Justin's Blog

 Posts Tagged ‘Web’

The other day, Richard wrote an interesting post on Facebook and parenting.  It’s a fascinating concept and one I tend to focus on the positive aspects of.  How else would I know if my daughter was eating fish fingers and custard or my neice was in desparate need of a new pair of Doc Martens if it were not for Facebook, Twitter and the like.

I am also fascinated by Facebooks willingness to change its basic interface.  Each change is followed by screams of “What has Facebook done” and “That’s it, I’m off to Twitter/MySpace/Google+/ThePub”.  However the new interface almost always brings benefits and people are even more upset when it changes.

We’ve gone through the same many times.  It’s one of the reasons we have both FirstPage and Dashboard running at the same time.

The latest innovation coming along is the Facebook Timeline, you have to jump through a few hoops to get it just now, but it’s worth it.

Below you can see mine (making this a very long post).  You can click on it to get to a bigger version on Flickr

What an awesome way to present data (and lose a few hours!)

Enjoy

:: Justin ::

Over the past few weeks, I have been testing a Chromebook.  It’s basically a laptop/netbook that only runs Google Chrome as a browser.

The question is, could you use a computer that doesn’t allow you to install anything (other than Chrome Apps).

Have you tried one?  Let me know what you think.

The answer for me is, “very nearly!”

Seems to me that this would be a great solution for Therap users (there are all sorts of enterprise controls available).

The only things I have found I really need to install are our Live Help application and there are times when Google Apps just doesn’t quite do enough for me and I need to use Excel.

Other than that, this thing is great.  It boots up very very quickly and as soon as I type in my Gmail address it is customized to me.  Then if I want someone else to use it, I log out and all of my stuff is safe on the cloud, they can log in and the computer becomes theirs.

So far the only thing I really don’t like about this Acer Chromebook is the clickable touchpad, I don’t see why I have to press so hard to click.

:: Justin ::

If like me you are always eager to use the latest and greatest version of a browser, you may have jumped all over Firefox 4 or the latest version of Chrome.

Unfortunately, as cool as both of these are (and I am now very tempted to go back to Firefox, especially given the way it syncs with its Android cousin) there have been some changes within them that casue problems within Therap.

Most notable of these is when submitting Attendance.

If you are experience, the solution for now is to revert to you previous browser.

We are working on this and hope to have a solution soon.

:: Justin ::

UPDATE: 4/24/11

This issue has now been resolved and Attendance will work just fine in Chrome or Firefox 4

Given Allison and Tony’s recent fawning over the iPad 2 and all things Apple, I thought it was about time I did a little on the things that are interesting me just now.

Top of these at the moment is some of the stuff that Amazon is up to.  I am a huge fan of shopping there, one of my rules in life is that if it is not sold by Amazon it probably is not worth having.

Then they started doing their video streaming service which include just about all my favourite old BBC shows like Blackadder, Red Dwarf, and Dr Who.

Then… they brought out their own Android App store to which my initial reaction was “eh?  what’s the point in that?” but it’s actually really quite fun.  Apart from the fact that they have a piad app for free every day, it’s a bit like having multiple record shops in your high street.  It’s nice to be able to choose where to shop and look at similar stuff presented differently.

And then…  they beat both Google and Apple by bringing out Cloud Drive it is wha you have always wanted from a music service.  You can upload your CD collection or buy music on Amazon.  Then you can listen to your collection from anywhere or download it onto any supported device.  It works like a dream and has very quickly replace Winamp as my music player of choice on my phone and computer.

It’s a fun time to be in the cloud.

:: Justin ::

We are in the process of making a whole lot of changes to our website to make it more useful for you.

Here’s a few of the highlights:

A new States page.  This will be the place where you can go and find information about what’s going on with Therap in your neck of the woods.  We’ve just got a few of them up just now, but over the coming weeks expect to see your state (and every other one up there).  If you have information that you think would be good to share with other Therap users and potential users in your state, please let us know so that we can include it.

An updated Community Page.  Wondering how to find us or what’s going on in Therapville?  Here’s a great place to start.

New blog URLs:  If you look up top you will see that my blog address just got shorter.  It’s now www.TherapServices.net/justin . you now have no excuse for not coming to see me!

The biggest plus for me is that we are using a new easy to update platform so we hope to keep you abreast of everything that is going on and make it really easy for you to find the support materials that you need.

Let me know what you think.

:: Justin ::

Today is my first experience trying out inflight internet access (on a flight from LaGuardia to Minneapolis/St Paul).

So far it has worked very well.  I've been emailing, IMing and Theraping at very acceptable speeds.

Is there anywhere left that you can't access Therap?

:: Justin ::

If you haven't thought about making the switch to Google Apps, maybe this will help:

:: Justin ::

Have you tried out Google Buzz yet?

Seems to be a bit of a Twiiter – clone though I am sure it will end up being their attempt to do Facebook.

Look me up there and let me know what you think

:: Justin ::

Yesterday, Google added bookmark syncing and extensions to its Chrome browser.

I love how quick and simple Chrome is, but the main reason I stick with Firefox is that I can build in a whole bunch of tools that I use regularly (such as ScribeFire which I am using to write this post) right into the browser with Firefox’s massive library of extensions.

I’m looking forward to seeing my favorites come over, and then my journey may be complete!

:: Justin ::

There is a lot of excitement our there in the world of mobile devices this week.

The Palm Pre just arrived on Verizon (shame, because if they had managed to get it there before the Droid, I would have been all over it, I am a huge fan and am still trying to figure out how to justify having two phones!)

Now, everyone is holding their breath to see what will happen on Wednesday with Apples big announcement, the possibility of a matching one from Verizon and more.  Rumours include the long awaited Applet Tablet (iTablet, iSlate, or whatever they are going to call it), Apple and Verizon working together, and much more.

My favourite place to keep up is Boy Genius Report.  Go check it our to find out more.

The good news in all this (other than Justin having more and better toys to play with) is that all of these advances make it quicker, easier, and cheaper to use Therap on the go and completely vindicate our initial vision of a web-based, browser based, cloud based system.  We had that vision when many people said there wouldn’t be computers in group homes and most of our customers were on dial-up connections!

Whenever people have asked us about mobile access, we have always said that mobile browsers would catch up and be the way to go.

Once again, it looks like we are being proved right.

:: Justin ::