tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-133168142007-10-04T14:02:12.622-07:00Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comBlogger131125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-3549386186286654972007-10-04T14:02:00.001-07:002007-10-04T14:02:12.698-07:00

September 29 to October 6 is banned books week.  Google has put together a web site on banned books which is well worth viewing.  Of the 100 best novels of the twentieth century (according to the Radclisffe publishing course (now transplanted to Columbia)) forty-two have been challenged or banned in the United States.  The most challenged/banned book of 2006-2007?:  And Tango Makes Three by

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-87435969994536554102007-10-02T14:53:00.001-07:002007-10-02T14:53:32.946-07:00

Sony has announced a new version of their stand-alone eBook reader, called "Reader."  The new version (the PRS-505) will be released in the upcoming days and will feature faster-responding, higher-contrast epaper, 8 levels of greyscale rather than 4, a thinner profile than the old Reader, a better button layout (it couldn't have been worse) and new color schemes.  Amazon is also releasing the "

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-403495097549816952007-09-27T11:23:00.001-07:002007-09-27T11:23:20.179-07:00

If you have signed a contract to work 850 hours at $77.10 per hour, you may want to send back the Lincoln Navigator.  An Excel 2007 calculation but was discovered this week.  Open Excel and enter the formula =77.1*850 in any cell.  The result will be displayed as 100000, rather than the correct answer 65535.  It turns out there are 12 known floating point numbers near 65,535 and 65,536 which are

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-69254041959869848312007-09-13T10:03:00.001-07:002007-09-13T10:03:41.762-07:00

The Ultimate Steal.  Microsoft is making an offer students can't refuse.  Students can now purchase Office 2007 Ultimate edition for a mere $59.95.  Who is eligible?: "...students who are actively enrolled at educational institutions and have a valid e-mail address from the institution" (Microsoft press release).  Youl know that Palomar email address that you thought was useless?  No longer!  The

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-46655025842475840902007-09-11T14:12:00.001-07:002007-09-11T14:47:03.849-07:00

Typepad from Six Apart is the first blogging company to offer blogging tools for the iPhone and the new iPod Touch. "The TypePad iPhone application was designed from the ground up to be optimized for Apple's innovative multi-touch iPhone display. TypePad bloggers can easily create new posts, edit existing posts, manage comments from their community, and configure settings to send photos directly

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-67353781636619319702007-09-07T15:34:00.001-07:002007-09-07T15:34:17.043-07:00

AT&T this week announced a new service: "AT&T Smart Limits for Wireless," which permits parents to "stay in touch with their children while controlling the children's mobile phone use. AT&T Smart Limits for Wireless™ is a feature-rich service that allows a parent to set usage limits on a child's talk time, text messages, instant messages (IMs) and downloads, manage how and when a child can

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-77721507690146031722007-08-30T10:41:00.001-07:002007-08-30T10:41:05.551-07:00

Dell has launched a new Optiplex, the 755 desktop.  "Dubbed the "world's most manageable, energy efficient commercial desktop ever," the system touts Energy Star 4.0 compliance and an Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) "Gold" rating. Additionally, the 755 can be snapped up with Intel's newly-unveiled Core 2 Duo with vPro technology, a 256MB ATI Radeon HD 2400 graphics card,

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-37021699975080952212007-08-29T09:20:00.001-07:002007-08-29T09:20:22.847-07:00

In a new report [PDF] by two Villanova School of Business professors, the argument is made that "...giving electronic tests can actually reduce cheating and save faculty time" (see HTML summary from Inside Higher Ed).  Timed tests drawn from randomly drawn from questions pools were used.  "Forty-five percent of students who took part in the study reported that the electronic testing system

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-73308784535065624482007-08-27T10:02:00.001-07:002007-08-27T10:02:26.825-07:00

News of grants:  We have two to report, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) "Digital Humanities Start-up Grants" for public and state controlled institutions of higher education, deadline for application October 16; and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) "Digital Innovation Fellowships," deadline for application October 3.    The NEH grants are involve new, digital

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-56733110216045557932007-08-16T14:17:00.001-07:002007-08-16T14:17:26.744-07:00

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen acting on the advise of numerous analysts and computer science researchers, de-certified California electronic voting machines in favor of paper ballots.  "The systems developed by the likes of Diebold, Sequoia, and Election Systems & Software were riddled with software-writing flaws and security holes that made the likelihood of error or foul play

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-91322949932916211972007-08-16T14:15:00.001-07:002007-08-16T14:15:45.077-07:00

Google, Microsoft and Apple all announced changes to their online storage services last week.  Google announced, essentially, the end of free, unlimited storage.  Paid storage upgrades for behemoth Picasa or GMail folders (soon to be added, Google Docs & Spreadsheet folders) can be had at the rate of $20/year for 6GB (on top of the 2.8 already provided free of charge by Google), running up to

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-10605331338230763612007-08-13T17:01:00.001-07:002007-08-13T17:01:30.290-07:00

Google, Microsoft and Apple all announced changes to their online storage services last week.  Google announced, essentially, the end of free, unlimited storage.  Paid storage upgrades for behemoth Picasa or GMail folders (soon to be added, Google Docs & Spreadsheet folders) can be had at the rate of $20/year for 6GB (on top of the 2.8 already provided free of charge by Google), running up to

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-19687535886301259902007-08-03T10:07:00.001-07:002007-08-03T10:07:51.266-07:00

The Pew Internet & American Life Project recently published a report [PDF] indicating that 57% of all Internet users have watched videos online and most of them share what they find.  Other interesting findings: 74% of broadband users watch video online; just 31% of dial-up users watch video online; 76% of young (18-29) Internet users watch video online as opposed to 39% age 65 ot older.  49% of

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-66078262190627790122007-06-15T14:37:00.001-07:002007-06-15T14:37:23.942-07:00

Rome Reborn 1.0 was released this week by the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia.  It is the product of 10 years of research and labor by archaeologists and computer specialists.  "The goal of 'Rome Reborn' is to create a digital model illustrating the development of ancient Rome from the earliest settlement in the late Bronze Age (ca. 1000 B.C.) to

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-5143523397998210682007-06-13T11:45:00.001-07:002007-06-13T11:45:57.376-07:00

Microsoft Research released this week their software source code and tools to help science progress toward an AIDS vaccine (MS press release).  "The source code for a set of software tools developed by Microsoft Research to advance AIDS vaccine research and development is available for download starting today from Microsoft’s CodePlex Web site. By sharing the code openly and at no charge with the

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-7368705948270110402007-06-12T14:22:00.001-07:002007-06-12T14:22:07.200-07:00

From Apple's WWDC this week, the look of the new Leopard OS was revealed this week.    There is a new desktop, dock, stacks in the dock; consistent windows looks; a new finder featuring cover-flow view, borrowed from iTunes; a new sidebar; better searching technology (thank you Vista); something called "Quick Look" like Microsoft's new preview function; "Time Machine," a new way to back up and

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-81533557421524475452007-06-08T13:14:00.001-07:002007-06-08T13:14:23.150-07:00

Here is one for ethics professors.  In episode 60 we reported on the OpenNet Initiative and the Internet filtering map.  The map shows those countries that carry out the most extensive internet censorship and surveillance. Now Amnesty International in a recent conference is arguing that "censorship is a "virus" affecting the health of the Internet" (ars technica).  AI "reserves particular

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-68113463311763052432007-06-07T13:00:00.001-07:002007-06-07T13:00:43.007-07:00

Google announced this week that they have added twelve more Universities to their book scanning and digitizing project.  The group, including Universities of Minnesota, Michigan, Michigan State, Chicago, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Northwestern, Ohio State, Pennsylvania State, Purdue, and Wisconsin-Madison will allow Google to scan a collective 78 million volumes.  No word on whether YouTube gets

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-24512815260387271352007-06-04T10:23:00.001-07:002007-06-04T10:23:39.175-07:00

It was revealed last week, in fact, the day after Apple announced the availability of DRM-free music from its iTunes Plus store, that Apple is embedding user name and email into every DRM-free music download.  This means that what you do with the download can be tracked and traced back to you as the originator.  Why?  "The entertainment industry is obsessed with the idea of "casual piracy," or

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-3977505042815530322007-06-01T08:17:00.001-07:002007-06-01T08:17:55.379-07:00

Microsoft yesterday announced the release in beta 2 of Live Writer.  We reviewed Live Writer beta 1 in episode 36 and have been using it ever since.  Live Writer is a desktop client that allows you to compose your blog locally and then publish to the web when you are ready.  Beta 2 is supposed to be more stable with more extensions.  New features include inline spell check, table editing,

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-87596248113383540272007-05-31T14:36:00.001-07:002007-05-31T14:36:24.469-07:00

Microsoft has released an unprecedented number of free tools to help users learn the new Office 2007 interface and get up to speed with the new versions of old familiar programs like Word, Excel and PowerPoint.  Today I would like to present links to these materials for those in need (and we all will be, sooner or later). Free Training.  Access to the excellent Microsoft eLearning series is

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-47937391323508518892007-05-10T12:55:00.001-07:002007-05-10T12:55:09.788-07:00

The Foundation for California Community Colleges (FCCC) has announced the availability for sale at very large discounts for CC faculty and staff the new Microsoft products: Windows Vista, Office 2007 and SharePoint Designer 2007 (the replacement for FrontPage).  Click here to visit the purchase starting page.  (Click the learn more... link in the buy Microsoft area of the page).  Be sure to

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-46814759597917812862007-04-27T12:00:00.001-07:002007-04-27T12:00:59.399-07:00

Microsoft announced this week that in an effort to raise their user base from 1,000,000,000 to 2,000,000,000 by 2015 they will be providing at almost no cost (an average of $3.00 per bundle) their most valuable software to the world's most needy users.  The bundle will include Windows XP, Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, Microsoft Math 3.0, Learning Essentials 2.0, and Windows Live Mail

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-1419957707065202182007-04-23T14:55:00.001-07:002007-04-23T14:55:26.464-07:00

Google has been named the most powerful world brand of 2007 in a survey conducted by Millward Brown (BBC).  The survey also attempts to associate brand with value, assigning a value the brand is expected to earn in the future.  Google replaces Microsoft, who was last year's winner.  Here are the top ten world brands:   Brand Value(in billions $) Google 66.4 General Electric 61.9 Microsoft

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13316814.post-60139821902440580582007-03-30T13:54:00.001-07:002007-03-30T13:54:32.715-07:00

File under "water can be carried in buckets too": busses equipped with Wi-fi are bringing the Internet to remote, rural villages. Click here for a BBC article that describes bus service in parts of India, Rwanda, Cambodia and Paraguay that load up on web content in the city, and then drive to the country, serving up content to rural computers. The project (known as the United Villages project)

Terry A. Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00531695407530441378noreply@blogger.com