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300,000 Free Lectures From The World's Top Universities

Oct 062011

I do not normally repost stuff from others but saw a post on this today and thought I would share the information I found in it
I’m not a fan of iTunes, especially since I use a WP7 which forces me to use Zune. But I do have to admit that one particular feature of Apple’s online media store is absolutely wonderful, and well worth exploring.
That feature is called iTunes U. The “U” stands for University, and it’s a scheme whereby dozens of the world’s top universities make thousands of lectures available online. Most of them are completely free, and can be accessed by anyone, regardless of whether you’re a student at the university concerned.
The lectures cover every subject under the sun, and because they were produced within leading universities it’s a fair bet that they’re accurate and trustworthy.
To use iTunes U, the only downside is that you’ll need to install iTunes on your PC and sign up for a free account. The download, from http://www.apple.com/itunes, is around 75 MB. Once you’re done, head to the iTunes Store and then click on the iTunes U button in the top menu bar. You’ll be glad you did.
Hopefully that information will help someone find a lecture they may be looking for.

300,000 Free Lectures From The World’s Top Universities

Personal No Responses »

Oct 062011

I do not normally repost stuff from others but saw a post on this today and thought I would share the information I found in it

I’m not a fan of iTunes, especially since I use a WP7 which forces me to use Zune. But I do have to admit that one particular feature of Apple’s online media store is absolutely wonderful, and well worth exploring.

That feature is called iTunes U. The “U” stands for University, and it’s a scheme whereby dozens of the world’s top universities make thousands of lectures available online. Most of them are completely free, and can be accessed by anyone, regardless of whether you’re a student at the university concerned.

The lectures cover every subject under the sun, and because they were produced within leading universities it’s a fair bet that they’re accurate and trustworthy.

To use iTunes U, the only downside is that you’ll need to install iTunes on your PC and sign up for a free account. The download, from http://www.apple.com/itunes, is around 75 MB. Once you’re done, head to the iTunes Store and then click on the iTunes U button in the top menu bar. You’ll be glad you did.

Hopefully that information will help someone find a lecture they may be looking for.

Just a quick note about someone I looked up to for most of my life, Steve Jobs

Computers, Hardware, Personal, Smartphones, Software No Responses »

Oct 062011

I never realized how much someone that I did not know could have an impact on my life. My love for computers started way back in 1982 or so and it was because of Steve Jobs’ Apple II that caused it. I had no idea who he was at the time, I just knew I loved this new box that I had started to play with. I used to spend my lunches in the library just so I could spend some time near it. I moved to a different school and found that the one Apple they had was treated like it was gold and you had to be “on the list” to get to be near it…new school = “not on the list”. Luckily I was only there for half of a school year. I went to high school and everyone was basically new and I showed an interest in the couple of computers we had in school and took a BASIC programming course and got in good with the librarian, the key holder for one of the Apple IIe computers we had and spent the next 4 years harnessing the love for computers I would eventually use to make a living. Now, 25 years later, I actually write in a language very similar to the one I learned way back then and make a fairly decent living at it, all thanks to a computer Steve Jobs created. I am not an Iphone/Ipod Touch user, but I know awesome when I see it, the designs for all Apple products have been nothing short of amazing, their Air laptop is just absolutely amazing, their OS is very user friendly and affordable, they just seem to get it, when so many others just seem to miss the boat.

Thank you, Steve Jobs, for being one of the most influential people on the planet during my lifetime!

An interesting site for automating some of the mundane stuff on the web

Personal, Software No Responses »

Oct 052011

I just saw this site and thought it would be interesting for us that may be socially active online. If you have a rather full online social life and were thinking maybe you wished you could automate some of the tasks you perform everyday, you may want to check out http://ifttt.com/ which stands for If This Then That. It will automate quite a large amount of tasks like if you wanted to send someone a direct message when they followed you automatically, etc. I just came across this site this morning and thought it may interest both of the people that frequent my blog.

Later

The list below are all of the sites they currently interface with….

Craigslist

Date & Time

Delicious

Email

Facebook

Facebook Pages

Feed

ffffound!

Flickr

foursquare

Gmail

Google Calendar

Google Reader

Google Talk

ifttt

Instagram

Last.fm

Phone Call

Pinboard

Posterous

Readability

SMS

Stocks

tumblr

Twitter

Vimeo

Weather

WordPress

YouTube

Zootool

Couple of minor, well maybe minor, shortcomings in Mango WP7 update

Personal, Smartphones No Responses »

Oct 042011

First and formost, no custom ringtones for emails, texts, or voicemails? What is up with that? Microsoft provides custom ringers from phone calls in this update but forgets to add that to the other notifications? hmmm, what a shame. Next shortcoming is also a notification, when something wants to give me a notification on this very in touch OS, why is it it does not give me a flashing LED to say “Hey idiot you missed a notification!” not saying it needs to be customizable or anything just a simple flashing LED to get my attention and they can even all have the same LED flash. Oh well, maybe next time they release an update they will include some more of the basic things people need.

Later

Just watching a podcast with Leo Laporte and he had a caller asking about the best phone for novices

Personal, Smartphones No Responses »

Sep 292011

H e just answered a question about easiest phone for a novice to use and he mentioned Android and Iphone. He said Android was more for advanced users and Iphone was the best for a novice, but he never mentioned WP7 or Windows Phone 7, which in my opinion is a very easy phone to use and most of the information you need is always right there, and I just wanted to mention to novices out there that you may want to take a look at WP7, I have a HTC Trophy and absolutely love it.

Well Mango is finally installed on my Verizon Wireless WP7 Trophy

Computers, Personal, Smartphones No Responses »

Sep 292011

Ok, I know I broke the rule and installed the beta on my WP7 trophy, but I heard too many things good about it to not at least try and no one seemed to have difficulty with the install. I also realized that when the official one came out that I would need to revert back to my pre-mango state to then go to full release Mango, I was worried but not too much since I do not really have anything major on my phone anyway. You can imagine my surprise when I plugged in my phone on 9/27/2011 and Zune told me that I had an update available….SWEEEETTTT! So I did what anyone would do in my situation and installed it. Which worked great for the most part, after about an hour or so of the install running automatically, I was pleasantly surprised when it said congratulations you can unplug your phone now. Like I said it went great for the most part, everything was still installed like it was when I started the install, even Wifi was online and ready to go, so everything is right with world….or so I thought, then I left my house and wonderful Wifi and boom, no data connection….dang it all, after searching high and low for fixes and seeing everything from reset your phone to hard reset to take your phone back to pre-mango state, I was a bit worried at this point but then I thought Microsoft wouldn’t really want their developers having to flash their phones back to factory to install this update, so I thought I would go with the simplest options first to see what would happen. I fired up Zune and found a Restore button on the main updates page, so I clicked it, which took me back to Beta Mango, ok fine, then I saw a post about Connection Setup Wizard by HTC being an issue and I had noticed some errors with it on boot up, so I thought what the heck and I uninstalled it and then immediately tried to update to full Mango again, after another hours or so, the same window popped up saying unplug your phone you are done, but this time I had Wifi off for testing and low and behold I was receiving data over my data connection….YEESSSSS and no hard resets no lengthy reverting back to pre-mango. So if you are installing Mango from your carrier and encounter no data connection afterwards, restore… then uninstall the connection setup wizard… then reinstall the update.

Hopefully that will help someone out there! And NO this was NOT Verizon Wireless’ fault as they have no control over the software we install, I think that is how it is with our PCs as well, we run the chance of messing something up anytime we install a simple app.

Guess I am done with turntable and now I am back to Pandora.com

Computers, Personal, Smartphones, Software No Responses »

Sep 272011

I really liked the premise behind turntable.fm but never really felt like part of it, so I have decided to stop using it. Just so happens that this decision coincides with Pandora.com announcement that they have removed the 40 hour limit, thank goodness, 40 hours is crap for a month worth of listening, I can eclipse that in a week. Downside to Pandora, it takes a browser window, but I found a way around that as well, actually http://www.flexden.net/content/pandora%E2%84%A2-desktop-adobe-air%E2%84%A2-15-application-free?destination=node%2F3525 is a very good implementation of pandora, it uses a very small window and allows use of all of the buttons you may need including voting volume and fast forward etc. I highly recommend using that app, which is an Air app if you are planning on listening to pandora for extended periods. So if you are looking for music to listen to with the ability to customize what you hear, pandora may be what you are looking for, you can start with a generic radio station and then click the add variety option and add musicians to the list, which will change the flavor of the music being selected. Also voting on a song will change the music variety as well, voting thumb down removes a song from the playlist and thumb up accentuates that music type in your list. The site is a HTML5 site so it even runs on WP7 in IE.

Later

Something I just came upon…from a link from somewhere

Computers, Personal, Uncategorized No Responses »

Sep 202011

turntable.fm is a very nifty site, it is a cross between chat board and radio, a place where normal people can play their favorite songs and let others hear them and vote on them as to whether they like them or not. Getting a DJ position on the turntables is hard but it does work out sometimes. They were having issues last week but it seems a fair amount more stable now. I am very fond of the I {heart] the 80s room and the mashup.fm room, and I am sure that you can find a room you like too. So if you are social or just want to be and you like music or if you even aspire to be one, you may want to give the site a try.

Later

Went to Kings Dominion in Doswell, VA this weekend

Personal No Responses »

Sep 192011

Just wanted to post a little something about my trip to Kings Dominion and some of the rides namely the Intimidator305 and the Dominator. Let’s start with the lesser of the two, at least in my opinion. The Dominator is a rather nice ride as it whips you all around I am including the info from rcdb.com for your information, it is a very exciting ride and has a lot of corkscrews and loops and is quite a nice ride.

Dominator: Length:4210′ Height:157′ Drop:148′ Inversions:5 Speed:65 mph Max Vertical Angle:57 Degrees G-Force:3.8 Elements:135′ tall Loop Cobra Roll Interlocking Corkscrews Trains:3 trains with 8 cars per train. Riders are arranged 4 across in a single row for a total of 32 riders per train.

The next coaster I want to mention is the Intimidator305, this thing is AWESOME, I had heard a little about it from the site but hadn’t ridden it yet, I thought it was a magnet launch or even a gas launcher like the old HypersonicXLC, which I was quite sad to see go by the way, and was quite surprised when I sat down in the second seat and saw the cable coming down from the hill waiting to hook up, but when it engaged and started I was very pleasantly surprised, the thing HAULS! It climbs to the max height of 305′ very quickly and smoothly. and once you reach the apex, all bets are off, this ride moves and fast, hitting 90 mph at the max and with nice banking turns and some corkscrews and an almost 90 degree vertical drop, it is amazing and I recommend it for anyone that loves to ride roller coasters!

Length:5100′ Height:305′ Drop:300′ Inversions:0 Speed:90 mph Duration:3:00 Max Vertical Angle:85 Degrees Trains:2 trains with 8 cars per train. Riders are arranged 2 across in 2 rows for a total of 32 riders per train.

Have fun!

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