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Cautionary Tale & Tribute to Geeks to Go!

Paul Hamilton — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:42:59 +0000

Here’s why I love

I feel like the victim of a happy set of circumstances that has left me with too much life and too little time. Regular blog posting has been a casualty in recent weeks. I’m moved to write this post by a painful and somewhat embarrassing experience that ambushed me last week.

In a vain attempt to multitask, I wasn’t paying enough attention when I tried to open what I thought was a legitimate link to a video that had been sent to me on Facebook by a trusted friend. The friend is indeed trusted, but the link was NOT legitimate, and it had not been sent intentionally.

The net result was that I installed a vicious worm on my XP Pro system. As a result of this malicious intruder, any time I clicked on a search result (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc), my browser would be redirected to an advertising site. The same thing happened when I tried to go to blogs in my Google Reader. To make a bad situation worse, the worm also disabled some of the anti-spyware protection on my computer.

The very worst of it, however, was that although I was able to get rid of the worm by using standard anti-malware software, I was not able to repair the damage. I could not get my searches and my Google Reader to function properly To say the least, this was frustrating; and it was costly in terms of my time!

That’s my cautionary tale. Now for the happy ending and a tribute to the wonderful people who facilitated it.

I wasn’t aware of Geeks to Go! until I went in search of help with my Google redirect problem, but I’m extremely glad that I discovered this amazing community! Someone in Dublin, who goes by the name of Rorschach112, and who is a “moderator” with Geek University (Geek U), provided me with exactly the help that I needed in order to restore my system to normal.

The fix required a complex multi-step process, but the instructions were detailed, clear, and ultimately successful. I was also impressed by the fact that the personal response to my query on the appropriate Geeks to Go forum came just a few hours after I posted about my difficulty.

A brief exploration has revealed that Geeks to Go! is an online community that offers support on its forums for all manner of software and hardware issues. Here’s how they put it in their own words:

Geeks to Go offers free, quality technical support, in a non-technical way. We take pride in being a friendly, family site, that’s accessible to all.

It turns out that Geek U, which is part of Geeks to Go!, offers free intensive training in the “techniques and tools of malware removal”. Graduates of the training are expected to “pay it forward” by offering help on the forums of Geeks to Go!. Volunteers are encouraged to apply, but I could find absolutely no evidence of soliciting for financial support anywhere on the site.

I love the concept of Geeks to Go!– a community of people who help other people, just because they want to! On the basis of my initial experience with them, I can’t recommend Geeks to Go! highly enough.

Natural Reader Free (downloadable program)

Paul Hamilton — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:20:29 +0000

I’ve known of Natural Reader for a long time, but I’ve never written about it here. When I took a serious look at this text-to-speech software recently, I concluded that it almost certainly would be an essential tool for countless learners if it were available to them. Natural Reader is an impressive option that should be available to all learners who work in a Windows environment. Since there is an excellent free version available, there is no valid justification for not making Natural Reader available in schools everywhere.

Natural Reader 7.0 – Free Version offers a text-to-speech toolbar that will run on top of almost any program. This makes it an excellent option for learners who are still required to use Internet Explorer as their web browser. Natural Reader can be used to read e-mail, whether in Outlook, Thunderbird, GMail, or HotMail. Natural Reader works with word processors, and it works in web browsers. In short, the toolbar shown below works effectively with digital text almost everywhere.

In addition to the toolbar option, Natural Reader offers a window where copied text can be pasted. Whether using this window or the toolbar, it is easy to change the reading rate and the pitch of the voice. Program functions can be accessed with user-defined keyboard commands.

Natural Reader will work with the voices built into the Windows operating system. It is noteworthy that if additional voices are installed on the computer, these voices are available for use with Natural Reader Free. A selection of high quality voices can be purchased from Nextup for US$35.

Additional features, including high quality voices, are available in two commercial versions of Natural Reader. Judging by the quality of the free version, anyone thinking of purchasing text-to-speech software would do well to consider the Natural Reader options.

SchoolForge (online resource)

Paul Hamilton — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:56:46 +0000

I have an email subscription to Only the Best from Techcetera.ca. Yesterday’s email provided a link to a wonderful resource for anyone interested in free online educational resources.

SchoolForge.net has an important and worthy overarching mission:

SchoolForge’s mission is to unify independent organizations that advocate, use, and develop open resources for education. We advocate the use of open texts and lessons, open curricula, free software and open source in education.

I believe this cause is worth supporting. One practical outcome of the work of the SchoolForge community is a website that lists, describes, and links to over 80 online resources that are free of monetary cost to educators. These are mostly downloadable programs that run in Linux and Windows, with a lesser number also available for Mac. Some of the listed applications are browser based.

Resources at SchoolForge are categorized in a helpful user-friendly manner. The screenshot below shows the main headings.