sat in a chair."  Make Gmail find exactly what you want with these searches:

• "from:<email>" searches for any messages from the email address you listed.  So "from:jkikpole@cairodurham.org" will find messages from him, but it doesn't list messages sent to him, CC-ed to him, that just mention him.
• "to:<email>" acts like "from:<email>" in reverse.
• "subject:<word>" looks for any messages with <word> in the subject line.
• "has:attachment" will find messages with attachments.
• "is:starred" will find messages that you've placed a star on.  You can star or unstar a message by clicking on the star next to it in your inbox.
• "before:<Year/Month/Day>" is great for searching for old messages.
• "after:<Year/Month/Day>" is a way to find recent messages.

You can combine these, too.

• "after:2011/09/01 before:2011/09/30" will find messages during September, 2011.
• "has:attachment from:jkikpole@cairodurham.org" finds messages from jkikpole@cairodurham.org that contain attachments.

See the full list of search tricks, check out this list from Google.

Google also offers this printable list of shortcuts.

To become a full Gmail ninja, check out this list.

Comment-Only Access in Google Docs

You can now give someone the ability to write comments in the margines of your Google Docs without worrying about them changing the document itself.

The new "Can comment" access is like a limited version of "Can edit".  This is great for peer review of classwork or teacher meetings.

For more information, check out Google's official announcement.

Servers: More, Faster, Better

This weekend has seen a lot of change in the design of the Mac servers.  I wanted to take a moment to give you a look behind the scenes and show you why this is a big deal.

At the end of the 2010-2011 school year, we were using five "home directory servers."  (Let's just call these "servers" for now.)  Each of these servers had the files, settings, and other items for a group of people on it.  Those groupings were:

• Cairo Elementary
• Durham Elementary
• Middle/High School employees
• MS/HS students with last names M-Z
• MS/HS students with last names A-L

Now, we have a different arrangement using seven servers:

• Employees A-G
• Employees H-O
• Employees P-Z
• Students A-E
• Students F-L
• Students M-R
• Students S-Z

Strange as it sounds, this isn't just about cleaner bookkeeping.

Consider 24 students in Cairo Elementary loging in to their computer lab.  Before, one server had to handle all 24 requests at the same time.  Now four different servers handle a mere six requests each.  Each server has much less work to do, resulting in faster logins.

Now consider  the Middle School and High School.  Every 84 minutes, students log in or out of about 100 desktops and 80 laptops.  That is a lot of work for the two previous servers.  Now its split up across four servers.  Again, faster results.

So what happens in the elementary schools when those MS/HS students log in?  Well, different schools are on slightly different schedules.  So that big spike of activity is not happening when Cairo or Durham Elementary are having a lot of logins or logouts.  So instead of the servers sitting idle for long stretches (during class) and suddenly doing a lot of work (save, print, and logout!), they will now be doing smaller tasks more often.  That means smaller "traffic jams" when an entire lab logs in or out.

In addition, student activity is now separate from teacher and office activity.  So teachers should see fewer slow-downs -- especially in the elementary schools.

You may have also noticed that we now have 7 servers instead of 5.  Again, this spreads out the work among more servers, allowing it to all go faster.

So what happens if a server goes down?  For one thing, fewer people will be effected.  If the server can't be fixed quickly, we can move those people to one of the other servers.  At that point, we'll still be running six servers instead of our previous five.

So, in summary:  More servers, better distribution between them, and faster service.  This is what 2011-2012 will bring us.

Download YouTube Videos

Ever find a YouTube video that you wanted to keep?  When bookmarking it isn't enough, try savetube.com.

SaveTube allows you to extract the video from YouTube, download it, and keep it for the long term.  This protects you from the video disappearing off of YouTube, allows you to load it into iTunes (for syncing to an iPod, iPhone, or iPad), and lets you put it on a flash drive to hand out.

To use it:

1. Find the YouTube video that you want.
2. Select and copy the video's URL (a.k.a. "web address")
3. Go to savetube.com
4. Paste the URL into SaveTube's blank line and click the "Video" button.
5. If the computer asks, let the Java program run.
6. Wait
7. Scroll down the page and download the video as your preferred file type.  MP4 gives the best flexibility, so use that if you don't have a preference.

Extra Tip:  There are a lot of services like SaveTube.  Feel free to search Google for "download youtube" to find others.  Maybe you'll find one that you like better.

iMovie Storage

Earlier today, I made a small but important change to iMovie.  If you use or intend to use iMovie, please be sure to read this.

Previously, iMovie would try to store to your account's space on the servers.  While that is great for Word or PowerPoint, it makes iMovie terribly slow.  And it fills your disk space, which breaks other things.  And it slows the server down, making the computers slow for everyone else.  Not good.

Now, iMovie will store recordings on the computer that you're sitting at.  This means a few things:

1. Its not slow.
2. Its not "killing" the computers for everyone else.
3. You will be leaving your work behind on that computer UNLESS you export it and copy the movie file to your Documents folder.  (See below)
4. Anyone else who sits at that computer can see, edit, and delete your work.  (See below)

These changes make iMovie work on hundreds of our computers.  Before today, it only worked on a handful.  So this was an overall good change.

If you or your students want to keep a video after you finish editing it in iMovie, please follow these steps:

1. Go to the "Share" menu and select "Export".
2. Next to the name of the file, click on the small blue square with the triangle in it.  This will expand the window and allow you to save to a new location.
3. Select "Macintosh HD" --> "Temporary Storage".
4. Select the file size that you want.  Use the guide to help you pick.
5. Name your file.
6. Click "Export".
7. You now have a video file in the "Temporary Storage" folder on the hard drive.  Copy this to your Documents folder so that you can keep it when you logout.
8. You should now be able to logout, login somewhere else, and keep your finished/exported video.

Lastly, please note the only real down side of this change.  Since its on the computer itself and not the server, that means that the students must sit at the exact same computer as the last time they worked on their project.  For example, if your class is editing video on Monday and Wednesday this week, have each student note the computer that they're using on Monday and return to it on Wednesday.  That will let them continue working without disruption.

Try to avoid very long video editing projects, too.  The longer the project, the greater the chance of a student deleting the work on Tuesday.  (This might happen due to malice or just confusion.)

Also, various computer problems may be fixed by replacing or erasing the computer.  So please be sure to mention any iMovie projects on that computer when reporting problems.

Sale on Apple Computer for Students

Apple just posted a sale on new computers.  In addition to the usual academic discounts, you can get $50 or $100 in iTunes credit.  That lets you buy music, TV shows, movies, books, iPhone or iPad apps, Mac software, rent movies, and more.

More details on their web site.

Saving Google Docs

You may find that you (or your students) want to save all of your Google Docs files.  This can be useful for any number of good reasons:  graduation, retirement, leaving Cairo-Durham schools, or just wanting a backup.

To download your Google Docs files, try the directions from Google themselves:
http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=49115&topic=1153350

Alternately, if you want all of your files in one shot, try this:

• Go to the Start Portal and click on Google Docs.
• Login.
• Hover your mouse over any random document so that "Actions" shows up on the right-hand end, next to the date the file was last changed.
• Click on "Actions".  This will show a pop-up menu.
• Click on "Download..." in that menu.  This will show a new window named "Convert and Download".
• Click on the "All items" tab near the top of the "Convert and Download" window.
• Select the type of computer file that you want each type of Google Doc to convert into when you download it.  For example, you might select "PowerPoint" for "Presentation".
• Click the "Download" button.
• Now wait.  If you can't wait, click the "Email when ready" button and check your email later.
• After a few minutes, your computer will download an archive of your files.  If this doesn't begin automatically, you should have a link that you can click on.

Find "Download" in the "Actions" menu.

Select "All items" and converted file types.

Wait while it "packs up" your files.

When the archive is made, you can download it.
If the download doesn't begin automatically,
click "click here to download".

Apple Sale for College Students

As a follow up to the previous post about purchasing computers for college-bound students, you might be interested in knowing about Apple's new sale.  You can buy a Mac at the discounted/academic pricing and they'll discount an iPod -- including the iPod Touch, which is basically a pocket-sized computer.

EDIT:  I stand corrected.  The sale hasn't started yet.  It has happened every May or June for the last few years, so it will probably start soon.  Sorry if I got your hopes up.  Just try Apple's web site in a few weeks to see if its changed.

EDIT 2:  The sale just began today.

Customize Email's Look

Want to make email look better?  You can customize the background picture, colors, fonts, etc. of your email account.

This does not effect the look of email that you send.  So you can make a very personal working environment without worrying about looking unprofessional to anyone you email.

Fo details, check out Google's announcement of this new feature:

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/custom-background-image-themes.html

Making New Passwords

Passwords.  We all use them.  Most of us hate them.  Making a password that is hard for anyone else to guess means making it hard to remember, right?  Not at all.  You just need a system.

Here are three systems (with examples) that you can consider.  They will make your life easier and safer at the same time.

Methods:

1. Sing.
2. No vowels.
3. Shuffle two words.

Method #1:  Sing

Pick a verse from a song that you know well.  Then take the first letter of each word, perhaps with some shorthand.

Example #1:  "One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do" becomes "oitlntyed" or even "1itl#tyed".  This is a really hard to guess, but its very easy for any Beatles fan to remember.


Example #2:  "Mary had a little lamb, who's fleece was white as snow" becomes "Mhallwfwwas".  If you want to make it harder to guess, add punctuation with "Mhall,wfwwas."  (Note that "." is part of the password.)



Method #2:  No Vowels

Pick a short phrase from a song, book, or other memorable source.  Take out all the vowels and capitalize the first letter of every word.  You could also replace the vowels with numbers.

Example #1:  "No such thing as a free lunch" becomes "NSchThngsFrLnch".

Example #2:  "Bottled water" becomes "BttldWtr" (for no vowels) or "B0ttl3dW4t3r" (for number substitutions.)

Hint:  Most vowels have a number that looks loosely like it.  "a" = "4", "e" = 3", "i" = "1", and "o" = "0".  For "u", you could use "\" and "/" together, or "^", or something that you pick.  Just be consistent, so that you can remember it later.  You can even choose to just leave out any "u".

Method #3:  Shuffle

Pick two words and interweave the letters.

This method takes a little practice, but its easy to reconstruct your password if you forget it.  As a bonus, you can effectively have the same password on lots of different websites while reducing the risks of password-reuse.

Example #1:  "milk" and "shake" become "msihlakke".

Example #2:  "water" and "exercise" become "weaxteerrcise".  You can also add some numbers to the sorter word to fill in the empty spots.  For example, "weaxteerrc1i2s3e".

Example #3:  Pick a word for your new, universal password system.  Then interleave it with the name of the site or service.  For example, if your word is "phone", then your Amazon.com password would be "pAhmoanzeon" and your eBay password would be "pehBoanye".

College Purchases

Looking for a computer for college?

Apple offers student discounts year-round, but often offers a laptop-and-iPod deal in the May - August time frame.  Check it out at http://www.apple.com/store and click on "Education Store" on the left.  (Or just go to http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/education_routing).

Dell offers discounts to college students at http://www.delluniversity.com.

HP offers discounts to students at http://www.shopping.hp.com/academy.

Lots of software can be purchased at http://www.academicsuperstore.com/.  This includes the ever popular Microsoft Office, Photoshop, and others.  These discounts are available to both students and teachers.

Also, keep an eye on deal sites like woot.com, dealnews.com, dealmac.com, and cowboom.com.  You never know when they list a great deal.  You can also check out RetailMeNot.com for coupons.

Lastly, compare prices and read customer reviews of products on sites like Amazon.com, NewEgg.com, Epinions.com, and Google.com/products.

Happy shopping.

Google Search

There are a number of ways to make Google more accurate, some of which are quite easy.  Here are a few examples follow:

Search:  Tiger Woods
Means:  Find Web pages with both of the words 'Tiger' and 'Woods'.  This is the most common way to use Google.

Search:  "Tiger Woods"
Means:  Find pages with these exact words in this exact order.  Good for exact phrases, e.g. finding quotes, verifying a scam, and plagiarism checks.

Search:  Tiger Woods -forest
Means:  Find pages with both of the words 'Tiger' and 'Woods', in any order, that do not include the word 'forest'.  Good for countering the effect of words with two meanings, such as "woods" in this example.

Search:  Tiger Woods site:espn.com
Means:  Find pages with both of the words 'Tiger' and 'Woods', in any order, that are on the espn.com system.  Good for web sites without a search function.


These techniques can be mixed. For example:

Search:  "Tiger Woods" golf -forest site:espn.com
Means:  Find pages with the exact phrase "Tiger Woods", and the word golf, without the word forest, and only on the espn.com site.

Save Paper with "Print What You Like"

For those of you who don't know, there is a way to print parts of web pages without printing the parts that you don't need.  This can save paper, ink, and space on your desk.

Just go to PrintWhatYouLike.com and type (or paste) in the address of the page that you want to print.  Then you can click on the parts of the page that you want to print and they'll highlight. You can highlight as many or as few chunks of the page as you want. Then you can click on "Isolate Selected" and print it.

You can also select the advertisements and click "Remove Selected", if you prefer. Or just click "Remove Background" for a quick way to reduce ink use.

For easier access to this service, you can make a button for it. Part way down the page is a "bookmarklet". If you drag this into Safari's button bar (just below the address bar), you can create a single-click button that loads the current page that you're viewing into the PrintWhatYouLike.com service. This makes it really quick to use.

Email Yourself Blog Updates

Do you read a few web sites that update rarely?  It can be pretty frustrating to visit them often yet only see updates every week or two.  Save yourself time and have the web site's updates emailed directly to you.

This can be done by going to feedmyinbox.com and typing in the website and your email address.  They'll email you a confirmation message.  Click on "Confirm Subscription" in that message and follow the directions.

Feedmyinbox.com is a great way to be notified of a small number of websites that update infrequently.  If you want more than 5 websites sent to you, check out Google Reader instead.  Reader is a simple tool that can consolidate dozens or even hundreds of web sites into a single inbox.  More on that in a future post, though.

Urban Legends

So you've received the latest message about a new form or CPR, rising gas prices, or radioactive cat litter.

Before warning lots of people about it, how do you ask, "Is it true?"  You can actually use Google or Snopes faster than the "Forward" button... and save yourself some embarrassment at the same time.

To use Snopes, go to snopes.com and use the Search line at the top of the page.  Type in a simple phrase, like "gas prices" or "cat litter" for a list of claims about those topics.  Snopes will tell you if its true or not.

To use Google, just copy a relatively unusual line from the message and paste it into Google.  Phrases with numbers or brand names work well.

Personally, I recommend Snopes over Google in this case.  Either one will probably work, but with Google you will have to read through several unrelated items and may even run into more copies of the claim without any real verification.  Snopes, on the other hand, does the research and clearly states if its true, false, or some mix of the two.

Which ever way you go, its worth checking your facts before forwarding a claim.  You can help stop false or even dangerous claims.  It may even save you from identity theft.

Google Sites Sidebar

Use Google Sites to build a website?  Google has some advise on how to improve your sidebar.

Passwords

Worried about your password?  Think you have a good one?  Either way, I recommend spending two minutes checking out the advise from security company ZoneAlarm.  It could save your bank account some day.

21 Google Docs Tips

PC World Magazine offers up 21 great tips for Google Docs.

Warning: FaceBook Scams

Thanks to spam filters and common sense, most of us don't fall for scams, phishing, and worms in our email any more.  As a result, spammers and identity thieves have moved on to a new format:  FaceBook.  Actually, they're not picky.  They like Twitter, MySpace, and other social networking services, too.

If you see a post on any of those services, remember to review it like any email.  If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  For example, if a friend or even a famous person is telling you about a free offer for laptops, iPhones, or iPads, chances are good that someone broke into their account.


If you use FaceBook, I recommend taking a look at this article:  How To Prevent & Remove Facebook Malware or Virus.  They offer a lot of good advise about protecting yourself from becoming the victim of one of these scams.