Indiana University: IT Training Tips Blog

If you have been using Twitter for a while, your Twitter Home page is probably becoming a blinding  jumble of unrelated messages. Because all your feeds pour into the same space, you need to do a lot of weeding to find what you want--that is, if you have the patience. Now, with the new Lists feature, Twitter allows you to categorize and filter tweets in any way you like. Just create and name one or more Lists and then assign people you are following to your various Lists.

Here's how:

In your Twitter space, click the Profile link at the top of the page. Under your username, click the Lists   button and choose New List. You can name your list anything, and make it Public or Private.

Once you have one or more lists, in the "Following" section on the right of your Profile, click the View All link. To the right of each of your followed usernames is a List button:   Click this button to see your lists, and then assign the selected username to a list.

Your Lists appear in the right section of your Home or Profile. Click a list to see only tweets that have been assigned to that list.

You can learn to use IU’s Oncourse Reorder Tools feature, or get training on how to conduct a Tandberg videoconference, by watching IU IT Training and Education’s award-winning tutorials.

In October IT Training & Education from Indiana University received awards for two training videos at the Fall ACM-SIGUCCS Conference in St. Louis, MO. ACM-SIGUCCS stands for The Association Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on University and College Computing Services; it is an international group of professionals involved in the support of information technology at institutions of higher education.

The communication awards were given in Category 3b: Electronic How-to Guides: http://www.siguccs.org/Conference/Fall2009/award_winners.html . Click "Read the rest of this entry," below, to see the tutorials.

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A flu epidemic or service outage due to weather can cause serious disruption of classes. IU has designed a new instructional resource to help instructors match their preferred teaching techniques with IU-supported technologies. The web site, structured around best practices of teaching, provides instructors with information about remote teaching and collaboration technologies, and supplies directions on where to get help from a consultant.
Check out the resources at: http://keepteaching.iu.edu/

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Unlike MS Word, InDesign won't let you "fake" a bold or italic style where the type itself doesn't include a bold or italic font. It will allow you to slant characters, but designers consider that to be bad form. Discussion of terminology of typography may help you understand why.

When people speak of fonts, they are typically using the word inaccurately. Here's the truth:

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What is videoconferencing?

Videoconferencing enables groups of people at different locations to see and hear each other at the same time. This technology allows users to conduct meetings, teach courses, and collaborate in real time at any distance. To participate in a group videoconference, you must be using videoconferencing hardware and software.

What videoconferencing resources are available at IU?

Indiana University faculty and staff can schedule any of the 228 videoconferencing systems located across IU campuses. Video calls from IU are not limited to IU campuses, however; calls can be made to locations around the world that have compatible videoconferencing systems.

IU maintains special pricing on the Tandberg MXP-series high-definition videoconferencing system. Therefore, this is the recommended and supported group videoconferencing system.

Where can I get training on the Tandberg videoconferencing system?

You can watch a video tutorial on the Tandberg videoconferencing system at IU, at:
http://ittraining.iu.edu/online/tutorials/tandbergFinal/index.htm

Where can I get more information?

The IU Knowledge Base has information about videoconferencing at IU at: http://kb.iu.edu/data/ajtt.html.

Recently, Andy Hunsucker wrote an article on his favorite Photoshop keyboard shortcuts. If you like keyboard shortcuts and other Photoshop tips, enjoy this entertaining video,�"101 Photoshop Tips in 5 Minutes,"�by Deke McClelland for Adobe TV:

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/dekepod/101-photoshop-tips-in-5-minutes/

You may already know that Photoshop blend modes can immeasurably enhance your creativity and playfulness. You may be familiar with the artful aspects of blend modes; however, most Photoshop users don't know they are corrective, too. Understanding how they work is a key to using them to your best advantage.

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You may have attended the IT Training & Education STEPS workshop, "Adobe Illustrator CS4: The Basics," and would like to learn more. Make lynda.com your personal trainer! If you would like a little review of Illustrator followed by more advanced concepts, see Mordy Golding's Illustrator CS4 Essential Training.

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New to Twitter? Did you just log in for the first time, and you feel your Twitter profile looks like a lonely wasteland? And seeing that, are you wondering what all the excitement is about? Here are a few tips to get up and running with Twitter, and to find just the right people and information. Your Twitter space will be home to you in no time.

Sending Tweets

• - After you sign up for Twitter, just enter a message (maximum 140 characters) in the entry field at the top of your Home page. All who follow you will see your tweets. If no one is following you yet, send a little introduction message anyway just for practice. It will be there for people later.

Receiving Tweets

• - Your Twitter space will be populated by the tweets of all the people you follow, so go out and find some Twitterers. See Finding Friends and Following Tweeple, below.

Finding Friends and Following Tweeple

• - Having an avatar is helpful when people start following you; everyone wants to know with whom they're speaking. Therefore, as soon as you can, add a picture of yourself or supply an image by which people can identify you. A bio is helpful, too. (See Making It Your Home, below.)
• - To find friends or interesting individuals who twitter, click Find People at the top of your profile. Type in their names, or just try searching “New York Times,” “Library of Congresss,” “noaa,” “oceanexplorer,” or other entities of interest. This is a good way to find news sites and other topics as well. To receive all their tweets, click the Follow button.
• - People you follow will receive a notice that you are following them, and in turn they will probably follow you.
• - To find more people or sites to follow, see who THEY are following and follow the ones that interest you!
• - To find celebrities, people, or categories of interest, go to http://wefollow.com/.
• - If you know someone's username, you can travel directly to their Twitter space by going to http://www.twitter.com/[username].
• - If you don't want certain people following you, it's easy to Block them.

There's more!

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The request to learn how to do InDesign book and manuscript tasks is on the increase in our workshops. The reason is, more and more scientific publications ask their authors to have copy-ready papers, and InDesign is so much more cooperative than Word when designing columns with graphics.

InDesign DOES have a footnote feature, and it's easy to use. Here are the pros and cons:

The good: Footnotes and endnotes from your Microsoft Word documents can be imported into your InDesign documents.

The bad: InDesign completely disregards your own Footnote And Endnote numbering options. Instead, it reformats footnote and endnote reference numbering to regular text.

The ugly? Decide for yourself on this one: InDesign can't convert your text to approved publication styles the way EndNote, a Word and WordPerfect plug-in does, so you'll have to style them yourself.

As I said, it's very easy to do. See this excellent tutorial by David Blatner of lynda.com:

http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to/video/how-to-create-footnotes-using-indesign-cs3-3785/view/