techNOcool

The other day my daughter wanted to play with the marble on my desk. The marble was actually a mouse ball. So when she dropped the 'marble' on the walk home it chipped. As she never saw a marble chip so easily she asked why it happened. I tried to explain what a mouse ball was. That didn't go so well cause none of the mice we have at home have them.

Is a balled mouse the new rotary phone?

That being said I thought I would share this goolgle search for obsolete technology.

I particularly like the wired article's section on telegraph. STOP

Posted by James Fadden at 1:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've enabled reCaptcha on this blog, to try to cut down on comment spam. At the same time I removed the need to sign in to post a comment. Until we see how well this works, I am not allowing any comments to get automatically published.

Let me know your thoughts!

Posted by Susan Fenton at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A while ago I posted about techNOcool: Flock - The Social Web Browser and Jason made this comment...

The browser is to now, what the OS was to the late nineties, which is something that used to be cool, but now is just tech. :) I remember being psyched about Windows95, but by the time Windows98 came out, people just wanted the damn thing to work so that they could get out to the internet.

I missed much of the practical nature/reality of what he was saying until I started to play with Netvibes. Netvibes allows users to create a page that allows you to bring in the various pieces of the web that you use regularly. Thus, now instead of needing to be on a computer with a browser that has all of the preferred plugins I only need a browser and my netvibes. My plugins are any where I am.

I have not figured out the universe - ecosystem thing yet but which I think is the key to making it "social" but that would be icing on the cake. Any one else with experience with netvibes? I would like to compare notes.

Hat tip to Jason...

Posted by James Fadden at 5:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Educause published their 7 Things You Should Know About Google Apps recently. A few years ago a few in computing looked at it coming away with the concerns listed in the document.

Has time changed our reaction and/or position?

Posted by James Fadden at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This YouTube video blew me away. It seems to embody all the things we've been saying might happen on campuses some day with mobile technology. That ACU was already doing it all with the iPhone surprised and excited me.

I was especially surprised at seeing some of the iPhone features which I didn't think existed yet, like voice recording and video in portrait mode (I thought they must have filmed sideways to get that!). And I wondered what software they were using to do some of the things and how they managed to get it on the iPhone given that the SDK isn't being released until next week.

Then I found a link on iTunesU to better quality versions of the same movie and noticed the description saying this movie was created "to highlight our vision of how the iPhone could be used in a university setting." So it appears they're not really doing these things yet. OK, now I don't feel so much like the world suddenly took a big leap in mobile technology while I wasn't looking!

ACU is, however, giving each incoming student this fall an iPhone or iPod Touch. And I do believe that many of the things they show in the video are already possible and many others soon will be. So this is certainly a trend to watch.

The vision displayed in this video is, to me, the very definition of techNOcool.

Posted by Susan Fenton at 8:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With the growth of web-based and portable email clients I wonder what the future of reading email will be. I have been poking around a few different options lately and came across this as I was looking to add the Penelope Extension to my portable Thunderbird.

Will Penelope be the death of Thunderbird?

I know that many of you on the blog are monitoring and playing with the growing number of portable apps, web based solutions and open source options so I thought I would through out to the group.

What is the future of reading email? How do you think we will do it? Will there be a dominant method/technology?

Posted by James Fadden at 4:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The New York Times has an article about "classroom capture" systems - software that captures the audio of a lecture along with a powerpoint slide, and at the touch of a button bundles it all together on a server for students to view later. It specifically mentions Tegrity and Echo, with costs of $10,000 - $100,000 per year, depending on options and school size.

These systems have been around for quite some time. But they're gaining in popularity for a couple of good reasons. They're easy for the professors to use, often requiring only that the professor start and stop the recording with a simple click. And the availability of wifi on players like the Zune, iPod Touch, and iPhone, combined with the larger screens of those devices, has made viewing the recorded lectures very convenient for the students. Schools with large commuting populations, especially, are seeing big demand for this.

Will Allegheny ever see a similar demand? We already know that a number of professors use Powerpoint slides in class and that students like professors making those available online. But at the moment, I don't hear a clamoring for the whole lecture online. I think that may be partly because students don't realize what's possible. Once they hear of their friends at larger schools downloading full lecture audio with their powerpoints I think the demand will trickle down to us.

Will we be ready, able, or willing to meet that demand?

Posted by Susan Fenton at 8:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Anyone play around with Live Documents yet?

I am waiting for my invitation email so I have not gotten in to kick it around. I googled it and found a few posts from around the web.

How long do we have before something like this actually replaces Office?

Posted by James Fadden at 9:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So I was watching 60 Minutes for a bit last night and was reminded of the One Laptop per Child initiative. I was also thinking a lot about the bizzare little family I have where my wife and I probably watch about 3 shows on television + a football game, a DVD or two, but easily spend about 10-15 hours on the computer a week. My wife spends more like 25. (It's how she communicates with friends, entertains herself, goes shopping, keeps up with world events... Phone, what phone? Drive to Erie... bah!)

Our kid's going to want a computer. We're going to want him to have one, rather than wasting his brain on television.

Continue reading "How young is too young?" »

Posted by Jason Ramsey at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Google Maps for Mobile has a new feature, My Location, in beta. I can't get this for the iPhone yet, but have read that it's coming. It uses the GPS on your phone to find your location, or, for those of us with phones that don't have GPS it shows your general vicinity based on the cell tower(s) you are connecting to.

I can definitely think of times I could have used this. Looking for a restaurant nearby, like in the video below, is one obvious example. Figuring out how to drive from where you are to where you want to be is another, but an approximate location for a starting point might work better in some situations than others.

Maybe those of you with smart phones that let you install applications will give this a try and let those of us who have to wait for Apple's blessing know how it goes.

Posted by Susan Fenton at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While Jason and James duke it out over iGoogle vs Flock, I've been experimenting with portable apps on a thumb drive lately. I like this approach better than iGoogle because of privacy concerns and better than Flock because of portability.

There seem to be a couple of ways to go with the portable apps - U3 enabled, which require a U3 flash drive, and the open source portable apps from portableapps.com which install on any flash drive. Some apps, like Firefox and Thunderbird, are even available both ways. So things can get confusing and/or messy fast.

But with 2 GB U3 flash drives easily available for $20 or less, I've been having fun sorting through this mess and setting up my thumb drive with all my favorite apps. Especially now that I'm travelling without my laptop more, it's nice to know that I can have access to email and such on public computers without leaving sensitive information behind.

But wait - there's more! After setting up portable apps for windows I started wondering "What about macs?" What if I'm at an Apple Store and want to use iChat? How can I do this without having to go through an account set up and without leaving a trace on the host machine? Well, it turns out there are a number of portable apps for the Mac, too. And that someone has created portable versions of Apple apps including Safari, Mail and iChat - programs that should be on any mac - that use the application on the host machine but settings files on the flash drive. Unfortunately these aren't free, but for 99 cents a piece I think they're worth checking out.

I'll let you know how it goes.

UPDATE 12/3/07: I bought and installed the iChat and Safari portable apps for the mac. These use the application on the host machine but replace the settings files on the host machine with aliases to settings files on the thumb drive. When the app closes, it puts everything back the way it started.

My experience with these apps has been mixed. I went through a very frustrating period with the iChat app, where it worked on some machines but not others - or on some accounts on one machine, but not others. Eventually I figured out that if a ~/Library/Logs folder had never been created (because no app had ever crashed under that account, for instance), iChat would not open. The problem was solved by manually creating the Logs folder. But I shouldn't need to do that - the software shouldn't choke in this situation but should instead create the Logs folder for me. Apart from that, all was cool with iChat.

Safari mostly works fine, but setting the home page is a mystery to me. When I launched my portable Safari and set the home page, I found that the home page of Safari on the host machine got changed. And the next time I launched portable Safari on a different machine, my home page setting was gone. If anyone has any idea where Safari stores information about a user's home page (and it IS a user setting), I'd be very interested in hearing about it.

Posted by Susan Fenton at 1:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night I download a new web browser Flock that makes it easy to subscribe to one's various social sites and services.

I first heard about Flock a year ago and thought wow that's a nice idea. After playing with it for a short time I decided that it was just that a nice idea.

Well folks this time it is a nice tool that does a good job of connecting your online life. The one spot were it seems to fall short is that all of the connections are managed locally on the computer. What would be the bees knees and make flock truly a social browser would be to have your profile travel with you as you open flock on the various computers you use.

Posted by James Fadden at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This Wired essay on Twitter is an interesting read. It's the first I've seen that really gives a sense of what Twitter might be good for, besides just being an outlet for narcissists and a tool for voyeurs. I'm still not ready to sign up, but the example of using it at work when co-workers are scattered intrigues me, especially given my impending move.

Posted by Susan Fenton at 8:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

James recently wrote about 3D Web-Browsing With SpaceTime. Watching the demos on the SpaceTime site reminded me a lot of the Cover Flow features being added to Leopard, Apple's soon-to-be-released version of OS X.

If you have ITunes 7 you can see Cover Flow now - just click View > Cover Flow view - or you can watch a demo of Cover Flow in Leopard here.

My question is this: Is all this really a good thing? Will it help me find things quicker or is it just pretty?

I find Cover Flow in iTunes fun to play around with, but not great for finding songs. The (text) search in ITunes is very good and very quick and I can find what I want so much quicker that way. Plus, having used iTunes the last several years, leaving my old albums and CDs to collect dust, I no longer know what the cover art for an album looks like. As I watch the pretty covers - most of which I've never seen before - fly by in Cover Flow I'm amazed that they belong to songs and albums I own. So Cover Flow is not much use for me - right now - when it comes to finding songs in iTunes.

But I can see how it might be helpful in the Finder. When I'm searching through a folder I usually have a better idea of what the document, photo or movie I want looks like than I do of what I named it. So seeing the document in Cover Flow view really might work to speed things along.

I'm looking forward to putting this to the test when Leopard is released. At least I'll be prepared with a computer with plenty of graphics power!

Posted by Susan Fenton at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Datatel (our administrative database vendor) has always been a big fan of "user-generated content", although it's really user-generated programming on a system that is closed to the outside world, but very very open to savvy programmers with time to spend customizing things.

Continue reading "Web 2.0 adoption among the Web 0.x crowd" »

Posted by Jason Ramsey at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

Why you ask? Well, one question she routinely raises with all of these free new online apps -

"What happens when these services try to make a profit? What happens to your stuff? "

Case in point this morning I uploaded three pictures of my daughter to my flickr account and got a message saying that I reached the 200 photo limit of my free account. And that to keep me within my 200 photo limit, they will hide my oldest pictures. They also reassured me that my pictures are safe as they are only hidden not deleted and that I can show them again if I upgrade to a pro account.

I am not sure that this is such a big deal to me as I store my pictures on my hard drive and back them up to a CD for 'safe keeping' but I can only imagine the boat that others are in who used flickr as their sole storage place. The cost of the pro account is only $25 per year and I was already considering forking out the dough prior to this but again that is not the point.

Then this afternoon I came across EdVentures in Technology � New and Improved Google Apps. Not to be out done by Yahoo, Google obviously feels that its online suite is developed enough to charge users for usage.

Posted by James Fadden at 2:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Apple posted this note from Steve Jobs today, arguing that the music companies should start letting online music stores sell their music DRM-free: Apple - Thoughts on Music

Apple also recently settled with Apple Records, maybe opening the way for Beatles, McCartney, Lennon, etc music to be sold on the iTunes Store.

Imagine...we may some day be able to buy Lennon's Imagine online, DRM free!

Posted by Susan Fenton at 4:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

As technology becomes more integrated into adult lives, it becomes completely enmeshed into the lives of children. With this as a premise I would like to tie two posts together.

First - In the Parlance of Our Times: It's a Victimless Crime. This post has to do with completing crossword puzzles using Google or Wikipedia as they are both readily available to online crossword puzzle doers.

Second - Digital Kids an article from news.com.com, that starts out.

"When Amy Jo Kim's son Gabriel says he wants to "watch videos," she knows he doesn't mean DVDs or television. He wants YouTube."

Continue reading "Changing Times and Expectations" »

Posted by James Fadden at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Educause Learning Initiative (ELI) has just released the
2007_Horizon_Report (application/pdf Object).

The Horizon Report identifies learning technology that is on the horizon, thus the name. It identifies a classifies the technology emerging by how many years it will take to be main stream. Specifically it talks about tech that will be mainstream in the next year, the next 2-3years, and in the next 5 years.

Social networking and user created content are coming this year, if they are not already here according to the report. With the work that has been done in the past year to bring the wikis and weblogs to campus these as well as the knowledge gained through social bookmarking, podcasting, and other web 2.0 options.

It is nice to see that we are on target with other emerging technology listed in the report, as we have started conversations about Mobile Phones, Virtual Worlds and Massively Multipleplayer Games.

Posted by James Fadden at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The last weeks have been busy ones investigating LMS, meeting end of semester needs of the faculty, and the impending birth of a second child have really gotten in the way of posting. Fortunately Brian, Jason and Susan kept the conversations going. (This is not to say they aren't busy, just that I have not posted and I am thankful that they have posted.)

Today, I planned a little blog time into my schedule to catch up on my bloglines reading and post a little about mobile computing, which has been a focus of conversation lately. In reading my bloglines, I came across a weblogg-ed post titled 'One Phone Per Child (?)'.

The post pushes the idea that while the idea of one-laptop-one-learner is finally catching on, it's time to start thinking about one-phone-one-learner. Obviously, this line of thinking hit a cord with me as I have been thinking about the next generation of mobile computing devices and even wrote a little about it. (Okay I guess that it hasn't been as long as I thought since my last post. But I am still thankful for my colleagues and their contributions.)

Mobile phones are becoming fairly ubiquitous and more powerful now including mp3 players, internet access, and higher quality cameras. The author promotes the idea of finding ways to harness this computing power for learning particularly in the K-12 setting. The article and others in his The Shifts category are worth a read.

Continue reading "What's Next? (Enough About Laptops and Wireless)" »

Posted by James Fadden at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've talked about my venture into the Mac world before on this blog, but not about my attempts at emulation of other operating systems.

I installed a wonderful program called Parallels. It puts virtual machines on your Mac, which you can install any operating system on. It's like having a little window on your screen that connects to another computer. (Except that computer is a big file just sitting on your main computer.)

I installed Windows 2000 in one virtual machine, Windows 95 in the other. (If you're wondering why I picked those, they're the two versions of Windows that I have official copies of. Since Parallels acts as a virtual computer, you need an operating system to install on each instance.)

I can run them both at the same time from within MacOSX, and I should grab screenshots. Windows 2000 boots in under 10 seconds, and I have Microsoft Office installed, as well as some work related programs that are only available in Windows. Compatibility has not been an issue at all so far. (Haven't tried any 3D games, but even DirectX based games seem to work just fine!) I also got Windows 95 to install, although drivers were a bit dicey at first.

The proof that I'm a geek is that this weekend I installed a Macintosh System 7 emulator that acts as a virtual Mac Plus, on my virtual Windows 2000 computer. I did it, just to say I could. The fact that it took me virtually 90 minutes to do on a sunny weekend, proves that I am a geek. Not virtually, but actually.

How is this work-related? Operating systems are becoming little more than fashion statements. Note the recent Mac vs. PC commercials we've been innudated with - (which by the way, make me ill as to how arrogant and snarky they make the average Mac user look.) And don't get me wrong, PC's can do virtual machines just as well as Macs. I've run a Commodore Amiga virtual machine for years on Windows. Virtual PC for Windows does for PC's what Parallels does for Macs. However, the interchangeability between Windows, MacOS, and Linux is making it less important what operating system is used to start with. Content, reliability, ease of use, price and even style will drive computing more than compatibility concerns. (Does it work with Windows? Who cares?)

I bought a Mac not to make a big change in the way I do my computing, but because it no longer felt like such a big change. Now, if only it came in black...

Should we just switch the whole campus to Mac or Linux, if we could even afford that? I'm not asking that question. The time is coming soon though that migrating to Windows Vista and Office 2007 may not be the no-brainer path it's been in the past.

Posted by Jason Ramsey at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The other day Jason posted about the Palm Treo. Today, the reference librarians and instructional technologists talked about viewing websites on mobile devices. It was a pretty interesting conversation that prompted me to talk Jason into borrowing his Treo for the afternoon to take experiment with it. Susan and I spent a few minutes kicking around the Angel Learning Management System course site, google maps, and a few other things on it. Text based pages seem to work best but that seems obvious.

I am hooked and can see application of use in daily work life.

How nice would it be to have the ability to take notes in a format that I will actually reuse right in my pocket.
Or to be able to grab the resource from the web as I have an impromptu meeting on Brooks walk.
Or to be able to check my schedule and email without having to return to my office.
Or to be able attend a conference without having to lug my tablet.

Posted by James Fadden at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Not only do I dig gadgets I dig tv. I would watch it morning noon and night if it were not for work, my wife, my kid, and the need to stay fit. I watch good TV. I watch bad TV. My favorite show at this point is The Office as I think it is very real. I like it so much that I follow the blog and often search youtube for spoilers and mashups. In today's post on Officetally you could follow a link to PARADE Magazine's article on how the five main characters use technology in their personal lives.

Now comes my point -

B.J. Novak's explanation of how technology is integrated into his life is most likely the technology landscape that we will need to support and our campus community will come to expect. His account of hating a gadget until he knows how to use it combined with frustration at the technology and himself is insightful. No longer will technology users understand how or why the technology works in detail but will use it all the same. Much the same way as our current use and understanding of automobiles. His anecdotes of how physical time and space are distorted through personal gadgets is also a good point to remember. No longer will proximity be a condition of community. More so communities are developed and maintained through technology.

Posted by James Fadden at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)