50 Ways to use Skype at School

Skype is a terrific, free program for voice chat (and text or video chat, for that matter). I’ve used Skype to stay in touch with my son as he travels overseas in the Navy (Skype-to-Skype calls are free!) and to stay connected with my granddaughter on the other side of the country.

TeachingDegree.org has come up with 50 Awesome Ways to Use Skype in the Classroom. Their list has helpful advice for teachers, parents and students. If you are an educator, be sure to check it out.

Twitter Your Flickr Photos

Twitter began as a simple way to post 140 character text messages for others to follow. But the Twitterverse was not content. So sprung a whole new lexicon of @ symbols and hash marks meaningful to only the Twitterati. It wasn’t long before people found ways to share their photos via Twitter, using third-party services like TwitPic and yfrog. These services are great, but for the millions of Flickr users, it was a pain to post some photos one place, and another if they wanted to share on Twitter. Or to have to grab the URL and shorten. It turned into a chore.

Today, Flickr announced that now you can tweet your Flickr photos!

There are two ways to share your Flickr photos on Twitter. For existing photos in Flickr, you first need to “Add a blog page,” authorizing Flickr to post to your Twitter account.  Once you’ve done that, you’ll see a “Blog this” button on your photo page, and you can send to Twitter from there.

If you want to upload to Flickr and post to Twitter at the same time, you can do that too! You still need to “Add a blog page” (you only need to do this once), then you’ll be given a special email address. When you email a photo to that “2twitter” email address, it will both post into your Flickr account, and send a link in a Tweet for your followers. The subject line of your email will double as the title of your photo in Flickr, and the message that accompanies the URL in your tweet.

Sweet tweets!

Become a BigBlueBall Fan on Facebook

I want to extend a personal thank you to all the Facebook users who joined our BigBlueBall Fan page. We quickly passed 100 fans, allowing us to register our own BigBlueBall Facebook URL: http://www.facebook.com/BigBlueBall

If you are a Facebook user and haven’t joined our fan page, please stop by and click the “Become a Fan” button at the top of the page. Then leave a comment on our wall and introduce yourself!

By the way, not long ago we added the ability for you to sign in to comment via Facebook, both here in our news section as well as in the BigBlueBall forums. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

If you have your own company or web site, did you know you can setup your own fan page? It allows you to separate your personal page from your company or web site. Once your page reaches 100 fans you can register your own Facebook URL, just like BigBlueBall.

Twitter Revamps Follow Views

Twitter today quietly rolled out a rather nice update to the Following and Followers pages. Now instead of a simple list of who you are following (or who is following you), you have a number of actions you can take, including toggling SMS notifications, unfollow, block and direct message.

You’ll also see their most recent tweet, making it a nice way to see their latest activity at a glance.

TIP: You can see a similar view with actions and latest tweets for other users, and follow them as well.

Vista + SP2 = WLM FAIL!

As I originally posted on patndoris.com back on June 1st, there is the distinct possibility Vista users who install Service Pack 2 will experience a problem with Windows Live Messenger (WLM) no longer launching. Since Service Pack 2 is set to start rolling out via automatic updates on June 30th, I thought it might be a good idea to repost this information again.

Problem: After installing SP2 for Vista, there is the possibility WLM will not launch. Clicking on the WLM desktop icon produces no result. No error. No hourglass. No running process in Task Manager. Nothing. Not even an error that the shortcut points to a program that is no longer valid. Nothing.

I ran into this myself when I updated to SP2 for Vista. It affects both 32-bit and 64-bit Vista systems. It apparently occurs when WLM detects the upgrade to the operating system and attempts an automatic repair but uses the incorrect installer package to do so. This should NOT be a reason for you to avoid installing SP2 for Vista. Service Packs include important security and operating system updates, and the WLM issue is easy enough to fix.

The natural thing to want to do is un-install and re-install. DO NOT! If you uninstall first, you will be prevented from doing the fix. Likewise, do not attempt a repair of WLM either.

Solution: Head over to Live Messenger Download site and re-install right over top of the the existing installation. I did not get any warning that WLM was already installed on my system, and it installed flawlessly in just a couple of minutes.

The problem was officially acknowledged on June 16th in the WLM Support Space blog. Their fix and instructions are basically the same as the ones outlined in my original information.

MSN Web Messenger Closing

On June 30, 2009 (yup, just a couple days away now) Microsoft has decided to put an end to MSN Web Messenger. The Web Messenger service has been around for years, and was an alternative for those who didn’t want to, or weren’t able to use the full instant messaging client. With the web-based integration of instant messaging right from the Windows Live People page in Hotmail (fondly called your “contact list”), you can now chat right from Hotmail.

Just sign into Hotmail, and you should see the familiar Messenger Icon towards the upper right hand side of the screen. Click on the drop down box to see the sign in options (shown above). For those, like myself who don’t use a Hotmail address for authentication, you do have access your contacts from your Windows Live People page with no problem whatsoever.

While it works great in IE and Firefox, I tried it on two different machines using Google Chrome and the Messenger option simply does not appear. On a fresh install of Chrome, after logging into my Live ID, I was prompted some pages might not display properly with the browser I was using So if you are a Google Chrome fan (like me) you may not be quite as impressed with this change.

Bottom line? MSN Web Messenger will be gone on Tuesday. If you want to access WLM on the web you’ll need to use the new Hotmail (or Live profile) option, or use a web based client such as Meebo or eBuddy.

Making IM Better with Video Chat

I have experience using the Internet since it was first made available for commercial use.  And after working in online marketing over the last seven plus years, I have noticed that keeping in touch with all your friends and family every day has become so routine, we almost take it for granted.  Over the years, it has gotten much more simple to drop a line, say hi, or find out what’s new throughout the day, regardless of what part of the world they’re in.  There used to be a time when this wasn’t the case – people didn’t have the technology available to them in such a user-friendly way to do so, and a result, it never occurred to them that it would be possible.  The way we communicate has changed…and for the easier.

If I think back and compare now to 10 years ago, it’s interesting to see what direction communication has taken.  If I want to know what my friends are up to now, I don’t even need to pick up the phone or meet them for a drink.  All I have to do is go on Facebook and check out my friends’ walls; or I can check out their latest Tweets.  I can see where they’ve been, what they’re thinking about, who they’ve become friends with – all without talking to them.  With so many of us online, this has become the norm.

One particular communication tool that has gotten better over the years is instant messaging, or IM.  When it first came out, there were only so many IM clients – PowWow, AOL, ICQ, etc.  And it was only possible to chat with your friends if they were using the same software.  Over time, it became possible to chat online with all of your friends, regardless of what IM client they were on.  For example, say one of your friends is using Google Talk and your mom is on Yahoo – if you’re using a client such as Paltalk or meebo, you can talk to both of them without having to install Google Talk or Yahoo.  What’s even better is that IM now allows you to video chat as well.  Services such as SuperIM from Paltalk or ooVoo make it possible for you to have a webcam chat conversation for free.

Video chat is so great, because it’s the next best thing to talking in person.  Imagine your best friend just gave birth, and you’re working on the other side of the globe.  What’s better than a picture of that cute little newborn?  Or imagine that a loved one is in the hospital, and you want to let them know that everything is going to be ok.  Or say something at work needs to be addressed immediately and it involves multiple people – with today’s IM tools, it’s easy to have a free video conference on the fly.  IM makes it possible.

To learn more about Paltalk, watch the demo on text, voice and video chat on SuperIM: http://blog.paltalk.com/paltalkmedia/2009/06/superim-demo.html

Amman Badlani is an Internet Marketing Manager at Paltalk.com, which provides free webcam chat, instant messaging and chat rooms.

Essential Digsby Update

Multi-network instant messenger and social network tool Digsby today released a long-awaited update. Build 60 dramatically improves efficiency, reducing CPU utilization by about 50%.

Here’s a full list of the features.

• Performance: We’ve optimized performance from the ground up, reducing overall CPU usage by about 50%
• Buddy List Search: Press Ctrl+F to easily search your buddy list or the web
• Emoticons: Added four new emoticon packs to choose from
• File Transfers: Improved the reliability of AIM, ICQ, and MSN file transfers
• Conversations: Added an option for new IM windows to start hidden and blink the tray icon instead of popping up a window
• New Infobox: The infobox now uses the same user interface control as the IM window (WebKit), making it much faster and more versatile
• MySpace: Added support for setting status on MySpace
• Google Talk: Added support for the Invisible status on Gtalk
• And More: Over 100 other bug fixes and enhancements!

How to get the update

If you’re already a Digsby user, you’ll get the update automatically the next time you login. It’s a big update, so it may take a while. If you haven’t tried Digsby yet, this is a great time to give it a try.

Digsby requires Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7. According to the developers, now that they’ve tackled this update, they can turn their attention to versions for Mac OS X and Linux.

Enable iPhone Tethering

Yesterday, Apple officially released the new iPhone OS 3.0 software update, which supports a slew of new features including the long awaited push notification and “catch-up” features such as support for MMS and tethering. Unfortunately, AT&T has said that MMS won’t be available on their network until “later this summer” and that tethering will be available eventually.

However, some bright minds have found a way to enable tethering on your iPhone right now, without jailbreaking. Just point your iPhone browser to http://help.benm.at/help.php and you can download and install a new configuration file for your iPhone and carrier. I tried it, and it worked! I was quickly able to setup a tethered Bluetooth connection on my Windows 7 laptop.

How do you enable tethering?

Once you locate the correct configuration for your carrier, download it directly on your iPhone, then reboot your iPhone. When it starts up, go to Settings > General > Network and you’ll see an option to enable tethering. Once you’ve done that, you can establish a tethered connection with your PC or Mac via either USB or Bluetooth. Surfing the web is actually not bad on 3G.

The same site also has the settings for enabling MMS, but I haven’t been able to find where to enter them.

Note that you enable tethering at your own risk. AT&T and other carriers may charge you for additional usage, if they figure out how.

via CrunchGear

iPhone 3G Ass

A hat tip to the Joy of Tech for skewering the latest Jesus phone — the iPhone 3G S — available beginning Friday June 19th. And if you want the iPhone 3G (not ’s’), you’ll be able to pick one up from AT&T for $99 with a two year commitment.

I’m not eligible for a subsidized upgrade on my iPhone 3G, so I’ll be passing on this phone. What about you? If you own an older iPhone, will you be upgrading to the new 3G S?

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