Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Cray XT-3 Ships [Slashdot:] 9:50:28 PM      Google It!.

Honey, I Shrunk the eLearning. Handheld computers are ready to deliver robust eLearning–like the media-rich learning experiences normally run on powerful desktop computers–and a Canadian company has developed a powerful new technology to bring full-bodied online instruction into the [Online Learning Update] 9:47:52 PM      Google It!.

Virginia Tech Supercomputer Up To 12.25 Teraflops [Slashdot:] 9:46:27 PM      Google It!.

Program in Course Redesign - Round III Results. http://www.center.rpi.edu/PewGrant/Rd3Less.html You may well see this a few times today - the Program in Course Redesign, a massive project across 30 partnering institutions to demonstrate how colleges and universities can redesign their instructional approaches using technology to achieve cost savings as well as quality enhancements, has released the results of the Round III redesigns. This round looked at course redesigns in 10 institutions, and similarly to previous rounds found some of the biggest quality improvements through 4 techniques - continuous assessment and feedback, increased interaction among students, online tutorials, and undergraduate learning assistants (ULAs.) In terms of costs reductions, I was pleased to see that both course management systems and 'shared resources' were cited as two of the predominant cost-reduction techniques in this round. I haven't been able to find any numbers on how they measured changes in quality enhancements (one assumes grades and retention rates at least) but if they are anything like the costs savings they report, an average of 39%, then clearly the findings from this study warrant attention. - SWL [EdTechPost] 9:42:12 PM      Google It!.

Firefox Shooting For 10 Percent [Slashdot:] 9:39:52 PM      Google It!.

This is Simply Smarter Broadcasting. Simple outline and link to a half hour MP3 summary of podcasting. "It's nothing more than Internet radio at its core, folks. It's audio, on-demand, that's easily synchronized with your computer system / portable media device... in theory." Don't forget, you can hear this broadcast on Ed Radio (invented long before podcasting). By Chris Pirillo, C:PIRILLO.EXE ~ Chris Pirillo, October 26, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily] 9:36:55 PM      Google It!.

Under Gmail's hood. I'd been experimenting for a few months with Gmail, Google's Web mail system, without really taking it seriously. But this week I decided to take the plunge and try using Gmail not only as a mail search engine, but as a replacement for Outlook (on Windows) and Mail (on OS X). Now I'm ready to join the chorus singing the praises of GMail’s user-interface technology. Its combination of HTML, JavaScript, and the DOM makes the browser do some remarkable tricks. ... As early adopters discovered long before I did, there's an architecture behind this JavaScript/DHTML wizardry. The best description I've found is from Johnvey Hwang, who deconstructed Gmail's JavaScript code and created a .Net-based Gmail API. As Hwang described in his July 5 write-up, Gmail loads a JavaScript UI engine into your browser at the beginning of each session. Oddpost, he noted, was the first Web mail application to perfect this technique. That was a prophetic statement: Just four days later, on July 9, Yahoo acquired Oddpost. Because Gmail's behavior is embedded in the UI engine, all subsequent interaction between the browser and the Gmail service is just an exchange of data. What Hwang calls the DataPack format is not XML, though; it's JavaScript. When you make a request to the Gmail service, whether to refresh your inbox or to modify the list of labels you can attach to messages, the response is a minimal set of JavaScript function calls and associated data objects that the engine uses to update the display. ... So is Gmail a rich Internet application? Sure. Although that label most often applies to Java, .Net, and Flash clients, Gmail shows that Web clients can join the club too. But crucially, Gmail's architecture is open to other kinds of rich clients, too. It doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. [Full story at InfoWorld.com] ... [Jon's Radio] 9:35:12 PM      Google It!.

Hypo-Allergenic Cats Now Available for Pre-Order [Slashdot:] 9:32:02 PM      Google It!.

PluggedIn: The OQO Is Not Just Another Handheld Device. SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A full-fledged Windows XP computer that's a fraction of the size of a laptop seems like the answer to the digerati's prayers, but the praise greeting the OQO Model 01 has been decidedly muted. [Reuters: Technology] 9:30:02 PM      Google It!.

Apple Rolls Out iPod Photo, Rocks with U2. SAN JOSE, Calif. (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc. rolled out on Tuesday a new iPod that allows users to view and share photos, a dramatic expansion that takes the most popular digital music player squarely into the multimedia realm, while spurring its rivalry with Microsoft Corp. and others. [Reuters: Technology] 9:27:42 PM      Google It!.

SGI & NASA Build World's Fastest Supercomputer [Slashdot:] 9:25:35 PM      Google It!.