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Recent Posts
My Windows 7 party has started
About a month ago I signed up to host a Windows 7 launch party. Officially, Microsoft will release Windows 7 on Octobery 22. Those selected to host a party are suppose to have a party within a week after the launch. My party will be on October 25.
I received a nice box of goodies today from Microsoft including party favors, balloons, napkins, playing card, a jigsaw puzzle and Windows 7 tote bags. Most importantly the box also included a Signature Edition of Windows 7 Ultimate. There were actually two DVDs in the box: 32bit and 64bit.
The instructions said to install Windows 7 right away. The host needs to be well versed in the new operating system features before the party gets here. I wasted no time in getting started with the installation. My Dell Studio 17 is less than six months old and runs Windows Vista Home Premium. I did something I never do… an upgrade (sorry Paul Thurrot).
The Studio 17 is my main laptop. It is packed with everything: pictures, video, music, software and all my documents. A pre-installation scan said there were 930,000 files on the hard drive. I then received a warning that this could take a few hours. No big deal. I had other computers to use while the upgrade progressed.
Before I started, I told Mesh to go offline. Otherwise I left everything running including Symantec Antivirus. The upgrade took five hours but worked perfectly! As soon as everything finished, I logged in and Mesh immediately grabbed all the files I had created while the installation progressed.
I have been using the Beta of Windows 7 for many months. It has worked well even on my oldest computers. Now that I’m officially using the production version, it looks great. This is my first blog post from my upgraded computer. Plan to see many more.
Picasa Has Name Tags
The stand alone Picasa application from Google now recognizes who is in your pictures and groups all the pictures based on this information. The web version of Picasa has had this feature for at least a year. I blogged about it last September.
I just installed the update and it’s only about 2% complete with the initial “face” scan. I have 92,000 pictures, so it will probably take all night to go through them.
As the program identifies new faces, a new icon is added to the “scanned pictures” group. Type a new name under one of these pictures and Picasa begins to group other pictures of this person under the same name. If the program is unsure of a picture (some of my kids look like each other) the pictures have a “check” and “X” under them so they can be easily added or removed from a group. If there is a large number of picture you wish to move to another group, the click-shift-click method will highlight a large number of photos. A context sensitive right-click offers options on re-assigning the pictures to another group.
I see some useful applications for this already. I have photos of every freshman who has taken my edtech class for the last four years. I could build a database of these students and then as other people in the college take photographs, we could sort them by person. Wouldn’t it be great if every senior could be given a personalized set of photos showing all the major events of a college education? I think we are getting close.
What’s the capital of South Dakota?
In fifth grade I memorized the capitals of all fifty states. It took a while, and I got 100% on the test. To my knowledge that information has not helped me one single time since fifth grade. Fortunately I have Google today and any time I need to know some tidbit of trivia (sorry South Dakota) it takes about two seconds.
But how do I find the answers to more difficult questions? I am talking about the kinds of questions I am more likely to get.
Who is this?
I put together a search activity for my class. How many of these can you find?
How many can you find in two seconds?
What is the significance of this formula?
It looks like a circle with a line across the top and the bottom. What is the significance of the logo on the green shirt of the guy standing on the left side of this picture?
What is this substance?
The picture below is a movie poster. According to the poster, what is the main topic of the movie?
What is the name of this painting?
The pictures below are of the same tree. What kind of tree is it?
