Category: Technology

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Demonoid is back….. but hold up!!

DemonoidAfter nearly six month offline, Demonoid is back. The best of the bit torrent sites has finally returned. Many people have been praying for this to happen since none of the other torrent sites are as user friendly, or contain as extensive a library of items as Demonoid. I know many people will want to run out and buy one of those new Mybook 1 TB hard drives from Amazon just so they can load up on pirated software. To those people I would say, slow down.

I reported on the initial demise of Demonoid in one of my earlier posts. But the six month hiatus of Demonoid leaves me a bit suspicious about the return of the site. Why has the site returned and why now? Information on the site states that Demonoid is under “new” administration and that the former admin, Diemos, won’t be back and has left to attend to personal issues. Diemos has turned over all control to the new administrators. To that I say, be careful. We all know that the RIAA and MPAA have been pressing a full out attack on any and all sites that are supportive of P2P file sharing. So the sudden return of Demonoid leaves me with the same feeling that one might get hanging around a mobster who just got pinched by the feds and comes back acting like nothing happened. It could really just be business as usual, but how do you really know for sure. Who is to say what the mobster might of talked about, or more importantly, who might be watching him now. I don’t know about you, but I would advise waiting for a few months before logging on to Demonoid again.

But then again I have been known to be overly suspicious. I guess you can just chalk it up to that New York upbringing.

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ePortfolio Conference: Day Two

The second day of the ePortfolio conference was pretty much the same, just shorter. I had only one breakout session to cover, and it was a repeat of one of the sessions that I gave yesterday on the topic of ePortfolio system selection. This was a good thing because presentation partner, Susan Lambert, and I had a chance to work out the timing and presentation flow during our first run. As a result the second time through was a little easier. I was pleased that the turnout for the session, an early Saturday morning session, was so strong. We had a full room and the participants were very interactive. This is always a good sign because it means that they are at least interested in what you have to say. Nothing is worse than a quiet and unresponsive room. Luckily this wasn’t the case. The only negative was that I couldn’t stop thinking about my 25th high school reunion that was scheduled to take place later in the day.

The  presentations slides from my breakout sessions at the Making Connections Conference on ePortfolios (4/10/2008) can be found below:

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ePortfolio Conference: Day One

ePortfolio Systems Presentation

The first day of the LaGuardia ePortfolio conference went off without a hitch. I was amazed at the turnout and how smoothly things progressed. I have been to many conferences but I’d have to say that this was one of the best organized events I have seen. Bret Eynon and his team from the Center for Teaching and Learning put together an impressive lineup of sessions throughout the day. We had conference speakers and attendees from as far away as England and Nova Scotia. The breakout sessions covered a wide range of topics central to the subject of electronic portfolios.
Continue reading “ePortfolio Conference: Day One”

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ePortfolio Conference Planning

ePortfolio Conference Planning

I am starting to stress out just a little bit. You see over the next couple of days I have a series of presentations that I am giving at a major national conference LaGuardia is hosting. The conference, “Making Connections: ePortfolios, Integrative Learning and Assessment“, is on the topic of ePortfolios and how they can be utilized to assess student and institutional growth. Continue reading “ePortfolio Conference Planning”

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Microsoft IT Tech Trends Speech

The footage above is the actual video of the speech that I gave to a group of High School juniors and seniors during the Microsoft sponsored IT Tech Trends seminar earlier this month. The purpose of the seminar was to get high school students interested in IT careers. While it wasn’t my finest speech (I rambled a little bit), overall I think I did okay. The students seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say.

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Microsoft IT Tech Trends Seminar

Alfred Thompson, Academic Relations Manager for Microsoft

After my morning class the LaGuardia CIS department hosted an IT Tech Trends seminar yesterday that was sponsored by Microsoft. The seminar was open to high school juniors and seniors from the NYC area with the express purpose of getting them interested in IT careers in general, and IT studies at LaGuardia specifically. One of the schools that had confirmed backed out at the last minute because the coordinator had confused the dates and had booked parent-teacher conferences on the same day. The turn out, while not as big as we had originally expected, was still respectable. Continue reading “Microsoft IT Tech Trends Seminar”

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My first Flashcoders meeting

NYC Flashcoders meeting

I went to my first meeting of the New York City Flashcoders user group last night. I have been a member of the mailing list for a few months now and figured that it was time to meet the actual people behind the site. The Flashcoders user group appears to be one of the more active flash communities in the NYC area. In fact, this group of multimedia professionals meet about once a week to discuss and display cool new Flash based projects and tools. The meeting last night was about using Arduino in conjunction with Flash actionscript. Continue reading “My first Flashcoders meeting”

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Drupal Camp at PolyTech

Drupal Camp at Poly Tech

After the late, late party at Miko’s last night, I wasn’t hyped to get up early on a Sunday morning a head off to a  technical conference on administering and programming for Drupal. However since I needed to learn more about this open source content management system for a side project that I am working on called Ensideus.com (more on that soon), I dragged my sorry butt out of bed and headed to Brooklyn. Continue reading “Drupal Camp at PolyTech”

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Coldfusion User Group Meeting

Coldfusion User Group Meetings

Those of you that have been paying attention to my recent post might have noticed that I have been spending alot of time focusing on my digital audio and video chops. As I result I have been getting nervous that I been letting my web design/development skills start to slip. So to make sure that I didn’t let that happen, I needed to get motivated. The quickest way for me to get motivated is to spend time around other Continue reading “Coldfusion User Group Meeting”

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CIS and ePortfolio

CIS ePortfolio Cohort

Today was the first meeting of the CIS ePortfolio cohort that is being sponsored by LaGuardia’s Center for Teaching and Learning. The main purpose of the faculty group is to research the best ways in which the CIS department can integrate ePortfolio into the Introduction to Computers course (CIS 100). The CIS 100 course is a required course for many of the academic programs at LaGuardia, and as a result, is a perfect class in which to reinforce the technical principles of ePortfolio.

I was asked to participate in this ongoing seminar because, I had taken a lead in researching ways in which digital portfolios can be used to enhance the performance of students in technical disciplines. Continue reading “CIS and ePortfolio”