TechBits

More Tech Learning Resources

I was catching up on my blog reading yesterday and ended up spending quite a bit of time at Jessamyn West's site, librarian.net. What caught my eye was her latest post "Free tech learning resources - short list"

I've written about digital literacy sites before here and here. Jessamyn's post caught my eye because of the graphic - parts of the handout are in Chinese! Turns out the New York Public Library put all of their tech handouts online and they're out there for everyone to use. And, in case you need them, they're available in Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish, and of course, English.

The other thing I learned in this post is that there's a Facebook group called Technology Training & Libraries. Request to join has been submitted - and accepted! Thanks, Jessamyn!

Firefox Redesign

You may have already noticed on the patron PCs that Firefox has had a redesign starting with Firefox 29.  The staff computers are updated less agressively as extensive testing with Koha needs to happen first.  Expect to see staff computers updated around the end of June or beginning of July.

In this video, Johnathan Nightingale, VP of Firefox, shows what's new in Firefox starting with version 29.

 

Trusted Reviews has more information about the changes.

Email shortcuts

Many of us will soon be moving to Office 365 for email, and some of us will be staying in Gmail. Here are some handy keyboard shortcuts to make all of our webmail experiences more efficient!

• Office 365 keyboard shortcuts
• Gmail keyboard shortcuts

Firefox and PDFs printing out blank

Has your library recently experienced patrons complaining that when they print out PDF files they come out blank?  Well, we know that the problem is being caused by a recent release of Firefox, specifically version 29.0 that was released on Tuesday, April 29, 2014.  By chance Tuesday night is the same night that we automatically update patron PCs with any new applications, so all patron PCs got this version of Firefox the day it was released.  After we received numerous reports about this we started investigating and saw that lots of Firefox users were experiencing the same problem.  People were saying that when you did a print preview of the PDF file it looked just fine, but then when it was printed out all you got was a blank page.

Thankfully, Mozilla got right to work on this problem and released Firefox 29.0.1 on Friday, May 9, 2014.  So the next Tuesday evening all patron PCs got this update, which fixes the PDF printing problem.  If you are still getting reports of PDFs printing out blank then find out which patron PC it was printed from and verify the Firefox version on that PC.  This is done with the following steps:

1. Open Firefox
2. Click on the Help menu item
3. Click About Firefox in the dropdown menu
4. The version will be listed in the window that opens

If you see 29.0.1 then you are ok, but if you don't then please call the Help Desk to get the update installed.  Please note: this is only for patron PCs as staff PCs have their Firefox updated by us because we use it for Koha.

New Folders Shortcut

I discovered after creating several folders for a project I’m working on a faster way of doing this task. Before I used to right click with the mouse and choose New and Folder. That seemed extremely repetitive and very boring. Now, it’s just ordinary repetitive and ordinary boring. By using the keyboard shortcut of Ctrl + Shift + N, I cut the amount of time I spent on my project by seconds.

New OverDrive Account

In late April, OverDrive released the latest version of the OverDrive App which includes a new feature - the OverDrive Account.

Why, you may ask, would I want another account? If your patrons want to sync their progress and bookmarks across multiple devices, this is the way to do it in OverDrive. I tested this out last week and here's what I found out.

In order for this to work, the title needs to be downloaded onto all devices and you need to be signed into your account. In my example, I used my iPhone and iPad mini. I downloaded and started reading on my iPad. Then, I opened the OverDrive app on my phone, signed into my account, downloaded the title and this is the message I received. When I tapped Yes, I was taken to the page I left off at on my iPad.

In addition to syncing, having an account will save you time in a few ways. Patrons are continually getting a new device or phone. If they have an OverDrive account, all they need to do after they download the OverDrive App is to sign in and any libraries and saved searches will be there. In addition, OverDrive will automatically activate your new device with Adobe Digital Editions. That, in itself, is quite the timesaver. Patrons can have up to six devices synced with their account and activated with the same Adobe ID.

You can find more information about this new feature on the OverDrive Help page. And, this account doesn't replace the need for a library card to check out titles from Wisconsin's Digital Library.

 

Hackable or Uncrackable?

Hackable or Uncrackable? A fun video from Intel about password security...

Play the password game and see how a password you create might measure up (don't use your real passwords!). After you test your password, you'll get helpful tips for taking your password from hackable to uncrackable.