technology

Back-To-School Tech Advice: 6 Things Every College Student Should Consider

Studying with Technology

Image credit: Zitona (Flickr.com)

The end of summer is near, and that means students will be heading back into the classroom in a couple of weeks. That being said, it’s time to sit down and think forward about the upcoming school year.

On top of the back-to-school shopping list and registration chaos, it’s a good time to start thinking about how technology will factor into your daily routine.  We’re talking about the nitty-gritty routine spent on studying, researching, writing, and sitting in class.

So in case you haven’t thought about it yet, we’ve hammered out some basic tech advice on 6 things you should consider.

Map Out Personal Tech Support Resources

No matter how well you know your tech tools, there will always be a random issue you can’t fix in a hurry. Knowing where you can go for help is key. There’s only so much Google can do for you with 10 million results.

Do yourself a favour and get your resources mapped out ahead of time.  Scout out, follow, and bookmark a good range of How-To sites, forums, and even basic support pages for your device.

Find Textbooks  Online 

When it comes to textbooks go digital wherever possible.  Digital textbooks can be significantly cheaper than original hardcopy or photocopied versions, and you won’t have to lug around heavy volumes.

As a starting point, sites like Project Gutenberg offer a vast selection of books in a variety of formats. You can also take advantage of Google’s latest textbook rental and purchasing offer from Google Play Books.  There’s also the iBooks app, whose iBookstore offers text books from notable publishers, such as McGraw-Hill and Pearson.

Flatworld Knowledge Online Textbooks

If those don’t pan out, you can check out FlatWorldKnowledge, an online catalog of textbooks where you can personalize textbook content according to your needs.

Shop Around For Free Software

You’re used to hearing of big name software applications like Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop that are above your price range.  But you can just as easily get free software that offers the same functionality as other paid programs.

Search for open source software alternatives. There are a ton of free tools out there. You can also find apps for your device like productivity suites, note takers, and mobile converter apps. In addition, desktop suites like OpenOffice and LibreOffice are great alternatives to Microsoft Office you can get for free.

Organize Your Gadgets & Devices By Task 

Mobile Devices
Image credit: sean hobson

If you have more than one device, you should try getting them organized according to task.  You may think this is counter-productive, but different sizes, apps and OSes can actually make working on multiple gadgets inconvenient.

Think about how you’ll be dealing with your school work this year.  Will you be typing up your papers on a laptop in a coffee shop? Does research work better for you on a desktop? Or will you be on a tablet for on-the-go convenience? You get the idea.

Some devices are more practical than others for certain tasks.  Figure out your studying habits and get a gadget strategy and workflow in place.

Adopt Different Study Habits For Online Classes

Some of your courses may be offered online or have an online bulletin board component set.  Keep in mind that online learning environments have different dynamics and hence, need a different approach.

Tip? For starters, keep focused.  It’s all too easy to get distracted with opened browsers, the comfort of your own room, and online networks. Moreover, we’re all used to scanning stuff online.  So when it comes to in-depth reading, you’ll need to really shift gears once you log in. Remember that a lot of it is about independent learning.

Also, timeliness is a big factor that can possibly affect your grades. You want to be one of the first ones to submit a discussion response. Remember there are others who can possibly cover the same points you want to make. Don’t let them steal your thunder by posting it up first. In short, constantly scout out other minor adjustments you can make to your studying habits.

Always Have A Back Up Plan

Google Docs Revision History
Image Credit: Support.google.com

All too often does a program crash on us in the middle of a paragraph, a USB gets lost, or we quickly close that 1,500 word paper without saving. But a few things can help prevent that.

Create a copy of your papers every few drafts to different storage media. Use cloud storage services like Dropbox to save a copy of your last draft.

Or conversely, create your original copy online with Google Docs. It will save your changes automatically. In addition, it will create a back up of the file’s revision history. Let’s not forget that you can always send a draft to yourself as an attachment!

Once the year starts, a solid routine will be the only thing keeping you on top of things. So make sure you plan out your tech strategy well!

Should We Add Another Format To The PDF-Killer List?

An interesting tidbit for this week. There’s a new format on the block and it looks like it’s drumming up some buzz as the next PDF-Killer.

The last one to hit the industry, if I remember correctly, was the XML Paper Specification (XPS) format  about 4 years ago when Microsoft Office 2007 was being released with XPS creation capabilities.  This time around, it’s the CDF format—Computable Document Format, a newly innovated open format that puts “interactive documents” on another level.

Having been developed by the team over at Wolfram.com, the CDF format uses mathematical computation technology to render the live interactive element of its content. The company is known for its computing software program and platform, Mathematica, which, in a nutshell, is used for computing data visualizations needed in fields dealing with complex data, information analysis, and mathematical formulae.

What is the CDF format?

According to the site, the CDF is “as everyday as a document, but as interactive as an app.”  Instead of simply viewing static text, images, and tables, with a CDF document you can manipulate them through inputting data, clicking on controls, and moving sliders. If you have a graph with data calculated and projected over time, you can modify those values and see the changes visualized–on the spot.

Looking at the CDF files they have on-site, you can see why it’s being called a PDF-Killer. From a user point of view, the CDF format shares a lot of the same basic similarities and uses as the PDF: it requires a file viewer (CDF Player), can contain different types of content, and is only editable in Mathematica or other CDF content creators (creating an interactive CDF actually requires a bit of coding rather than a one click creation method, though).

The PDF already has interaction capabilities with the ability to play videos, Flash games, and manipulate 3D objects. But so far, as Conrad Wolfram (strategic & international development director of Wolfram) points out, those types of interactivity are pre-generated for you.

The CDF format provides a unique way of creating, consuming, and understanding informational content.  As it is with all formats, though, each has its own strengths and uses, some of which are necessary, some not. Simple resumes and articles, for example, are still perfectly fine as a PDF. Live data and textbooks, however, may be better in CDF.

Rather than a question of will the CDF replace the PDF, I think the question facing PDF users is how the CDF format will interact with PDF files over the long run. The format was just launched, so it’s still in the early stages of adoption. So far, as per the FAQ, you can import content from PDFs and the CDF Player plugin is only supported by web browsers (no embedding CDF files in PDF, for instance).

Download the CDF player and take look at a few CDF examples in action for yourself.

PDF, A De-Facto Standard No More

While you’re all excited about the upcoming holidays and can’t think of anything else but that gift list to get through, you can add one more thing to get excited about.

The de facto standard of information interchange, aka the PDF, just got one step closer to being adopted as a standardized format. Last week, the PDF 1.7 specification gained the approval votes it needed from ISO committee voting members as it reached the Enquiry “Close of voting” stage in the standardization process.

Before this certification happens though, the comments included with the votes need to be addressed before the format gets its official ISO standard tag—ISO 32000 (lovely name, no?). Even with those last few hurdles, the PDF’s standardization process is looking good.

Jim King, PDF architect and Senior Principle Scientist at Adobe Systems Inc. will serve as technical editor for the international working group meeting in January where the submitted 205 comments will be resolved.

On his blog he states, “If the group can address all the comments to the satisfaction of all countries, especially the ones voting negatively, it is possible to finish at that meeting and publish the revised document.”

So Is It Still An Adobe-Microsoft Showdown?

In the face of impending success, you can’t help but wonder about OOXML and where its standardization is headed.

OOXML was also submitted and fast tracked for an official ISO standard, but rejected in September. Alongside that rejection was the controversy over Microsoft’s active influence over committee members and their votes. The OOXML proposal then went back to the drawing board for revisions to take the negative votes and comments into account.

Boxing AnimalsNow, three months later, as its Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) draws near in February, OOXML’s standardization is still up in the air as its interoperability, the OOXML hot topic of the day, will be a major factor in the decision to approve it as such.

Making it even harder is that OOXML is constantly held up against ODF, the poster child of open source solutions. It’ll be interesting to see how “open” and how much “interoperability” a Microsoft format can possess in general.

While that issue unfolds, the PDF will more than likely get the ISO standardization without much drama. Has Adobe won this round already without even trying?

These are exciting times for the PDF format indeed.

Why Performing OCR On Handwriting Doesn’t Work

Unsurprisingly, OCR is consistently a hot topic in PDF and the PDF user mind in general. In paper intense work environments, PDF conversion and OCR engines have proven to be a successful work-around for transferring paper files into word processing applications. Thus, with the help of scanners and the PDF format, any and all types of paper work can be done electronically and efficiently. Or can it?

While trying to integrate and transfer every non-digital working habit into an electronic equivalent, there are still some things that just can’t be done with ease using the same everyday tools. For instance, what about converting hand printed/written documents?

Three Flavours Of OCR

Many of you have probably wondered why such a thing can’t be done with the OCR technology in PDF conversion products. Well, this is because OCR technology and devices are only capable of recognizing the machine printed characters and fonts. And seeing as how the number of documents that are being scanned in are usually typewritten, OCR is employed in almost all cases.

In other cases, there are documents that contain handwritten sections and/or fields that are used for collecting data—a thing being slowly superseded by the fill-able PDF form. You can create a digital copy from such a document simply by scanning it in, right? Yes. However, it requires a different recognition technology altogether. Using OCR, you can perhaps get maybe one letter to “OCR” into ASCII, if it’s printed clearly and written in ink that’s thick enough to be read. But that’s about it. This is where another flavor of OCR comes in: Intelligent Character Recognition.

ICR is a more advanced form of OCR that translates hand printed letters into digital ASCII equivalents. This version of OCR is primarily used for processing applications and forms on which you “print clearly” and place individual letters in boxes. This structured method of reading a hand printed document is one of the major limitations of the technology, but controls and reduces the amount of human errors that cause misinterpretations.

In addition, there are documents that contain handwriting—aka cursive writing. Can recognition on such documents be performed? The answer: Yes. The third flavor of OCR is IR (Intelligent Recognition), the latest generation of OCR technology to date. This is used to read unconstrained writing (text not contained in boxes) and uses the same methods to translate the characters into ASCII text. From my online searching, there are a good number of companies that provide full fledged OCR/ICR/IR solutions, which can be integrated with digital workflows.

Thus, if you’re looking to OCR handwritten PDFs, you’ll be sorely disappointed. The ability to do everything and anything with technology is perhaps the ultimate goal for developers and users. Practicing it, on the other hand, is perhaps the ideal goal for every worker bee out there. It’s sad to say, but there are some cases in which you can only do so much.

The ABCs of the PDF: M to O

A lot has happened with the PDF format in the last year—submission for standardization, release of a new specification, software upgrades, and improvements with graphic and dynamic PDFs. In this series posting, you get a look at the PDF’s recent format competition and past legal issues as well as the other uses of PDF related technology. Here it is.

Macromedia

Adobe Systems, Inc. acquired Macromedia Inc. in 2006 and has, since then, injected Macromedia technology into their software. However, Adobe and Macromedia had come into close, legal contact even before the acquisition—over patent disputes.

The patent dispute according to past articles in early 2000-2002, was over a tabbed palette interface element that was awarded to Adobe. The issue dated back to 1996, right up until 2000, during which time Adobe had confronted Macromedia about the palette’s inclusion in several of the company’s products.

Yet Macromedia’s argument against the suit, filed in August of 2000, was that the patent was invalid. This escalated to a point where Macromedia countersued against Adobe in September 2000 for infringing on three of Macromedia’s own patents. After two years of back and forth legal battles, Adobe won the lawsuit and was awarded 2.8 million.

And five years later, Macromedia is now one of Adobe’s acquisitions. . . .

Native PDFs

As you know, native PDFs are ones that are generated from electronically created documents. Yet, while these native PDFs are beneficial when it comes to conversion, they can also produce just as much legal hubbub as patent disputes can. Moving the ability to create PDF files, or PDF-like formats, directly into the authoring application was definitely a complex issue that became a major headliner in PDF news this year.

Back in February, I wrote three postings on factors that made creating digital documents and native PDFs a more significant matter than ever before. There were the legal issues between Adobe and Microsoft; the PDF specification submission to ISO; and then, there was OpenOffice.org, Microsoft’s word processing app rival whose applications sport ODF creation, a format that became a statewide standard in Massachusetts.

Creating native PDFs and PDF-like formats now involves more politics at the authoring application level. Microsoft has the convenience of a widely used platform, Adobe has the ubiquity as de facto standard, and OpenOffice has the state of Massachusetts. Creating a native PDF, or PDF-like format is now, in one sense, a matter of “moral??? choice: are you an Acrobat advocate, a loyal MS Office user, or an open source supporter?

OCR

You know it by its three letter acronym, you know what it does when it comes to converting scanned PDF files. Yet, as a software that literally recognizes and translates digitally imaged characters into character codes (ASCII or Unicode), OCR isn’t just for converting scanned PDFs.

OCR has been used for a wide range of data processing systems. It’s been used by the Standard Oil Company of California for credit card imprints for billing purposes. At the Ohio Bell Telephone Company, OCR was used for reading bill stubs. Even the United States Air Force used OCR for reading and transmitting typewritten messages.

Another big use for OCR technology is postal office work. The first use of OCR in Europe was by the British General Post Office for automating the mail sorting process. OCR scanners read the routing barcodes marked upon the envelopes that are based on corresponding postal codes, resulting in faster organization and shipment times. In 1965, the United States Postal Services adopted the method, followed by Canada Post in 1971.

Today, OCR is being further enhanced as a data input method ranging from simple text to digital scanning processes to sophisticated ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition), a more advanced version of OCR that recognizes hand printed documents.

Whether the PDF world is buzzing with long standing issues from the past or just slowly unfolding with new developments, the PDF world, can be an interesting place, indeed.