CofC Weblog for EHHP Faculty
The Giving Tree
Through Open Culture The Giving Tree is available; the same film is available on YouTube. The video below is the animated short film narrated by Shel Silverstein. Share it with your students or yourself!
Here’s a video you will really like; it’s the song we all know, Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire, but with images from the past. Social studies teachers have been using the song lyrics in their classes for years. You will enjoy the images, especially if you remember the originals! This video is thanks to Billy Joel and Ye Li from the University of Chicago.
DID I MISS ANYTHING
by Tom Wayman
from http://www.library.utornonto.ca/canpoetry/wayman/poem5.htm
Originally from: The Astonishing Weight of the Dead.
Vancouver: Polestar, 1994.
DID I MISS ANYTHING?
Question frequently asked by
students after missing a class
Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours
Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I’m about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent
Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose
Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring this good news to all people
on earth
Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?
Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human existence
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered
but it was one place
And you weren’t here
The beauty of a panorama can never be described in words; it has been to be seen to be believed. In an extremely crowded world, panoramic spots are few and far between. Oh yes, you can see an entire city laid out in front of you from the top of a skyscraper. But nothing beats watching the natural ones. For instance, the one from Yavapai Point at Grand Canyon is a natural wonder. Check these out and share with your students. A great addition to Google Earth.
360Cities: 360Cities.net has a good collection of panoramic vista from around the world. Most of the panoramic shots are geo-referenced and interactive. You can start off from the Editor’s picks or go to their World panorama map and the Photographer map for travelling to a spot from a world map. You can watch the panoramas in full screen and navigate on it with the controls provided. The sweep of the eye is also represented on a Google map alongside.
If you have Google Earth installed, you can literally travel to spots around the world and view panoramas using a downloadable KML file.
But right now, I am checking out what they advertise as the world’s largest 360 panorama – an 18 Gigapixel shot of Prague.
Panoramas.dk: The panorama website is the work of Hans Nyberg, a photographer and an enthusiast of immersive panoramic images. As he says, an interactive VR panorama cannot be seen in a book or on a printed image. It has to be experienced on a computer screen. The site also has links to other great resources for learning more about the art of VR photography. The site has a huge collection of panoramas from around the world. You can even check out Obama’s Nobel Prize speech or panoramic photos from Tour de France.
Gigapan: The Gigapan panorama website is all about gigapixel panoramic images from around the world. What’s interesting is that GigaPan was developed by Carnegie Mellon University in collaboration with NASA Ames Intelligent Robotics Group, with support from Google.
The panorama website also has a community formed around the common passion for panoramic photography. You can join for free. Use their uploader to share your panorama shots with the general community. You can search through the collection using the search box, or go for the orange filters at the top that are marked as – Most Popular, Most Recent, Tags, and Conversations. You can view a lot of the panoramas on Google Earth using the link given just below the snaps. The site does not give a full screen view, but Google Earth does.
ARounder: Immerse yourself in panoramic vistas of cities, museums, parks, local cafes and stores, cathedrals, and more. ARounder is an online travel magazine and a neat panorama website with a smaller collection than the ones before it. But it is neatly arranged according to region. And there are two outer-worldly places on the moon and Mars too for the space buffs. You can click a location and take a wide-eyed virtual tour through the place. You can also get ARounder’s free iPhone app for some virtual sightseeing while on the move.
I am not going to Tahiti; instead let me do a bit of virtual roaming across the landscape of Mars for a change.
Panoguide: Panoguide is a free central stock of information and community discussion on panoramic photography. Their About page says that the panorama website is also a how-to on techniques for creating panoramic images using a conventional camera and “stitching” the images together on a computer. Click on the tab that says Gallery and dive into their collection that’s arranged around country names. You can also use the Google Map for a point and click approach.
ViewAt: Select the wide variety of locations from the dropdown or on the map and you are there with two clicks. You can watch the default panorama or go for the high resolution image. The site’s forum is also a spot to visit if you are interested in panoramas and photography.
Panedia: Panedia is a combination of Panoramic & Encyclopedia. It is actually a professional services site for ‘georeferenced photography using immersive panoramic technologies’. The site has a small collection of panoramic photos, all on Australia. Every panorama has hotpsots which are clickable links to more panoramas. If you like the Australian outdoors you can check out their small demo collection.
1001 Wonders: This is a panorama tour of the sites that are listed on the World Heritage List compiled by UNESCO. Presently, 263 places are being showcased on the website. The ultimate goal is to panophotograph 1001 sites.
Tom Hanks playing a FedEx employee, ditches into the sea with a plane load of packages. Though reliable at the best of times, parcel services like FedEx, UPS, USPS, DHL, etc. also hit bottlenecks once in a while.
For these worst of times, knowing the exact location of your package helps you shout at the customer support desk with some authority. Or let them be.
The tracking/shipment code is like the unique fingerprint for your package. All these parcel services also have a little tracking ID box on their website which let you know about the whereabouts of the package.
The parcel service websites are good enough when it comes to package tracking. But there are a bunch of other package tracking website apps out there that give you alternatives. Like pinpointing the package location on a map, or getting the info to you via a tweet. They also help to reveal extra information which might not be available on the carrier’s website.
So, keep these ten web services bookmarked for the times when delivery schedules go haywire.
Boxoh presents a single tracking number box to track your parcels from USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL/Airborne. Typing in the number leads to a Google Map which shows the location of the package and the status. The delivery time is also mentioned and you can subscribe to the tracking information via a RSS feed.
You can follow your parcels and packages using the email alerts from FollowMyStuff.com. You don’t have to register on the site; just enter your tracking number and your email address where you want to want to receive the tracking alerts. Alerts are immediately sent out when the package status changes. The web app supports DHL, UPS, and USPS. Tracking info updates via SMS and Twitter are soon expected.
PackageTrackr.com covers the regulars like UPS, FedEx, and DHL. It also supports 21 other worldwide operators like EMS and more. You can let the web app match the tracking number to the service or pick the service yourself. The results display the route of the package as well as the transit points along the way. You can also connect to the parcel service from the results page. You can track your shipments from your browser, iGoogle homepage, RSS reader, Windows sidebar gadget, or your iPhone or iPod Touch.
Creating a user account on the site helps you use services like email forwarding, email notifications, SMS alerts, and Twitter notifications.
TrackMyShipments.com works on emails. It supports FedEx, UPS, USPS, and DHL. You can create an account here and forward all your shipment confirmation emails to the online tracking service. TrackMyShipments automatically extracts the tracking number and start tracking your package. The email can be in any format and any layout. You get status alerts via email or by manually logging into your account. Using this online package tracker, you can keep tabs on 10 shipments at a time.
SimpleTracking.com gives you a browser based tracking tool, a Firefox extension and a small HTML widget to track deliveries. The site supports FedEx, DHL and USPS package tracking. You can also subscribe to the info with RSS.
Check up on the status of your packages via Facebook and Twitter. Email, SMS messaging, and RSS feeds are also there. You can also download its iPhone app. All you have to do give them the tracking number and a nickname for the package. The web service supports 13 carriers.
Track-Trace is basically a frontend for 10 parcel delivery services. Entering a tracking number in the carrier’s text box takes you to the package tracking info page of the respective carrier. Apart from the 10 services listed with field boxes against them, Track-Trace has a large alphabetically arranged links for numerous carrier services worldwide.
This one is another simple package tracking website that covers deliveries from UPS, USPS, DHL, FedEx, and a few more like Canada Post and Spee-Dee. The tracking info is represented on a Google map (or Google Earth). You can create an account and save all your packaging info on the site.
TrackThePack.com lets you manage and track all of your packages from UPS, FedEx, DHL, USPS, SmartPost, Global Mail, Canada Post and OnTrac. It gives you the status report on a timeline and a Google Map. Just like TrackMyShipments.com, it can also take in forwarded shipment mails and extract the tracking number. The web service gives you many-sided approached to tracking with a Firefox extension, a bookmarklet, and an iPhone app.
If you forget all URLs, it’s a good bet you will remember this one. Use Google’s search box to type in the tracking number and get the status report. If the number is error free, the parcel service will be the first result and all you have to do is click the link for the delivery report. The services supported are UPS, FedEx, and USPS.
All these websites use the respective package and courier services’ API to bring you the status results. What they help to do is extend the service to other presentations like Google Maps and Tweets. If you are a chronic eBay or Amazon shopper, having more than one way to track your shipments would be the way to go. Let us know about your preferred shipment tracking service.
Have you ever lost your owners manual for an electronic device? What a nightmare if you need to re-program it or fix it yourself or order a part. Well, here’s your solution — www.retrevo.com.
Write this one down or bookmark it–I just did.
Retrevo has owners manuals for your car, camera, stereo, tv, coffeemaker, grill, refrigerator, printer, computer . . . I could go on and on, but you get the picture. Check it out now!
It happens to all of us. You set your phone down to go do something and later on you can’t remember where you left it. Or maybe it fell out of your pocket somewhere. Whatever the case may be, a lost cell phone can give you a headache in a hurry.
After all, we’re dependent on these devices. What if it was stolen? You don’t want your private information in the wrong hands, especially since these new phones are capable of making purchases online.
In this article, I am going to cover a few of the tools you can use to locate your lost or stolen cell phone. So the next time you lose your phone, hopefully it won’t take all day to find it.
[Note]: Finding your cell phone is much easier if you have the ringer turned on or at least have it on vibrate. Finding a phone on silent can be done (if you have GPS), but it is by far the trickiest of all recoveries.
For a lot of you, this may be the only tool you need. If you don’t have a house phone (less and less people do every day), you can go to WhereisMyCellPhone and dial your number for free. We’ve covered this app in our directory before. Simply type in your number, click Find It!, and let it ring until your phone is found. There is no registration required to use this app. This app is US-only.
If you think you’ve left your phone in a public place, you can try this directory app. BlueRetriever is pretty cool in that it allows you to create a wallpaper for your phone that has a site URL and an ID number on it.
When someone finds your phone, they can go to the website, type in the ID number, and they will be able to find out who the phone belongs to. You can even offer them a reward, which you set yourself, of up to $100 in gift cards (Amazon, Starbucks, Target) or donations with Kiva.
Site registration is free and BlueRetriever supports the following devices:
[Note]: If your phone is not on the list, feel free to try the service anyway. You may however need to crop the image to fit on your phone’s screen.
This app supports Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile phones. Lookout provides security in the form of virus and malware protection, data backup of your contacts and photos, and device location.
The site says that if you can’t find your phone you can make it “scream” (not quite sure what that means) or wipe it out.
If you’re really worried about your data being stolen, you can look into F-Secure Anti-Theft (directory). Supported by Symbian OS, Windows Mobile, and Android, this application provides the ability to track your lost phone, remotely lock it, and even remotely wipe out all the data.
If your phone is stolen, you can text message a key to your phone to find its geo-location. Send the phone different keys to perform the activities mentioned above.
We’ve covered similar software in WaveSecure and BuddyWay.
If you own an Android phone, you need an app like iTag. Once installed this app will allow you to view your cell phone’s location, make it ring from the website even if it is set to silent or vibrate, lock the keys, back up your contacts, delete the information on the phone, and more. There’s not much this app can’t do in the way of finding your cell phone.
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