I agree with you.
In my startup (marketplace for face-to-face teachers) we see clearly that most of the students are not self-motivated and self-assured when in difficulties.
It is the rigor of the schedule appointments, the expertise of the face-to-face teacher to adjust the learning progress and his direct feedback that are helping efficiently our students.
MOOC’s are still experimenting on the best way to massively transmit knowledge and it will take time for them before being as efficient as a human teacher.
I don’t know much about Apple computers but on a Windows PC I wouldn’t use startup password to avoid friction when starting the PC.
For login in a website, I would use an application like Keepass. For my private data, I would create a virtual encrypted disk with Truecrypt.
If you leave your PC alone or take a nap, just close Keepass and Truecrypt and your data are secured.
And to enter the password when you start Keepass and Truecrypt, I would create a few pages text file on my desktop and just copy/paste a combination of 2 or 3 words so I wouldn’t need to speak my password loud.
One solution is to host your own NAS.
Synology e.g. provide for their NAS multiple services that might replace some Google Apps: Mail server (Gmail), CalDAV support (Google Calendar), Cloud Station (Google Drive/Dropbox), Photo Station (Picasa), Audio Station (Google Play),… all these with VPN connections.
And you can easily install some productivity tools like CRM, wiki, Wordpress, Zafara…
It doesn't come prepackaged with apache/php/mysql does it? I take it one would have to install those. Tonido does most of these things, but there are some limitations/complications when trying to install your own stuff I believe.
I like how easy it is to follow, comment and close the tasks on Asana:
- They send an email with the full comment/update made on the task
- Reply to the email to send a comment and it will update Asana
- There is a direct link in the email to “View and edit” the task or to unfollow it.
- You can reply with “complete” to mark the task completed
- You can assign the task to a teammate by adding him to the email “to” field.
All this without leaving Gmail.
Most of the top bars use single word (or very short) menus. With this unified drop down menu, you are limited to make all the sub-menus at the same size then the top menu, which is not very user friendly.
I prefer to have longer sub-menus with comprehensible links like http://www.jawbone.com or http://www.nike.com
