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Pete Lacey: Tool unties knotty class schedules
At St. Clair County Community College, a computer can pick your classes for you.
We are one of about 20 community colleges, colleges and universities offering an online schedule planning tool that removes some of the stress in figuring out when you can take the classes you need.
The tool is designed specifically for all of us with busy lives.
SC4′s winter semester begins Jan. 9. So far, more than 1,300 students have taken advantage of this tool while registering for classes.
The tool, called College Scheduler, is simple to use and is integrated with the WAVE online system (www.sc4.edu/wave) students use to register and pay for classes.
College Scheduler was developed in 2004 by a California college student, who was tired of trying to figure out his own college schedule combination online.
Here’s how it works:
You log in to our WAVE system and choose the new schedule planner tool. You select the classes you want to take and at what SC4 location.
Then comes the great part: You enter the times and days during your week that you are unavailable to take classes. If you have a job, family commitments or anything else, just plug in those times you cannot attend class.
The system goes to work, giving you a list of classes you want that are available in the time slots you can take them.
You simply return to WAVE to register for the classes you want, and you are on your way to a successful semester.
It’s a customized process that is available day and night.
This is a great tool for any student. It works whether you are starting for the first time as a high school graduate or coming back as an adult to start or finish your degree.
The tool has links to video tutorials.
Coming to college should be an easy process. SC4 realizes that our students often have to support a family, work at least one job and have social commitments, as well.
This schedule planning tool is just one way we are trying to accommodate busy lifestyles. SC4 already offers classes during the day, evening, online and in several locations, including Port Huron, Algonac, Croswell, Peck and Yale.
Students who need help determining the best career to pursue, or what classes to take for winter semester, should schedule an appointment with an academic adviser. And for any help related to the enrollment process, call us at (810) 989-5500.
Life is busy, but college is important.
Make time to work toward completing a college degree now to prepare yourself for the future. Your reward for this dedication will be a more reliable career with increased earnings.
5 Content Curation Tools for Social Sharing
Many of us use popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Yet there are hundreds of others, most of which you likely have never heard of.
Some of these lesser known digital outposts are worth discussing, however. Over the past few weeks I have reported on three: StumbleUpon, Delicious and Google+. In this article I list five others, each of which faciliates the aggregating and organizing of existing content — i.e. “curating” — and social sharing.
The importance of content curation cannot be understated. Today, we are inundated with information that’s vying for what has become an increasingly scarce commodity: our attention. Those individuals or businesses that serve as curator, filtering out all but the best, most relevant content will benefit from increased social capital and, therefore, attention. The following sites provide a means to accomplish that curating function.
1. Start Your Own Online ‘Newspaper’
Paper.li is a content curation service that enables people to publish an online “newspaper” based on topics of interest to them or the community they seek to influence. The social tie-in is that readers can share the paper with friends and followers.
What works for individuals can also work for businesses. For example, a number of ecommerce merchants have started their own aggregation sites — searching “ecommerce” with “news” at Paper.li produces this list. Here are a few examples from Practical eCommerce readers and contributors.
E-commerce Morning News by Travis Ebel
Paper.li allows anyone to aggregate content, what is calls an online “newspaper.”
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#eCommerce Daily News by Sarah Spagnudo
Sarah Spagnuolo’s paper shares news of interest to ecommerce merchants.
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Ecom Experts Daily by Shawna Seigel
Shawna Seigel, a Yahoo! developer, curates ecommerce industry news.
Paper.li draws content from the following social networks: Twitter, Facebook and Google+. It can also aggregate content from RSS feeds.
Setting up a “paper” requires little effort.
- Decide on a topic.
- Login using your Twitter or Facebook account.
- Give your paper a name.
- Pull in content from the aforementioned networks, use RSS feeds or a combination of both.
- Select a language. Paper.li supports English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Dutch and Portuguese.
- Choose a list of categories to which you will assign content.
- Publish.
The paper can be published daily, two times a day — morning and evening — or weekly, and it can be syndicated via Twitter, Facebook and email. You can also embed the paper on your website or blog.
Currently, Small Rivers — the company that created Paper.li — runs display advertising on each paper. Plans are in the works to enable paper owners to replace such advertising with their own.
2. Share News of Interest with Your Community
Digg allows community members to rate content.
Digg is a social network for sharing content with a community of followers who can then rate the value of the content through “Diggs.” Highly rated content gets moved up, enabling it to receive more views and, as a result, more clicks-throughs.
While it shares some of the same attributes as StumbleUpon, my own experience with Digg is that it delivers much less traffic, perhaps because category options are very general, even generic.
For example, there is no category for ecommerce. Everything related to the topic has to fall under either “business” or “technology.” A greater diversification of posting categories would doubtless improve the site’s relevance as a tool for social sharing.
3. Put a ‘Sphinn’ on the News
Sphinn focuses on news for online marketers.
Sphinn is a content aggregation site similar to Digg. But Sphinn is designed for sharing news of interest to online marketers. Unlike Digg, which relies on users to rate content, Sphinn uses a team of editors to decide the most important articles to feature each day.
Its editorial staff presumably tries to ensure that content is on-target, non-promotional and free from spam, a problem that has plagued Digg and other social sharing sites.
4. Content Sharing Especially for Bloggers
Technorati is a well-known blog directory.
Technorati is a blog search engine and directory that indexes content from more than a million blogs.
Founded in 2002, Technorati’s heyday pre-dates the advent of social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Recently, however, the site expanded to a media company, providing advertising and other services to blogs and social media sites.
To be included in Technorati’s directory, bloggers must set up an account and submit the blog’s URL.
5. Do It Yourself Version of Digg
Pligg is a do it yourself version of Digg.
Pligg is a content management system designed to allow anyone to create his or her own version of Digg. It was created by third-party developers and has no relationship to Digg other than the fact it mirrors its functionality.
Pligg can be downloaded to a server and comes with a variety of default templates. Some technical expertise is required to make full use of the platform, however.
Here are some sample sites built using Pligg.
Small Business Trends Business Book Awards
Small Business Trends uses Pligg to showcase its book awards.
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BizSugar aggregates news of interest to small business.
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A tool box of basic ideas to zero in on the stocks to pick
Picking stocks need not be reserved for financial gurus and degree-wielding mathematicians in investment banks.
All that’s needed is a toolbox of simple ideas that filter and zero in on companies investors should find attractive.
Investing is akin to farming, whilst trading is more like betting. Both can be very lucrative. However, in the main, investing is much easier, more leisurely and less risky. The following rules will help you select good stocks, even in today’s rough financial climate.
Build a portfolio
A good portfolio is a wide range of stocks. The fewer stocks you have, the rougher your ride will be.
Aim to own 30 stocks. Keep buying new stocks, rather than “going big” on ones already owned. When you have 30, increase position sizes. Until then, don’t load up on anything. Buy some Emaar, but don’t then buy into more property. Next, buy a good bank.
Get rich slow
Trying to get rich quick will guarantee you get poor fast. Think in terms of three years for each investment. Trading attracts expensive fees; investing is relatively cheap. Trading is fraught, investing less risky.
Timing the market is difficult, yet seeing the long- term big picture is often easy. Stock markets in the Middle East have been pretty flat over the last few years.
Now the bubble is over, the chance to invest in solid companies at a good price has arrived.
But don’t hurry. Take the long view.
Play with the effects of percentage growth on your money. Learn to weight the relative values of companies.
If company A has a higher valuation than company B, but seems to be the same in most other ways, is there an opportunity?
The world is an innumerate place. Even professionals are often caught out by obvious figures. For instance, divide the US national debt by its population and tell me, is anyone doing basic math in that country?
It is ironic basic arithmetic can give you the edge. Looking at the many companies in the Gulf that have fallen so far, you can be left wondering if anyone was doing basic calculations back then. Are they now?
Take your time
The world is full of opportunities. Miss one, no problem. There are always plenty of bargains to be had.
Use the rule “If you think it’s a good pick, it isn’t. If you know it’s a good pick, it is.”
While you are waiting, keep looking and learning by keeping up with the daily news. For example, the DFM’s own stock price keeps falling.
That can’t go on forever you might think, but only watching and waiting patiently will give you a chance to pick the bottom.
I never buy a stock if it is tipped to me — ever. If you buy a stock on a tip and if it turns out well, you will never know why you succeeded. If you lose, you feel awful. Ignore tips.
Conducting your own research is a must. If you think Tamweel is great, you should know exactly why you think so.
The research process will teach you how the market works and how companies and their values change. Without research you are naked. If you cannot do the research yourself, don’t buy the stock, no matter what anyone says.
Lastly, always remember emotions blur your critical faculties — fear and greed can make fools of us all. If you start with safe steady stocks, you will build up a good platform from which to build your skills.
Stereoscopic 3D Virtual Website Building Tool to Launch
From January 2012 people with little or no technical skills will be able to create stereoscopic 3D virtual world based websites using a new tool called Orbcreation.
Orbcreation is aimed at individuals and small businesses who want to make their own websites that can stand out from the crowd. Their product is a range of themed templates and inserts that will enable the webmaster to create their own Second Life style 3D website, which can either be a room with information displayed, an office building, a shopping mall or even an entire virtual world. For example, rather than publishing several videos on a regular website page, the user could use Orbcreation to present the videos on a 3D video wall. At the click of an icon, the website can be converted into stereoscopic 3D.
It has been built by Richard Knol who has been developing and creating complex programmes for many years. 3D Focus exclusively spoke to Richard Knol about Orbcreation asking how it is different to Second Life, how he intends to monetise the service and what plans he has for the future…
3D Focus: Can you give us a brief overview of Orbcreation?
Richard Knol: Orbcreation is about giving people the ability to create 3D worlds. These worlds could be a simple room with information/images on the walls, an office building, a shopping mall or an entire virtual world with trees, flowers and butterflies flying around.
The purpose of these worlds is to give people a different perspective on the ideas or information. Website owners will be able to present their content differently to the standard “2D webpage, click to view the next page” style we all know. They are visually stimulating, interesting and a great way to showcase or feature something special.
You will be able to create an entire website in 3D but we think it will be more appealing to add or merge a 3D world with existing websites.
3D Focus: What is your background?
Richard Knol: I run a company that provides reservation services for golfers. This company generates the income that allows me to do more challenging activities that I really enjoy doing, which currently is “setting up an online tool where people can create their own 3D web world”.
3D Focus: Some of the features of Orbcreation sound like they are already available in Second Life. How is this different?
Richard Knol: The main difference is that Orbcreation will run in your own Internet browser. People will visit your end products like they visit a website, whereas in Second Life people lead a “second life” and stay within the environment.
I think the really unique aspect of Orbcreation is that the visitors of your website become an active part of the website itself. They can interact with other visitors or indeed any person who connects in the 3D area. For example, an art gallery could have a curator to interact with visitors or a shop could have a sales person; that’s something really pioneering. You can interact with a number of people in the room and have a group discussion via a chat window.
3D Focus: There are several website building packages available for the 2D world complete with templates and functionality add-ons. Would you say Orbcreation is the 3D version of one of those?
Richard Knol: No. This new service is a product in its own right. Our goal is to make building 3D websites and 3D worlds as easy as it gets. You select components (or ‘orblets’ as we call them) and add them to your world. You drag them to their location, set a few properties like the colour or the image/video to show and that’s all there is to it. We are not going to create something that will give you every possible feature, because we would end up with an online version of 3DS Max or Maya that no one will be able to use. The key is simplicity.
3D Focus: You said that this will be easy enough for your mother to use. How have you achieved this?
Richard Knol: One of the main objectives was to simplify the complexity. It has resulted in something similar to a drag and drop interface. For example, you can add a video screen to your world from the list of orblets, specify the URL of the movie to play and there you go.
3D Focus: What will you be launching from day one in January?
Richard Knol: From day one people will be able to create web worlds by using the standard components we have available. There are buildings, terrains, basic building blocks, furniture, displays for video images or text, and lots more. There will also be cool items like flags that you can display images on and butterflies that all behave independently.
When you have finished building, you will receive a .zip archive from us to host it yourself or we can host it for you for a small fee. Soon after the launch we will add the ability to upload 3D models that you have created yourself. These will be added to the Orblet library and you will be able to sell them to others earning revenue for yourself. It is certainly going to evolve and develop and we love that concept; people will be able to create with us.
3D Focus: Let’s say there were 50 people in a room that had created by your system, will those other avatars have needed to download special software to be part of that room?
Richard Knol: Orbcreation was built with the game engine Unity. The users will all need to install the Unity web player. Luckily Unity is used in a lot of games and many people already have it installed (over 60 million). The Unity developers have also successfully ported their platform to Adobe Flash. When this is released we will also provide a Flash version and target a much larger audience. However, the Unity web player will always run faster and load faster so if people have the Unity web player installed we will automatically hand them the more native Unity version. We want to make this as seamless as possible. You visit a website, end up in a 3D world, nothing to it, no big deal, but it’s so incredibly cool.
3D Focus: Would those avatars be able to chat to each other? Let’s say they share the same interest, could they chat about the virtual world they are in?
Richard Knol: Right now we support text chat. They can send public and private messages. At the Unity conference in San Francisco we (the developers) were told that in the next Unity version they will offer access to the microphone and webcam. This will open up the possibility to support voice and video.
3D Focus: Will Orbcreation be compatible with iphones and ipads?
Richard Knol: Unfortunately not. The Unity web player is only available for desktop computers. When the Flash export feature arrives it might work on some Android phones and tablets, but Adobe has already announced that they will not be putting much effort into mobile platforms anymore. In any case the visual impact of 3D images can be ‘lost’ on smaller screens. It’s a bit like watching a movie like Avatar on your iPhone, a bit pointless!
3D Focus: Why is the world ready for this now?
Richard Knol: The computers are now powerful enough and the technology is available. The weird thing is that you have the game developers that produce awesome graphics with real time shadows, special lighting and everything you can think of. And there are the Web designers on the other hand who are limited to HTML, Flash and static images. The only thing we did was combine the two. I guess it was just having the vision.
3D Focus: How do you intend to monetise this?
Richard Knol: When you build your world, you construct it with orblets. Many of these orblets are free and some of them will cost a small amount of money (around $1 or $2). When you are ready you can either receive all of the files and host it yourself or we can do that for you. If you want multi user support we can host that for you for a fee, but this will also only cost a small amount.
3D Focus: Would every website owner’s Orb be part of a global world?
Richard Knol: Right now everyone will have their own world or orb as we call it. It will however be relatively simple to combine the worlds in some type of grid and allow people to travel between them via hyperlinks.
3D Focus: What is your longer term strategy?
Richard Knol: Our strategy is to target individual people that want to create their ideas or dreams and share them with others plus we will target small companies that want to stand out and offer something totally different. The orblet library will grow steadily, especially when we add the option to upload your own 3D models. People can get a model from websites like turbosquid.com, upload it and put it in their world.
3D Focus: Will people’s Orbs be available to view in stereoscopic 3D?
Richard Knol: Yes, there is a checkbox you can click in the general settings of your world when you are building it. If switched on, people will get a 3D goggles icon in the bottom of their screens and they can enjoy the world in anaglyph 3D. We may add other 3D viewing options in the future, but it all depends on the developments in hardware and the support for it by Unity. The most important thing is that we support the double camera that you need for stereoscopic viewing.
Online shopping tool creates customized gift lists
Stumped on what to buy your spouse, children, boss and friends for the holidays? Hesitant to fight the mob at the mall or fumble with credit cards at cash registers?
No need to sweat it. A new web-based shopping tool developed by a Lawrence company can pinpoint unique gifts that match a person’s traits and direct you to online merchants where you can make your purchases.
The Gift Professor, launched in September at www.coolproducts.com, is a free personality-based gift discovery tool and brainchild of CoolProducts.com president Tony Schmidt, a Lawrence resident. CoolProducts.com is a division of Schmidt’s technology start-up company, New Frontiers E-Commerce.
“I had the idea (for the Gift Professor) in 2001, but it was impossible then because few people had broadband Internet,” Schmidt said. “So I put it on the shelf, but it was inevitable.”
The tool was developed by Schmidt and a team of social psychologists, computer scientists, statisticians, industrial designers and others based at the Lawrence Regional Technology Center, a business incubator for companies that are commercializing innovative technologies developed at The University of Kansas or by local entrepreneurs.
“It’s the labor of a team, for sure,” he said.
The Gift Professor asks a series of questions based on the recipient’s occupation, interests, hobbies and the relationship they have with the gift-giver. Schmidt said information and gift ideas aren’t shared with others.
The recipient’s profile is matched to a catalog database to get a single page of suggested gifts and a personal store for saving the best gifts for future reference. The database includes more than 1,500 catalogs and online merchants and more than 40,000 products. Apparel, CDs and DVDs are excluded.
Users buy directly from the merchant. Schmidt receives a commission from the merchant for each sale.
“We’re agnostic about the merchants and products,” he said. “We give you what you’ve requested without any marketing results on it.”
Schmidt said he employs 15 part-time and two full-time workers, as well as interns.
If all goes well with Gift Professor, he said he would like to include smaller merchants and include craft items among its products. Currently, he said, the team is working on developing a mobile application for the tool.
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