Here is an example screenshot from Backup Box

It seems kind of ok at first, except that none of the bubbles are the same size. Google is the worst for this, at least the vertical height of the Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Buffer widgets are equal.

Ignoring bubble size, lets look at how I implemented this.

First up, Facebook:

<div class=”fb-like” data-href=”http://www.mybackupbox.com” data-send=”false” data-layout=”box_count” data-font=”verdana” style=”top:-3px;right:-1px”></div>

I need to add a div for them, for whatever reason, then paste in a bunch of wonky JS to get the right tags and link to their script. The final part is the actual like div, which I expect. They make use of the HTML5 compliant data attributes, which is awesome. You’ll notice that I had to modify the styles to actually line it up with the other widgets. One should not have to do that. You’ll also notice that their JS source is a nice // instead of http or https, this gets around browser rules about insecure content. More about this later.

Next we have Twitter, they’re my second favourite:

Twitter uses an a tag instead of an, no big deal. They also make use of data attributes, so thumbs up. I add a line of javascript but I still have to actually write some JS instead of just linking… *sigh*

Now Google:

What the heck? 10,000 engineers can’t come up with something a bit simpler than this? I’ll give them credit for using a sprite (since if you manually change the height of their iframe in the console you can see all the images), but not much else. Data attributes are good. Tons of stupid javascript is not.

LinkedIn, the best share button implementation on the internet!:

Damn, that was simple! Two lines! There is ONE problem with LinkedIn’s implementation that I’ll mention further down.

Last but not least is Buffer. These guys are new to the scene, doing an awesome job, so I try to support them:

Ok, Buffer does a great job too, following in the footsteps of Twitter and LinkedIn, no doubt. Their only mark against them is they don’t support HTTPs. I actually had removed them from our homepage at the time of writing because of this.

The BIGGEST problem that ALL of these buttons have is that they don’t support a data-href without a protocol prefix, ie. //. Every one, excluding Google+ requires me to specific http:// or https://. This is a serious problem if you have an SSL certificate. For example, Facebook discriminates likes between https and whether you include the www prefer in your domain. There’s a potential four different like counts the we can have. I can either change the code to https://mybackupbox.com and lose our likes or leave it as http://www.mybackupbox.com and retain them. I shouldn’t have to make this decision For new companies like Buffer, having their javascript link not support SSL means that I have to remove them or have the “mark of the beast” beside my URL.

"Mark of the beast 2.0"

A few things to mention. A good share button will have:

• One <div> tag where the button will go
• One <script> link to an external file
• All settings are defined using HTML5 data attributes
• Support for non-prefixed links to their scripts, eg. //twitter.com/plugin.js
• Support for non-prefixed data-href links for their buttons so developers are forced to choose.

This post barely scratches the surface when it comes to share buttons. We’re only using the bubble count style and each widget has multiple form factors. Hopefully these companies can get it together and standardize on things. Maybe that’ll be my next project? Who knows.

If you liked this post you should follow me on Twitter: @EricWarnke

You should also check out our latest project, http://mybackupbox.com

If you own a small business, or a startup, then you absolutely need to use Google Apps. Hands down, Google Apps is the best tool to manage your business. There’s a reason over 4 million businesses have switched.

Your role as a startup owner is to run your damn business, not fiddle around with mail servers and worry about document backup. That’s where Google Apps comes in.

Google Apps is FREE for small business and startups who have less than 10 user accounts. If you need more than that you’re either funded, have revenue, or you have too many partners anyway. You can find Google Apps’ free page here.

Step 1:

Enter your domain name, obviously. Or you can buy one if you don’t already have it. I’ll assume you already own one.

Step 2:

Fill out the Account Administrator fields. I only fill out what is required. First Name, Last Name, Email Address, Phone, and Country/Region. Make sure your administrator email address is something you will never lose access to, you will need this if you ever have to reset your password, which has happened to me.

Step 3:

Select your administrator account email and password, I usually just pick eric (or admin if it’s a client). This counts as your first account.

Step 4:

Set it up! Your Apps account will prompt you to run through a setup wizard. If you think you’ll learn something then go ahead and walk through it. Personally I like to just learn as I go, so I just close the dialog box.

Step 5:

Before doing anything else you need to activate Google Apps. You can ignore anything else until you do this since there’s no point in using Apps unless your domain name knows what to do with it.

Google tells you that the recommended way is to upload a special HTML file to your server so you can prove you own the domain. But there are alternatives!

I prefer to select the Add a DNS record to your domain’s configuration option. The reason I do this is two-fold: 1. I don’t like random HTML files or META tags that serve no purpose, and 2. I need to be in the DNS record screen of my domain management software in a few moments anyway!

Since I use Media Temple to host my DNS records, even if I host the website elsewhere, I have to select Other since Google Apps doesn’t have instructions for how to verify a Google Apps account with Media Temple. Good thing I’m writing them here!

The instructions for verifying an account with Media Temple should be fairly similar to any other web host or domain registrar. I’m using Media Temple’s Grid Server service which lets me host up to 100 domains on a shared server for very cheap.

I edit the DNS Zone File so I can add the custom TXT record that Google has given me.

You will have various settings. Simply click Add a Record, select a TXT type for the record, leave the name blank, and paste in the TXT value that Google Apps gave you. Hit Save.

Media Temple’s DNS propagates instantly so as soon as I saved the new TXT record I can click the Verify button back in my Apps tab and it instantly verified my account!

Step 6:

Arguably the best reason to use Google Apps is for email. So let’s Activate your email. On the home dashboard for Apps you’ll see the different services that you have available to you. You’ll notice that there are some really ugly links like http://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/surrealwifi.com. Don’t worry, we’ll fix those in a bit.

For now, click Activate Email.

This next page has a ton of information. Google Apps does a good job of explaining how to set up your MX (mail exchange) records but again they don’t have Media Temple as an option. It’s all pretty generic anyway. Here are instructions on how to set up your Google Apps email with Media Temple’s Grid Service.

Remember that DNS Zone File that we were editing back in step 5? Yeah, we need that again. I start by clicking the Add a Record button 5 times since we need to add 5 MX records. Change each new record type to MX from their drop down menus.

Google Apps prefers if you set priorities for the records. Media Temple doesn’t have a specific field for this so we prefix them with their numbers. This of course could vary depending on your host. If in doubt, Google says to leave the priority blank and just make sure they are in the right order.

I use these:

• 10 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
• 20 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
• 20 ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
• 30 ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
• 30 ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.

Leave the names blank, just change the values.

Save the new MX records and then click I’ve completed these steps in Activate Email screen for your Apps account. You will be taken back to the home dashboard and under email it says “We are checking MX records for your domain. This may take 48 hours to complete.” In reality it usually takes less than an hour.

Don’t close this tab, we still need it!

Now let’s change those ugly URLs that are set by default.

Step 7:

Click Settings from the menu bar at the top of your Apps account.

I mainly use Email, Docs, and Calendar, so let’s change those URLs. The latest version of Google Apps lets us change them all at once.

Click Change URL under the Calendar section.

Then click Change URLs for all domain services

For the heck of it let’s change all the URLs. I’ve left the default suggestions like docs., calendar., email., etc.

Hit Continue.

Head back to your DNS Zone File settings. If you’re like me, which is slow, your host might log you out for taking too long. That’s ok, just log back in and find those settings again! I actually reload the page just to make sure that I’m logged in, otherwise I might make a bunch of changes just to find out that I’m logged out, and that is a real kick in the teeth.

Add 5 more records. Change their types to CNAME.

In the Name section of each record enter in your custom URLs prefixes. I left them as default so I used:

• mail
• start
• calendar
• docs
• sites

Each record should have the value set to ghs.google.com. Save them. Your provider might spit out an error saying that you have two records the conflict. For me, Media Temple creates a mail record by default, so I just deleted their default one so the only thing left was my Google Apps record.

Click I’ve completed these steps in your Apps account and they should all redirect. This was instant for me but it all depends on your DNS.

At the time of this writing, Google Apps doesn’t support custom URLs for their Contacts feature.

Your Media Temple DNS records should now look like this!

Now would be a good time to test out your custom URLs. Just type http://mail.[yourdomain].com to try it out.

Step 8:

By the time I’d finished the custom URLs, the Email section on the page now said “Updating Google servers… This may take up to 1 hour to complete. We are updating Google servers to enable email for your users.” Hardly 48 hours, eh?

I suppose there really isn’t a step 8. You’re pretty much done. Plus this post is already over 1200 words… thanks for sticking around!

Google Apps has many more features to explore and they are really pushing their app marketplace. Personally I don’t use any marketplace apps, but you might find them interesting.

If you’re clicking around your Google Apps dashboard you might want to try the following:

• In Settings
  • Enable Calendar labs to get the latest features.
  • Enable the Preview for the new Contacts manager.
  • Change the default document visibility in Docs so you don’t have to share it with your coworkers every time you make a new document.
  • Enable Google Sync in the mobile section so you can add your new account to your smartphone the proper way.
• In Domain Settings
  • Enable SSL to Automatically enforce Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connections when your users access Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and Sites. In short, it makes your accounts a lot more secure if.
  • Upload your own logo to customize the branding of your Google Apps account.

I would not enable 2-factor authentication. I had a really bad experience with it when I moved from Canada to Chile and time zones changed and my authenticator iOS app wasn’t working and blah blah blah. It was also really annoying in general.

This post is really long, and has 8 steps, but Google Apps is so worth it.

Please post any questions, comments, or suggestions below!

In order to take an API call to Piwik and use the returned JSON to generate a custom graph with jqPlot, do this:

    $.getJSON(url, function(data) {
        var i = 0;
        var line1 = new Array();
        $.each(dates, function(x, y) {
            line1[i] = [x,y];
            i++;
        });

        $.jqplot("chartdiv", [line1],
        {
        // the rest of your jqPlot options
        });
    });

The part that took me a while to wrap my head around was that jqPlot requires an array of arrays for the data points. Hopefully this is helpful to whomever finds it.

Click "Move" to select a new location

Since I have my work and regular documents properly synced across all my machines it was time to sync the rest of my work flows. I run all my email through various Google App accounts and I check them on my main computers using Thunderbird. For web browsing I use Firefox exclusively unless I’m forced to use something else.

I have a basic set of add-ons  that I use, such as Minimize to Tray, Faviconize Tab, All-in-One Gestures, Delicious, and Copy Link Text. I had installed these separately but various settings like my bookmarks toolbar and icon arrangement get changed. The way to fix this was to move my Thunderbird and Firefox profiles to the Dropbox so they stay in sync.

It’s quite simple:

1. Create two folders in your Dropbox for both profiles. I just called mine “Firefox” and “Thunderbird”.
2. Locate your current default profiles and copy their contents to the respective ones you just made.
3. Mozilla.org says to find them like this:
   • Firefox:
     • On Windows Vista/XP/2000 the path is usually %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\
     • On Linux the path is usually ~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/
     • On Mac OS X the path is usually ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/
     • More details here
   • Thunderbird:
     • On Windows Vista/XP/2000 the path is usually %APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\ or just browse to C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\ on Windows XP/2000 or C:\users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\ on Windows Vista, and the rest should be obvious.
     • On Windows 95/98/Me the path is usually C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Thunderbird\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\
     • On Linux the path is usually ~/.thunderbird/xxxxxxxx.default/
     • On Mac OS X the path is usually ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/
     • More details here
4. Once you’ve copied the contents of your default folders over you need to delete them.
5. Now run the profile manager for each program by running each one with the -p flag enabled. It’s easiest to type “firefox.exe -p” and “thunderbird.exe -p” from the run command in the Start menu.
6. You now need to create new profiles for each
   

   Create a new profile

   

   Select the new destination folders in your Dropbox

7. Once you’ve create a new profile you can delete the old default one from the list. The new one will become the default option.
   

   The new folders with your profiles

8. That’s it! You’ve now moved your Firefox/Thunderbird profiles to your Dropbox. On subsequent computers simply create a new  profile and point it at your Dropbox profile folders, you shouldn’t copy the old profiles over. Make sure you delete the default profile and then start up Firefox/Thunderbird and your settings will be the same (once Dropbox syncs).

The only problem I’ve had is that some existing plugins needed to be reinstalled after the first copy, however, before you reinstall anything that claims to be incompatible you should simply try searching for updates and restarting Firefox/Thunderbird.

Leave a comment if you’ve managed to do this or something similar with success.

—-Update—-

Ok, so for the record the above “does work”. However, I quickly realized that all my email takes up a crapload of space in the Dropbox and Thunderbird doesn’t necessarily change for me that often, so I undid my profile changes.

Also, for the sake of speed, and proper caching, you should definitely move your Firefox cache by typing “about:config” in the address bar. Find (or create by right-click > New > String) the entry “browser.cache.disk.parent_directory”. Set it to the absolute location of when you want the cache to be. I set mine to “C:\Documents and Settings\Eric\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\eric\cache” which is pretty much where it used to be, but you can put it anywhere. Then go back and delete your old cache out of the Dropbox for good measure.

Hope that help!

Open-Mesh.com is slowly but surely improving. Just recently I noticed their homepage changed slogans. It went from something like “WiFi for the developing world” to “WiFi Where You Need It”. I like the latter, myself.

New firmware updates have also happened and beta 1.21 has been released. There was a glitch upgrading to the c953 firmware because of the technique used to upgrade. This required a lot of people to manually reset their routers if they were using the test firmware. They fixed the problem by using the “normal” way to upgrade and version c955 went off without a hitch.

According to Antonio Anselmi, author of the ROBIN mesh network software which powers Open-Mesh, says that the latest kernel is about a week away. Yay!

A picture of the schedule is here:

I went to

• Financing an Idea
• What Problem Does The Semantic Web Solve?
• Angel Fund, U of A, Robert
• Evolution of Nexopia
• Why Twitter Will Rule The World
• Emerging Mobile Platforms

I also led a session on Edmonton Wireless & WiFi Mesh Networks with Mack Male.

One of the most interesting conversations I had was with a fellow named Clark Murray. Clark and three other guys have created a great product called dub5 which stands for the 5 W’s in everyone’s life, the Who What Where When and Why. Essentially dub5 is a new take on scheduling and calendar management. Their major advantage over competitors like Outlook and Google Calendar is their text message integration. Personally I love this and I hope to be using it as soon as it’s ready.

Since all the video I took of my sessions ended up being like 300mb a piece and 20 minutes long I haven’t finished uploading them to Google Video yet. However, check out the quick demo I had the dub5 guys give me.

I’m reading up on Joomla! It’s a seriously kick-ass open-source application. I’m a bit miffed that I haven’t taken a closer look at it until now.

The reason I’m reading up on Joomla is because I accepted the IT Director’s position for the Alberta School of Business Students Association (BSA). It’s not a “real” IT Director’s position where I implement new grandiose technologies and run a huge department or anything. This is basically a service position for the students where I help maintain their website, publish updates, work with the Students Union to do our BSA elections, and help students get personalized business cards if they want. The great thing is I can do this while I’m in Germany.

Rob, one of my best friends and my employer for the summer, and I are going to try and rework his old site Equine Edmonton, I’m going to suggest we use Joomla! to streamline any problems we’ll run into.

Does anyone see a problem with doing contract web design and then implementing prefabbed infrastructure like WordPress of Joomla!?

Travelling Forever has an old post about keeping everything on a USB key instead of a computer. I think this is interesting, but outdated. I wouldn’t want to rely solely on my USB key when I know I’m screwed if I lose it. I prefer to rest easy on the fact that I can do the majority of my work with simply an internet connection.

For the last few months I’ve basically not needed a personal computer. This began when I moved all my email accounts to the IMAP format. More specifically my personal email at my own domain is hosted by GMail so I just have to log in from wherever. The best part about this is I can use my main computer if I wish and still use Thunderbird, but if I want I can jump on a computer at school or even use my cell phone to check my email. I was originally going to set up my own IMAP server and try to fiddle around with everything myself but I figure it’s simpler to just let Google do it for me. It’s free and reliable and I don’t have to play tech support for myself. Read Google’s Email Switch Guide.

Along with Google I use their calendar system. It’s a great program that I can access anywhere there is an internet connection. I use it to schedule almost anything I do, and using a service called GooSync I can sync all my calendars with my phone. I haven’t found a better calendar system that lets me easily share my events with other people. I’ll admit the GooSync site looks a little unprofessional but it’s straight forward and any reviews I read called it legit. It hasn’t failed me yet

A major problem I had in the past was having my bookmarks around when I wanted them. I tried out Foxmarks for a little while but I didn’t like the whole syncing idea. Now I use del.icio.us and it works amazingly. If I’m going to be on one computer for an extensive period of time I’ll install the add-on in Firefox, but otherwise I can just log in and search my own bookmarks. del.icio.us is also a great alternative to your regular search engine. See my del.icio.us bookmarks here.

As far as homepages go I used to make my own little link filled page that I’d write in HTML. Now I use Netvibes exclusively. It aggregates all the RSS feeds that I want and keeps track of what I’ve read and it doesn’t force me to leave the page. Netvibes has got literally hundreds of custom written widgets that you can plug into your homepage and all you have to do is log in. Comparable to Netvibes you have iGoogle, Pageflakes, and MyYahoo. I’ve introduced several friends to Netvibes and they have mostly converted away from iGoogle. Netvibes also lets me keep a little list of handy links that I use often, such as banking and school websites. It also has nifty plugins for Facebook and GMail which will update themselves automatically.

Another huge obstacle you’ll face with leaving your laptop behind is how to access your files! You could leave it running at all times and set up some sort of server or VNC to your machine whenever you need something. This is pretty technical and it doesn’t leave much redundancy of your data. What I’ve been doing for the last several months is keeping a copy of any relevant documents on a USB key. I used to have a nifty Swiss Army knife that my dad gave me for high school graduation several years ago. This had a small 128mb dongle inside, but unfortunately I left it in a school computer one day Now I have an awesome SanDisk Cruzer micro 4GB stick on my key chain. Unfortunately it comes with this pesky U3 Launchpad software, you can get a removal tool though.

For the record I’m not a big fan of syncing anything. I’d much rather have a static copy available remotely at any time, but for the sake of redundancy I have been syncing my personal files.

The best way I’ve found so far to sync important folders is to use Microsoft’s own SyncToy v2.0 Beta. I use this in for two reasons, 1. to keep a copy of my important data with me at all times and 2. to keep a backup of my important data. Every time I use my laptop and I’ve made changes to either work or school documents I plug in my USB key and run the SyncToy shortcut I pasted in there. I simply hit Run All and in a few seconds SyncToy has made a carbon copy of any files that have changed. I try my best not to change both locations are the same time but if that happens SyncToy politely asks you what you want to do. You can create as many folder pairs as you want. Tom’s Guide has a rough introduction to different syncing programs.

I’m finding it’s really nice to not worry about lugging around a laptop or when I’m next going to be able to come home to check my email. It’s really freeing to know I can go to almost any computer out there and work just as I would normally at home. I even did my cafe’s payroll on a computer I’d never used before simply because it was convenient for me to do so. The only limitation you’ll face is whether the computers you’re using have the software you need, like the Office or Adobe suites.

My friend Mack suggested that this I’m some sort of “internet nomad” because of this. Does anyone else have similar experience distancing themselves from their computers?

Until recently my router only went a few feet past my building. It doesn’t help that I’m in an old cinder block building and the router was at the back. When I was still working for Nexopia I had schemed with a few of the engineers there about bouncing free wifi down Whyte Avenue using different repeaters. We came up with some grand schemes but nothing materialized mostly due to the time and cost restraints we all had.

Traditional wifi networks require the customization of each router, known as a node or repeater. I bought a Linksys WRT54GS router with plans for re-flashing the device with my own firmware. However after a lot of research I realized I didn’t have the technical expertise to do that. I could teach myself but it would take me a long time to become familiar enough with Linux to properly implement the router.

A while went by and I just kept offering free wifi to my customers in the cafe. Then along came Edmonton’s NextGen focus group on municipal wifi. Before I attended I once again opened up my research for free wireless networks and I stumbled across a company named Meraki and the idea of an open-mesh wifi network. I decided to order one of the Meraki Outdoor Pro repeaters.

I went to the municipal wifi focus group and we talked mostly about where to recommend the city implements free wifi. I was a bit turned off by the idea of leaving it up to the city’s IT department to make recommendations on how to implement this sort of system. If it’s anything like the U of A, it will be ancient, expensive, and unreasonably secure. I let everyone know I had already been considering this and I would be going ahead with my own experiment. This was met with a lot of encouragement because it’s exactly what the city needs to see in order to get something done. Perfect.

The idea behind a mesh network is that one plugs in a gateway node to a hard line to the internet. This node starts broadcasting a wifi signal. Any additional nodes that are given power within range pick up this signal and start repeating it. This is all automatic without any setup. You can only repeat a signal so far before the quality degrades, so every once in a while you’ll need to add another hard line. With enough nodes you can blanket whatever size area you want.

Meraki is a great concept… but with faults. They create neat looking wireless repeaters that have all the firmware pre-installed out of the box. Unpacking and plugging in my router was as simple as that, unpacking it and plugging it in. Then I logged on to their management page and put in my order number and it automatically connected to my device.

Meraki has one of the slickest dashboards I’ve seen for anything hardware related. It lets you map where your nodes and are track who is using it. As well you can introduce payment structures for people accessing your wifi if you’re greedy enough to do it.

Where Meraki fails is in letting their customers customize the product. Initially you were able to hack the devices however you want until Meraki decided to remotely update each device’s firmware and change their EULA. Read more here: http://www.virishi.net/from-happy-hacking-screw-you-story-meraki

Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of creative control with the splash page for my router. The splash page is going to be how I justify deploying these nodes. If a few ads on a welcome screen can cover the cost of the hardware I’ll keep adding them. So far I’m going to sit on this one for a month and see what the usage is like.

Meraki pros:

• Simple to use
• Great tracking and management software
• Payment options
• Super easy to expand

Meraki cons:

• Expensive!
• Very little plash page customization
• Extremely vague on payment terms and what sort of cut they get
• Evil ad bar for regular versions
• Evil EULA that doesn’t let you modify their hardware

Since Tuesday afternoon there have been 42 unique users of the network, and only about 5 have been inside my cafe. The Meraki repeater is supposedly good for around 700ft., and I can get a connection well down the street in several coffee shops. Right now it’s suction cupped to one of my windows.

In the future I’ll be looking more into Open-Mesh.com, the open source wifi mesh project that is much cheaper and fully customizable.

Since the last post we have had to create a continuation of our project websites as well as contribute to a group collaboration wiki. The website was easy enough to do, however we were still instructed to use FrontPage (discontinued in 2006). This time we needed to insert some Access databases into our websites and make them editable. To do this our instructors provided us with a nifty little template that does all the work for you, but you had to attend the labs to get it. I did not. So I did it the more realistic way, manually… and by manually I ran a database wizard in FrontPage, not terribly tricky.

A couple other stupid and unrealistic things we were required to do included adding a scrolling marquee and password protecting a page by making the password the name of the page. First of all a scrolling marquee is something no self-respecting web designer would ever implement and I seriously doubt any company would ask you do use it. Secondly, security through obscurity is probably the worst thing you could do. You might as well not bother to link the page.

For our wiki project the entire course of approximately 450 students needed to contribute significant work to a class wiki about MIS. There were 64 topics on various technology issues and about 15-20 students assigned to each topic.

Now, before I get started, this is an interesting idea but it was the worst executed project I’ve ever participated in. One of my profs, Ofer Arazi has spent a great deal of time researching and working with online social collaboration like wikis. He’s a great prof and he has done a good job teaching the class. Unfortunately this assignment was not properly thought through by the entire department, it was not any one persons fault.

I was assigned to edit Application Architecture, Peer-to-Peer Networking, and Software Application Generation Tools. Joy.

Our assignment was to contribute meaningful, useful entries that required “effort”. There was a short list describing what “effort” was and it includes everything from original content to reformatting for readability.

When I started my work the pages I was assigned to were pretty well fleshed out, albeit blatantly plagiarized. So I decided to contribute my “effort” through deleting irrelevant and useless content as well as reformatting the articles and properly referencing sources. The hitch with all the types of contributions is that if you’re moderately competent you can argue 100% at the end of the day if you’ve done even a little bit of work.

There were two major flaws with this project:
1. The wiki couldn’t handle everyone at once.
2. It’s peer marked, each student is responsible for grading two articles (40 different students).

1. Poorly designed wiki

The following bit of dialogue between myself and the course coordinator further reinforces my feelings of being robbed of precious tuition dollars. I posted this in our open discussion board accessible by students and faculty.

Me:

I’ve noticed the server hosting the wiki is excrutiationly slow. So slow that my session likes to time out when viewing pages.

Also, having to compete against 15 other students to edit one page is extremely unfair. I’ve found that by the time I’m done editing a section my lock has expired and someone else is editing it, now I basically have to sit here and hit edit and hope I get to it before the next person, AND then I have to try to incorporate the last student’s changes.

What are the odds of looking at the speed issue before this thing is due?

Response:

Eric,

It sounds to me like you left this assignment until the very last minute. This is fine, as it is your choice when you want to do it. However, thsi assignment has been available to work on for 3 months now. It is not our fault you left thje assignment to the last minute. the onus is on you to make sure you can get your contributions in on time. The entire purpose of giving you the assignment so early was to make sure everyone had a fair chance to get on and edit the page. Of course the server is going to be extremely slow and busy the night it is due. We gave all students every possible tool to complete this assignment.

N.J.

Course Manager

Me:

Actually I’d say the onus is on the department to properly design and execute relevant and working assignments. So far it’s failed pretty miserably. When I complete an assignment should not matter. Next year I suggest a warning be given to all students that the current server architecture in place can’t handle everyone at once. In fact it looks like it’s more of a software issue and not the server (poorly designed wiki) because ulearn was speedy.

By the way, you were not available during your office hours as we arranged to meet so I had to go talk to Ofer.

I look forward to the grading.

Thanks,
Eric

Response:

Eric,

AS you probably know, when many people try to work on something at the same time, the speed becomes very slow. We could take a lot of time and money top design a wiki that can handle mor epeople at the same time, but the problem will still remain. Only one person can ever edit a document or wiki page at any given time, no matter how fast the wiki is. Even if we had a state of the art, superfast wiki, it would still lock out everyone but one person for editing. So, very close to the due date, everyone will still have the same problem. This is why we gave everyone 3 months to work on this assignment, so that trying to find time to edit the wiki page woudl not be a problem. many students took advantage of this and began their work early. Unfortunately, those students who left it unitl the last minute will experience the issue of being locked out. I hope you understand the real reason as to why there were problems with the wiki. Hopefully this clearly explains all of the issues, and any amibiguities.

Cheers,

N.J.

Me:

N.J.,

MediaWiki (which powers Wikipedia) is both free and scalable. It also allows multiple users to edit and has built in edit conflict resolution management.

Here’s a few links to reference for next year:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Edit_conflict

Eric

After this he stopped responding completely. This was over a week ago and I’ll consider that conversation closed. I later had my professor tell me in class that I would make a very good consultant because I “always had suggestions for improving things”. Obviously he’d been reading.

I’ll admit I was a bit curt with our course manager but realistically someone needs to hold the school responsible for their ineptitude.

2. Peer marked assignment

Rumour has it that last year there were so many complaints about the peer marked wiki projects that the course managers had to give everyone 100% on the assignment. I could technically give everyone a 0 and they couldn’t do anything about it. My mark isn’t dependent of how I grade someone else. A few of us challenged our prof and verified that we could put in the bare minimum effort for this grading without penalties. For the record I did mine properly. I did give out a fair share of failing grades for blatant plagiarism without quotes or citations to back it up. Technically those students should fail the course… technically.

Yesterday I received a pleasant email from the course coordinator:

Hi Eric,
your URL’s to your webpages you submitted do not work. We have   tried every one and even multiple alterations, and still did not   get them to work. Did you check to make sure the URL’s you   submitted work? It looks as though we can not access your  webpages,  and we need to in order to actually grade your  assignment.

N.J.

Me:

Hi N.J.,

I just opened part 4B from my assignment page and clicked on every
single link and they all worked fine for me. I also went directly to
the site at http://students.bus.ualberta.ca/warnke/ from two different
computers and it worked fine, both in IE and Firefox.

I’m not sure what is wrong.

Eric

Response:

Hi eric,

Your link you gave me in this email works, but the uRL’s in your  submission do not. We will grade you rassignment based on this  working URL, but there will be a penal;ty for a submission that  does not work.

N.J.

Me:

Hi N.J.,

This can’t be correct. My friend (who is also in this course) is
standing beside me right now as we download and click on each link and
they all work.

I would like to come to your office and go over the submission before
you deduct any marks.

Please let me know when is best to drop by.

Please attach the document you saved from uLearn so I may see for myself.

Regards,
Eric

Response:

Hi eric,

It turns out that there was another student whom had a very similar name, but did not put his full name, so we thought it was you. I have found your submitted file, and graded you thusly. You will receive no penalty for URL’s not working. Sorry for this confusion. I have attatched the excel file as you requested for you to look at.

Thank you,
N.J.

I don’t know what you’re thinking but it definitely felt like I was the first Eric to pop into his mind when something went wrong. The funny thing is each assignment also had a unique student ID attached to it, 3 times actually. Also, the only other Eric’s in the course had last names of Leong and Mah, nowhere near Warnke.

All in all I can’t say I’m terribly impressed with this course. I wrote on both my student evaluations that I felt this was a complete waste of time and that I intend to write a formal complaint to our assistant-dean.

By the way, any spelling or grammatical errors by N.J. are complete his, I didn’t edit any of his stuff except to change his full name to his initials for his peace of mind.

Any comments on what you’ve read would be appreciated. If I’m completely out to lunch or if you think I’m demanding way too much from my university I’d be glad to hear your thoughts.

I’m off to the Project Hope benefit dinner tonight, I  hope it’s good