Atlantic Cape Web Guy

Five hidden tools and tricks for Google Calendar

2011-04-19T09:10:00.002-04:00

Came across some really great tips for using Google Calendar. From keyboard shortcuts to some great add ons available in Labs. Several of which I've just enabled on my account.

Five hidden tools and tricks for Google Calendar

Google Docs secrets: 20 power tips

2011-02-21T10:21:00.001-05:00

I came across a great list of power tips for Google Docs that I wanted to share:

Google Docs secrets: 20 power tips

Fix pictures in position is a new one to me and one that'll I'm sure I'll use now that I know about it.

Upgraded Google Documents List

2011-02-02T08:53:00.002-05:00

If you are a user of Google Docs then, there's a pretty good chance you've just noticed the most recent upgrades. The most notable is the improvements to the document list.

Google provides a great interactive help page explaining the new Documents List.

The navigation panel has been cleaned up a lot, and seems much easier to navigate to me. I also found the details pane to be very helpful as well. Seeing a preview and all the shared details at a glance is a big upgrade. It reminds me a lot of OSX Finder's columns view.

Google Chat with Video

2010-10-08T10:07:00.003-04:00

If you have a webcam, Google Chat does support video. So from Gmail you can video conference a co-worker in addition to Instant Messaging with them. You just need to install a plugin for video chats to work with Google Chat.

Video Chat Plugin download

If you have the plugin and a webcam give this a shot. A little camera appears next to a users name if they can video chat back.

Opportunity Starts Here

2010-10-07T15:18:00.003-04:00

Materials relating to our recent "Opportunity Starts Here" rebrand are available online.

news release
statement
key marketing messages
tagline
logos
ads
print ads
tv ads
more

Rebrand

2010-09-03T12:53:00.003-04:00

You've probably noticed the new logo colors on www.atlantic.edu. As part of a rebranding we've been switching all of our online services over to the new standards.

For more info, read the style guide. There's some useful guidelines and logos/templates to use there too.

Google Docs OCR

2010-06-22T10:23:00.002-04:00

Google Docs recently added the feature to perform OCR (optical character recognition) on uploaded pdf and image files. So now, you can have it convert a pdf into text!

When you upload a file into Google Docs you should see the new option. If you need to convert a pdf that someone sends to you into text (why isn't everything already text will always boggle me) then this might be a nice option to check out.

flickr tagging

2010-06-16T09:20:00.002-04:00

Atlantic Cape shares thousands of photo on our flickr account, with many new photos added daily. This is a great resource for not only sharing photos with the community, but also if a photo is needed for internal use too. I really recommend that you check it out if you haven't already.

Also, please feel free to add any additional tags to photos as well. You just need to be logged into flickr (using a flickr or Yahoo! account) to do so. Tagging of photos makes them much easier to find and sort, so please tag away. A location, individual(s), event, etc. The more descriptive our photos are tagged the better.

How to tag photos on flickr

Like Button

2010-04-29T09:26:00.002-04:00

Just incorporated the new Facebook Like Button Social plugin into our news releases. It can conveniently be found at the bottom or all news releases now. If you want to share the particular news release with your Facebook account, just click the Like button. It's that simple.

You can also easily see which of your friends like the news release as well.

This is the first of the new Facebook social plugins that we've incorporated with www.atlantic.edu. We'll keep you posted as we integrate more of the social plugins!

Strudels Gadget

2010-02-04T13:35:00.002-05:00

We've made a nifty little Google Gadget to display Strudels daily offerings. You can add it to your Google Start Page.

From your Start Page just click Add Stuff and you'll find it under the ACCC Content section.

It can also be found online for the general public on Careme's page. Feel free to add the gadget to your own personal webpage or blog.

Upgraded Campus Maps

2010-01-29T14:24:00.002-05:00

Just rolled out a beta release of updated campus directions/maps.

http://atlantic.edu/about/directions.htm

Now all 3 major campuses are conveniently located on one Google Map. Clicking on each respective campus will reveal information regarding the specific campus as well as a link to custom driving directions.

Users can also select which campus from the tabs beneath the map and the map will then jump to that specific campus.

If a user zooms in closely to a campus (12x zoom or greater) they will notice that the buildings now appear on the actual Google Map with detailed information for most of the campus buildings. Parking lots as well as handicap parking are prominently featured as well.

This gives users a much more detailed and rich experience should they choose it.

I'm hoping to add tighter custom driving direction information, more detailed public transportation information, as well as offering our campus maps as a KML download and Google Mapplet for users to install.

Please share if you have any further suggestions.

Interlibrary Loan Request Form

2010-01-08T11:38:00.002-05:00

Trying to find books or articles not owned by the Atlantic Cape library or the county library? We now offer a simple form to fill out to make an interlibrary loan request.

Simply fill out your contact info, the book or article to loan, and whichever of our 3 campuses are most convenient for you to pick it up at.

interlibrary loan request form

Safety Information

2009-11-24T11:25:00.002-05:00

The Safety Information on atlantic.edu has been undergoing a redesign. The information found there has now been broken up into individual pages for more efficient reading and consumption. All pages are now linked via the sidebar on the Safety Information pages too, making it easy to navigate. A refreshed look also helps for a more inviting experience.

Users are now allowed to fill out a simple web form to report a crime in addition to contacting security through the phone, via a guard, or at the security desk.

There's also now a listing of various ways to follow safety alerts. Check them out and see which one's you might want to follow.

Many other improvements are also still being worked on, so check back often to see what additional features are added.

Google Web Elements

2009-10-21T12:52:00.002-04:00

Google Web Elements makes it really easy to share Google products on the web.

For instance if you've created a Presentation or Spreadsheet in Google Docs, just paste the URL of the file and it gives you the code snippet to paste onto the web. The little display widget is pretty slick and easy for users to interact with.

It seems like a really cool way to share info, so if you have something created with your Google Apps account check it out.

ARIA Landmark Roles

2009-09-25T13:34:00.003-04:00

atlantic.edu now include ARIA Landmark Roles to help improve the accessibility of the site. ARIA roles help to improve the the semantics of the sites layout.

For instance, if a user is depending on a screen reader to have our site read to him, they can much more easily navigate directly to the main content or the search box with the use of ARIA.

This is another way we are making our website more accessible as well as more semantically sound for our users.

Library

2009-09-10T11:40:00.003-04:00

The library information commons has just been redesigned. The goal with the redesign was to make is easier to gain access to the great online services that our library offers.

The lengthy text has been replaced with easy to scan links to the most commonly used services. Each library location also has a page now detailing what specific offerings they have as well.

Be sure to visit and check out all the great services our library offers.

atlantic.edu footer upgrades

2009-07-21T11:27:00.002-04:00

The footer on atlantic.edu got received some upgrades today. Cosmetically it should be easier for users to read and we've also made the following additions as well:

All locations and very basic contact information can now be found in the footer for our 3 main locations.
Additional Information links such as contact us, feedback, etc. are now grouped under 1 column in the footer and made a little easier to get to.
We've also added links to our numerous social networking properties that the school maintains. So now it's even easier for our fans, followers, or whatever they might be for that service to keep track of what we're up to.

Hope you enjoy, and please let me know if you have any further suggestions. Also check out the various social networking sites that we belong to, we're constantly added new content.

Tasks added to Google Calendar

2009-05-20T09:35:00.002-04:00

Google Calendar finally added an integrated task list. It's incredibly easy to use, and works well with the already impressive Calendar app. I highly recommend you check it out.

Learn more about Tasks.

ACCC is on Facebook

2009-04-15T11:44:00.004-04:00

Atlantic Cape Community College just launched their official Facebook Page just a few days ago.

Some of it's current features are:

Keep informed of current ACCC news
Find out about latest events and activities
View photos (including Professor Tom C. with pink hair)
Watch videos
Find other related Facebook Groups and Pages
Find out who else is a Fan of ACCC

Check it out and become a Fan!

Google Labs

2009-03-20T10:04:00.004-04:00

Google Apps does a great job of rolling out new features. However, they also often make some pretty cool features available through their Labs area. The Labs area is easy to get to if you're logged into your Gmail. Just click on the erlenmeyer flask found at the top right of the window.

Then you'll see a listing of all the currently available features available in the Lab. If there's one you are interested in, just click on the Enable radio. It's that simple.

My current favorites are:

Offline - it allows you to use Gmail without online access. Very useful.
Canned Responses - automatically have a reply go out if it meets a certain criteria. Great for dealing with forms.
Google Calendar Gadget - incorporates your Google Calendar in Gmail, very cool.
and there's many more.

Google Mobile Sync

2009-02-13T09:21:00.002-05:00

Google recently released a very cool syncing solution between some of their Google Apps and many mobile phones. If enabled on your mobile device, it allows for two-way syncing between Google Calendar and Google Contacts. So your calendar and contacts are always up to date regardless of whether you updated them on your mobile device or via a web browser on your computer.

I synced my calendar up with my iPhone in just a few easy steps. They also offer instructions for configuring other mobile devices as well. This is really useful and easy to use, check it out.

10,000+ Visits

2009-01-23T09:27:00.002-05:00

atlantic.edu set a new record for visits in a particular day on January 20th. We had 10,893 visits the first day of the spring semester! We've come close on a few occasions to the 10,000 mark in one day, but that marks the first time we've had that much traffic in one day.

Notable trends for January 20th:

10,893 views
37,659 page views
3:21 average time on site

atlantic.edu upgrades

2009-01-13T13:43:00.002-05:00

Below is a summary of some of the upgrades to atlantic.edu that were released on Friday.

Main navigation - the main navigation found in the header of the site is now larger and easier to read. Sub-menus are now displayed via a horizontal drop down versus the previous display.
Reduced HTTP requests - the overall number of HTTP requests being requested per page load have been reduced on the majority of pages. Reducing the number of requests greatly improves page load time.
Minified JS and CSS files - the majority of Javascript and CSS files have been minified. This again reduces page load time a great deal.
Increased use of white space - the increased use of white space between elements on most pages, gives the site a cleaner easier to read appearance.
Increased font size and spacing - increasing the font size and spacing in the content region again makes reading the pages content easier on the eyes, resulting in a better web experience.
Separation between regions - the different regions of the pages through use of lightweight background images and CSS better define the different areas on the web site. The header, footer, sidebar, and main content area are now better defined.
CSS sprites - are used throughout the site now to reduce the amount of images loaded onto the page, resulting in a faster web experience.
Use of PNG vs GIF - switching many of the GIF images on the site to PNG reduced filesize a great deal. In some cases a 60% savings was had! Less filesize to download the faster a page loads.

While there's a ton of further improvements being worked, I hope you find these recent upgrades lead to a better web experience. If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to share.

Google Visualizations powered by Docs Spreadsheet

2008-12-17T15:58:00.002-05:00

The Google Visualization API offers some really great ways of visualizing data. One example of it's use can be found on the Research departments Credit Hours page. In this particular case we're using the Gauge visualization to represent data.

The information is being pulled from a Google Docs Spreadsheet that the department maintains. Though some nifty Javascript and a few API calls we're able to take the data from the spreadsheet and create those gauges on the fly. No manually updating the page, or exporting images and then SFTP them up to the server. It's really quite a nice solution to visually displaying data.

There's a ton of visualizations available, and you can even create your own if you're so ambitious (and an advanced geek).

Linking Tip

2008-11-07T15:10:00.003-05:00

Here's a little tip when linking to a URL on a webpage:

Just simply link the text to the URL. Don't give instructions on how to get to the URL or ask them to type in the URL manually.

Examples:

Bad:

Goto our home page and scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on directions, then click on Mays Landing.

Good:

Directions to Mays Landing Campus

It's much easier and more convenient for a user if links are done this way versus suggesting someone go through numerous steps or have to type in a URL manually.

ACCC Latest News Dashboard Widget

2008-10-22T14:28:00.004-04:00

ACCC now has a OS X Dashboard widget available. It will provide you with the latest news releases from ACCC.

The dashboard widget requires a Mac running OS X 10.4.3 or higher to run.

Download ACCC Latest News Dashboard widget (496KB)

YouTube Channel

2008-09-11T10:31:00.003-04:00

YouTube is a fantastic resource for viewing and sharing original videos online. It's also one of the most popular destinations on the web today, so sharing your videos there opens it up to the possibility of an extremely wide audience.

The school has a channel setup to share various short original videos. It is also being used to serve up the videos featured on the recent What's Cooking that's currently airing on NBC40 as well as the web. We're working on some other pretty nifty ways of incorporating YouTube within our site leveraging their developer API's. So hopefully they'll see some light and go live soon.

Setting up your own channel for your own personal use is simple as well. Just sign up for an account then begin uploading videos. That's really all there is to it. You can customize the look of your channel, create playlists, embed videos into pages, and even work with their robust API if you really want to get advanced. Just be sure that what you're uploading isn't copyrighted and you should be fine.

Edu Web 2008 Conference

2008-07-23T14:26:00.003-04:00

I attended the Edu Web 2008 Conference at the Trump Marina in Atlantic City this week. It's a conference aimed at the use of technology in higher ed. There were several hundred people there from all over the world. It was a good conference and I did learn a lot that I hope to work into our website.

I blogged about my daily events on my personal blog.

I didn't take too many photos (been to AC many times already) but many attendees did take some very nice photos and they can be found on flickr.

Enhanced Search

2008-05-20T14:40:00.002-04:00

Just rolled out some enhancements to the search on atlantic.edu. The search results are now pulling several searches into one convenient tabbed page. With Communicator backissues and news release separate from web page results.

Searches include:

web page on atlantic.edu and venus.atlantic.edu
college news releases
CommuniCator issues
employee listings
site images

The employee results are marked up using the hcard microformat which is a first for our site. Other microformats will be adopted throughout the site as well. Also the image search is another first for atlantic.edu as well.

Since additional searches are made via an AJAX call, the entire page doesn't need to reload. Resulting in faster, almost immediate searches.

Check out the new improved search on atlantic.edu. While it's still in beta, if you have any suggestions or comments please share.

Cafeteria Menu Online

2008-04-24T13:25:00.002-04:00

If you're feeling kinda hungry and wondering what the fine folks in the cafeteria are serving, you're now just a simple click away from finding out. The cafeteria menu gadget can currently be found on the cafeterias page as well as by clicking on the employees link in the footer of atlantic.edu.

It will also be offered shortly as stuff to be added to the employee start page at its.atlantic.edu. Check under Add Stuff to see if it's been added yet. I previously wrote on how to Add Stuff to the start page.

Google Reader

2008-03-28T15:11:00.003-04:00

If you visit many sites often than you've probably heard about RSS feeds. RSS feeds allow you to subscribe to a sites changing content. So instead of checking out 20 or so site every morning, you could just have their RSS feeds pulled to you. A great free RSS reader is the Google Reader.

As part of our Google Apps for Education, you can just login using your email address and password. You can add new subscriptions from pasting one you found on a site you enjoy or browsing through some suggested feeds on the site. You can also opt to share a story from a feed so others can subscribe to your personal Google Reader feed.

ACCC has been offering an RSS feed for a while now with more on the way. Log in and check it out, it's really cool.

Use the Web Calendar

2008-03-19T13:53:00.002-04:00

If you're not already submitting events to the college's online calendar, you really should. It's extremely easy to do, and with over 15,000 unique page views to the calendar a month a great way to get exposure for an event.

Anyone can submit an event to the calendar (submissions are screened before being posted). To submit an event just do the following:

From the top right of just about any page on atlantic.edu click on the calendars link.
From the calendar page, there's a link to Add Event Form in the sidebar. Click on that will take you to a form to fill out to submit your event.
Fill out the form and submit it. Required fields has an asterisk (*) besides their title.

That's all there is to it.

Add Stuff to your Google Start Page

2008-02-21T09:02:00.007-05:00

There's a ton of useful gadgets that can be added to your personal Google Start Page. And it's really easy to do. In this example I'm going to demonstrate how to add the WACC Radio gadget to your start page.

First go to your Google Start Page (http://its.atlantic.edu). Locate the Add Stuff link as depicted below and click on it.

You should now be at the page where you can add stuff to your start page. There's categories on the left. In this case we want to locate the WACC Radio gadget in the ACCC Content category which is most likely selected by default. Locate the WACC-Radio gadget and click Add it now to add it to your page.

That's it! If you want to add other gadgets choose a category on the left then just click Add it now under the gadget that interests you. When you're all done adding gadgets click Back to homepage.

Your Start Page will now have your newly added gadget(s). Feel free to move them around by dragging them around by their header.

If you're interested in creating a gadget info can be found at the developer page. Or if you have some suggestions for a gadget let me know.

How to set up a free blog using Blogger

2008-02-05T11:03:00.000-05:00

While I'm sure we're all aware that employees have access to Gmail now, there's also many other great Google Apps that we have access too as well. Today I'm going to discuss how to setup your own free blog using Blogger.com and your existing atlantic.edu account.

First login to your account through its.atlantic.edu navigate to your email. At the very top of your email screen you'll see a couple of links like pictured below.

Click on the more link to discover all the other Google App goodness that awaits you. From the listing of the many Google Services available to you (I recommend you check them out when you have a second) locate the Blogger one that's under the Communicate, show and share heading.

This will take you to Blogger. This is a very popular and free blog host. As an employee with an atlantic.edu email address you already have a Google account and can login with your email address and password to get started.

And that's it, you're now logged into Blogger and can follow the simple steps to setting up and customizing your blog. Congratulations you are now the proud owner of your very own blog!