To educate, inform, inspire

QR-UPC codes and Adobe PDF

August 2, 2011 - Who knew? - by Mark - 12 Comments

It was recently brought to my attention (via a tweet) that Adobe Acrobat can be used to generate QR (Quick Response) codes. So I did a little digging and discovered it was pretty easy to accomplish – who knew? Background – QR codes were initially used for tracking parts, but […]

Adobe Edge Fundamentals

August 1, 2011 - Adobe - by Mark - No Comments

On Monday, August 1, 2011, Adobe made a public version of their Edge animation tool available via Adobe Labs. I thought it might be helpful for readers to have an introduction to some of the fundamentals regarding the use of this tool. First, go get a copy of Edge at […]

D2W Conference

July 19, 2011 - Technology , Travel - by Mark - No Comments

I spent part of last week participating in the D2W (Designer to Developer) conference in Kansas City. This was the second year the conference has been offered. Many thanks to @DeeSadler for her efforts in making this conference a reality. There were 38 speakers this year. It is a huge […]

WOW Web Design Contest – Final Thoughts

June 28, 2011 - Technology , WOW - by Mark - 2 Comments

I participated in the WOW/ Web Professionals web design contest in Kansas City last week (June 21 – 24). I wanted to take a moment and share my observations and include a few comments received from the judges. I am providing these hoping that we will continue to see gradual […]

WOW Web Design Contest, 2011

June 28, 2011 - Technology , Travel , WOW - by Mark - No Comments

I had the distinct honor of being part of the WOW/ Web Professionals web design contest. This competition was held in Kansas City last week (June 21 – 24). Teams of two (web designer and web developer) competed for over $210,000 in scholarships and prizes. I plan to post a […]

BlackBerry PlayBook (part 2)

June 3, 2011 - Technology - by Mark - 6 Comments

Now that I have a full week of experience with my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, I thought it time to review my latest experiences and offer some additional insights. Obviously, I have limited experience with this device and welcome comments to help me improve my overall understanding. I will focus on […]

BlackBerry PlayBook

May 31, 2011 - Technology - by Mark - No Comments

I have been reviewing/ experimenting with my new BlackBerry Playbook tablet for the past few days. So far, I like the unit (and the interface). I wanted to share some of my experiences in this weblog entry as others may encounter similar situations. I also want to formally thank Del […]

Book Review

May 18, 2011 - Technology - by Mark - No Comments

I received notice today that my book review has been published by CHOICE (May, 2011 issue). Since many readers of this weblog may not have direct access to their publication, I have included a copy here as well. Partridge, Derek. The seductive computer: why IT systems always fail. Springer, 2011. […]

IPVEO P2V camera

May 12, 2011 - Technology - by Mark - No Comments

I have participated in a number of seminars this year where some sort of document camera was needed. After a little research, I decided to obtain the IPVEO P2V camera. It arrived today. I found the install to be a breeze and the interface is very intuitive. I particularly like […]

WOW Web Design Contest – Illinois, 2011

April 17, 2011 - Student Examples , Technology , Travel , WOW - by Mark - No Comments

I just completed supervising the 11th annual WOW web design contest for the state of Illinois. I have done this every year (with the exception of 2008 when I was giving a pre-conference seminar at the 17th International WWW Conference in Beijing). There are separate competitions for secondary and post-secondary […]

Switching ICANN Registrars

April 6, 2011 - Technology - by Mark - 2 Comments

There has been a fair amount of controversy over the CEO of GoDaddy (Bob Parsons) recently killing an elephant in Africa. Personally, I have begun pulling my accounts from GoDaddy and placing them elsewhere. As part of this process, I realized how potentially convoluted the process is. Therefore, I decided […]

Lightroom Web Gallery

April 2, 2011 - Adobe , Technology - by Mark - 2 Comments

I have been learning more about the capabilities of Photoshop Lightroom 3. I recently completed a set of tutorials at lynda.com and thought I would use that knowledge to work with some photos I took yesterday. Lightroom allows one to work with the native image formats (and seems to have […]

Flash vs. HTML5 resolved

April 1, 2011 - Adobe , Huh? , Technology - by Mark - 2 Comments

After giving this matter a great deal of thought, I think I have finally solved the entire problem/ controversy regarding the use of Flash instead of HTML5. Given this special day, I thought it appropriate to share my thoughts with the world. In a nutshell, these are completely different tools. […]

AEL Impact Award

March 22, 2011 - Adobe , Technology - by Mark - No Comments

I received the Adobe Education Leader Impact Award last month. The actual plaque arrived today. Thought I would share this on my weblog. I am incredibly honored to receive this award from my peers. For those who are not familiar, the Adobe Education Leaders program spans many continents. We have […]

Adobe Wallaby

March 12, 2011 - Adobe , Technology - by Mark - No Comments

Adobe recently released “Wallaby” via their labs website. This is a technology which converts Flash (.fla) files to HTML (HTML5). Of course, only modern browsers will be able to display the results (sorry IE 6, 7, and 8). The images rendered are SVG images (a fair number for shape tweens). […]