Day 3 of Winter Storm

We have been out of school for three days now because of snow, ice, and freezing rain. Today everything is covered with a coat of ice. Hopefully the temperature is going to rise later today and start to melt this stuff... I took the bus out to my school last night to check on the building. Found a busted water pipe in one of the classrooms. One of the school district maintenance guys talked me through shutting off the water for that room, but boy what a mess... Plan to head in this afternoon and see how the clean up is going.

Speaking of buses... Portland has a great public transportation system. If not for the buses nothing much would be happening.

Missing Sync for Hiptop/Sidekick

Mark/Space: · Missing Sync for hiptop

Missing Sync for hiptop enables synchronization of iCal events and To Do's list and Mac OS X Address Book contacts with the hiptop desktop interface and hiptop handheld (including the Sidekick). Share contacts, calendar events and to do items across multiple devices using iSync.

Markspace already makes a version of Missing Sync for the Sony Clié, now they are working on a version for the Sidekick. Website says coming soon...

Will Richardson's Blogging and RSS Article

Blogging and RSS Will's article published in Multimedia & Internet@Schools is available online at the link above.

That Parent-Child Conversation Is Becoming Instant, and Online

Instant messaging, long a part of teenagers' lives, is working its way into the broader fabric of the American family. [NY Times Technology]

NPR : NASA Poised to Land Rover on Mars

NPR : NASA Poised to Land Rover on Mars

Late Saturday night Eastern time, a spacecraft called Spirit is due to complete its 300-million-mile journey by landing at a site that scientists think was once a crater lake. They hope to find evidence that water once flowed on Mars, because where there was water there may have been life.

Domain Migration...

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.

Bluetooth Remote Control

Just read about this on Mobilewhack and gave it a try. Romeo, and Veta Universal turn your Nokia 3650 into a Bluetooth remote control for your Powerbook. It can be used to do all sorts of things like advance slides in a Powerpoint or Keynote presentation, control iTunes, iDVD and even control the mouse.

WiFi SD card for Smartphones coming

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

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...

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...