Bruce Landon: HCI

accessibilty

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 19:58:16 GMT

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.'"

visualization

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 05:56:35 GMT

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]

elearning

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 16:50:02 GMT

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]

eCulture

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 20:11:29 GMT

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]

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 23:32:05 GMT

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.

[Science Blog -]

pen

Thu, 22 Jun 2006 20:44:48 GMT

BumpTop, Pushing the Desktop Metaphor.

[Slashdot]

grid

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 15:26:35 GMT

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]

javascript

Thu, 04 May 2006 21:38:07 GMT

Test Driving the Flex-Ajax Bridge. The latest code release from Adobe Labs brings JavaScript and Ajax functionality to the next version of the Flash Player. Webmonkey takes a look at the newest development in the rich internet applications sphere. In Monkey Bites. [Wired News: Top Stories]

networks

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 15:41:23 GMT

Social Networking From Your Cell.this is just the beginning --BL

[Slashdot]

screencasting

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 06:21:13 GMT

Media strategies and challenges.

These screencasts are not reviews. They're examples of a new hybrid form -- the demonstration/interview. Back in my BYTE days, it was my privilege to receive a steady stream of visitors bearing the fruits of the tech industry. I had a front-row seat at hundreds of fascinating demos and discussions. I always wondered what it would be like to capture and share those sessions. Now I know.

If you're a viewer, think of me as a proxy. The goal is to use my knowledge and experience to steer the demonstrations in the directions you would like them to go, and to ask the kinds of questions you would be inclined to ask. If you're a presenter, think of me as a friendly adversary. My goal is to blow past your slide deck, drill down into use cases, and challenge you to show how your technology can help me -- and the viewers for whom I'm acting as a proxy -- solve real problems. [Full story at InfoWorld.com]

... [Jon's Radio]

remote control

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 06:17:55 GMT

Motorola Patents Therapy Patch. Instead of the annoying buzz of current cell-phone vibrating alerts, a new design can be applied anywhere on the body that will "stimulate" you when a call comes in. [Wired News: Top Stories]

javascript

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 05:18:21 GMT

Ajax and the Ken Burns Effect.

[Slashdot]

disruptive

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 16:05:11 GMT

Triple Boot on MacBooks Working. [Slashdot] This is a revolutionary breakthrough that can leverage the user experience into higher levels of productivity -- there is still work to make the switching from task to task appear seamless but this can make lives easier as a universal platform for computer labs among other things. Making it simple is almost alway diffiicult complex work but the payoff is getting more minutes of your life back. -- BL

HCI

Sun, 09 Apr 2006 04:15:33 GMT

Cringely Predicts Apple to Ship OS X for Any PC. [Slashdot]

games

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 04:51:12 GMT

Brain Teasers. Can a new generation of mind-training games actually make you smarter? Commentary by Clive Thompson. [Wired News: Top Stories]

video

Sat, 25 Mar 2006 19:11:34 GMT

Fetish: Thin Camera, Fat Rez. Sanyo's flash-memory videocam means you can watch without being seen. Plus: Pioneer puts XM radio in your pocket. Wired magazine reports on the latest tech innovations. [Wired News: Top Stories] Pocket Full of DLP If your laptop screen seems too small - and electricity is scarce - attach it to this ultraportable DLP projector. It generates up to a 60-inch picture using LED lamps, making it tiny, fanless, and efficient (the lithium-ion battery lasts 2.5 hours). And it handles HD, standard, and PC video sources, converting them to 800 x 600-pixel resolution. It's the perfect projector when there's not an outlet in sight.$799 -- seems like the beginning of an R2D2 style portable projector -- imagine it as a big screen for a handheld --BL

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 22:13:45 GMT

Yahoo! Releases OSS Ajax and Design Tools. [Slashdot]

browser as desktop

Mon, 13 Feb 2006 16:09:12 GMT

Online Ajax Pages The New Web Desktop?. [Slashdot]

HCI

Thu, 09 Feb 2006 05:33:20 GMT

Coming Soon, Super Vision. [Slashdot]

HC

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 04:59:03 GMT

Are Vertical Mice The Next Ergonomic Trend?. [Slashdot]