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November 26, 2004
BOBs : Best of the Blogs (German Edition)
Deutsche Welle is sponsoring a "best of the blogs" contest for 2004. The web audience nominates blogs, a jury selects 10 in each of 11 categories, and the world has a week to vote on the selections.
The categories are Best Weblog, Best Topic, Best Design, Best Innovaton, Best Journalistic Blog (Arabic, Chinese, English, German, Portugese, Russian, Spanish)
[1] Best of the Blogs Awards Enter the Final, DW staff (sin), 2004.11.01. Deutsche Welle’s 2004 Best of the Blogs Awards moves into the final round of its international Weblog competition. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1382096,00.html
[2] What the US Could Learn About Blogging, Sean Sinico, 2004.11.14
Bloggers may claim they talk about the same subjects the world over, but Deutsche Welle’s Best of the Blogs exposed regional differences in blogospheres -- and the competitions they take part in. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1396471,00.html
[3] Go Ahead and Blog It, Markus Bösch (sms), 2004.11.24. What happens when you put a scandalous Chinese blogger, Russia's Internet wonder child and Germany's blog authority at one table? A discussion of whether blogs can change the world -- and about two dozen live posts. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1405366,00.html
Posted by sjc at 8:50 AM | Comments (0)
November 24, 2004
Channel 9 from Outer Space
Channel 9 is a Microsoft MSN blog platform. Actually, it's a "5 guys from microsoft" who wanted improved communication between Microsoft and developers. "We believe that we will all benefit from a little dialogue these days. This is our first attempt to move beyond the newsgroup, the blog, and the press release to talk with each other, human to human."
The Forums area seems a bit more lively than the home page, supporting moblogs, polls, a coffeehouse, a video archive, etc.
Overall, a nice, flexible package for a wide audience.
[1] Channel 9, http://channel9.msdn.com/
[2] Channel 9 Forums, http://channel9.msdn.com/forums.aspx
Posted by sjc at 8:58 AM | Comments (0)
November 21, 2004
Will it go Big Bang Again ?
Joel Achenbach's Washington Post's article today asks "Will the Universe Go Crunch, or Will 'Dark Energy' Rip It Apart? Either Way, Your Head Will Pop."
Answer?
"We're not sure if the universe will keep expanding or start contracting. We don't know if The End, if there ever is such a thing, is many billions of years away or many trillions of years away. We don't know the nature of dark energy, this strange force that's shaping the universe. We don't know if constants are constant. We don't know why there are laws of physics. We don't know why there's something rather than nothing."
[1] "Cosmic Question : Will the Universe Go Crunch, or Will 'Dark Energy' Rip It Apart? Either Way, Your Head Will Pop," Joel Achenbach, Washington Post, Sunday, November 21, 2004; Page D01, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A997-2004Nov20
[2] image STScI-PRC2004-07a : "Hubble's Deepest View Ever of the Universe Unveils Earliest Galaxies," March 9, 2004. http://hubblesite.org/news/2004/07
Posted by sjc at 1:57 PM | Comments (0)
November 18, 2004
Google Scholar
Hope Greenberg has pointed out the emergence of Google Scholar.
"[Google]may already be the first stop for students doing research, but it looks like Google Scholar hope to become the first stop for many academic researchers. They've indexed documents and books, including many that were not previously available to the public. They have citations as well as ways to find info from non-online libraries."
Next, we should expect Google Scholarly Alerts to let you know that one of your competitors has submitted a new artice, won a new prize, or has just retired - leaving open a tenure track opportunity - apply now ! Eventually, Google University.
[1] Hope Greenberg is also found at http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/
Posted by sjc at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2004
Wikithink
Robert McHenry, former Editor in Chief, the Encyclopædia Britannica, and author of How to Know (Booklocker.com, 2004) presents a critique of the Wikipedia under the title "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia" [1].
The fundamental question he poses is "How do we know it's correct." Unsaid, but left implied, is that when we use a real encyclopedia, we have someone vouch for the correctness.
Real experience with real encyclopedias, however, is not so simple. After all, each new edition advertises "new, improved, up-to-date." Somehow, this is a better place to put your faith.
Underlying the critique is a implied model of knowledge that seems to challenge the traditional authorities. Weinberger argued in his "Everything is Miscellaneous" [3] presentaion, knowledge is not a "thing" cast in concrete but is more like a conversation.
[1] [ Robert McHenry, "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia," TechCentralStation, November 15, 2004, http://www.techcentralstation.com/111504A.html
[3] See http://sjc.blog.uvm.edu/archives/2004/11/everything_is_m.html
Posted by sjc at 8:59 AM | Comments (0)
November 16, 2004
Everything is miscellaneous
David Weinberger explains that "Everything is miscellaneous" in a lecture on "Blogs" and Knowledge as part of the Library of Congress and C-SPAN series on the Digital Future. [1]
Weinberger is a Fellow at the Harvard Unviversity Beckman Center for Internet & Society, former senior internet adviser to the Howard Dean campaign, and author of "The Cluetrain Manifesto" (2000). He is also author of "Small pieces, loosely joined: a unified theory of the web" (2002). Both books can be downloaded from his website.
[1] The Digital Future, (http://www.c-span.org/congress/digitalfuture.asp)
[2] JoHo, David Weinberger, (http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/)
Notes from the session, questions and answers.
Digital Futures: Blogs and Knowledge
the fate of trees of knowledge (categorization)
self selecting communities of interest
weblogs are conversations
people use this stuff in ways we never expected.
accessing the "the authentic" object
seitenvender
cultural settings of blogs (japanese)
- keitai bunka
- j ito
- minmin's Obento - http://www.fotolog.net/minmin
internet sociology
- at the beckman center
usenet isn't dead
- there are 70,000 of them
-
learning blogs
- an environment where people learn together
- class blogs
- new agent changes authority
- authority of text challenges authority of voice
- building knowledge together
- sharing the authority
knowledge systems
- email
- web logs
a theory of everything explains nothing
"i am an internet sociologist. i was an embedded researcher in the howard dean campaign"
dean campaign
- bogging was third voice
- this was their blog
- our voices could emerge
- the kerry web log was not used in the same way
re : categorizations : are they really different
- the entry barriers have been lowered
- this affects the shape and politics of knowledge
can blogs be used as evidence in courts
chinese program
- a woman has been given a contract
- teaching 1/3 of the chinese to speak english in the next 12 years
- do we own our own language ?
- english is not a proprietary thing
- english is a reasonably decent language
just came back from a conference on online social networks
- do people give their own language
- doesn't the form control the voice
- knowledge as a social reality (not a purely social reality)
Posted by sjc at 4:19 PM | Comments (0)
November 14, 2004
The All Seeing Eye
The Pentagon is building its own Internet in the sky (the "Global Information Grid" or GIG), to give all American commanders and troops a moving picture of all foreign enemies and threats.
"This 'Internet in the sky,' Peter Teets, under secretary of the Air Force, told Congress, would allow "marines in a Humvee, in a faraway land, in the middle of a rainstorm, to open up their laptops, request imagery' from a spy satellite, and 'get it downloaded within seconds.'
Robert J. Stevens, chief executive of the Lockheed Martin Corporation, the nation's biggest military contractor, said he envisioned every member of the military having "a picture of the battle space, a God's-eye view. And that's real power."
The project is expected to take two decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to construct. And that's real money.
Tim Weiner, Pentagon Envisioning a Costly Internet for War, New York Times, November 13, 2004. URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/13/technology/13warnet.html (Subscription)
Posted by sjc at 9:23 AM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2004
iPod Socks
Dress your iPod up in any one of six vibrant color socks (green, purple, grey, blue, orange, and pink). This set of knit socks provides a stylish, fun, and practical way to protect your iPod. Fits all iPods.
Not quite the ultimate iPod fashion statement, but close. Real socks are soon to follow, no doubt.
What I find most interesting is that the color of the socks is coming back to the rainbow color scheme of the original Macs, an amazing feat of image management.
Posted by sjc at 8:06 PM | Comments (0)
Prokudin-Gorskii Gallery
Yesterday, Hope Greenberg came across these photographs.
"Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, developed a system to take color photographs at the turn of the 19th/20th century. The photos are of Russia and some of Italy. It's very strange because we have become so used to seeing photos of that period in greys or sepias. Very intriguing...thought you might enjoy..."
URL: "Digichromotography: Restoring Prokudin-Gorskii's Photographs," http://www.gridenko.com/pg/
Posted by sjc at 9:01 AM | Comments (0)
November 9, 2004
PaPeRo - The bot with the lot
PaPeRo is NEC's partner-type personal robot, who development is led by Junichi Osada.
"When Osada whispers, 'Sing me a song', the robot rolls its head and complies. The song over, Osada gently pats PaPeRo's head and the robot's eyes glow in response. 'We've programmed PaPeRo to take photographs, tell us about tomorrow's weather, provide updates on the stock market and connect to the internet,' Osada says. 'He's fairly talented.' Papero also converses, delivers personal messages and, when Osada dozes off, switches off the telly."
"In the course of in-depth evaluations with PaPeRo, NEC focused on the human-robot interactions in the real environment encountered at home. Based on the data and insights in the evaluations, the new PaPeRo with more sophisticated human-robot interaction capabilities has been developed . "
Sources:
My Baby Bot, Peter Familari, The Herald Sun, Sydney, Australia, 2004 November 03,
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,11252195%255E11869,00.html, "A small robot has startling human characterists ..."
NEC Personal Robot Center, http://www.incx.nec.co.jp/robot/english/robotcenter_e.html
Posted by sjc at 9:30 AM | Comments (0)
November 8, 2004
Anarchy in the UK
Sony's Qrio made his UK debut at the London’s "Best of Stuff" show -- playing host, singing, dancing, football-playing, and holding intelligent conversations.
Qrio, which is about the size of a three-year-old child, is at the forefront of developments in artificial intelligence, according to its Japanese maker Sony. "He will greet visitors and is flying in from Japan. He probably has his own airplane seat, that is how highly Sony prize him," said Mr Irish.
Sources:
Humanoid Robot Qrio Makes UK Debut, Helen William, The Scotsman, PA News, Friday, 5 November 2004, http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3721900
Gadget show heralds MP3 Christmas, BBC News, Friday, 5 November, 2004, 09:09 GMT, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3979991.stm
Posted by sjc at 1:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 4, 2004
Glenn Gould Complete Goldberg Variations 1955 & 1981
"If you were young in the 1950s, and you attended the films of Bergman and Fellini, were hip to the Existentialists in Paris and the "Beats" on the road, and followed the daunting stylistic twists and turns from John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and other modern jazz artists, it was more than likely that you were a Gould fan as well.
"Glenn Gould—A State Of Wonder in celebration of the 70th anniversary of his birth. A deluxe 3-CD set this collection features Gould's legendary 1955 Goldberg Variations recording coupled for the first time with a remastered version of his 1981 recording of the same work. The remastering of the '81 Goldbergs was done using the original analogue tapes for unprecedented, pristine sound. The third disc features an intimate discussion with journalist Tim Page and rare studio outtakes from Gould's 1955 recording session.
Posted by sjc at 2:12 PM | Comments (0)
November 3, 2004
I am not a dustbin
Hi, I am QRIO, the latest robot in town. I am smart, intelligent and entertaining. I can see and feel like you. My mother tongue is Japanese but I am sure that I’ll master your language as well.
Like you, i can feel
It’s not that I don’t have emotions. I am not made of stone.
we’ve evolved too
My makers at Sony feel that I and my cousins are doing great guns. After all, we evolved to this stage in just about a 100 years.
Source: Man, machine collaboration, Soni Sangwan, Hindustani Times, New Delhi, October 31, 2004.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/5922_1082688,0015002200000004.htm#
Posted by sjc at 8:05 PM | Comments (0)
Blogging in Higher Education (Update)
From Steve Gilbert's TLT-SWG mailing list. (also at http://sjc.blog.uvm.edu/archives/2004/11/blogging_in_hig.html).
Here's info that emerged rapidly in response to my brief mention of our need for BLOG info and a BLOG-in-higher-ed-expert who can do a guest "appearance" via telecommunications for a workshop on Nov 12. I still need an expert and more info about emerging higher ed use of BLOGS - even complaints! Slightly more detail below... and, yes, we're figuring out how TLT-SWG can use BLOG structures...
See:
"Educational Blogging" by Stephen Downes, http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0450.asp
"Blogs: A Disruptive Technology Coming of Age?" By Phillip D. Long, http://syllabus.com/article.asp?id=6774
Weblogg-ed, maintained by Will Richardsonm, http://www.weblogg-ed.com/about
Shedding Light/BLOG-MANIA from Ohio Learning Network; lots of useful links!, http://www.oln.org/teaching_and_learning/shedlight.php
"Serendip ...an expanding forum and a continually developing set of resources..." Interesting similarities and intentional differences from most BLOGs - co-founded by Paul Grobstein, http://www.tltgroup.org/events.htm
Posted by sjc at 9:12 AM | Comments (0)
November 2, 2004
Concept Maps and Visual Thinking
Yesterday, Chris Ruscio, following a lead from Hope Greenberg, draws the connection between Finite State Machines and HyperStory ... "a nondeterministic finite state automaton (NFA)…"
This leads to a riff on "visual thinking", "concept mapping", the "algebrification of the human mind," and the history of mathematical thought. When did algebra or geometry first become useful in non-mathematical thinking? Or, conversely, when did normal thinking first get turned into mathematics?
The Venn Diagram first comes to mind; related to the earlier Euler Circles, it is a popular example of geometry applied to thought[1]. It seems turns out that this was apparently in reaction to George Boole's use of algebra to systematize logic. Venn apparently was dissatisfied with the Boolean approach, and so documented his approach.[2]
[1] The Mathematical Universe, William Dunham, http://www.cut-the-knot.org/LewisCarroll/dunham.shtml. The link to Venn Diagrams explains the important (to the mathematician) difference between the Venn Diagram and the Euler Circles.
[2] http://www.andrews.edu/~calkins/math/biograph/biovenn.htm
[3] Today (2 November) is the birthday of George Boole (1815 - 1864).
Posted by sjc at 1:26 PM | Comments (0)
November 1, 2004
Photoblogging with Flickr
flickr.com is a recent entry to photoblogging. Rather than managing the number of uploads per day (as does http://www.fotolog.net/, or the total number of photos uploaded, it limits the number of downloads (to 10 Mbytes per day?month?).
It has a clean interface and is worth exploring ...
Check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/cosmicray/
Posted by sjc at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)