Ben Bederson's dashboard

Ben Bederson started following the idea "SugarSync should allow Mac users to remove the icon from the Dock" in Sharpcast.

Ben Bederson set one of Ben Bederson's replies as an official response to "*Book of the day*" in International Children's Digital Library

Ben Bederson replied on August 14, 2009 19:48 to the question "*Book of the day*" in International Children's Digital Library:

We select the books randomly from the entire collection. If you like the idea, you can actually put the book of the day "web gadget" on your website or blog by following these instructions.

Ben Bederson reported a problem in RunKeeper on August 09, 2009 14:08:

Pausing a workout results in incorrect summary

I just did a run where I paused the workout a few times - sometimes staying in the same place, and sometimes walking to a different place before I continued running. The result is completely broken summary data. It seems to count the mileage when I paused but not the time - resulting in a longer distance than I actually ran at a much faster pace.

Specifically, I ran about 5 miles, and then (having got lost), walked about 1.5 miles at the end. RunKeeper Pro reported that my workout was 6.5 miles at about 8 minutes a mile when it really was closer to 5 miles at about 10 minutes a mile. Thus, the pause feature is totally broken. Please fix or remove it. I'm amazed that there don't seem to be other reports about this - am I using it incorrectly? Or is this the intended behavior for some reason?

Thanks.

Ben Bederson replied on August 04, 2009 12:07 to the question "Ability to Export Data" in RunKeeper:

This is a great start, but you absolutely need at least two more features:
* Ability to export all runs in a single action. If I use RunKeeper for any time and want my data to do my own analysis, it would take forever to export each run one at a time.
* Some time information. Currently, GPX files only contain start time. At the very least, please include ending time, although of course time stamps for each position datapoint would be best.

Ben Bederson started following the question "Xmarks: Where's Opera support?" in Xmarks.

Ben Bederson started following the question "Why doesn't Xmarks have a chrome add-on?" in Xmarks.

Ben Bederson started following the idea "Support for Chrome" in Xmarks.

Ben Bederson started following the question "Chrome support is needed with foxmarks/xmarks" in Xmarks.

Ben Bederson started following the question "Google Chrome Support for Foxmarks" in Xmarks.

Ben Bederson replied on September 08, 2008 14:38 to the question "Blog Widget?" in International Children's Digital Library:

You should have a bit of flexibility with it's dimensions. Try changing the number embedded deep in that HTML from "w=200" to "w=150" (or change the height by changing "h=200" to "h=150", or something like that. Although, last I tried that trick, Google was a little fussy about resizing it.

Ben Bederson replied on September 08, 2008 12:12 to the question "Blog Widget?" in International Children's Digital Library:

Actually, you can use the ICDL "book of the day" gadget on your blog. Just include the following HTML anywhere in your blog, and the gadget should show up.

<script src="http://gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.childrenslibrary.org/library/basic/icdl-book-of-day.xml&up_showlink=1&up_color=green&synd=open&w=200&h=200&title=Children's+Book+of+the+Day&border=%23ffffff%7C0px%2C1px+solid+%2399BB66%7C0px%2C2px+solid+%23AACC66%7C0px%2C2px+solid+%23BBDD66&output=js">

You can see an example of this use at my home page.

Ben Bederson replied on August 11, 2008 17:17 to the discussion "Using the library" in International Children's Digital Library:

Learning Languages: Many of the books in the ICDL are available in more than one language. Use these books to study a language you don't know. Use the Advanced Search screen to search for books in two or more languages. Then try reading in the language you are studying. If you aren't sure you understand the page completely, switch that page to the language you do know with the popup menu underneath the page. For example, The Blue Sky is available in English, Croatian, and Italian.

Ben Bederson replied on August 11, 2008 17:17 to the discussion "Using the library" in International Children's Digital Library:

Creative Writing: If you really want to push your creativity, try looking at a picture book in a language you don't understand at all. Then write a story to go along with the pictures.

Ben Bederson replied on August 11, 2008 17:17 to the discussion "Using the library" in International Children's Digital Library:

Complete the Story: Use the first half of any book to inspire children to complete the story. Read the first portion of the book together – then ask children to envision how the story ends by drawing pictures and illustrating them.

Ben Bederson replied on August 11, 2008 17:16 to the discussion "Using the library" in International Children's Digital Library:

Scavenger Hunt: It can be fun to learn how to navigate the ICDL and search for books if you are looking for something in particular. So, if you want to teach people how to use it – consider finding a few favorite books, pull out some particular tidbits from those stories – and then ask kids you are teaching to try and find those books based on those tidbits. Or ask more basic questions such as how many books there are in the ICDL from Africa, or even simpler, find a picture book that is short and has a blue cover and report the title and author. See more details for this activity in our teacher training manual.

Ben Bederson replied on August 11, 2008 17:16 to the discussion "Using the library" in International Children's Digital Library:

Digital Story Time: If you have a standard computer projector, then try using it the next time you read a book to children (whether in a library's story time hour, in school, or at home). Simply hook up the projector to your computer, find a book in the ICDL and read with the large projected display. This has the advantage of making illustrations (and words) large enough for everyone to see – and the technical nature of the display is often engaging. To make it work as well as possible, be sure to maximize your browser window (on Windows, try View->Full Screen). And once you get to the book pages within ICDL, click on the icon on the top right which reduces the size of the navigation icons – making more room for the page image.

Ben Bederson replied on August 11, 2008 17:15 to the discussion "Using the library" in International Children's Digital Library:

Read for Pleasure: The simplest way to use the ICDL is to just read a book. Pick one of the featured books from the home page, search books using Simple Search – or the Advanced Search or Location Search at the bottom of the Simple Search page. Then read away – for free and anonymously. Or you can create an account to keep a bookshelf of books you like and set various personal preferences.

Ben Bederson started a conversation in International Children's Digital Library on August 11, 2008 17:14:

Using the library

The ICDL is a rich resource which can be used in a wonderfully wide range of situations by children, parents, teachers, librarians and others from all walks of life. Children can expand upon the stories to create games; parents can extract themes to help explain important lessons; teachers can utilize the multicultural nature of the collection to teach languages; librarians can enrich community outreach programs with tales from around the world and; of course, anyone can just open a book to read for pleasure.

This is a place to discuss the ways people are using the library. As each of you use the library, please consider posting a short note describing how you did so. Your activities can help other children foster a love of reading too. I'll kick this off by adding some activities that we already know people do with the library.

Ben Bederson replied on August 11, 2008 17:11 to the problem "New company doesn't show up in list" in Get Satisfaction:

Well, it is a little better. I can find the company if I search on the first word in the name ("International"), but if I search on "children" or "library", it still doesn't show up. so I don't think it is quite solved yet. But thanks for your help so far.