TheDesignspace

Pass data to a Qualtrics survey and display it in the survey and reports

Posted on February 5, 2010 by ellen

Qualtrics is an online survey application with many capabilities that aren’t obvious at first glance. I’m currently using Qualtrics to create a feedback form that will be used in several hundred learning modules. This form needs to recognize from which learning module it’s being accessed, and it should determine the author of the module and email them a copy of the user’s feedback.

Qualtrics has a feature called “embedded data” which allows you to pass any arbitrary arguments in the link to the survey. We’ll use this to add metadata to the feedback.

There are three steps:

Set up a link to the survey that passes “Embedded Data” values
Set up the survey to access the Embedded Data
Do something with the Embedded Data

Fish oil prevents onset of schizophrenia: treatment breakthrough

Posted on February 2, 2010 by ellen

Research starting in the early 90’s has suggested a neurodevelopmental basis for schizophrenia. Other studies suggest a biochemical basis for this abnormal development in schizophrenics related to insufficient fatty acids – fatty acids that contribute to the phospholipids which are the building blocks of neuronal membranes. Growth of axons and dendrites, making new synaptic connections and pruning of old ones, involves the synthesis and breakdown of phospholipids.

Based on findings of reduced fatty acids in people with schizophrenia, researchers have been studying whether giving Long-chane omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) to patients at high risk for developing psychotic disorder would prevent them from developing psychotic disorder.

Proposal: Advance Directives for our digital legacies

Posted on January 18, 2010 by ellen

Ten years from now, which is most likely to still be around, your last email or this one by some ancient Assyrian businessman?

Photo by mharrsch / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

One thing I can tell you is that when the photographer who took this image stops paying for their Flickr account, this photo is likely to disappear, and all sites that hotlinked to it using Flickr’s “embed” feature, will lose the use of it.

An ontology of Collaboration patterns

Posted on January 13, 2010 by ellen

In trying to gain some understanding of collaboration patterns, I came across an interesting article that proposes a layered ontology or model of collaboration that reconciles the many ideas on collaboration patterns expressed elsewhere.

Towards an ontology of collaboration patterns proposes a “collaboration stack” which clarifies the relationship of collaboration patterns to collaborative services and to the underlying communication technologies.

Export your highlights and notes from the Kindle

Posted on January 3, 2010 by ellen

Update, April 16, 2012 Please see this new post for updated instructions on how to export

A new and very much needed Kindle feature recently released by Amazon is the ability to export your notes and highlights from the Kindle to a usable form.

To get your notes, just sign in to http://kindle.amazon.com

Once you are logged in, you’ll see a list of your books. To the right of the ratings area, if you see tiny icons as shown below, there are notes or highlights that can be viewed.

Infectious cancer in Tasmanian Devils

Posted on January 1, 2010 by ellen

Photo by Two Big Paws [CC]

Around 15 years ago, Tasmanian Devils, those cute little bad-tempered creatures from Down Under, began vanishing as a consequence of a new disease spreading rapidly among the population. Around 1996, a photographer documented severe facial tumors in the Devils in the northeast of Tasmania. By 1999, similar tumors appeared in Devils on the east coast. By 2003 it was clear that the entire population was in decline because of the disease. At first, it was assumed a virus or retrovirus was the cause.

ActionScript 2: Nested button events

Posted on December 30, 2009 by ellen

Sometimes it’s helpful to have a quick reminder of how button events work within nested clips in ActionScript 2.

[ TRY DEMO ]

A button nested inside another button OR inside a MovieClip that has buttonEvents assigned to it will not work. (Button events include: onRollOver, onRollOut, onDragOver, onDragOut, onPress, onRelease and onReleaseOutside).

This is due to the way Flash captures events: the first parent instance with a button event handler assigned to it is the one that is listened to. None of its child objects will be listened for unless you use a workaround.

Confluence: create structure to help new wiki users get started

Posted on December 27, 2009 by ellen

Once you’ve created a shared online space for your coworkers, you may discover with some frustration that it doesn’t receive the level of interest you are hoping for. One reason for this reluctance to contribute may be lack of structure. Wikis don’t make a lot of assumptions about how you want to structure or navigate through your data, and this lack of structure can be confusing and somewhat intimidating to users, particularly if they aren’t sure where to put their information. This confusion is not limited to non-technical people: I’ve seen IT community sites and wikis lose members largely because of poor planning and navigational cues.

Although theoretically, the ability to add labels or tags to wiki pages eliminates the need to put them in any particular location within the site structure, people still like to know “where they are” within a site because the relationships between documents carries a lot of information about the significance of the document itself. Users need clues as to what else might be there and what to expect when they click to other pages.

Copying text from a password protected PDF

Posted on December 25, 2009 by ellen

I was recently sent a document in PDF format for editing and revision. Unfortunately the author had protected the document from copying, pasting, annotation, page extraction – in short everything necessary to be able to

JW FLV player with Javascript playlist

Posted on December 15, 2009 by ellen

This is an example of how to create a javascript-based Playlist selector for a JW FLV player. The playlist selector menu has 3 sections that toggle open and closed when you click on them. This allows the user to switch playlists, choosing from various topics.

The source code has not been cleaned up, but you should be able to get an idea of how to set this up from it.