Friday, November 17, 2006

"We gather that the idea is the software acts as a sort of search tool that finds images with certain things in them as one might use the Google toolbar to find documents with certain words. Polar reckons its Bloom[dot accent] face matching technology will be just one component of this. ...The firm's Californian spokesman reckoned the software had some "intriguing social networking capabilities". The mind boggles."  -- It might be intersting to see who you look(ed) like by searching --BL 8:56:16 PM      Google It!.

dual-mode Nuvoiz sees flat-rate tariffs pushing voice calls onto Wi-Fi By Bryan Betts → More by this author Mobile networks are at last yielding to the lure of dual-mode phones and voice over Wi-Fi, as flat-rate tariffs turn the business of delivering a call into a cost instead of a revenue.  That's the claim of Chong-Jin Koh, the head of Nuvoiz, a wireless VoIP start-up. He said that, after years of jealously guarding their voice revenues, some carriers have now realised that as average revenue per user (ARPU) moves to a flat rate, it's cheaper to offload call delivery onto Wi-Fi."Dual-mode phones will explode over the next five years," he said. "Skype and others are going mobile too, though they're mainly targeting consumers." -- this is espeically attractive for wireless campuses -- BL 8:39:23 PM      Google It!.

Institutions in US and Abroad Continue to Select rSmart for Open ... By Arizona Venture Capital The Georgia Institute of Technology âo[base "] Atlanta, Georgia is piloting the rSmart Sakai CLE this fall and evaluating it as a full replacement for its proprietary course management system. Several factors have led Georgia Tech to this ... azventurecapital.com - http://azventurecapital.com 8:02:57 PM      Google It!.

EdTech Posse Podcast 2.1 - Open source in education By blog.caninternetshop.com Journler - note taking and desktop blogging for Mac, freeware, closed source; Firefox - web browser, an excellent alternative to IE, all platforms, open source; Moodle - web based course management system, an excellent alternative to ... blog - http://blog.caninternetshop.com 8:02:33 PM      Google It!.

A conversation with Rajiv Gupta about fine-grained access control. Joining me for today's podcast is Rajiv Gupta, CEO of Securent. His new company, which has been operating in stealth mode for a couple of years and just announced itself today, is focused on the thorny problem of fine-grained access control. In this conversation we discuss the role of XACML, the Extensible Access Control Markup Language; we talk about how to wrap or intercept legacy security policies in order to hoist them out of application logic and place them in the network where they belong; and we explore the relationship between fine-grained security which focuses on individual resource, and coarse-grained security which deals with users and roles. ... [Jon's Radio] 4:10:02 PM      Google It!.

dLCMS - Open Source LCMS built on Silva/Zope. http://www.dlcms.ethz.ch/ Ahhhh, love those Google searches. Whilst searching (and still seeking) information about the standards compliance of WebCT CE 6 content exports, I stumbled across this find, the dynamic Learning Content Management System. Built as an extension of the open source CMS called Silva, dLCMS bills itself as a "content management system for web based learning materials" built on top of Zope and released under a BSD license. It stores resources in XML format and has created packages which have been successfully imported into OLAT, ILIAS, Moodle and WebCT. It looks to have been produced by ETH Zurich (and possibly on soft money that's now run out) but possibly worth a look. - SWL [EdTechPost] 4:07:10 PM      Google It!.

Facing the Dangers of Nanotech. bethr writes "Technology Review has a Q&A with Andrew Maynard, the science advisor for the Woodrow Wilson International Center's nanotechnology project regarding the dangers of nanomaterials and why we have to act now." From the article: "Individual experiments have indicated that if you develop materials with a nanostructure, they do behave differently in the body and in the environment. We know from animal studies that very, very fine particles, particles with high surface area, lead to a greater inflammatory response than the same amount of larger particles. We also know that they can enter the lining of the lungs and get through to the blood and enter other organs. There is some evidence that nanoparticles can move into the brain along the olfactory nerve, so this is completely circumventing the blood-brain barrier." [Slashdot] 1:27:57 PM      Google It!.

China Reinstates Wikipedia Ban. Rob T Firefly writes "The International Herald Tribute reports that the lifting of China's Wikipedia ban earlier this week was short-lived. Wikipedia is once again inaccessible from behind the Great Firewall, along with all other Wikimedia projects. Additionally, the URL of Chinese Wikipedia is once again a banned search term. No reason has yet been given for any of it." From the article: "It wasn't immediately clear if Wikipedia was inaccessible due to technical glitches or because government censors had blocked the site again. The Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Information Industry did not immediately respond when contacted for comment Friday. Beijing blocked access to the English and Chinese versions of Wikipedia in October last year, apparently out of concern about entries touching on the country's sensitive spots -- Tibet, Taiwan and other topics."[Slashdot] 1:23:23 PM      Google It!.

"The controversy gathered steam Monday when Linden Lab, which publishes Second Life, posted a blog alerting residents of the virtual world to the existence of a program or bot called CopyBot, which allows someone to copy any object in Second Life. That includes goods such as clothing that people purchase for their in-world avatars, and even the virtual PCs that computer giant Dell announced Tuesday it is going to sell in the digital world." 10:52:51 AM      Google It!.

Microsoft Pushing Municipal Wi-Fi. PreacherTom writes "Microsoft is moving to be the latest player to bring its formidable weight to bear in the growing Wi-Fi market. The software giant's recent deal to provide content and services through partnership with municipal Wi-Fi operator MetroFi in Portland, Ore., will intensify the battle between Google, Yahoo!, and MSN for online traffic. Why the focus? Content providers who capture the growing municipal Wi-Fi market will be in a better position to enjoy higher traffic to their sites and greater customer loyalty [~] and, as a result, grab a greater share of the $16 billion of expected online advertising dollars this year, according to consultancy eMarketer. 'It's a battle for eyeballs,' says Matt Rosoff, an analyst with the consultancy firm 'Directions on Microsoft'."[Slashdot] wifi everywhere is a way to make just-in-time education workable and assures that the learning platform is mobile or at least wireless -- BL 10:35:53 AM      Google It!.