The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that students at Lehigh University got a first-hand opportunity to hear from Libyan rebels in Benghazi, who spoke with them over the Skype Internet video-telephony service for about an hour. This is a great continuing demonstration of how 21st Century communications tools are unlocking decades, if not centuries, of…
Updated 4/25/11: Microsoft has released a hotfix for the problems caused by its Security Update last week that caused PowerPoint 2003 to have problems opening files with image backgrounds embedded in the slide template portion of the program. An explanation has been posted on Microsoft’s Technet Blog, and the hotfix is available in Microsoft’s KnowledgeBase.…
Jacob Comenetz’ article, “Digital Diplomacy”, in “The Diplomatic Pouch” blog of the Washington Diplomat newspaper, discusses the role of social media in the civil uprisings rippling through many Arab countries. Comenetz notes that a lack of understanding of the dynamics of social media not only is bringing down authoritarian Arab governments, but also apparently cost…
Last month I briefly mentioned the increasingly widespread use of services called “URL shorteners” that generate unique substitute web addresses for sites that are more compact and fit more easily within the 140-character constraint of Twitter’s messaging system. But there are issues when using shorteners whose domain names registered in other countries. Read the full…
My March 9, 2011 “CompuSchmooze” column in the Jewish Community Voice of Southern New Jersey deals with how social and political activism has been changed by the rise of social media that facilitate communications among activists. You can read the original column here.
My February 2011 CompuSchmooze column is about a utility that lets PCs read and write data on a MAC formatted hard drive. MacDrive, by MediaFour Software, does the trick.
Steve’s “CompuSchmooze” column in the latest issue of the Jewish Community Voice of Southern New Jersey deals with passwords and personal online security. You can read the column here.
Many Baby Boomers complain that they don’t want to be bothered with email, or have a website, or a Facebook page, or an iPhone. Any discussion of Twitter usually ends with a comment like, “I don’t want people to know what I had for lunch,” even though regular CompuSchmooze readers will know that most Twitter…
The latest version of Apple’s iOS operating system for iPhones and iPads includes a wireless printing capability called AirPrint. The only problem is that, in typical Apple style, it’s restricted (or so they want you to think) to a new line of AirPrint enabled printers from HP. Fortunately, the geek universe is not sitting still…
This video podcast program features a slide presentation by Dr. Jerry Ehrlich, a Cherry Hill (NJ) pediatrician who volunteered in Darfur with Doctors Without Borders. He commented on artwork by children in Darfur and showed photos of the refugee camp in which he worked. The program was recorded 11/21/2010 at Temple Emanuel in Cherry Hill,…
