Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Mass Storage For Phones. The Demo conference started today, and the first news out of it comes from Seagate, which will be introducing pocket-sized, 20-GB, Bluetooth-equipped drives for cellphones this summer. They call this tech Dave (one wonders whether the acronym or the expansion came first). Quoting: "DAVE-based products will be about the size of a credit card and less than half and inch thick, with an operating range of up to 30 feet from the connected phone... Software to hook the drives up to cellphones has already been produced for J2ME, BREW, Windows Mobile, Symbian and XCCC. Palm compatibility is forthcoming. The platform is open source..." [Slashdot] 8:27:35 PM      Google It!.

A Wheelchair That Reads Your Mind. Researchers are developing a thought-controlled robotic wheelchair, using a small, mobile interface that works with EEG electrodes placed on the scalp.... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 4:16:26 PM      Google It!.

Computer Program Writes Its Own Fiction. MEXICA, is the first program to generate original stories based on computerized representations of emotions and tensions between characters.... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 4:14:14 PM      Google It!.

SplashCasts Educational Potential. What are SplashCasts? Today TechCrunch published an article about the official launch of SplashCasts. For those who haven't heard of them before here is a little blurb from their main page. SplashCast enables anyone to create streaming media 'channels' that combine video, music, photos, narration, text and RSS feeds. These user-generated channels can be played and easily syndicated on any web site, blog, or social network page. When channel owners modify their channel, their content is automatically updated across all the web pages 'tuned' to that channel. Educational Potential My first question was how is this different than podcast's or Windows Movie Maker. In reality a user could create these multimedia presentation for quite some time, but the interface is much easier to navigate and control. Users also have the added bonus of using content that is already hosted at places like Flickr and YouTube without downloading and copying the content. That sure saves some time in the creation process. With SplashCasts you are also basically creating your own channel. Much like I wrote about yesterday, everyone can be famous; everyone can have their own channel. Some ideas for education off the top of my head: Teacher records classes and has a channel students can go and watch anytime. Teacher creates classes online using video, audio, photo's, text, whatever... a true MULTI-MEDIA presentation. Assign students to create their own SplashCast regarding a subject. Create a class SplashCast that everyone can add to and update. It could be a great resource for other teacher's as well. What other applications in education can you think of? Trial Run I decided any review wouldn't be totally complete without a test run. I signed up (free) with relative ease (they did ask for my birthday, but promised it would be kept private) and signed in. I must say I was pleasantly surprised at the ease of creating a presentation. I created a couple using text, audio, video from YouTube and even a RSS feed presentation. The flash interface was a little annoying to my ajax-centered (Gmail, Google Calendar, etc, etc.) life. Overall though I give it 8 out of 10 stars.  Original Article: http://www.edutechie.com/2007/01/splashcasts-educational-potential/ Technorati Tags: splashcasts [EDUCAUSE CONNECT blogs] 2:46:57 PM      Google It!.

Water From Wind. ghostcorps recommends a writeup in The Australian by columnist Phillip Adams about a new windmill design that extracts water from air. The article gives few details of how it works, because patent protection is not yet in place, but what is revealed sounds promising. "[Max] Whisson's design has many blades, each as aerodynamic as an aircraft wing, and each employing 'lift' to get the device spinning... They don't face into the wind like a conventional windmill; they're arranged vertically, within an elegant column, and take the wind from any direction... The secret of Max's design is how his windmills, whirring away in the merest hint of a wind, cool the air as it passes by... With three or four of Max's magical machines on hills at our farm we could fill the tanks and troughs, and weather the drought. One small Whisson windmill on the roof of a suburban house could keep your taps flowing. Biggies on office buildings, whoppers on skyscrapers, could give independence from the city's water supply. And plonk a few hundred in marginal outback land [~] specifically to water tree-lots [~] and you could start to improve local rainfall."[Slashdot] 2:42:21 PM      Google It!.

Very nice integration. I am working on a contract, so I'm sending back and forth lots of DOC format files, and this morning I noticed something nice, that works really well. I'm a Gmail user, and now there's a link when you're looking at an attachment that allows you to open it in their browser-based word processor. It's by far the most convenient of the three links, esp since I don't have a desktop word processor that reliably opens Word files. Since I'm so often critical of Google I thought it was important to say "Good job" when they do something that's nice for users. [Scripting News] 2:38:19 PM      Google It!.

'Dumb Terminals' Can Be a Smart Move for Companies. Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "More companies are forgoing desktop and laptop computers for dumb terminals [~] reversing a trend toward powerful individual machines that has been in motion for two decades, the Wall Street Journal reports. 'Because the terminals have no moving parts such as fans or hard drives that can break, the machines typically require less maintenance and last longer than PCs. Mark Margevicius, an analyst at research firm Gartner Inc., estimates companies can save 10% to 40% in computer-management costs when switching to terminals from desktops. In addition, the basic terminals appear to offer improved security. Because the systems are designed to keep data on a server, sensitive information isn't lost if a terminal gets lost, stolen or damaged. And if security programs or other applications need to be updated, the new software is installed on only the central servers, rather than on all the individual PCs scattered throughout a network.'" [Slashdot] with fast pipes and virtual machines this is becoming an attractive option for places with limited resources especially since it lends itself well to mobile computing platforms with wireless --BL 2:30:29 PM      Google It!.