I am taking a break from blogging for a bit. Back before long.

I haven’t tried this yet but it looks interesting.  Amit Agarwal has a nice post about Slideaware, a web-based service that helps you publish and deliver PowerPoint presentations on the web.  One of the major differences in this app from SlideShare and Zoho Show is that the presentations can be delivered live to a remote audience in a fashion similar to web conferencing.

PowerPoint files can be uploaded online by either using the SlideAware Add-In for PowerPoint or through a web based uploader specifically for Office 2007 users.

Feedback from the audience takes the form of sticky notes which can be imported back into PowerPoint. There are a number of other interesting features, such as the ability to resize presentation for embedding in web pages and wikis, and statistics and graphs showing the usage of your presentation.

There is a free plan that allows you to upload upto 50 presentations online.  After next month some features like live Slideshows and viewing metrics will have a fee attached.

Google has recently launched a site called Google Code for Educators, a program specifically focused on Computer Science topics at the university level.  Through the site, Google expects to share the knowledge they’ve built up around things like distributed systems and AJAX programming.

According to the Official Google Blog, the Google Code for Educators “offers materials for AJAX web programming, distributed systems and parallel programming, and web security.  The site includes slides, programming labs, problem sets, background tutorials and videos.  We’re eager to provide more content areas and also more iterations for existing topic areas.  To allow for liberal reuse and remixing, most sample course content on Code EDU is available under a Creative Commons license.”

They are actively seeking input from educators through a Google Groups discussion site.

I signed up for a free online subscription to Blogger and Podcaster Magazine, which launched in April, and just got around to looking at the July edition.  While this particular issue didn’t have any articles that called out to  me right now, you may find some. 

I was interested in their interactive B&P Guide which features four pages worth of blogs and podcasts organized by general topic. (e.g., from “Arts” to “Web”)  Just click on the link to go to the resource.

You can sign up for a subscription here.  Digital and podcast subscriptions are free, the print edition is $79 in the U.S. (12 issues). 

The online magazine uses Olive Software which allows you to click through pages, change print sizes, consult a Table of Contents with links and much more.  You can extract content and email or print it and also download and save the magazine for offline reading.  There is a helpful interactive user guide to Olive Software, showing what you can do with the magazine.

50+ Firefox add-ons for security and privacy
Concerned about security flaws in Firefox that have recently been in the news?  Here’s a bunch of add-ons from Mashable to choose among to keep your browser secure and private.

The new Backpack 
The latest update of 37signals’ Backpack gives the user much more flexibility and control in organizing information and searching pages.  Below is a summary of the new features.  At the Backpack site there is a brief video demo showing how each works.  [via Mashable]

• Move (drag and drop) elements around to suit yourself
• Drag and drop between pages
• Search all your pages from any page
• Better organizing tools
• New toolbar
• Multiple photo galleries per page
• Better titles for lists, notes, pictures
• RSS feed for every shared page

Directory of  learning/eLearning tools
Here’s a growing directory –  new tools are added continually — of 1,500 learning tools.  Free, open source, and commercial apps suitable for developers, deliverers and learners of all types.  [via e-Learning Stuff] 

Marketer Rohit Bhargava writes about technology as an enabler for people collaborating and sharing an “authentic” voice: 

There is a pool of professionals who are watching and contributing to these efforts and focusing not just on how we organize the world’s content … but also how to bring it to local communities and real people around the world.
 
That group is part of a phenomenon increasingly known as Library 2.0 and the spokespeople of this revolution are the new generation of Librarians who are blogging, contributing to wikis, using social media to locate and organize information and along the way, reinventing a profession that is likely to be one of the most important careers of the future.

[via LibrarianInBlack] 

Image by Travelin’ Librarian. Some rights reserved

Both Google Blogoscoped and Google Lat Long Blog have a story about the use of Google Maps by the BBC to show flood warnings, emergency center locations, photos, videos and audio reports for Berkshire, which is one of the most severely affected areas.

The user-generated information plus that from BBC journalists creates a fuller picture of what is happening during the worst flooding in 60 years, and provides it in multiple formats.  A truly useful mashup, as Jessica Lee points out.  See the interactive flood map.

Nearly $19 million in federal grants have been awarded to low-income school districts across the U.S. 

The Improving Literacy Through School Libraries program provides funds to help schools improve their libraries and the reading and other literacy skills of their students. The funds can be used to purchase more library resources, improve schools’ technological capabilities, facilitate Internet links and other resource-sharing networks, enhance professional development opportunities and expand hours of access to library services. 

The announcement includes a list of grant recipients.  [via AL Direct] 

40+ tools for PDFs
Includes sources for ripping, burning, and mixing PDFs.  Some are free, some are more technically difficult than others.  Mashable has brief info about each of the tools that are linked to. 

12 ways to use Facebook professionally
Web Worker Daily details and explains 12 good ways to use Facebook as a professional tool.  There has been so much hype lately about Facebook and new apps developed for it, the potential effectiveness of the social site can get lost.  Essentially the message here is to be thoughtful and selective as you build your Facebook and smart about using the available tools, which are many.

Audiobook podcast collection of free audiobooks
Thanks to What I Learned Today for calling attention to this collection of free audiobooks.

In a thoughtful piece which Peter Brantley characterizes as “rambling notes on the departure of traditional fashion in newspapers and libraries,” he raises concerns for the public good function of both newspapers and libraries as they are increasingly impacted by Wall Street investment managers and corporate goals and practices.

I urge you to read the entire article as I am only summarizing the library portion and ignoring the newspaper discussion entirely.  About what is happening in libraries, Brantley says,

I cannot help but sense that Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are helping — rather inadvertently, through the law of unintended consequences — to effect a similar rough transition for libraries, particularly the public libraries that serve our communities and public state universities. Books digitized, harvested, electronically shredded, and commoditized have left dis-intermediated libraries wondering how to better market themselves to a population unevenly aware of their existence, and the services they offer.

Contracts between Google and its library partners restrict the libraries’ ability to aggregate digital copies across institutions and provide their own services, potentially competing with Google.  Brantley’s concern here is that the books and online journals in libraries have already been paid for by the public in one fashion or another.  The library partners have costs again in accepting back the digital copies of their files.

He goes on,

As we stand on the threshold of a world where Google and the publishers may well sell us back access to the information whose acquisition for libraries we — as a society — have already publicly supported, it seems increasingly risque to note that we may be losing some cultural forms fundamentally crucial to our well-being. Their departure may be profoundly damaging in ways that we cannot yet imagine, for they have served as the silent sources of liquidity for social change. A thriving press and public libraries have always been so accounted.