We’ve just finished some updates to the Primary Blogger servers which should increase access speed and fix any issues with image uploads experienced over the last few days.
Category: primary technology
PrimaryPad Chrome extension keeps track of the pads you used
Ever forgotten the URL of a Primary Pad you have been working on? Well now this very simple Chrome extension will help you remember by providing a really simple click link.
Bye bye Skype. Hello mumble!
After Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype things have gone from bad to “omg are you kidding me?”. Skype now installs bloatware on your computer and the frequency of adverts being displayed on your screen increasing dramatically I felt it was time to leave the sinking ship.
Don’t get me wrong, I used Skype daily and it’s still got some great projects running but Microsoft have a history of really messing up services like Skype but forcing us to all use them. Sure we loved Skype before it got bloated, I remember when I used to install Skype and only use it for calls, now I’m constantly finding myself in a state of frustration when I have 20 ads to close, 50 payment reminders or the service fails to perform.
Primary Technology out-grew Skype. I didn’t want video conferencing, I wanted more people in an audio call and PrimaryT now has 20+ members of staff so I needed something distraction free, light weight, reliable, free and barrier free.
Skype’s recent partnering with Facebook and MySpace sends even more shudders down my spine. I don’t trust Microsoft much and I don’t trust Facebook at all, I’m not alone on this and there are plenty of reasons why such as Microsoft’s patent on eavesdropping calls and the idea of integrating Facebook with my audio calls leaves me in a dark, worried place. We should also remember that voice / language detection technology is so advanced that if you think a transcript can’t be made of your phone conversations you are horrible naive (a bit like the Facebook facial recognition stuff everyone said wasn’t computationally possible).
I also worry about the idea of bringing “credits” into social networks, at what point will I have to pay to ask someone to be my friend?
Say hello to Mumble
I was first introduced to Mumble by a member of the Piraten Partiet, they use it with hundereds of people to hold their voice conferences. Imagine 400 people on one phone call? It should be chaos right? Wrong. If you are a gamer: Mumble is like Vent/Teamspeak but completely open source and much better audio quality. If you’re not a gamer.. What you need to know about Mumble is that it’s a client/server service. You can’t make calls to land lines. A few major downers for teachers are that you need someone to host a mumble server for your school and there is no video calls. Who even finds video calls productive anyway? I never did…
Mumble’s client is great, it’s so unbelievably easy to use and lightweight, the whole project has a really good feel to it and I expect to see some really great things coming soon!
Setting Safe Search as the default home page across your whole school
Creating a Group Policy Object (GPO) to set Safe Search as your Homepage
- Open Group Policy Management Console – It is found under Administrative Tools on the server Start Menu
- Right click on Group Policy Objects and select New
- Name the policy “Users – Set Homepage” – This will be a user policy rather than a computer policy, using a meaningful description will help administration later on.
- Right click on the policy and select Edit. The Group Policy Editor will now open.
- Browse through the tree structure to display Important URLs in the right hand side of the browser
User Configuration > Windows Settings > Internet Explorer Maintenance > URLs
- Right click on Important URLs and select Properties
Enter the following address for the homepage URL into the dialogue box
Http://www.primaryschoolict.com
- Click on Ok and close the Group Policy Editor
- Within the Group Policy Management Window browse to the Organisational Unit containing your school users
- Right click on the Organisation Unit and select Link an existing GPO.
- Select your new GPO from the list and click Ok
- Your new GPO is now linked and will be applied to the users contained within the Organisational Unit you selected
Please be aware if you have another GPO applied at a higher level, for example in the Default Domain Policy settings may not be applied as anticipated. This can happen if you have two conflicting GPO’s. For example if you have two policies to set the homepage, one using www.bbc.co.uk and another using www.google.co.uk, one of the setting will take precedence.
PrimaryPad now supports Speech input
You can now chat with PrimaryPad using speech input (only supported in Google Chrome). This new feature allows you to talk into the chat dialogue saving those important finger muscles to do furious desk tapping and head scratching.
Try it out and let us know 