Archive for March, 2004

I just threw the switch to enable Wiki Formatted Text in CAREO, specifically in learning resource descriptions (any time you see a resource listed - search results, main page, whatever), and discussion post entries. This will let folks just go ahead and enter plain text, and CAREO will try to Do The Right... »

After way too long, I've taken some time to re-implement the RSS feeds from CAREO. The new implementation is infinitely more scalable than previously (now uses periodically updated static files, rather than regenerated-every-time live queries). The downside of this new implementation is that you can't create your own feeds from any query. I'll add... »

I've been playing around with interim builds of XStreamDB 3.1 Beta, and it's coming along REALLY nicely. It's pretty cool when the president of the company is the guy running the beta program. Jim's been awesome, feeding tips and pointers to the new stuff. They just added/enhanced scoring of fulltext queries, so we can have... »

I just enabled an RSS feed for upcoming workshops conducted by the Learning Commons. Haven't added the orange XML link to the workshops pages yet, but here's the link. It updates every morning at 1:00am with the upcoming workshops. »

Ferdinand Krauss is preparing for a presentation he'll be giving on designing effective learning objects. Presentation available here (but requires some form of MS browser, which I don't have handy :-( UPDATE: If you get the warning: This presentation contains content that your browser may not be able to show properly. This presentation was optimized for... »

Just updated CAREO to WebObjects 5.2.3 (and MacOSX Server 10.3.3, Java 1.4.2). All appears to have gone well, except the WebObjects StartupItem got eaten. Empty. nada. I copied the working one over from my laptop, and all's well. Caveat emptor. Yadda yadda. UPDATE: Yup. Just updated commons.ucalgary.ca, and it borked the WebObjects StartupItem as well. I... »

We've been taking a look at Macromedia Flex, and it seems like a pretty cool technology. It manages data modelling, UI generation, and presentation of an interactive application (as a .swf) to the user. Some cool potential there. The data modelling stuff feels a lot like WebObjects EOF. The UI description stuff (MXML) is much... »

I've been poking around for a decent way to implement text formatting without requiring folks to know HTML. This is for use in our Workshops management app, as well as the Discussion/Review component of CAREO (and coming soon for APOLLO). At the bare minimum, I'd like to at least translate linefeeds into br and p... »

I've just bundled up the ALOHA application (version 1.3) as a MacOSX bundle, so you don't have to go through Java Web Start to fire it up. The other added bonus is that it looks more like a "native" application, using the real live menu bar and everything! Here's a link to the disk image... »

King Chung Huang and Mike Mattson are presenting at the NMC online conference on Wednesday. The presentation just went live, and it's an excellent overview of some of the thinking behind APOLLO (the next version of the CAREO software). A brief description of the fundamental conceptual shifts we've made, including "Object At Center", is provided,... »