Sunday, July 23, 2006

accessibilty Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Sunday July 23, @01:05PM from the ubiquitous-search dept. With the recent release of a modified version of their search engine, Google is receiving praise from many different groups. The new Google Accessible Search was released as a Google labs project which prioritize pages based on their likelihood of being accessible to visually impaired users after the original search results are returned. From the article: "The best-known guidelines for building an accessible site are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) from W3C. But these are not the basis of Google's new service. Raman said: 'We don't test against WCAG. We think in the spirit of those guidelines, but we don't test against them verbatim.' Instead he endeavored to identify 'what works for the end-user,' describing a process of 'experimentation, training and machine learning.'" 12:58:16 PM    comment

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

visualization Timeline 1.0 Released. The SIMILE project is happy to announce the availability of Timeline, a DHTML AJAX Timeline widget for visualizing temporal information. It is like Google Maps for time-based data. [The SIMILE Project] 10:56:35 PM    comment

Thursday, June 29, 2006

elearning UMW's Bluehost/Fantastico Experiment. If posts by the cogdog, blamb AND Jon Udell weren't enough to convince you, then take MY word too and run, don't walk, over to Gardner Campbell's blog to listen to a 45 minute recording from their latest faculty academy on using a 3rd party hosting solution and application 'control panel' as a way to inexpensively support faculty innovation and experimentation. (And for the record, this hasn't changed my mind at all about podcasts, though Brian's right, Gardner's voice is remarkably soothing to listen to ;-) I must admit to feeling a little dissatisfied with the discussion about 'enterprise computing' -type questions (around minute 20 and following, and in the questions and answers in the end) but it's not a simple complaint either. First off, they really should be commended for adopting a mechanism that greatly increases the authentic assessment of new technologies, part of the aim that's described in the first 20 minutes. And in regards to the 'enterprisey' issues, some stock also needs to be placed in the retort of how enterprisey these systems should have become anyways. This has come up a few times in conversation for me over the last weeks - while the use of computer technology in teaching and learning isn't that new, this beast we call the 'course management system' is barely 10 years old...do we really believe we got it right the first time, in just 10 years, and that the model will never need changing? So there's a lot to be said in general about an approach that stays flexible, especially in light of Web 2.0, which if anything could be described as massive, non-stop disruptive innovation, the only constant being change. Sure, we thought the internet in general meant that, but now it really seems to be unfolding in front of our eyes. So I'm left both inspired but wanting to eat my cake too - can we not have this flexibility and experimentation AND the guarantees of service we seem expected to provide? (I liked Gardner's response about trust and agreeing to a certain amount of risk, but I've never seen that calm down an irate professor during exams when the system goes down.) Udell's comment regarding Ray Ozzie's speech really resonates for me here - "In his vision of the future of enterprise software, services are delivered on demand, they produce value in incremental steps, and they’re paid for when -- not before -- that value is proven." Still, Gardner and his crew are to be totally commended for their approach - maybe instead of a 'learning management operating system' we might start thinking about a control panel for instructor-controlled (or student controlled, how about sticking that in your pipe!) mix- and matchable lightweight apps that already had the connectors to the SIS and authentication systems built in (or can these be the same thing?) - SWL (the first step to dealing with your problem is admiting you have a problem...My name is Scott, and I am a blog addict...really, I'm working on my other machine right now as I write this!) [EdTechPost] 9:50:02 AM    comment

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

eCulture Google to Test PayPal Rival. remember the railroads, remember the banks, remember credit cards - find history in the dust of google on the rise -- BL  [Slashdot] 1:11:29 PM    comment

Monday, June 26, 2006

Cell phone emissions excite the brain cortex. Electromagnetic fields from cell phones excite the brain cortex adjacent to it, with potential implications for individuals with epilepsy, or other neurological conditions. This finding is published in Annals of Neurology, a journal by John Wiley & Sons. The article is also available online via Wiley Interscience. read more [Science Blog -] 4:32:05 PM    comment

Thursday, June 22, 2006

pen BumpTop, Pushing the Desktop Metaphor. [Slashdot] 1:44:48 PM    comment

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

grid Google's Secretive Data Center."Google now has more than 450,000 servers spread over at least 25 locations around the world. Connecting these centers is a high-capacity fiber optic network that the company has assembled over the last few years.  Google has found that for search engines, every millisecond longer it takes to give users their results leads to lower satisfaction. So the speed of light ends up being a constraint, and the company wants to put significant processing power close to all of its users."  -- how big if the fiber pipe between you and the nearest googleplex port?  -- BL [Slashdot] 8:26:35 AM    comment