IT Ideas

We have some users who still need to be able to work with Office files while storing their files in Drive. One answer is to use the Google Drive Sync Tool (the local install of Google Drive). The downside of this tool is the all the files are cached on your local hard drive and unless you are disciplined and only sync the folders you need (and how many users ever bother to go into advance settings to do this?) you can use up a huge amount of local hard drive space. The other issue is that the process of syncing those files uses significant bandwidth and if you have a site with a 1000 users - you run out pretty quickly if any number use this tool. Another solution is the AwesomeDrive Extension . This allows you to open Office files directly from Drive into local apps and save them back without the need for the local Google Drive Apps and its associated issues. I've pushed this app to all PC users via Group Policy - see my guide here . Demo of it in action:   Just be aware i...

For a while now we have been using an expensive online professional development system that nobody seems to get on with too well. So I was asked to come up with a system that works in Google Apps and does the basic core things that the paid for system does. So the key things are: Easy way for staff to record objectives. Method for approving and reviewing these objectives. Method for submitting CPD activities and having them approved. Method of submitting overview statements. Keeping all of this in a central easy to navigate central store for the head. Seemed like an ideal opportunity to get my two favorite spreadsheet functions into action - importrange and query. So if you have not met these two functions - here are the basics: Importrange = IMPORTRANGE ( "1MHqboMSXVImyh_wFKi2WAazZinqCo_90tfYaEbOszqo" , "Form Responses 1!A1:N2000" ) This pulls data from one Google Sheet into another. So I've got several forms as part of this system and want to p...

As a chemistry teacher I've always wanted a good online molecular modeling application. We finally seem to have one with molview.org . With this online app you can quickly build up complex molecules and view them in 3D. You can also export them or embedded them in sites. It also includes analysis tools to look at bond lengths, angles, NMR and IR spec. So great for A-level chemistry. Brief video below:

Chromixium 1.0 has been released. This is a version of Ubuntu thats been configured to look and feel a lot like ChromeOS. If you want to have a multiuser machine - you can configure the guest session, which is wiped clean after each user logoff. Pretty quick to install and configure and a great way of reprovisioning old hardware. Instructions to install Chrome and configure guest session. 1. Install Google Chrome Go to this site http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/chrome/browser/index.html Click on the Download button Select 32 bit .deb (For Debian/Ubuntu) Click Accept and Install Click Save to download the file to your Downloads folder (google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb) Once it has downloaded, close the browser Open Files (file manager) from the dock and open your Downloads folder Double-click on the file google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb and it will open in the Package Installer (GDebi) Wait a few seconds for the package to be prepared. Click on Install Pa...