Wednesday, November 1, 2006

'Second Life' delays real estate price increases. Blog: It seems that customer outcry can make a difference, contrary to conventional wisdom that companies operate by their own set of... [CNET News.com] 10:44:37 PM      Google It!.

Lecturers 'made ill by workload'. Nearly half of lecturers suffer ill health because of their job, a new survey suggests. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition] 10:43:26 PM      Google It!.

The Internet Now has Over 100 Million Web Sites. 1sockchuck writes "There are now more than 100 million web sites on the Internet, according to Netcraft, whose monthly web server survey has reached 101.4 million sites. From the article: 'The 100 million site milestone caps an extraordinary year in which the Internet has already added 27.4 million sites, easily topping the previous full-year growth record of 17 million from 2005. The Internet has doubled in size since May 2004, when the survey hit 50 million.'" This is a far cry from the August 1995 results that just cleared 18,000. [Slashdot] 10:17:08 PM      Google It!.

Blake Ross Working on Parakey Web OS. prostoalex writes "IEEE Spectrum is running an article on Blake Ross, creator of Firefox, and his new project called Parakey, which will bridge the gap between Web and desktop operating system. From the article: 'As he describes it, from a user's point of view, Parakey is "a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do." Translation: it makes it really easy to store your stuff and share it with the world. Most or all of Parakey will be open source, under a license similar to Firefox's. There are differences between the two projects, however. Although Ross plans to incorporate the talents and passions of the free-software community, he's building Parakey around a for-profit business model. And he's leading the charge with a simple battle cry: "One interface, not two!"'" [Slashdot] 10:16:09 PM      Google It!.

Viral Fossil Brought Back to Life. hey hey hey writes "In a controversial study, researchers have resurrected a retrovirus that infected our ancestors millions of years ago and now sits frozen in the human genome. Published online by Genome Research this week, the study may shed new light on the history of these genomic intruders, as well as their role in tumors. Although this particular virus, dubbed Phoenix, is a wimpy one, some argue that resuscitating any ancient virus is inherently risky and that the study should have undergone stricter reviews." [Slashdot] 10:13:59 PM      Google It!.

The new community oriented site by EduTools was launched today with 10 products.  The links to EduTools will now go to the new site and the previous product information will continue to be available as an archive.  All new product information will be on the new site along with community discussion forums for each product.  Each of the forums also supports an RSS feed so it is now easier to keep current with developments in products of interest.  Enjoy - Bruce Landon on behalf of the EduTools Team 10:10:56 PM      Google It!.

Classified Wiki for U.S. Intelligence Community. CortoMaltese noted that the U.S. intelligence community has unveiled their own classified wiki, the Intellipedia. Reuters says "The office of U.S. intelligence czar John Negroponte announced Intellipedia, which allows intelligence analysts and other officials to collaboratively add and edit content on the government's classified Intelink Web much like its more famous namesake on the World Wide Web. A "top secret" Intellipedia system, currently available to the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, has grown to more than 28,000 pages and 3,600 registered users since its introduction on April 17. Less restrictive versions exist for "secret" and "sensitive but unclassified" material." For kicks, you can also read about Intellipedia on Wikipedia." [Slashdot] 10:55:45 AM      Google It!.

The Screening Room #10: Dabble DB.    The October episode of The Screening Room features Dabble DB, a web-based workgroup database that, in the style of 37Signals, focuses on simplicity and embraces constraints. Dabble doesn't aim to do full-blown database application development, or sophisticated query, or heavy transactions. Its mission, instead, is to enable teams to easily manage and flexibly evolve modest (say, 30- to 50-megabyte) quantities of structured data. ... [Jon's Radio] 10:53:57 AM      Google It!.

Mobile speech recognition. On Monday I visited Nuance for an update on the company's speech recognition products and initiatives. Two years ago, my screencast on Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 demonstrated what was then the state of the art in automatic dictation. Dragon has for years been asymptotically approaching the point at which dictation becomes routine and general-purpose. For most of us, it hasn't yet reached that point. I didn't upgrade to the latest version 9 because, despite improvements, I didn't think it would yet cross my threshold for routine use. Nuance's demo of Dragon 9 confirmed that hunch. ... [Jon's Radio] 10:52:01 AM      Google It!.

The Open University launches OpenLearn By Mohamed Amine Chatti(Mohamed Amine Chatti) The OpenLearn website is based on the open source course management system Moodle, as announced by Martin Dougiamas, Moodle community leader and lead developer in November 2005. This Open University OpenLearn as well as MIT OCW ... Mohamed Amine Chatti´s ongoing... - http://mohamedaminechatti.blogspot.com/index.html 10:47:01 AM      Google It!.