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Ubuntu – Google Mail (GoogleApps) as default mail client

Since Ubuntu 9.10 NetbookRemix has been released I am again finding myself using my trusty old ASUS EEE when on the road.  And  finally it seems I have found a vanilla Linux distribution that is reasonably responsive and works ‘out of the box’.

One thing I don’t need on the road (as a matter of fact on none of my equipment) is having to install & maintain some client/server mail client. Here is a workable solution to have your browser default ‘mailto:’ links to Google Apps.

Howto

System –> Preferences –> Preferred Applications

Chrome:

perl -MURI::Escape -e '$to = shift;$to =~ s/^mailto://i;exec("chromium-browser", "https://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.tld/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&cmid=22&to=".URI::Escape::uri_escape($to) );' '%s'

Firefox:

perl -MURI::Escape -e '$to = shift;$to =~ s/^mailto://i;exec("firefox", "https://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.tld/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&cmid=22&to=".URI::Escape::uri_escape($to) );' '%s'

Note: do not forget to replace ‘yourdomain.tld’ with your actual Google Apps domain

Here is the link to the original blog entry by David Davis (xantus77): http://xantus.vox.com/library/post/howto-use-gmail-for-mailto-links-linuxubuntu.html (Kudos !)

Useful software for practical mobile learning

Since a fair bit of my time is spent working and researching in the field of Mobile Learning and there is not a lot of recent  listings of Software useful in practical m-Learning implementations I have compiled the following list from my bookmarks and Software I commonly use for these purposes. This list tries to represent currently usable applications not applications in the development stage.

Rather than writing this in the form of  a blog entry I decided to keep this as a live document within Google Apps that people can contribute to.

Please consider adding to this list if you find some useful mobile learning software missing. You can also subscribe to the changes to this list via RSS. You can also download this list as a PDF document.

Need for digital (media) literacy

I just recently stumbled across this link to the ‘Heartland Institute‘ via a reference in an American Newspaper site citing their sources for an article about the US Economic Stimulus package. I initially was hoping this might be a satiric site such as CNNN, but after taking a closer look and checking out some references it appears these people are actually serious (and worse still seem to have a lot of funds at their disposal to spread their dubious view). Reading this rubbish got me thinking about how many kids would actually think this could be an authoritative source for information.

I often see readers commenting on websites that are an obvious parody, taking the written word on these sites absolutely serious and literally. But the mentioned site above is written with the obvious intent to present the information as fact (no matter how ridiculous the claims are).  I don’t actually want to get into the (mis-) information presented on this site, but more the danger posed by such sites if we don’t teach digital literacy to our kids at school from a young age. Skills such as checking the sources and motivations behind certain ‘news and information’ sites.

While some of these sites (such as the example above) are very secretive about their donors and sources of revenue it should be fairly obvious by trying to do a quick online check what their particular objective is. In the particular example used above the published donations from the Tobacco industry and obvious links to the Oil industry both in the people employed by the organisation as well as direct contributions should give a very clear indication.

Sources to check the facts:

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (http://www.ipcc.ch/)
• United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (http://unfccc.int/)
• Union of Concerned Scientists (http://www.ucsusa.org/)

Sources to check the background

• PRWATCH (http://www.prwatch.org/)
• Center for Public Integrity (http://www.publicintegrity.org/)
• Media Transparency (http://www.mediatransparency.org/)

Now I am certainly not advocating to take the information from the sites above as automatically correct. Sites such as these might have their own motivations and can also skew their information to suit their own objectives. My point is more making the next generation aware of the need to check and balance their information sources and in the end use their own brain to weigh up the different sources in terms of their validity.

However seeing the browsing habits of my own children and their friends I fear that this particular skill-set has not been given a lot of attention in schools so far. I very much hope this is going to change with age and I will try my best to make them aware of the need to check.

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