How to embed slide show presentation to a website for free but also limit the audience

It started with my need to create a nice module in Moodle for my organization. To make it interesting, I intended to make it in a slide show presentation, controllable by the user.

I have known Slideshare that provide that kind of service, deemed to be the YouTube of presentation slides, which is free and easy to use.

Since the material I wanna share internally is also supposed to be kept internally, I kinda expected that Slideshare provide the capability to do private sharing (unlisted capability of YouTube), meaning sharing it to those you intended it to. So I tried Slideshare.

However, Slideshare only provides that capability to pro (paid) user. It means if I upload my stuff in Slideshare, it is view-able by others too.
So, I tried to find alternatives and stumbled across a number of similar tools. An example of said tools can be read here :

• 14 Alternatives to SlideShare for Top-Notch Presenters
• 6 SlideShare Alternative

I tried Empressr, with its capability of sharing privately, with password. It just didn't work with embedding in Moodle. Reading all the others' description, I couldn't determine which one can provide me with the feature I needed. I didn't have time to try them one by one. Another quick googling and I found out that presentation slides from Google Drive could be viewed as a slide show when embedded in another web page. It could serve my need. A ha!

So I uploaded the presentation slide to Google Drive, made it viewable only to those who has the link.
(For a step by step guidance, see this : How To Display Presentation Slides on a Blog Post with Google Drive)

The last part is to embed it to Moodle page :
I used this :

Click here to get the code in text if you don't wanna type it :)

Change the red text to the id of your presentation slide in Google Drive.
If your sharing link is something like this:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gRzW98_UtFOy570K6UZY5PG5fsasaEEe4Lmz8qBFi3_oDc/edit?usp=sharing

The id to use is the one in red text.

This solved my case : embedding somewhat private material in controllable slide show presentation in an internal webpage for internal consumption :)

Getdropbox & Thesis Document

I wrote this following questions from some friends at Plurk about why I do not use googledoc instead.

Since I worked on my thesis last March, I has at least 2 workstations. My notebook at home, my notebook in the office ( I do in-company thesis), and computers in my faculty.

I've tried to only use my office notebook, but after some times, carrying the notebook back and forth on twice a day 1,5 hour indirect train travel became too annoying.

I have a special folder for my thesis work, including subfolders that organize my literature collection based on how I get them and whether I have printed them or not. It's common for me to add new articles or move some articles to printed-folders.

For that reason, I back up my files by simply copying my thesis folder to my flashdisk and copying it again to my home notebook. However at some point, my pathetically-small-capacity flashdisk (256Mb) can't handle my files anymore :p

I tried to send files to my own email address. But this really is not the best solution, because I can't have my perfectly organized thesis folder on hand.

That's how I started using Dropbox from Getdropbox.com. It gives me 2Gb online space.
I installed it on my home notebook. Then I moved my thesis folders to the Dropbox folder. When I installed the same application on my work notebook and link it to my own account, it automatically made an exact copy of my Dropbox folder at home.

Everytime I made changes to my thesis at work, i.e.: document update, document relocation, etc, the application automatically synchronize the change online and when I get home, the same synchronization is also performed in my home notebook.

That's how Dropbox helps with my thesis work :D
Btw, I need more Dropbox space. If you register through my referral link, you and I (it's fair right? hehe) will get additional 250Mb space, haha.. So, if you wanna give it a try, register through this link :D

There are similar concepts that might be as useful, such as online desktop (I forget the application name).

Google Translate in Picasa

I commented on a photo in Picasa of my friends, attending our friends' wedding. I wrote in Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian Language; and it's not just 'Bahasa' as many people, even fellow Indonesians, think it is )

After submitting, my comment appeared with another sentence underneath.. It was a rough translation of my comment into English, haha..


After checking their "what's new", this was what I got:

Automatic comment translations

If your photo is getting kudos from around the globe, we'll automatically translate comments in foreign languages to your default language.

Wow, then Google must have had a checking mechanism if the comment is in the user's default language, if not then decide what language it is, and finally translate it to the default language.

I tried to submit a comment in English just to check, and yea, there was no such translation appeared.

Although not perfect, it's a cool way to facilitate non-Indonesian speaking visitors :D I really like it.

update:
Surprisingly, through images we shared in Plurk, my friend and I saw different translations for an exact same sentence she wrote.

What she saw:
What I saw:
Hahaha, this is getting more interesting..

Let's Take A Shower

As I now live together with two other friends, I have to share kitchen, dining room, toilet, and bathroom. Our bathroom looks like a simple room with stone as the floor and some tiling on the wall. A blue curtain separates the shower area with the sink & mirror area.

I won't complain about my bathroom, it's good enough for me But this cold winter days really make me want to enjoy a soothing warm bath, with steam showers probably

These shower enclosures look very elegant. I like the so called Chic Glass Shower Enclosure With Sliding Door (pretty long name, huh. They should have made a shorter name. But it helps describing the product anyway). I'm not sure I like Acrylic Base Glass Shower Enclosure. It looks cool, but probably too small for me. If they have it bigger, I'd like it

See this shower kits. Whiiii, I'd definitely enjoy the combination of rain shower with foot massager The massager is in the form of water massage jets. I love being around water (I am an Aquarian anyway, if that matters, hahaha). Well, I have to wait until I have my own house to have this luxurious items. It's no use remodelling my temporary student housing, hahaha.

Web Hosting

I need to create a website for a small business of my friends’. Alas, I know very little about webhosting, domain, data transfer, design, and all other stuffs related to it. I have tried to look for local (by local I mean Indonesia although I live in Netherlands at the moment) webhosting services but got confused with the many offers. You know, having too many options is as confusing as having too limited options.

I heard about a website that provide web hosting articles and I think it will be quite useful. Some of the articles available are about choosing a dedicated host, domain parking, overview of many type of control panels, et cetera. There is also categories of articles, such as about one of the most well known control panel: Cpanel.

So, let’s take a look at this website to learn about web hosting :)

Google's New Feature

I just noticed this new feature in Google search. I don't know if it's been there for quite sometimes, but since I use Google a lot, I don't think I miss it at the first go. Its name is SearchWiki.

Quote from Google:

Customize your search results with your rankings, deletions, and notes — plus, see how other people using Google have tailored their searches.

Please remember that your SearchWiki notes will be visible to other users, identified with your Google Account nickname.

For every search, each links is now given three new buttons, namely Promote, Remove, and Comment. At first, I assumed Promote would be used if you find a link useful and wanted other people to know it too, Remove for the exactly opposite reason, and Comment if you wanted to leave comment (d'oh) about the links.

When I tried clicking on Remove, the link is removed from the list. If you want to restore it, you can find it at the bottom of the page.

When I clicked on Promote, it brought the link to the first rank and subsequently another button appear in place of the cross Remove button. The tooltip still mentioned Remove, but if you clicked on it, it would just return the link to its previous normal rank.

This is a new way of Google to let user customize their search results. This is probably because the Information Retrieval technology used by Google (and every other search engines) will always produce non-perfect recall, precision, and ranking system. Hence, I think providing this kind of feature will help in mitigating the imperfectness of those measures.

The other good thing is the customization is shared among users so that users can also benefit from input from others. For example: I can see what other user think about a link in search result, and can feel more confidence in that link (as being recommended).

Notes: You can only see the new features if you log in to Google account

Updates:
Here's a video from Google's official blog about how to use SearchWiki:

ShopWiki - Shopping Search Engine

What do you do nowadays if you want to buy something?
Probably you'll do some searching in the internet by using web search engines. If you're lucky, you'll find an online store that sell the product you want with a price that you're happy with. However, if you stumble upon many online stores offering the product at different prices (it could be very different), you might not feel so lucky any longer. That kinda thing brings confusion.

Now let's see this website. It claims itself to be a shopping search engine that make use of web-crawling technology in combination with consumer-written Wiki. Web crawling technology is the same technology use by major search engines such as Google, Yahoo!Search, etc. Thus it can crawls a huge number of online stores. This brings benefit as users can compare prices of a product from several stores simultaneously. For example is specialized bicycles.. or Apollo bicycle.

ShopWiki present the search result as a list of products related to the keywords. The good thing is for each entry, a pic of the product is presented, along with the name and description. The lowest price of the product is given from the many stores that sell it. If you want to know more data of the different prices, you could point your cursor to one of the entry and a bubble with pop with a list of lowest prices from several shops. Here's a snapshot of the search result:


I think this shopping search engines is very helpful and user friendly :)

Medical Alarm

Hey, this is interesting. I stumbled upon a website selling customer care service and products related to safety. They sell some kind of Medical Alarm Systems, one for inside the house and one for the outside. I am always interested in stuff related to medical (thanks to my parents who work as nurses and sorry for them that none of their children pursue a career as a doctor. Well, they don't complain though :D)

The interesting feature of the inside-the-house system (they call it Tele-Assist) is Fall Detector. Imagine when your grandmother is at home, alone, and you know that she’s not in her fittest state as she’s ever been before but you couldn’t be around. The product has a panic button, which alert the family, doctor, or emergency help when pressed. But if somehow the wearer cannot even press the panic button, the fall detector will alert the company’s operator, who will act accordingly once (s)he has assessed the situation. It is wonderful how new technology (like the detector) can help people.

For outside, they use Mobile GPS in the form of a watch. They claim that the device will connect you to help no matter where you are in the world. It will send your GPS location to a trained professional in case of emergency. I think this is very useful. I can imagine how hard it is to create such complex connection of medical alarm system with other actors in the environment, such as the doctors, emergency ambulance, et cetera. It is difficult especially in developing countries, for instance my home country. I don’t know how they could do it if a customer actually travels to Indonesia and goes to some rural areas.

Nevertheless, such technology implemented in this medical alarm system is admirable and could really help. I only hope that the infrastructure in Indonesia could get better to actually make use of such technology in a large scale.

Oh ya, I found their video in YouTube, here goes: