Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better. – Maya Angelou

Mr. Walker's Classroom Blog

  • Twitter DuckDuckGo

    What is DuckDuckGo?

    From their official website:

    “DuckDuckGo is a general purpose search engine that is intended to be your starting place when searching the Internet. Use it to get way more instant answers, way less spam and real privacy, which we believe adds up to a much better overall search experience.”

    From their privacy page:

    “DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. That is our privacy policy in a nutshell. The rest of this page tries to explain why you should care.”

    DuckDuckGo’s “!bangs”

    “!bangs” are special commands that give users the ability to search 100s of other sites directly from the DuckDuckGo search box (including other search engines). There are currently over a thousand !bang commands available. The most popular “!bangs” are also available in the drop down menu.

  • Follow these steps to get started with Photoshop CS6 beta:

    1. Watch the Russell Brown’s 6 Favorite Features in Photoshop CS6 beta video
    2. Download and install Photoshop CS6 beta
      You do not need a serial number to install and use the beta. Simply select “Try. I want to try Adobe Photoshop CS6 for a limited time.” in the Welcome Screen when you start the installation process.

  • google_docs_150x150Spell checking powered by the web

    One of my early projects at Google was to improve the suggestions that are made when a query is misspelled in Google Search. The neat thing about that system is that it’s adaptive: our suggestions get smarter and smarter based on the words Googlebot sees as it explores the web.
    But search isn’t the only place where I make spelling mistakes! And that got me wondering: could we take this adaptive technology and use it to make spell checking better in other places?
    The answer is yes. To prove it, today we’re launching an update to spell checking in documents and presentations that grows and adapts with the web, instead of relying on a fixed dictionary. This update has a few big advantages over traditional spell checkers:

    1. Suggestions are contextual. For example, the spell checker is now smart enough to know what you mean if you type “Icland is an icland.”

    2. Contextual suggestions are made even if the misspelled word is in the dictionary. If you write “Let’s meat tomorrow morning for coffee” you’ll see a suggestion to change “meat” to “meet."
    3. Suggestions are constantly evolving. As Google crawls the web, we see new words, and if those new words become popular enough they’ll automatically be included in our spell checker—even pop culture terms, like Skrillex. 

    This new spell checker is available for English documents and presentations, but we plan to bring it to more languages soon. We’re really excited to give you a spelling system that continuously gets better. We hope it will make writing more efficient and enjoyable for you.

    Posted by Yew Jin Lim, Software Engineer

  • Instant America
    Created by: Online Graduate Programs

  •  

    Many of us played with Legos when we were kids, but for some people, the fascination continues well into adulthood. Some of today’s Lego sets bear little resemblance to the boxy brick buildings we used to make. So, what’s up with those newfangled Legos robots? And what does Lego mean, anyway?

    Ultimate Lego Quiz