Shiver me timbers!  Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.  Aye, it’s that time o’ year again, and to celebrate, Blackboard is releasing a Pirate Language Pack.

The Blackboard Academic Suite now supports 14 Blackboard Language Packs, including Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Dutch, English (U.S.), English (U.S. K-12), French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish.  In addition, the Blackboard community supports Polish and Brazilian Portuguese.

In the recently released Application Pack 3 for Release 7 of the Blackboard Academic Suite, existing support for Arabic has been extended to include full transposition of the user interface into proper directional orientation for the language (right-to-left).  Any custom language development using the Blackboard Language Pack Editor can take advantage of this transposition if desired.

You can download any of these free Language Packs from the Blackboard Language Pack Catalog. 

We had so much fun creating this new Language Pack that we’re also releasing a Pig Latin Language Pack for your enjoyment.  If you’re a little rusty in Pig Latin, check out the Pig Latin article in Wikipedia.

Yo ho ho . . . and thanks to Cap’n Dan Rinzel for making these new releases available.

The tweeting started just before BbWorld’07. John Lowe posted to the BLKBRD-L listserv about using twitter for the BbWorld’07 Unofficial Backchannel. I was intrigued.

I’d read about twitter – the website that asks you to answer the question, “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less. Despite the press it was getting I couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about. Who really needs to tell people what they are doing at random moments during the day. Furthermore, who wants to read that random stream of stuff? I thought.

Now was my chance to find out. I signed up. Throughout BbWorld’07 I tried to remember to post interesting tidbits or URLs that I’d heard in sessions. When I did I heard back from others in the network who were enjoying other sessions or who were stuck at home unable to attend the conference and glad to hear about the events in near real time. People seemed to appreciate this micro-blogging of the conference. Before I knew it I was addicted to tweeting.

Now I’m using twitter to share what I’m doing in my role at Blackboard. If it is related to the Blackboard Developer Network, or news in the Open Source communities, or updates to the User Group and other Client Engagement activities and I think others might want to know, I tweet about it.

Interested in learning more? You are welcome to follow me.

Today is a day to celebrate some unsung heroes – the people who make our lives possible in this 24×7 networked age.  I’m talking about System Administrators. 

Without them our computers couldn’t talk to one another, our email would remain undelivered, our VoIP phones would fall quiet, we couldn’t teach and learn online.  System Administrators know that we’re counting on them to keep the electronic services we’ve come to rely on, up and running.  They usually only hear from us when we’ve got problems – system down, forgot my password, laptop infected with a virus.  They put in long hours on nights and weekends to ensure that the rest of us experience minimal disruptions.  How often have they been the calm voice on the other end of your phone line reassuring you that everything is going to be all right? 

Today is SysAdmin Day, the day to say thanks to the fine men and women who keep our networks, servers, websites, laptops, printers, and entire IT infrastructures humming. 

Thank you!

For the most part what is written on a chalkboard is erased soon after.  In fact, that is the whole point – the ease of writing followed by ease of erasing repeated ad infinitum. 

But there is an exhibit at the Museum of the History of Science at the University of Oxford that focuses on blackboards even as they are vanishing from our daily lives in the classroom and meeting spaces.  The exhibit is called “Bye-bye blackboard… from Einstein and others.”  There are some real treasures to enjoy here.  And if you’re in Oxford and have a chance to visit it in person – let me know what you think.

Don’t you just love the "Mac vs. PC" ads that have been running on TV for the past year?  Apprently so do the video creators at Wallstrip!

Wallstrip is a daily web video show, sponsored by TheStreet.com, which mixes "stock culture" (or finance information and trends from Wall Street) with pop culture.  In the series "Wallstrips Take On…," the site recently posted a humorous take on Blackboard in a video homage to the series of Mac ads currently airing on US television. 

Watch the video here.  It’s quirky and very clever.  Enjoy.