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Archive for February, 2009

Cheap Microsoft Software: At work licensing

2009/02/09 Leave a comment

University staff can purchase the following Microsoft software for a nominal fee (<£20, including s&h) under the Microsoft at Work agreement:

  1. Office Enterprise 2007 Work at Home Media
  2. Office Mac 2008 Work at Home Media
  3. Windows XP Professional w/SP3 Work at Home Student Media
  4. Windows Vista Business w/SP1 Upgrade Work at Home Media
  5. Project Pro 2007 Win32 English Disk Kit Student Media EMEA Only CD
  6. Visual Studio Pro 2008 English Disk Kit Student Media EMEA Only DVD
  7. Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Win32 English Disk Kit Student Media EMEA

 

I put the Order form for staff on: “J:\Humanities arts and languages (HAL)\Language_services\software\Microsoft\Work at Home order form from Civica – London Met U.pdf”.

Categories: Documents, Institution-is-London-Metropolitan-University Tags: ,

Adobe-PDF support

2009/02/09 Leave a comment

Students often need to convert PDF files to Word, beyond having to select and copy/paste page by page in Acrobat Reader, text (preserve formatting, images, tables), including deleting carriage returns.

 

Re the latter, AFAIK even Acrobat Full cannot retain paragraphs without breaking it up line by line with carriage returns. This seems to be inherent to the nature of pdf as a page drawing language concerned with representation, not content.


Most students also need to convert from Word to PDF, e.g. for their CVs.

 

The Moorgate software image does not only seem to include “Acrobat Reader 9, but also an unspecified “PDF conversion utility” which seems to be PdfCreator 0.9 (see http://www.pdfcreator.de.vu). I explain using it here.

 

There are a number of other free pdf-creators around, with varying abilities, like primopdf, winpdf, bullzip… If you find something better, add a comment here.

 

There is also a free “Create PDF” service at http://www.acrobat.com/, limited to 5 pdfs (per email address?), and a conversion from pdf to html at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/access_onlinetools.html.

 

KDE office on Linux is said to be able to convert PDF to editable formats.

 

Gmail and Google docs can view PDF documents as HTML in the browser.

 

Note that Office 2007 can convert Word to PDF (and much more) and that  HE Students can buy all of Office 2007 Ultimate at a hardly more than nominal fee (< £40) through http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-uk/default.aspx.

 

University staff can get Microsoft Software for a nominal fee under the Work “at home” license agreement, see here.


For further study, refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PDF_software#Converters_5

 

Categories: Institution-is-London-Metropolitan-University Tags: ,

Instant language services support on office and classroom IT lab computers. Part I: Initial Setup

2009/02/08 Leave a comment
  • If you have Windows XP on your office computer, we can use MS-Messenger (ver 4.7) “Application Sharing”  to provide immediate live assistance with computer problems in remote parts (also useful for collaboration with colleagues on documents, including web pages, when a phone call is too little and a meeting is too much).
  • click “Start”, “Run”, type (or copy/paste): “C:\Program Files\Messenger\msmsgs.exe“, click “OK”
  • Initial setup (you have to do this only once)
  • “Add a .net passport to your windows xp user account”:
  • Email account
  • Users of http://hale-translation.groups.live.com/, http://hale-interpreting.groups.live.com/, or the  Interpreting online calendar (http://calendar.live.com) can re-use their windows live account
  • Other users can use existing hotmail/windows live accounts or create a new hotmail/windows live  account (you may want to create a separate account for work related messaging)
  • On your office computer, also check the checkbox to “Associate your account with your windows user account”, like here: , when asking for help on a student computer, uncheck this
  • Add “Thomas_plagwitz” at “hotmail.com” as a contact (initially, I will have to accept this before you can contact me):
  • Click on “I Want To … Add A Contact” (green plus sign)
  •  Once set up with Messenger like described here, go to PART II.

 

Categories: Distance-education-format-is-Synchronous, e-infrastructure, Institution-is-London-Metropolitan-University Tags: , ,

Instant language services support on office and classroom IT lab computers. Part II: Usage

2009/02/08 Leave a comment
  • Once set up, if you have Windows XP on your office computer, we can use MS-Messenger “Application Sharing” to provide immediate live assistance with computer problems in remote parts (also useful for collaboration with colleagues on documents, including web pages, when a phone call is too little and a meeting is too much).

 

Click “Start”, “Run”, type (or copy/paste): “C:\Program Files\Messenger\msmsgs.exe“, click “OK”.

  • Start a conversation by double clicking on the user icon (“Thomas Plagwitz” or whoever) in your contact list.
  • Right Menu: Section: “I want to” / “Start Application Sharing”
  • All is well if the other party has “accepted your invitation”, like above – allow some time for the screen sharing to start up on old computers.
  • When a dialogue comes up which asks you which application to share, use “Desktop”, like below  – this will allow the other party to see your screen. 
  • At the end of the session, “Unshare” your desktop, or simply end the “conversation”.
Categories: Distance-education-format-is-Synchronous, e-infrastructure, Institution-is-London-Metropolitan-University Tags: , ,