Domain Migration...

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I moved my domain to TeacherHosting.com and it looks like things went well. Now I have this site and the Lewis Elementary site all running on Moveable Type 2.65 running MySQL. The process was pretty painless thanks to help of Paul Bradley. Now that I have all my sites running under one installation of MT, I can use plug-ins such as MT-OtherBlog to pull content from one site into the tim.lauer.name site. For example on this page, I have the last two entries from the Lewis Elementary site. Also the Photoblog is pulling images from http://tim.lauer.name/photolog.

Happy Spam Year...

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MSNBC - A year of spam, spyware and worms

A year of spam, spyware and worms Dark side of Internet boiled over in 2003.

If my inbox is any indication, it looks like 2004 is getting off to a good start... Woke up to 6 virus/worm infested emails in my inbox. Looks like it is similar to the Sobig. Most of them came from Intel related addresses, so figure someone I know from my work there last year has a problem.

Whittier GIS Project

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EdBlogger Praxis: Whittier School contemplates use of blogs for NSF project.Al Delgado's school in Chicago is involved with an NSF project looking at using geographical information systems with his elementary students. The official title is... "Designing Learning Environments for Teaching Scientific Argumentation and Mathematical Reasoning with Geographic Data." A description of the project can be found here.

Al has been asked to help integrate the use of web logs into the project.

Moveable Type 3.0 Coming Early '04

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movabletype.org: NewsThe other day Ben Trott posted information about the upcoming release of Moveable Type 3.0. New features will include comment registration. This feature will be very helpful for teachers looking to utilize Moveable Type with students, but who have been worried about comment spam and also unwelcome comments. He notes that those interested in posting from mobile devices will find 3.0 a welcome release...

Blosxom....

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blosxom :: the zen of blogging ::I installed and played with Blosxom last winter. After reading about the latest version of this weblogging tool on Pat Delaney's site, I tried it again and I am very impressed. I have it running up on my web space and also on my Powerbook.

I have been looking for a tool that will allow me to keep notes on my laptop. I have been writing notes about my experiences as a first year principal at Lewis Elementary. I had considered using a tool such as Moveable Type, but did not want the notes on a public web site. I also wanted access to my work when not online. Blosxom is just what I was looking for. The CGI will take text files placed in a folder and create them as posts. You can add folders to organize your posts and magically Blosxom will reorganize your site based on the folder structure. For example someone could send me meeting notes from a staff meeting in Word format. I can open them in word, save them as a .txt file into a directory in my Blosxom directory and they are automatically posted.

In addition to posts saved as text files, Blosxom also allows for the creation and editing of posts via the browser.

A very nice tool from Rael Dornfest...

WiFi SD card for Smartphones coming

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SyChip say they're close to introducing an WiFi SD expansion card that's compatible with Microsoft Smartphone-powered cellphones like Motorola's MPx200 and Samsung's i600. Now if only someone would make one that works with the Treo 600. Read... [Gizmodo]

My friend has a Treo 600. A very nice phone with a SD slot. If it can take a Wi-Fi card then you have a very interesting device. My Nokia 3650 is working well for me, but if I had a phone that also could connect via Wi-Fi, then I would have a device that would allow me to move about my school and stay connected via our wireless network...

Flat Stanley Author Dies at 77

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Jeff Brown, Children's Writer

Jeff Brown, a magazine editor and short-story writer who created Flat Stanley, the two-dimensional hero of an enduring series of children's books, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 77 and lived on the Upper East Side.

My students always liked the Flat Stanley books... I mean who wouldn't want to read about a boy squashed paper-thin by a bulletin board... who possesed the ability to slide under doors and down sewer grates...

Mobilewhack...

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MobileWhack

MobileWhack is all about that mobile handset, palmtop, hiptop, ipod, or laptop in your pocket, purse, briefcase, or dangling from your utility belt. It's about squeezing every last ounce of mobility out of your mobile device.

From Rael Dornfest comes Mobilewhack, a weblog about mobile devices. Bryan Bell did the layout and through the use of CSS, it looks great on any device, even my Nokia 3650...

Tis the Season: Walmart sale of $30 DVD players causes stampede

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Ok, so $30 is a really good price for a DVD/VCR combination player, but is it worth nearly crushing another human being to death just to get one? Apparently so:A stampede of shoppers left a woman seriously hurt this morning. She was trampled by a crowd of bargain hunters at a Central Florida Walmart. 41-year-old Patricia Vanlester is at Halifax Medical Center tonight. Family members say she came to Walmart to buy an advertised DVD, but what she got was a trip to the hospital...When the store finally opened, shoppers grabbed for the item. People started fighting for the DVD player and pushed Vanlester to the ground. "I screamed and said stop don't step on her," Ellzey says. "My sister is on the ground but no one would listen." Walmart employees rushed to Vanlester. She was knocked unconscious. She was airlifted to Halifax Medical Center.Read... [Gizmodo]

Moveable Type Spam Vulnerability

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movabletype.org: News

The "Email this to a friend" functionality in the mt-send-entry.cgi script is vulnerable to being used by spammers to send spam messages. In principle, all "email this to a friend" programs are vulnerable to being used by spammers, because they allow the user to specify a To: address and a message body. But in practice, MT's implementation of this is not as robust as it should be, and a new version is available below.

This fix is already included in all versions of MT 2.64 downloaded from today on.

Schools as a safety net...

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School Is Haven When Children Have No Home

With unemployment and spiraling housing costs pushing a growing number of families into homelessness, school systems across the country are seeing more and more children like Mariah living in shelters, cars or motels. Some states are reporting a nearly 50 percent increase in homeless students over the last year.

An article from the New York Times on how schools are increasing becoming a resource of last resort for students of families facing homelessness and poverty.

Moveable Type due for an upgrade...

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SixApart Announcements...The great news is that we've got a new version of Movable Type planned for release in the next couple months that is a response to the sort of features and requests we've been hearing from our current users and other webloggers. Because of the success of TypePad and our ability to staff up, we're working on releasing more features in the basic Movable Type package and concentrating the features needed for businesses, organizations and large content-driven sites into Movable Type Pro. [Six Log]

It looks like there will be an upgrade to Moveable Type in the near future. Am hoping that a lot of the features that they have put into Typepad show up in Moveable Type. I'm also looking for tools such as those available in add on plug-ins such as MTMedic. These allow for an administrator to do global administration tasks on a MovableType installation.