web

How one Tweet saved 12 years of my work

I keep a copy of every bookmark on a site called del.icio.us. I also shared all of my educational links with a network of people. Many people have thanked me for those links over the years. However, in the last year, after being passed around to buyers a few times, del.icio.us seems to be falling apart. They no longer provide a way to export your links, and I did not have a recent backup (my poor planning). I had 3736 bookmarks in jeopardy and no way to get them out.

I searched the web and found nothing. I then searched Twitter and stumbled onto this post by D.A. Gutierrez:

I reached out to him via Twitter and he offered two options: 1. he would move everything for me. or 2. he'd give me a link to some code (written by Krzysztof Szafranek) and detailed instructions on how to run it myself.

I took option 2 and his instructions were spot on and worked perfectly. I even ran it for a friend and sent him all of his 17,000+ bookmarks for safe keeping.

D.A. also provided me with a half-dozen choices for new bookmarking software. I went for Pinboard. You can follow my educational links here:
https://pinboard.in/u:arvind/t:21apples/ (there is an RSS feed available, too). I paid $11 a year for the privilege, and will now back up my links 1x/month. They make many export options available.

These bookmarks (most public, some private) are a way for me to organize my resources and access them from any computer. Were it not for D.A., my work since 2005 would have been lost into the Internet ether.

I'm grateful today. Thank you, D.A.

note: I came out of blog hiding to write this in case it helped a single other del.icio.us user.

Anti-smoking slideshow voted best educational presentation on Slideshare

via slideshare.net

This powerful slideshow was voted best slideshow in the world, education category, on Slideshare.net.

On a side note: Slideshare is a fantastic way for you to share your slides with a wider audience. I generally use Prezi for presentations, but when I use Powerpoint then I use Slideshare for sharing.

Catchafire - changing the way people volunteer

Catchafire uses the web to match people's skills with better volunteer opportunities. This seems like a great way to have our students connect to organizations in meaningful ways. They create a profile, try to match with an organization, and then give their skills. This seems more powerful than just showing up, getting trained quickly on some small task, and doing it. Now, many times that is just what an organization needs, and so we can give that. But with the technical skills our students have, shouldn't we expect more of them in their community service work?

via @cacrandall

min.us - elegant photo sharing, made easy

Do you ever need to share a few photos (or a bunch) with people and don't know how to do it? The website http://min.us should cure what ails you. Just drag pictures onto the site, grab the link, and send off to someone. Genius.

This is what I love about the web - someone seems a problem and fixes it. Enjoy.