Webmaster Tools tab Gadget broken by google

Posted on by primaryt

All of my webmaster tabs have been broken by googles latest update to the Webmaster Tools set 🙁 Nothing is showing up in igoogle and when i try add new gadgets it just brings through the whole page and not the important parts I need 🙁

Is everyone else experiencing the same level of fail?

Does anyone know if Google broke the webmaster gadgets?

Project Natal Games

Posted on by primaryt

I have been following the stuff about Project Natal and it looks like it could be really good for education.

I will try to summarize project Natal:
Move your whole body instead of your fingers. It has facial/sound recognition. I love how interactive project natal is and that makes it perfect for educational use.
I have 2 problems with Natal:
1) it requies an xbox360. By default schools assume an xbox360 is an arcade gaming console so the main function is gaming.
2) I don’t know how to code/develop games for Xbox 360 (I’m hoping that flash games will be playable as most educational games are flash based).
There needs to be a discussion into integrating this new type of full body control into new games. The functions and methods need to be simply integrated into existing resources. For example, if you have an old flash game that is just point + click. How does this new control type interface with that? Can you point at an object or do you have to slap it? what is a click, what isn’t? What is a drag/drop & What isn’t? How do we storage faces for facial recognition? Does this need to be part of the Windows Live login process? In which case will all pupils need a live account?
In an ideal world it would be open source but thats not going to happen. I will keep my ears to the ground and report back 🙂

As a side note, just imagine if the sensor comes out for vista or xp, how amazing would that be? This type of interactivity with your OS with full application support would make my brain drool.

I see this as being the future so I will be asking the guys at Primary Tech to look into it 🙂

Uber slick curved widescreen monitor by NEC for just $8000! Bargain, right?

Posted on by primaryt

NEC CRV-43 Curved Display Features:

  • Seamless curved screen, which eliminates bezel and screen gap issues for increased productivity and decreased frustration (according to Center for Human-Computer Interaction – Shupp et al, presented at Graphics Interface 2006)
  • 2880 x 900 double WXGA native resolution
  • 200 cd/m2 brightness
  • 0.02ms Rapid Response
  • 10,000:1 contrast ratio
  • Wide color gamut with 100% coverage of sRGB and 99.3% coverage of Adobe RGB
  • Single link DVI-D and HDMI 1.3 input connectors
  • USB 2.0 connectivity for easy use of peripherals
  • Front panel controls
  • On Screen Display (OSD) and software-based GUI, which enables advanced display control options

Hopefully one of our suppliers will read this and we will be able to review it and keep it 😛

Smaller sizes are available. At current these screens are not suitable for primary education due to their price & lack of being able to bring anything new to the users interface. I struggle to see how graphics designers and video editors will feel about this. Imagine 3d modelling on a none flat surface?

Who will win, 3d or curved? My moneys on interactive 3d screens for the workplace and curved for gamers/home. Hrm, curved 3d touch screen.. Drool…

Mission Accomplished :)

Posted on by primaryt

Woohoo, after several months of development work the new Primary School Safe Search site is live at http://primaryschoolict.com/

If you have your browsers home page set to http://primaryt.co.uk/google then it will automatically redirect you to the new site. You might want to change your browsers home page, this is available on the bottom right hand side of the page 🙂

Glad it’s finished, next project is PGA 🙂