Wednesday, October 06, 2004

U.S. Scientists of Smell Sniff Out Nobel Prize. STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Two U.S. scientists won the 2004 Nobel prize for medicine on Monday for showing how the sense of smell enables people to recall, for instance, the scent of spring lilac in winter or the stench of rotten food eaten long ago. [Reuters: Science] 8:52:38 AM      Google It!.

Brain Links. Via elearnspace, a whole bunch of links to sites about the brain. Something to think on. By Various Authors, October, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily] 8:48:02 AM      Google It!.

Re-usable Learning Content Objects or Re-usable Learning Experience Objects?. Where else would someone glibly cite Chomsky's Syntactic Structures except in our field? Glib or not, it is not surprising to see Chomsky used as the base of a response, because much of what I write is in direct response to Chomsky and his ilk (Zenon Pylyshyn, Jerry Fodor, etc). Feldstein is responding to my question, "where was it written that language must be composed of building blocks strung together?" He finds the source for this question in my paper Design Standards and Re-usability (though I must say Learning Objects in a Wider Context frames the idea more effectively). Even so, he effectively finds the source of the tension: "I believe that the rules for re-using experience patterns and the rules for re-using content are respectively analogous to the rules of syntax and semantics." I would say they are analagous in use, but they are not isomorphic - there is nothing, say, in the placement of an image on a web page, or the playing of an audio clip with some video, that corresponds to the rules outlines in Chomsky. That's not to say that the new rules are not generative - but they're generative in the way that a fractal or a network structure is generative, like a tree or a river, not in the way a language-based grammar is generative. Feldstein offers a good, insightful criticism, well worth reading. By Michael Feldstein, E-Literate, October 3, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily] 8:45:33 AM      Google It!.

Nose-steered Mouse Could Save Aching Arms. I saw the prototypes at the National Research Council offices in Ottawa a couple of years ago, but this invention by NRC staff is finally getting some public play. The nouse is a system that uses a video camera to locate your nose and use it as a mouse pointer. Want to switch it on? Blink twice. By Celeste Biever, New Scientist, September 16, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily] 7:50:38 AM      Google It!.

Computer telephony: why wait?. The other day I had one of those living-in-the-future moments. An important phone call came in, but the colleague I needed to bring into the call wasn't available, and the caller couldn't wait. So, with the caller's permission, I recorded the call and forwarded it as an MP3 file to my colleague. When she later replayed the conversation, she got crucial points -- both factual and emotional -- that I never could have accurately reported. VoIP fantasy come true? Not even close. The call came in on a POTS line. I answered on a regular -- not even cordless -- telephone. The integration between the voice and data networks was courtesy of JK Audio's QuickTap. ... There are dozens of ways in which personal computers can add value to the PSTN. Caller ID screen pops, conference call setup, call logging, voice archiving, and user-programmable IVR (interactive voice response) are just some of the productivity aids that we should all take for granted by now -- but that almost nobody can. The story of the Bellheads vs. the Netheads is a myth in the primary sense of that word. It explains a real conflict between worldviews in a way most people can easily understand, and that's useful. But we can't believe it literally. If the mammals keep waiting for the dinosaurs to die out, we'll keep missing chances to exploit them. [Full story at InfoWorld.com] When you click through to the column, you'll see that its title -- as published online and in the print magazine -- uses the phrase "IP telephony," not "computer telephony" as originally written. I can understand why the change was made: the former term is more familiar than the latter. And that's exactly my point. We tend to assume that the integration of computers and telephones means both devices must use TCP/IP. That's an enabler, but not a requirement. There's a ton of useful integration you can do by bridging between TCP/IP and the PSTN. ... [Jon's Radio] -- idea: simple recording of call service (as a link on the conference/class call) that makes an mp3 copy and then distributes it to the conference/class as a link.  The virtue is that a playback via winamp plus pacemaker the review time could be reduced by 50 percent and with an added value service it could be keyword indexed with software (fasttrack?) -- BL 7:31:02 AM      Google It!.