Friday, October 27, 2006

Designing a more accessible web. BBC Click's Katie Ledger investigates how easy it is to access the internet if you have a disability. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition] 10:35:09 PM      Google It!.

Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade?. swestcott writes to mention an article at the Chronicle of Higher Education site, wondering if Wikipedia will ever 'make the grade'? Academics are split, and feuding, about how to handle the popular collaborative project. Due to the ease of editing correct information into nonsense, many professors are ignoring it. Others want to start contributing. From the article: "As the encyclopedia's popularity continues to grow, some professors are calling on scholars to contribute articles to Wikipedia, or at least to hone less-than-inspiring entries in the site's vast and growing collection. Those scholars' take is simple: If you can't beat the Wikipedians, join 'em. Proponents of that strategy showed up in force at Wikimania, the annual meeting for Wikipedia contributors, a three-day event held in August at Harvard University. Leaders of Wikipedia said there that they had turned their attention to increasing the accuracy of information on the Web site, announcing several policies intended to prevent editorial vandalism and to improve or erase Wikipedia's least-trusted entries." [Slashdot] 10:32:27 PM      Google It!.

Flaw exploited in RFID-enabled passports. Blog: Security researchers have released proof-of-contact code that they say enables an attacker to read the passport number, date of... [CNET News.com] 4:09:53 PM      Google It!.

Educause responds to the BB patent and the saga continues as reported in http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/27/educause 4:08:58 PM      Google It!.

Sloodle combines Second Life 3D with Moodle in an interesting new learning platform.  Maybe the time is right for compelling games games for learning. -- BL 3:50:14 PM      Google It!.

RFID passports take off. Despite security and privacy concerns, all but three of the countries required by the U.S. to issue passports with radio tags are doing so. [CNET News.com] 3:33:32 PM      Google It!.

Ubuntu 6.10 is Out. cloudmaster writes "Apparently they were watching me to see when I downloaded the 6.10-rc release isos, as I did that last night, and the full release happened this morning. :) Neat stuff, including Firefox 2.0, Gnome 2.16, myth 0.20, faster booting thanks to upstart (sort of a replacement for init, among others), etc. The announcement and download pages are up. I've got *my* torrent running..." [Slashdot] 3:32:47 PM      Google It!.

Java To Be Opened For Christmas?. MBCook writes "At the Oracle OpenWorld conference, Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz announced on Wednesday morning that Java would be opened within 30-60 days, which would would mean about Christmas Day at the latest. Sun first announced they would do this back in May at JavaOne but didn't give a date. We've seen rumblings before on this topic. Schwartz also commented on the companies Sun Fire servers, Sun's relationship with Oracle, and general trends." [Slashdot] 3:32:06 PM      Google It!.

Facebook introduces new "sharing" feature. Blog: Social networking site Facebook has rolled out yet another new feature that might not boil over too well with its members. It's... [CNET News.com] 3:29:34 PM      Google It!.

A conversation with John Schneider about Efficient XML. John Schneider, the CTO of AgileDelta and the driving force behind E4X, is now evangelizing Efficient XML, an alternate binary syntax for XML. In today's podcast we discuss the motivations for this proposed W3C standard, its theoretical foundations, and its uses. ... [Jon's Radio] 3:28:05 PM      Google It!.

Depressed? Net-based Treatments Can Help. Jung and the Restless writes "Researchers at an Australian university have found that regular visits to therapeutic and educational web sites can successfully treat depression. Researchers directed patients to The MoodGYM, a cognitive behavior therapy site, and BluePages, a depression education site. After 12 months, users of both web sites reported improvement, with the educational site working out better than the behavior therapy site. A psychotherapist who did not participate in the study says that the results aren't all that surprising. 'Cognitive behavioral strategies [~] sometimes in conjunction with medication [~] are the most effective means of treating depression,' and 'a person who is visiting an educational site like BluePages is taking the necessary steps with her own self-care. That's a key component of successful treatment for depression'" [Slashdot] 3:26:29 PM      Google It!.

Next Generation of iPods to have Wi-Fi?. Zephyr14z writes "A TMCnet article states that Apple has filed a patent for iPods that can purchase music wirelessly over the internet. This was an expected feature in the Zune, though it turns out not to be true. 'While this could be an effort to fight the software giant and its product directly, it should be noted that Zune's built-in Wi-Fi will be limited to the file sharing between devices with no direct Internet purchases from the handheld,' says Campbell." [Slashdot] 3:25:29 PM      Google It!.

Smart Cameras Detect Crime, Erode Privacy. MattSparkes writes "Smart surveillance systems could identify crimes as they take place, if a computer vision system developed at the University of Texas goes into production. The system is capable of classifying behaviour as friendly or violent. In the past there have been attempts to spot unusual behaviour, but this required subsequent user classification. These new systems may keep us more secure, but is it worth sacrificing our privacy for? And will we see false positives, where police cars screech to a halt beside hugging couples?" [Slashdot] 3:22:34 PM      Google It!.