HootCourse Blog

RSS feeds for your HootCourse

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:31:37 -0700

HootCourses now have RSS feeds: One more way to easily access your course content.

There's two types: Dashboard RSS and Course RSS. Dashboard gives you the tweets from all of your courses, while Course gives you the tweets of a specific course.

The feeds work by using a special authentication token, which is unique to your account. Tokens function as both your username and password for the feed, letting you securely access your RSS where you want. Check it out at your dashboard.

Some other notes

Links in your course stream now open in a new tab, just like on Twitter.
The dashboard looks a bit different now. It's not as easy to accidentally use the #hootcourse hashtag to tweet to all courses.
We have a page on oneforty now. Check it out here.

Finally, a big thanks to some notable testers who have helped with these latest updates and some other important fixes: @JaneBozarth, @BrianCroxall, @DerekBruff, @skipvia, @chambo_online and @algotruneman

We appreciate all the feedback and support.

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New options for tweeting to a course

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 20:22:00 -0700

We've just pushed our most-requested feature live: The option to privately tweet (or Facebook update) into a course. Do this by unchecking the checkbox right under the post form.

Previously, messages had automatically gone out as updates to Twitter and Facebook. Of course, sometimes you don't want to tell your Twitter or Facebook friends about your thoughts on the latest literature assignment. We've included this checkbox so you can control who sees your HootCourse tweets. Tweets that aren't posted to Twitter/Facebook are only viewable on hootcourse.com.

Of course, there are drawbacks to privately posting: Your tweets won't be seen by Twitter at all, so they won't be available in hashtag searches.

The checkbox is smart, meaning it will remember the settings of your last post.

URL-protected courses now enjoy more privacy, as the content is only viewable by those who know the URL. Students and teachers can still opt to post to Twitter from a URL-protected course.

You can also see these updates reflected in your mini-clients. The mini-client updates itself, so don't worry about reinstalling.

If you have any questions or comments, please join HootCourse 101 to comment or learn more!

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More HootCourse embed options available

Fri, 21 May 2010 17:23:00 -0700

We've gotten a few requests for new ways to embed the mini-client, beyond the tab that's featured on our main page. Here's our new embed page:

The first new option for embedding is inline HTML. You can put this anywhere in your HTML document and it'll show the mini-client right there on the page, no tab needed. As with most inline embed elements, you can adjust the size to your liking. Our mini-client works with widths greater than 199 pixels.

Our second new method is the Google Gadget by URL. Google Gadgets work on iGoogle, Google sites, and Blogger. Blogger is also one of the blogging platforms we support, making it a great choice for professors looking to use a blog with a particular course.

We're looking forward to seeing how users integrate our mini-client into their own sites. If you've got a site with the mini-client that you'd like to show us, tweet at @HootCourse with the URL.

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Introducing the HootCourse blog

Fri, 14 May 2010 10:19:22 -0700

Welcome to our official HootCourse blog. Here, we'll talk about the latest HootCourse news, including new features, new fixes and happenings in the beta.

We're using Posterous as our blogging software of choice, one of the four blogging platforms that works with HootCourse.

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