The Information Commons in Library West

Are your passwords strong enough?

Take two minutes to check out this great Slate article by Farhad Manjoo: Fix Your Terrible, Insecure Passwords in Five Minutes: A foolproof technique to secure your computer, e-mail, and bank account (http://www.slate.com/id/2223478/pagenum/all/)

Farhad goes through two easy steps to help you develop strong passwords to protect your online identity and information.

He also stresses that it’s okay to use different passwords for different sites but reminds us be sure to save our strongest and most distinctive passords for our most important logins that could do the most harm if cracked, like our online banking, computer, and email.

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NEW RELEASE!  Open Office Suite 3.1

Open Office 3.1 is a FREE and EASY to use suite of programs created to mirror/compete with the Microsoft (MS) Office Suite.   It’s available in different languages, stores your data in an international open standard format, can read/write files in other common office software packages and works on ALL COMMON COMPUTERS!   Did I mention how easy it is to use???  http://download.openoffice.org/

Mission Statement:

The mission of OpenOffice.org is to create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format.

Available programs include:

• WRITER
  A word processor similar to MS Word and can export to PDF format.
• CALC
  A spreadsheet program similar to MS Excel or Lotus 1-2-3.  It can also export spreadsheets to PDF.
• IMPRESS
  A presentation program similar to MS PowerPoint or Apple Keynote.  It has the ability to export presentations to Adobe Flash, can create PDF Files, and can also read presentations created in Microsoft’s .PPT file format.
• BASE
  A database management program similar to MS Access.
• DRAW
  A vector graphics editor like MS Visio or CorelDRAW and contains features similar to those contained in MS Publisher and Scribius.
• MATH
  A program that allows for creation and editing of mathematical formulae similar to MS Equation Editor. It supports multiple fonts and can also be exported to PDF format.

Why you should use Open Office: http://why.openoffice.org/

List of New 3.1 Features:  http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.1/index.html

Download the latest version: http://download.openoffice.org/

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White House Continues to go 2.0

On Friday (05/01/09), the White House added three more social networking accounts to it’s bag of web 2.o tools: MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.

You can also follow the Official White House Photostream on Flickr, where official White House photos “are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs.” 

The White House has also sported an official White House Blog as well as an official YouTube page since January 20, 2009, and as of this blog post, their YouTube channel has over 47,000 subscribers and over 1.1 million channel views.

Thanks to Dr. Dilger for the White House Flickr reminder.

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Is dealing with large files starting to feel a little a lot like juggling with fire???

So, for the last 30 minutes you’ve been using one of the digital microform readers in Library West, you finish scanning all the images that you needed, when suddenly you realize that  you have 75MB of image files to save and have forgotten to bring your thumb drive!  You could email all of the images to yourself but that would mean attaching the files in batches.  You could zip the files and email them to yourself but your email won’t let you send a file that big.   What to do?

Here are a couple of programs that will allow you to send large files:

Send-u-it  http://www.senduit.com  

• has a 100MB file limit
• offers the choice of allowing your URL to expire between 1-5 hours or 1-7 days.

File URLs:  http://fileurls.com/  

• has a 250MB file limit
• allows you to password protect your URL for privacy
• offers the choice of allowing your URL to expire between 1 or 7 days

MediaFire http://www.mediafire.com

MediaFire is a little different from Send-u-it and File-URLs.  It’s a free file hosting site which will allow you unlimted storage for your project images, PPT presentations, documents, etc.    I use it to easily store backups of my PowerPoint presentation files.  In the event of USB-drive failure before/during one of my presentations, I can access my backup files online and download them directly from a browser- no software install needed.  

The free version offers:

One of the downsides to the free version is annoyance of seeing ads on the site but it’s a small price to pay for convenience though and the ads aren’t flashy and outrageous as they are on some sites.

So dear reader, how do you deal with your large files?  Do you use a special program?  Any tips or tricks to share?

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PDF-to-Word has finally moved out of closed beta testing and is open to all.  

Seriously, it doesn’t get much simpler than this:

1. Go to: http://www.pdftoword.com/
2. Upload a PDF file 
3. Choose Word (.doc) or Rich Text (.rtf) output
4. Supply an email to have it mailed to

I experimented using a large 2.5MB PDF file (approx. 192 pages) and within 5 minutes PDF-to-Word emailed me the converted document.

Because the converted doc was larger than the PDF file, PDF-to-Word kindly compressed/zipped the file before emailing it to me.    The formatting came out perfectly, images as well as headers/footers transferred, and the formatting of the tables throughout my test document were surprisingly flawless.    Thumbs up!   

BTW- Did I mention that this program was free?  Try it yourself:  http://www.pdftoword.com/

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WPtouch ( http://www.bravenewcode.com/wptouch/ )

A cool new application/widget/theme created by Brave New Code  that allows your Word Press website/blog to load quickly on touch mobile devices.

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