iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

Here’s a word cloud for 2011 at MattClare.ca – mostly my blog (biased towards the end of the year):

Here’s my Twitter feed for 2011:

I think the insight there is that I use twitter to get a hold of Giulia a lot.

As my ThinkUp installation at mattclare.ca/thinkup gains way more data than my previous archives had I think 2012 will bring with it some real insight.

Pearson and Google launched their open class platform this week. Its a Learning Management System (LMS) tied to Google Apps domins. Two subjects often covered by this blog.

My short take is that the service looks useful for recreating an isolated web space that respects the need for private on-line areas student privacy and publisher copyright suggest. It’s not as open as I had hoped, but it is more real-world collaborative than any other LMS I’ve used.

My quick assessment, with updates from Tuesday October 18, 2011 4:51 PM:
Positives:

• Private – both in web isolation and in student records
• Private but easy to add others
• Free to add to an Google Apps domain – good option to those already using Google Apps versus other LMSs
• Has document collaboration powered by Google Docs
• Easy to use
• Simple link to publisher content
• UI is polished, including maximize option for all content

Negatives:

• Standard Cloud control concerns
• Unless your institution is paying for a commercial LMS licence the migration costs will likely outweigh any transition costs
• Configuration of items is often done through a Moodle style view/modify (edit) metaphor – can’t say I’m a fan – but so many instructors want a “student view”
• Crude controls of public (rest of the web) versus private, biased to private
• It’s infrastructure, not an innovation
• The menu structure and/or list of tools appears to be extensively cached – is this the return of the turn of the millennium Perl based tools and I need to “publish” something somewhere? – kidding
• There’s no logout button?

Also, you can add other participants via their E-Mail address, but no E-Mails are sent and there otherwise seems to be no way for them to access the OpenClass without being part of the Google Apps domina?
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Many have heard me complain that I’m not a fan of AWOLNATION’s hit song “Sail!”.

One thing I often cite is how few unique words are in the song. I finally ran the numbers:

AWOLNATION’s four minute and twenty seconds song “Sail” has 85 words, but, only 36 of those words are unique!

Here’s how those 36 words break down:

Here’s the PHP script I used to do the analysis mattclare.ca/~mclare/blog/sail.phps

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you wipe an iPhone via MS Exchange here’s my video.

I hope you don’t find yourself in a situation where you need to wipe your MS Exchange linked iPhone because you lost it or it was stollen, but I think everyone who has their phone connected to Exchange at work or Apple’s MobileMe service appreciates this kind of piece of mind. I know I really value knowing that if someone’s got my phone they at least don’t have my data like E-Mails, contacts, pictures and whatever else is on my most personal device.

In the case of MS Exchange 2010 here is what the confirmation E-Mail looks like afterwards.

If you don’t have your phone linked to Apple’s MobileMe service I’d recommend the Exchange based options that you might have through work (or a BlackBerry Enterprise server) or Microsoft’s hosted Exchange services or Google’s Apps for domains premium services.

The convoy hauling six giant beer vats passed our house. You can follow twitter.com/ChallengerMF to track their progress.

This was one of my first attempts at night photography with the DSLR.