Jolicloud the new brain-child of Tariq Krim (founder and former CEO of Netvibes) is taking shape and looking great. Today they releaseda screenshot of the Jolicloud app directory and I have to say it’s looking pretty sweet. We even noticed a certain great web app aimed at students in there…..
Which brings me around to Jolicloud again. It is a great idea; a simplistic, beautiful interface wrapped around (I assume) Ubuntu netbook that is sure to strike a chord with students and web professionals alike. I know I’ll be installing it as soon as I get the chance! Come on beta.
So sign up now and scubscribe to their twitter feed and all that because this is going to make some waves pretty soon.
Being a sucker for anything with a little apple on it, I recently subcummed to the iPhone. So far the user experience is way better than any other phone I’ve owned. The ease of use and interaction is simply brilliant and most of the apps being released are great too.
This in mind I’ve been toiling away in Xcode for the past week or two to create something for Notely. This being my first dealing with application development on OS X so it’s been a rocky week but with the help of a few great sites I’ve gotten over most of my issues.
Since the app is coming close to completion I though I would throw up a few images and see what feedback came in…so..here goes.
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iPhone app showing the home screen
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iPhone app showing the users Notes
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iPhone app showing the users Notes in detail
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iPhone app showing the users contacts being deleted
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iPhone app calendar
Mail me or submit comments and suggestions to Get Satisfaction and I will see where they can be slotted in.
So I’ve been working hard on a couple of new features that some of you have been requesting and wanted to give you all a sneak peak and ask for any feedback on the ideas. So onto the features.
Mindmapping
I’ve developed a text to mindmap feature that turns formatted text as a flash mindmap. The text must be formatted in the correct manner, something a little like this:
Months of the Year
Spring
March
April
May
Winter
October
November
December
This will, when processed, create the following mindmap.
When viewing the mindmap you can expand and contract nodes to create the appropriate view for your learning.
Questions & Answers
The second new feature is a questions and answer service. I’m hoping this will replace the need for a separate forum..which I really don’t have the time to manage. With this new tool users can ask and answer questions (funny that). Answers provided can be voted upon and the answers with the highest user approval will be promoted to the top of the answers list. This will provided a basis for older pupils to help out those a few rungs below them. I’ll even be popping in every now and again to ask and answer questions. Here are a few screenies of the new service, as ever feedback is appreciated so don’t hesitate to contact me either in the comments, e-mail or Get Satisfaction.
I’ve always thought of web applications such as Notely as replacements for traditional desktop apps. Being a web application allows Notely to be flexible, focussed and constantly updated. One thing that web applications often do wrong is support; most sites throw up a an FAQ. Not Notely!
We’ve added even more ways for you to get support, we’ve now got a dedicated support email (hmm you can guess what it is I think), a support form, a new manual and I will be using Get Satisfaction.
The Support Form
The new and improved support form allows you to send in bug reports and support requests, simply fill out the form specifying as much of the information as possible and as detailed an explanation as possible. It’s even possible for you to add a screenshot of your problem. With all this information submitted it should be fairly easy for me to figure out waht the problem was and fix it.
The Manual
The manual comes in two flavours; videos with subtitles and a HTML walkthrough. The manual aims to explain all the key tools within Notely and shows you in detail how to use each of them. The manual is currently only in English but in time I’ll get it translated.
Get Satisfaction
From now on I’ll also be logging into Get Satisfaction, a sort of out-sourced crowd-sourced support system, to check for new posts. You can ask questions about Notely on our page here. I would encourage you all to sign up to Get Satisfaction and help other users out, the less time I have to spend on support the more time I can devote to developing Notely.
I hope these two new tools (along with the current FAQ) will make Notely more of a candidate to replace traditional desktop tools for some of you out there.
Due to the impending release of Notely version 3 Notely will be taking some time out next weekend (3rd May 08 01am – 5rd May 08 01am GMT) in order to do some major server/database re-jigging. So that’s the bad news…now for the good news.
When we come back on Monday morning we’ll have a brand spanking new site with tonnes of great new features for you all. Version 3 of Notely won’t look radically different but there will be over 20 changes under the hood including some much needed new features all aimed at making you better organised and allow you student to organise your workload much much better.
Bloody Hell! Lucky old Americans. Students as ACU are to be given iPhone or iPod Touch when registering for college. In an attempt to create a modern, cutting-edge, learning environment the College will be rolling out the program from the next academic year. Using these iPhones/iPods students will be able to download and install over 15 web applications developed by the College’s IT staff. Amongst the services will be homework alerts, in-class surveys and quizzes.
Jealous as I am of these lucky future iPhone owners it’s great to see technological solutions being embraced in schools and colleges around the world! Good move ACU!*
It seems that UK teachers are making an effort to get homework banned in UK state schools. The teachers union is under the impression that pupils might get stuck in  a “cycle of resistance to school in children from poorer homes“ caused by the difficulty of completing homework.Obviously children around the UK are rejoicing no-end about this, why wouldn’t they! But are teachers not looking at this the wrong way? If students find homework too difficult to complete it shows that pupils need help to complete homework in a manageable way.There seems to be no suggestion that pupils are unable to complete homework for academic reasons, the problem is with finding the time to do it. The UK Government’s current guidelines suggest that pupils should do “one hour a week at five” rising to “90 to 150 minutes a day at 16.”  This may not sound like a lot but pupils are finding it increasingly difficult to find the time to complete these tasks.Problems like this are why I created Notely in the first place; many millions of bright students the world over lack the organisational skills to make the most of the learning opportunities they have.Pupils using Notely are able to schedule homework and even receive reminders before their homework is due in and collaborative features like whiteboards (group-editable notes) can help pupils during group work.
Hey guys,A while ago Notely had a small upgrade to add some new features such as the Schedule Builder. You all seemed to like the schedule builder, but there was one common request. To be able to customise the time slots. So given the demand I’ve added this feature today.All you have to do to edit the time slots is click and type. As soon as you click away from the time slot it is saved behind the scenes.I’ve also been busy creating some cool new features that I think you’ll love, hopefully they will be coming out shortly (within a few weeks) I’ve also got a couple of new languages coming.
) if not contact me and we’ll see if we can sort it out; it was a big job moving 5000 or so users to a new database!