Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Welcome to an incomplete history. I'm Hillary and I'm Jeff,
Speaker 1 00:00:04 Your host for this weekly history podcast. <inaudible>
Speaker 0 00:00:25 I want to show you first a couple of basic things that everybody needs to get started, and you might not think much about this. You might just kind of use whatever browser your computer defaulted to the browser choice is really important. And what I'm trying to focus on here are tools that can be consistent no matter what computer you're using. So whether you're using a windows, computer, um, a Macintosh, or you're using a, a Lennox based machine, uh, even if you're using it on your iPad, your iPhone or your Android device, um, many of these are also available in chromo S uh, many of the tools I'm going to show you. Um, some of them, it's going to be a little bit different. So for this one right here, uh, the, the things I'm going to talk about right now, which is basically your browser and your email client, uh, these are pretty particular for all the systems except for chromo S so if you're going to be using chromo S ignore this, um, there is a way to do a different browser other than Chrome.
Speaker 0 00:01:26 Um, there's also a way to use another email client, but it's much simpler just to keep with the ones that provide, uh, as the default setting, but for all the other systems, uh, the browser I would really recommend is Firefox. Now, I'm going to give you an alternative at the end of this video, uh, to my main choices. And the alternative I'm going to talk about is called Vivaldi. Uh, there's another kind of open source browser called brave that, uh, emphasizes, uh, security and privacy. Uh, I have some issues with brave. They have embedded ads that kind of irritate me, uh, right now, Firefox is the browser of choice for me. There are a couple of reasons for that. First of all, they really have doubled down on their focus on privacy. Um, for a long time, people kind of fled Firefox because there was this infamous memory leak that would happen the longer you had Firefox open to kind of slower your system would get, um, that's been solved now and compared to the biggest browser, which is Chrome, uh, it definitely uses resources a little more efficiently, right?
Speaker 0 00:02:34 It's still, it's a modern browser. It's still kind of bloated sometimes, but as far as the balance between kind of privacy and usability and compatibility with sites, uh, particularly, uh, sites, you as an instructor or a student or whatever it might be using regular, like it is compatible with most of those things. So Firefox, uh, I'm using it right here to go to the Firefox website, which is part of Mozilla Mozilla. Uh, and they've kind of, when you go there, it'll give you a chance to download it. Um, I'm going to put all these links on the description of the video, but you can just go right here and you can download it. And what happens is this, uh, it'll up, it'll kind of install a new browser for you, you'll have the choice to make it your default browser or not. Uh, you can try it and not make it your default browser until, you know, it's actually something you want to stick with, but I like Firefox, uh, for its privacy focus.
Speaker 0 00:03:35 Uh, they've also kind of integrated some new features, including lock wise, which is their integrated, uh, password solution. Um, your passwords for all your websites should be different. Um, I'm guilty of not doing that. And I know most of you probably are guilty of the same thing. Um, but you really should use a password store or something to store your password on, uh, passwords for their various sites, because you really need to have different passwords for different sites. Uh, so Firefox has an integrated version of that. There's again, an alternative I'm going to give you at the end of this video series, it's called bit warden, uh, which is really fantastic. I really liked that word and a lot, uh, but just for simplicity sake, Firefox gets you that it's got really robust ad blocking. Um, also it's extension library is pretty fast and, uh, you can get extensions for a lot of the apps I'm going to be talking about today.
Speaker 0 00:04:36 Um, so I would say Firefox, um, for all of those reasons and more, um, although your choice of browser is fairly individual. Now, the next big thing you need to be able to do besides kind of going to your school's website, or if your student go into your course websites, go into your learning management system, like canvas things like that is your email. And the default email application on your computer is fine. Uh, whether it's outlook, if you're on a windows machine, um, Apple mail, uh, on a Mac iOS, or if you're on Lenox, it might be something called Gary. Um, I do like Gary a lot. Gary's a really nice slick email application. Um, if you want an email application that you can get a bounce between systems on it, it always is the same experience. I would say, Thunderbird is your choice. Uh, now Thunderbird, um, is a spinoff for Mozilla, the same people that make Firefox initially made Thunderbird.
Speaker 0 00:05:38 Although it's been spun off as kind of its own application, now its own thing, and it's pretty good. It's got an integrated, uh, email client calendar, client task lists. You can also see chat right there. It says. And the great thing is this, um, it sets up pretty seamlessly with most email accounts. Now, some outlook accounts and some accounts that use login.microsoft. Uh, some universities use those. It might be a little finicky at first, keep at it. Um, once you get it set up, it works beautifully. Uh, the community's pretty robust. So you can use the community, uh, to get kind of support on that. Um, don't look for your own it department at your institution to kind of help you. They really don't know about this, uh, which is a little surprising, um, they're kind of mystified. Why Thunderbird, why would somebody would want to use it for their email?
Speaker 0 00:06:39 Um, and they really aren't equipped to kind of deal with helping you get it set up, but it's fairly straightforward to set up. So Thunderbird's a great email application and it solves the calendar problem as well. It integrates with Google calendars and integrates with Apple's, uh, calendars. Um, so it does a really good job of all of that. So you've got these two basic building blocks, Firefox and Thunderbird. And the next thing I would add on that is actually thinking about getting hosting. And this is really directed, not necessarily to students who might be watching this video, but for professors, for instructors, for teachers and for students who know they kind of want a little bit more, they really want to focus on security. There's a great group called reclaim hosting, and I'm not getting any money from reclaim hosting to talk about this, but reclaim hosting was created for educators and institutions, uh, to provide a hosting solution that solves a lot of prob uh, privacy issues.
Speaker 0 00:07:45 Um, I use this for my own hosting for an incomplete history. Um, the podcast that's associated with this video, you're listening to, so an incomplete history, it's fun podcast. I do with a colleague of mine. Um, Hillary calls her and she's out at old miss. Uh, but reclaim hosting is a place where you can get an email address. That's not owned by someone else, and you can host a site now, your site, um, it could be just stuck a blog site. It can also be site to use, uh, for students to kind of access material. If you want to go outside the learning management system for your university, the great thing is this, and this is what people always are surprised with. Now. Students can get a really basic one, um, that is, I'll check it in just a minute. I think students can get it for $0 million while they're students it's kind of limited, but they get their own email address and all that stuff.
Speaker 0 00:08:43 But for instructors, professors, as well as students who kind of want something a little more, a $30 a year, you get your own domain, you get unlimited subdomains, you get an email address with that. You get a lot of stuff with that for $30 a year, and it's private, right? This is all you, um, I can't say enough about reclaim hosting. They're fantastic. Um, they use WordPress as kind of their backbone or their, um, uh, servers when you're kind of setting up websites through them, uh, which is a great thing students should know. Um, you know, it's, I would say, um, it's fantastic. And along with Firefox browser and the Thunderbird email client, uh, using reclaim, hosting that, right, they're using a browser that protects your privacy, using an email client that kind of gets you off the website version of checking email and they using reclaim hosting.
Speaker 0 00:09:46 Um, this really does provide you with a lot of the tools you need. So Firefox Thunderbird reclaim hosting, uh, they're kind of in order of what I think may be most important immediately. And then what kind of is ideal, uh, that $30 a year fee for reclaim hosting, you probably can't get reimbursed for that through your university. However, uh, and I would check with this, it may be something that's tax deductible as a business expense, um, particularly in the age of COVID-19 and kind of remote teaching. Um, but you know, absolutely fantastic. I cannot kind of recommend reclaim, hosting it up. So this is the end of part, one of this series, the next set, I'm going to talk about actual tools you need for creation, uh, basically writing focus tools as well as tools you would use to create presentations for students. Take notes, keep track of bibliographic information. Also a really interesting alternative if you're in decoding at all, but if you just want a simple way to write things in a way to manage kind of the sea of PDFs, that all of us seem to labor under now that you know, everything gets put in a PDF format,
Speaker 1 00:11:11 <inaudible>.
