Some of you may be familiar with Slamwire and AJU’s joint venture, Pupilcity.  Our first project is ProctorU, a secure exam proctoring service for distance education.  Using webcams, VNC connections and authentication through a partnership with Acxiom, we allow students who are taking classes online to complete thier exams online as well, all while keep a high level of academic integrity.  Read the press release here.

From the release:

Acxiom’s Mike Jortberg says, “Unlike recording devices that require a user registration process, complex software installation and special training for both students and instructors, Pupilcity’s ProctorU solution is a much simpler approach for the distance learning student and instructor. We are excited to have the Acxiom Fact-Check-X student identity solution embedded into ProctorU. If an institution is considering using face to face proctors for their students, this is the next best thing to expensive, in-person human observation of a test taker.”

Thought I would take time to share three websites that I use on a daily basis.  I intend to make a case why you should too.

The first one I have spoken of before:

I mentioned this in a previous post, but I want to mention it again.  This site lets you update an endless array of social media sites at once.  People have told me before they think it is neat that my myspace and facebook statuses match my twitter tweets.  That’s all thanks to ping.fm.  With google talk integration and mobile capability, I love to ping all the time.  

Mahalo is one of those great sites that you could be on for hours.  It bills itself as human powered search, and I guess I see that.  But the beauty of mahalo is that it is a great site to keep up with current events.  You know how you will be walking past a TV and you will hear someone say something like “And that’s the latest on the Obama water bed scandal”… and you think to yourself.. “What??!?”

Well mahalo surely has a page devoted to the obama water bed scandal, explaining it with basic facts and relevent links.

In addition to that, they also have a daily show (called mahalo daily) that is a fun watch.  

Lastly, my current favorite is a site that we at Slamwire/Pupilcity have partnered with:  

Tokbox has completely revolutionalized the way we communicate at AJU and at Pupilcity.  It is a super simple, free website that allows you to chat, video mail, and conference… all using webcams.  

Webcams are one of those things that have been around forever, and you have always thought, “this is going to be the future of the web.”  But only until recently have high speed internet connections become common enough to support wide spread, practical use.  They have been around a little while, but they seem to really be gaining steam.  If you have a webcam, visit www.tokbox.com/jarrod5 to call me and see how awesome this site is.  You don’t even have to sign up to call.  Just visit my page and hit the call button.  Seriously, I don’t want to AIM, googletalk, or anything else again.  Tokbox blows them all away.

Ok, so I haven’t blogged in a while, and I realize that.  Things have been crazy lately.  Slamwire and AJU have launched a joint venture and it has absolutley taken off.  Marriage plans are moving along nicely, and business trips to Phoenix and Notre Dame are behind me.

So anyway.. a full post is coming tomorrow.  Maybe two!  Wait, no. Pace yourself, Jarrod.

I am looking forward to this weekend.  Not just because it’s the weekend, but because I am going to take a much needed, “mini” vacation to Central Florida to see Matt, Slamwire’s muscle in the programming department, get married.  This gives Alaina and I a chance to revisit all of the places we used to frequent when we first began dating.  A nice “pre-honeymoon” as I have called it.

Alaina and Jarrod, watching the Devil Rays circa 2005

As I planned this trip over 8 months ago, I realized I would be running through Tampa and thought “holy cow!  I can go see a Rays game!”  Many of you may know, I have sat through many a game at Tropicana Field (when living in the Tampa area) and watched them get their brains beat out.  I had a deep passion for my loveable-loser Devil Rays.  Since I have left, the team was sold, the stadium improved, the team changed thier name to the “Rays” (no Devil), and changed their colors.  And oh yeah, they started WINNING!  After sitting through countless beatdowns in the cheap seats, I moved to Birmingham and never had a chance to share in all of the great things that are going on with that franchise.

Which brings me to my planning stage.  I looked at the baseball schedule and realized that the regular season would end the week before, and thought, “dang!  I won’t get to see a game.  Unless they make the playoffs (snort snort).”  And I watched this season unfold, with them leading the AL East the whole way.  What an unbeliveable turnaround.  Worst record in baseball in 2007.  First place in MLB’s toughest division in 2008.

So Friday night, I will be at the Rays-Whitesox playoff game at Tropicana Field.  This weekend will be sureal.

Sureal because Alaina and I will return to places we last visited as a struggling (financially), post college couple.  And we will return only a few months before we become husband and wife.

Sureal because I will see Matt Jaeh, a guy I have known since elementary school, get married.

Sureal because I will get to sit in the Trop, where so many baseball games were lost and not cared about, and watch a team now know for winning, where fans suddenly care ALOT.

And sureal, mostly, because…. well, I never get a day off anymore.

So I was among the throngs of people who downloaded Google’s browser, Chrome, when it was first release. In terms of usability, google’s products generally second to none, so I had high hopes for chrome.  While I do see it’s potential, I gotta admit that I am back to using firefox for most of my web browsing, and it’s only been two weeks.  Chrome has alot of cool new functions and it is relatively light on system resources.  But, dag nabbit, it locks up… alot.  At least for me it does.  And I use it on two different computers running Vista on one and XP on the other (both have very different system settings).  It seems to be when I use a flash app, for the most part.  Anyone else having these issues?

God, I hate hurricanes.

Gustav is layin into the Gulf Coast right now…

Alaina and I were in Pensacola this weekend and had to cut our trip short due to the storm.  The interstate was PACKED with people running from the weather and I 65 in Escambia County, Alabama was a gridlock, forcing Alaina and I to take Hwy 31 north for quite a ways.  I now know why they invented interstates.

Anyway, I am glad we left.  I can’t believe the Gulf Coast (and particularly NOLA) is taking another hit with a storm.  Growing up down there, I just don’t remember there being hurricane problems this often.  It seems like now there are 6 storms a year that threaten or hit that area.  Anyway, I will be praying for the coast today, hope you will be too.

For those that remember the first version of this blog, it was hosted with godaddy.com using their Quick Blogcast Service.  Now I am at wordpress.com, and I have never looked back.  My reason for going with Godaddy was simple.  It costs a few bucks a month, so I assumed it would be much more solid than all of the free versions out there.  Boy was I wrong.  How does Quick Blogcast come up short?  Let me count the ways:

1.  SPAM, SPAM, and more SPAM. I got (at least!) 10 SPAM Trackbacks a day for zoo sex, cialis, or something else revolting.  When I finally had enough, I sent an email to support, and this was their reply:

Dear Jarrod Morgan,

Thank you for contacting online support.  You will need to ban IP addresses for the creator of the trackback to be prevented from creating new trackbacks from that IP.

Blocking and Allowing IP Addresses in Quick Blogcast
Managing Trackbacks in Quick Blogcast

Please let us know if we can help you in any other way.

Excuse me?  Ban IP addresses?  Why, your exactly right!  Surely this is a fool proof way to foil spammers!!

What is this, 1998?  Blocking an IP address will do absolutely nothing, especially since they all come from different addresses, and spammers are not likely to use the same one again anyway.

2. Clunky design. After using wordpress and it’s easy interface, I don’t understand why I suffered through the poorly designed flash that godaddy uses.  It has strange pauses, and it generally takes 3 or 4 steps to log in and post something.  While that doesn’t seem like a lot, it really discourages spontaneous blog posts (like this one).

3. Strange Characters. Very often, an apostrophe or some other character will look fine in the window where I am entering in a new entry.  But upon publish it turns to gibberish in the RSS feeds, making me look like I don’t know what I am doing.

Lastly, let me say this.  Godaddy on the whole is a solid company.  I really admire Bob Parsons, the founder and personality behind the company.  He is innovative in his marketing, and took a very sleazy industry (web hosting and domain names) and became the #1 brand name by treating customers ethically.  He even made godaddy a safe haven for people who were scammed by registerfly.  Heck, I even have a poster of his 16 Rules for Life and Business hanging in my home office (it’s very inspirational, if you haven’t before, go read it).

This is just one product that they completely missed on.

]]> http://jarrodsblog.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/godaddycoms-quick-blogcast-total-ripoff/feed/ 3 jarrodmorgan http://jarrodsblog.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/i-have-found-my-graceland-and-guess-where/ http://jarrodsblog.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/i-have-found-my-graceland-and-guess-where/#comments Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:46:47 +0000 jarrodmorgan http://jarrodsblog.com/2008/08/05/i-have-found-my-graceland-and-guess-where/ ]]>

Check out the new “Gateway of Champions” at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. It honors all the past gator football greats while I think it will seriously help in recruiting for the future. I smell a road trip!

I know I have been lax on the blog updates.. but I’ve been busy with several exciting projects I will talk about soon.  But I had to share this…

For those who don’t know who Josh Hamilton is, he was the #1 Baseball Draft Pick by my Tampa Bay Rays in 1999.  Hope were high for him as he was labeled the next A-Rod, but a car wreck and a fall into drug addiction put his career and life in jeopardy.  After the Rays gave him chance after chance, he was banned from baseball and told to go clean up his life before he even made it out of the minors.  The story is well publicized, he almost died, and ended up on his grandmother’s front porch, starving and begging for help.  She nursed him back to health, and he slowly kicked his heroine addiction.

During his journey back, Josh even appeared on AE’s Flip This House, where he worked for Richard Davis’ construction team while Richard taught him life lessons.  At the end of the show, Josh began playing independent baseball again.

After three years out of organized baseball, Hamilton began his slow climb back, eventually landing with the Rangers in the major leagues this year.  Never one to hide his past, he has always been open about his demons, and advised young people to not make the same mistakes he did.

We all love a story of redemption, and Josh’s rookie year has been breakout.  The one time phenom even made the all-star team!

So fast-forward to last night.  After years of struggle, mistakes, and a long journey back, Josh Hamilton entered the major league home run derby. And in what was probably one of the most redeeming nights of his life, Josh lit the world on fire on the grandest of stages: the soon-to-be defunct “House That Ruth Built” (Yankee Stadium).

So take a few minutes and watch the video below and revel in a man’s moment… his resurrection to all that he was supposed to be. Josh Hamilton blasted a record 28… wait… 28!!!…  homers in the first round, with some of them being some of the biggest bombs I have ever seen in Yankee Stadium.  My only regret is that he doesn’t play for Rays.