BUILD YOUR OWN NEWS FEED
News feeds, also known as news aggregators or RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, reduce the effort required to check websites for updates. The drawback of these feeds is that the volume of articles can be overwhelming, especially if you like to have feeds from general news sites such as the BBC but are only interested in one topic.
A new free tool from Yahoo called Yahoo Pipes allows users to build their own news feed. Multiple news feeds from different sites can be combined but with one big improvement: filtering.
This allows for a news feed to be built that is more useful and relevant. For example, a feed that COL has built for copyright issues contains RSS feeds from 33 different sites. Without the ability to filter some general sites like the BBC, the Globe and Mail, Reuters or even dedicated sites like IP-Watch, the number of articles returned would be well over 800 on most days. With the filtering (which can include descriptors such as the age of the article and keywords), the number of articles is reduced to a much more manageable 40 to 50 items.
To date, COL has built a number of news pipes for subjects such as Copyright, Open Educational Resources, Governance, Gender, and Open and Distance Learning issues. You can either visit www.col.org when you want to check news and just click on the relevant link. The news is automatically updated each time the link is clicked. Or you can subscribe to the feed or receive email alerts daily or as changes are made.
www.col.org/newsfeeds
ALTERNATIVES TO MICROSOFT OFFICE
Desktop computers use productivity suites to offer tools for reading, writing and many other applications. While Microsoft dominates the market, your needs may be met by other alternatives ranging from free programmes to full suites.
Making the right choice is all about matching your needs to what is offered. Here are some features worth noting:
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Corel WordPerfect Office X3 offers simple PDF, HTML and XML publishing.
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StarOffice 8 features basic productivity tools plus extras such as a drawing program
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OpenOffice 2 is Sun¡¦s version of StarOffice¡Kfor free.
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IBM is offering a free test version of its Lotus Symphony suite, which is compatible with Windows and Linux
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Online Web 2.0 services include Google Docs & Spreadsheets and ThinkFree (a blend of desktop and Web tools)
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Zoho is a browser-based service that plugs directly into Microsoft Office to store work on your hard drive and Zoho¡¦s servers.
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While Microsoft Office 2007 doesn¡¦t support the Open Document Format favoured by the free content community, Sun offers a free plug-in that enables you to save ODF files in Microsoft Office.
For a detailed comparison of many of the popular software choices, go to http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3524_7-5140428-2.html
PORTABLE APPLICATIONS
Increasingly, computer users are carrying their own programmes, settings and data on pocket hard drives, or memory sticks. A number of software publishers are releasing portable versions of their products.
A popular one-stop source is PortableApps, a suite of completely free, open-source mini-apps for flash drives. These miniature - but full-featured - Windows applications run entirely from your USB flash drive, without installing anything on the host computer.
The DataTraveler II Plus USB flash drive allows you to work on multiple PCs in different locations, using your own desktop¡¦s Microsoft Outlook email contents, Microsoft Internet Explorer settings, favourites, cookies and history, plus your files, folders and icons.
Ceedo Personal and MojoPac let you carry your programmes and data on any portable storage gadget, including a thumb drive, iPod or memory stick.
Most products are under $US 50; PortableApps is free.
www.portableapps.com
www.kingston.com/Migo
www.ceedo.com/
www.mojopac.com
LOW-COST ICT USER DEVICES
www.infodev.org/devices-list
info
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