Monthly Archives: October 2008

Free web services useful to run your business

This is a list of free web-services that are useful to run a business. It was generated by members of the Pune OpenCoffe Club on their mailing list. The list was compiled by Freeman Murray, and uploaded to the PuneTech wiki. Please add to the list based on your own experiences. Since this is a wiki page, anybody should be able to modify it. Click on the “Edit” button to add.

[edit]Business Planning and Board Management

[edit]Project / Task Management

[edit]Web Conferenceing / Screensharing

[edit]Bug Tracking / Issue Mgmt

[edit]BackUps

[edit]Hosted Version Control

[edit]Mailing List Management

[edit]Misc.

Pune-based Harbinger wins award for learning software

Pune-based Harbinger group, creator of the Raptivity e-learning software, has just won an award from the “Chief Learning Officer” magazine for “Clinical Challenge,” an innovative online learning program that it created with Philips Healthcare, designed to pioneer the use of gaming in healthcare education. This program tries to combine entertainment with challenge to test knowledge on complex clinical subjects. 

From the press release:

As can be seen on the Philips Learning Center web site www.theonlinelearningcenter.com, complex subjects such as anatomy, physiology, pathology and imaging specific challenges have been made engaging and interesting using a variety of game formats including popular TV game shows, common board games, challenging brainteasers, immersive simulation games and so forth. The tools have also provided a means to present advanced clinical images in a format that allows for exploration via drag and drop, hot spots and auto-solve techniques. 

Use of games for learning appears to be one of the areas that Raptivity is focusing on, earlier having partnered with a US non-profit organization, the Entomological Foundation, to design an develop games based online learning software products targeted towards 3rd and 4th grade children in the US. The games teach the children about “the exciting world of insects and their role in our environment.”

The main features of Raptivity:

  • Leverage Raptivity library of pre-built interactions based on best practices in instructional design.
  • Completely customize each interaction.
  • Create a single Flash File for your eLearning interactivity.
  • Successfully track completion status, score and responses for each interactivity.
  • Packages that allow easy creation of 3D content, learning games, converting videos to interactive videos, and simulations

Harbinger are also the creators of Flockpod, a web-service that allows web publishers to create a space on their webpage where users can interact with each other right on-the-spot, without leaving the page.

Basic course on Linux by PLUG – Oct 6

What: A basic course on Linux conducted by Pune Linux Users Group (PLUG)

When: Monday, 6th October. 4pm to 6pm. 

Where: Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research (SICSR), 7th floor, Atur Center, Model Colony, Pune, India (Map)

Registration and Fees: The event is free for all. No registration required.

Details
This is a very basic GNU/Linux course. The aim is to provide some hands on experience to the user so as to make him aware of all the different features and flavors of a GNU/Linux OS. At the end of the course, a user should be able to connect to and browse the internet, send receive mails, create rich text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, administer personal system etc. all using a GNU/Linux system and various free software available on the net.

Check out the detailed syllabus for this course.

Pune Linux Users Group Meeting – Oct 4

What: Pune Linux Users Group (PLUG) monthly meeting

When: Saturday, 4th October. 4pm to 6pm. 

Where: Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research (SICSR), 7th floor, Atur Center, Model Colony, Pune, India (Map)

Registration and Fees: The event is free for all. No registration required.

Details
The PLUG meeting is open to all, there are no charges or pre-requisites to attend the meeting. If you are intrested in FOSS (Free/Open Source Software) you are welcome to the meeting. If you want to give a talk or a demo, you are welcome.

This meeting happens on the first Saturday of every month, at the same place and time. Usually, a PuneJava talk organized by IndicThreads also happens immediately after the PLUG meeting, but apparently not happening this month. 

Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management (SITM) is organizing a two day seminar on Telecom Management at their beautiful campus at Lavale village. Details of this meeting, and all other interesting tech events in Pune can be found at the PuneTech calendar.