Moodlerooms binds Moodle and Google Apps together

Google is getting to the schools and universities with offer of Google Apps (solution for e-mails, document management) more and more. And so it makes a sense to use widely known Moodle and create something that will be useful for both sides.

I think that recently released news on Moodlerooms site(company that is certified Moodle partner and company that brings some really good Moodle stuff again and again ;-)) about offering single sign-on between Moodle and Google App is great and I think this will help another schools to decide what they will be using to solve their e-learning needs.

Press release is to be found HERE

New features ideas? It is time...

Do you have idea for new feature for Moodle that will blow everybody minds? Feature that will be used around the world and in the nearby universe? Now it is perfect time to make something about it.

Moodle.org is preparing for another round of GSOC (Google supported contest for students) and needs new ideas.

More can be found in this announcement

(Via www.moodlerific.org )

VPN driving me mad

Today something different than usual Moodle ramblings ;-).

I use VPN connection on one of my projects. VPN is for Virtual private network. You can picture VPN as small, safe island in rough sea of the Internet ;-). It combines conveniences of private network - security and global network - access from anywhere, you can mount disks from server as local disks etc.

Set up VPN is fairly easy, you can see tutorial with pictures for example here. I created VPN connection without problem, only thing that bothered me (I am used to restarting IM services - skype, icq when connecting to the VPN) was annoying popup window demanding me to login to VPN even if I didn't want to use it.

It jumped on me on random moments, I noticed, that this may have something to do with problems with internet connection. If there were some hiccup when loading web pages, VPN thought there is a problem with net, jumped in to save the day...which has happened to be very bothering and unnecessary.



I am using Windows XP and Firefox 3, I tried to find where is the problem. Checked the network setting to disallow VPN to redial, checked Firefox setting for connection, but without luck. At last I found solution where I have never expected it. You have to go to Internet Explorer setting and set VPN connection to never dial. Windows thinks VPN as dial-up connection and Firefox takes this setting directly from Internet Explorer (strange, I know).



You can find how to set this up for example on this page .

I hope this will help someone with same problem, saves you some needed time, nerves and hairs :-)