Aug

15

You are what you Tweet

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, Interactive, Network, Web2.0 | Leave a Comment

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Jun

18

Astronomy without borders

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, HighRes, Interactive, Internet2, Network, Streaming, Technology | Leave a Comment

Internet2 has partnered to transfer real time data between China and New South Wales.  Crossing the globe merging multiple countries and processing huge amounts of data.  Very cool to see advanced research and education networks grabbing 512 megs per second (per telescope — seven total) and streaming it live to Shanghai.  More info here and here

Tags: Internet2, bandwidth, network, astronomy, China, trends

Jun

17

You are what you tag

Filed Under Design, Education, Interactive, Network, Technology, Web2.0 | Leave a Comment

My del.icio.us feed via Wordle:

wordle2

Tags: wordle, tag, visualization, community, trends

Jun

7

Sugar Labs is cool

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, Interactive, Media Players, Network, OLPC, OpenSource, Streaming, TED, Technology | Leave a Comment

sugar labs logoThe OLPC program is moving through a rough time right now with the announced departures of initial key members and the new Microsoft announcement to bring XP onto the XO Laptops.

Walter Bender, former President of OLPC has launched Sugar Labs to promote the use of Sugar on more devices. Sugar is open source and I’m running it on my Powerbook via VMware’s Fusion. Sugar Lab’s approach: children should not be forced to learning a legacy operating system designed for adult computer programmers.

Lets face facts. XP is not designed for the world’s children living in poverty. The design is simple and perfect for children:

Sugar on OS X

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May

20

My latest read - Innovation Nation

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, HighRes, Interactive, Internet2, Network, OLPC, OpenSource, Reading, TED, Technology, Web2.0 | Leave a Comment

Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back from John Kao is a timely read. To say I enjoyed his lessons how America is losing it’s innovation lead was not pleasant experience, yet the book is highly engaging.

There are timely lessons in this book from the $100 laptop and more importantly the exodus of top American talent. No surprise that top talent from India is returning home after attending college in America as globalization brings new opportunities to India.

You may be surprised to learn how Kao documents the loss of top Americans heading overseas. That’s native-born Americans leaving our best institutions (and their home country) to work in new innovation centers with more creative, less political conditions.

The list includes Paul Saffo from Stanford, John Seely Brown from Xerox PARC, Peter Schwartz from Global Business Network and Rita Colwell, former head of the National Science Foundation and current professor of biological sciences at the University of Maryland.

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May

16

OLPC running XP

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, Interactive, Media Players, Network, OLPC, OpenSource, Technology | Leave a Comment

olpc xpWell the long wait is over. Microsoft Press Release has struck a deal with OLPC to offer XP on those little laptops. I’m not sure this is a good thing. Ask anyone who has Vista if they would like to downgrade back to XP (I did) and then you realize this is what will be introduced to millions of future Microsoft customers children around the world?

Lots of press here: Slashdot, NYTimes, CNET, Gizmodo,

I’m counting on the fact that behind the scenes Microsoft is helping fund OLPC. I’m not sure Sugar has what it takes to be the interface because OLPC clearly failed to market the story behind Sugar. And that’s a shame.

Tags: OLPC, sugar, Microsoft, XP, globalization, laptop, trends

May

15

Bandwidth for Schools

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, HighRes, Interactive, Internet2, Media Players, Milwaukee, Network, OLPC, OpenSource, Smartphone, Streaming, TED, Technology, Web2.0, WiscNet | Leave a Comment

A National Broadband Policy needs to be more than just a talking point. Schools in our country need to upgrade their internet bandwidth to 25 Megabytes per second. This is for every school — not just the K12 district who slices up the bandwidth based upon the total number of school buildings in the district. The technology and educational impact upon our schools: leaving them behind just when students from around the world are joining and benefiting from the broadband educational internet.

Playing catch-up
Today we find a majority of schools around the country in the educational slow lane. For some reason it does not matter if the school is remote or urban, many are connecting at just 5 Megabits/second. Its like teaching history with books that still recognize Russia as the old Soviet Union….oh how I miss Gorgachev.
Any college connecting at less than 10MB — shows a lack of understanding and vision for their students who enter higher education seeking not just a degree but an advantage to enter the global marketplace.

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May

15

FTC Update coming

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, Google, Interactive, Internet2, Milwaukee, Network, OpenSource, Rich media, Technology, Web2.0, WiscNet | Leave a Comment

wiscnet logoAs WiscNet’s Future Technologies Conference wrapped up late yesterday followed by a staff outing in Madison. Will be posting a lot of content regarding our keynote speakers and Internet2 over the next couple of days and grabbing my flickr feed for FTC 2008.
Here is the link for FTC 2007.

May

12

Learning to change

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, Interactive, Milwaukee, Network, Technology, Web2.0, WiscNet | Leave a Comment

Join educators Tuesday and Wednesday for the 2008 Future Technologies Conference at Monona Terrace in Madison Wisconsin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4VhoWGZ2eA

Tags: WiscNet, Education, Learning, community, globalization, trends

May

9

Jumping into the cloud

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, Google, Interactive, Internet2, Milwaukee, Network, OpenSource, Rich media, Streaming, Technology, Web2.0 | 1 Comment

internet cloudThe huge success of web apps have made me think about the continued use for Microsoft’s Office suite. Back in the day Office was the only game in town but today Google’s Apps lead the Web2.0 surge in online apps that provide great functionality and work group solutions for free. When Robert Scoble announced:

I’ve been watching my usage. In two months I’ve only used Outlook out of the entire Office Suite. Everything else? Moved onto online services.”
- 09:06 AM April 30, 2008 from web

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May

4

Laptop orchestra to Beijing via Internet2

Filed Under Audio, Education, Globalization, Interactive, Internet2, Media Players, Network, Streaming, Technology | Leave a Comment


Stanford’s Laptop Orchestra will perform via Internet2 to Beijing, over 6,000 miles away via HD video and audio in a performance marking the annual Pan-Asian Music Festival in Palo Alto on Tuesday May 5th.

Tags: Internet2, laptop, orchestra, community, globalization, trends

Apr

21

SlideRocket Beta

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, Google, HighRes, Interactive, Media Players, Network, OpenSource, Rich media, Technology, Web2.0 | Leave a Comment

I have been beta testing SlideRocket, a new online presentation tool. It has a very Keynote like approach to creating presentations, or should I say is also at the exact opposite end of the PowerPoint scale of slideware. Thanks be to God for Edward Tufte.

SlideRocket Beta

The beta period looks to be stable for the short term, but SlideRocket will give Google’s online slideware tool a bit of a hard look, but I just do not believe it will be enough to move the masses to SlideRocket.

SlideRocket is a Adobe AIR application supporting Flickr photos and the ability to directly import Google Spreadsheets. The beta tag sticks because I was not able to get accurate results on my Flickr search on three attempts. It also borrow’s from Adobe the deep grey design UI of the program. Read more

Mar

5

Open Source in Education

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, Google, Interactive, Internet2, Milwaukee, Network, OLPC, OpenSource, Technology, Web2.0 | 3 Comments

Yesterday ComputerWorldUK posted Open source in schools could save the taxpayer billions about the growing impact of Open Source solutions for schools. The growing movement of free resources for education including software and opencourseware solutions continue to thrive. This movement is leading a revolution in education.

google apps

Google Apps for Education permits any school to tap free, industrial strength resources including: Gmail, GoogleTalk, Calendar, Docs, Sites & Start Page. This solution is standards based while integration is seemless.

Schools continue to face dwindling budgets, staff reductions and program cuts. Lets face facts, globalization also forces schools to implement technology refresh programs, turning over computer labs every 3 or 4 years via equipment leasing. The continued use of commercial software (inlight of Google’s offering to the education community) is a sign of simple fiscal mismanagement.
Looking for a success story to actually justify free software for schools? Click Here for the large number educational organizations (K-12 & Higher Education) that have already migrated to Google Apps for Education.

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Feb

25

Philadelphia Orchestra: Live via Internet2

Filed Under Audio, Design, Education, Globalization, HighRes, Interactive, Internet2, Milwaukee, Network, Streaming, Technology, WiscNet | Leave a Comment

Global concert seriesFriday afternoon Milwaukee’s Discover World hosted a live performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra via Internet2. The Philadelphia Orchestra Association is a member of Internet2.

The HD video concert was projected in Discovery World’s Digital Theater which provides viewers with a spectacular 27foot wide high definition image with a 2048×1920 resolution picture.

discoverworld
Early arrival at Discovery World

The Philadelphia Orchestra is the first major orchestra to transmit live concerts to multiple large screen venues such as Discovery World. The live broadcast uses an MPEG 2 compressed stream running at bandwidths exceeding 50 times that of conventional internet video streams. For this concert performance only 20 venues around the world participated.

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Feb

15

Milwaukee has Google street views!

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, Interactive, Milwaukee, Network, Rich media, Streaming, Technology, Virtual Reality, Web2.0 | Leave a Comment

Milwaukee has just been added by Google to their cool interactive Street View component of Google Maps? What a cool technology for the city and organizations to exploit in Google’s popular mapping service.

milwaukee street view via google

So feel free to email anyone and send a link permitting visitors to interactively tour Milwaukee via Google’s panoramic street view component. No mention in local media (newspapers, TV or radio) about Milwaukee joining this cool web tool.

With linking and embedding supporting this will provide a great resource for Web2.0 tools as well….like building the interactive frame right into your blog:

View Larger Map

Milwaukee joins great cities including San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Las Vegas, Denver, Dallas, Minneapolis, Chicago, Miami, New York City, Boston and Orlando with support for Google’s street view technology.

It may surprise some around town that many established cities (including Seattle) are not yet supporting street view.

Wish the resolution of their camera was better….but its a cool start.

Tags: Google Maps, street view, interactive, VR, panoramic photography,
Web2.0, cool, trends

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