Ed's Tech Tips

I've written about Content Management Systems (CMS) previously such as Drupal, Plone and Joomla. They are excellent tools for developing and managing web sites. Although they are free open source tools, they do require an investment of time in learning the in's and out's of the systems. They also require a database backend, such as, MySQl or PosgresSQL. Many times these systems can be overwhelming and overkill for many applications. This must have been the motivation behind CMSimple.

CMSimple is a CMS that does not require a database backend. tis ideal for small business or private sites. It is a free application. It includes a WYSIWYG editor that is supported by IE on Win, and Mozilla on Linux, Win and MacOS.

• Small - The complete content management system is less than 100 KB.
• Simple - simple to install and easy to modify. The entire site is stored in a single HTML-file - no database is needed. You edit your entire site with your favorite HTML-editor, upload the content file and get a dynamic website!
• Smart - There is an integrated online WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) editor with link validation, image handling, online editing of system files and an automatic backup on logout. These features that makes CMSimple simply smart!
  

There are numerous high quality templates avilable as well.

CMSimple will most likely be the tool used to host class and club websites on the Association's web server later this year. We need to further test it and develop some custom templates featuring the class colors and animals.

While there is more software for Apple's Macintosh computers than ever before, it still falls behind Windows in some areas. One of them being add-ons for Skype, the popular internet communications software. In particluar, the ability to record Skype phone calls. Ther are a variety of ways of doing so, since a number of podcasts are recorded on Macs with Skype.

Check out an article at MacDevCenter.com for one method. Emily, the Quarterly editor wanted to record an interview. She had been using a cassette recorder, but recording on her Mac would give her the option of uploading the audio interview as a web extra for the magazine. However, I could not expect her to configure Audio Hijack and Soundflower to re-route the audio inputs and outputs of Skype, headphones and Garageband. Instead, I found an inexspensive utility with an unimaginative name from Ecamm, called Call Recorder which integrates with Skype and allows one click recording of calls. They include drag and drop audio converters that easily convert the resulting MOV audio file into MP3 or ACC format files suitable for podcasting or sharing on the web. 

I like PDF files. You can maintain the page layout, fonts and content and be sure that it will look the same no matter where you view it or print it, at least most of the time.

What I do not like is how sllllloooowwww the Adobe Acrobat Reader is. It is slow to download, install and run whenever you want to view even the simplest of single page PDF files. At least on a Mac, I can use Apple's View, which is very fast to open and load a PDF document. The Acrobat Reader is also slow on Macs. I find it very annoying! Acrobat is now at version 8 I think and I though software was supposed to get better with each version or upgrade. Whie there are many new features, Adobe has added way too much bloat to the reader program. They really shoudl two versions: the nimble, quick and lean editio and the current slow, fully featured version with all ofthe bells and whistles for those that want to do more than simple read and print a PDF which is what I wnat to do 99% of the time.

Now Windows users can enjoy the same speed and ease of use of Apple's Preview with the free Foxit Reader 2.0 for Windows. There is also a version for Linux. With Foxit you can view documents the same way you do in Acrobat. The interface is suprisingly very similar to Acrobat. There are bookmarks and you can search the document. You can print, view contents as text and fill out forms as well. 

Foxit offers additional PDF tools as well. If you considered Adobe Acrobat Professional, check Foxit's PDF Creator and PDF Editor applications. These cost a fraction of what the comparable Adobe products cost, and if the PDF reader is any indication, probably much faster. 

Cyberduck is a free open source FTP and SFTP (SSH Secure File Transfer) browser licenced under the GPL with an easy to use interface, integration with external editors and support for many Mac OS X system technologies such as Spotlight, Bonjour, the Keychain and AppleScript. I use it often to maintain the Alumnae Association web site. The Quarterly staff uses it upload large files to our FTP server for easy transfer to the magazine designer and printer. The editor no longer has to burn files to CD and deliver them or mail them. The software is being actively developed, but it automatically updates and reinstalls itself.

When I'm working from my Windows computer I use WinSCP. it too is a free open source SFTP client using SSH, which is much more secure than plain FTP. 

• Web based administration
• Active Firewall
• Instrusion Dectection and Prevention
• Print and File Server for Windows and Mac clients
  
• Web ServerAntivirus
• Web Proxy and Content Filter
• Windows Domain Authenication
• Data Backup
• And More