Aug

17

On my reading list

Filed Under Audio, Design, Education, Globalization, Media Players, Network, OpenSource, Reading, Streaming, TED, Technology, Web2.0 | Leave a Comment

If you're visiting my blog for the first time, you can subscribe to my RSS feed. This allows you to read the latest updates about Globalization, Internet2 and Education via feeds.
Thank you for visiting.

Looking forward to Larry Lessig’s new bookRemix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. Larry has documented how the music and movie industries are turning students into criminals because they use cheap software, the internet and their creativity.  His presentation at TED hilights the core principals of his upcoming book.

The power and impact of the digital economy has placed copyright and the old guard clearly on the defensive.  Those aging companies still want the market to be “published” (in analog format) are unwilling to change to the new information economy.
–Well okay what I’m really trying to say is they don’t want to give up their revenue streams.

Okay maybe they do understand how the game has changed, yet I’m not sure the impact of how young people are wired has fundamentally changed their business model.

Actually I’m hoping Remix may also hilight how the RIAA should be chasing down the millions of pirates in China rather than students in America.  Larry is proving what everyone under 30 already has accepted as a fact of life…They have never been forced to purchase a majority of their entertainment in analog format.  Should be a great read!

Aug

15

Whats new is now old

Filed Under Design, Education, HighRes, Media Players, Network, TED, Technology, Virtual Reality, Web2.0 | Leave a Comment

Microsoft’s Photosynth was a hit at TED last year and looked to be really promising regardless of running only on XP SP2 and Vista (shame on you Microsoft) but the same team along with the University of Washington has moved forward with new photo, video and VR technologies:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLLzV5qeKyk

This should be a very interesting mashup of multiple media formats.  Great work and a wonderful tool for education.

Tags: Photosynth, photo, virtual reality, panaoramic, globalization, trends

Jun

26

50 million viewers cannot be wrong

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, Network, Streaming, TED, Technology | Leave a Comment

ted 50 million
TED is amazing don’t you think?

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

Read more

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.

Read more

May

20

OLPC: The remix

Filed Under Audio, Design, Education, Globalization, Milwaukee, Network, OLPC, OpenSource, TED, Technology | Leave a Comment

Max’s first laptop will be the new One Laptop Per Child prototype announced this morning by Nichoals Negroponte. No “keyboard” since both sides of this ebook reader will support a virtual keyboard.

olpc xo beta

But I’d like to buy a 1st Gen unit too. And I’ll config it to run Sugar.

Tags: OLPC, sugar, Negroponte, prototype, globalization, 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.

Read more

Apr

30

National Broadband Policy

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, Google, Internet2, Milwaukee, Network, TED, Technology | 2 Comments

At last week’s Internet2 Spring Meeting Telepoly Consultant John Windhausen presented research support the adoption of a National Broadband Policy to deliver 100 Megabits to every home and business by 2012.

I2 spring meetingWould you like to fully understand the impact of this policy? May I suggest starting with Tom Friedman’s bestseller The World Is Flat 3.0?

Make sure you read Version 3.0 — Friedman’s update measures how quickly the world has adopted Globalization with networking technologies woven into the fabric of global business, government and education sprinkled around some of the most far reaching locations worldwide.

Read more

Apr

14

My latest read - The Starfish and the Spider

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, Milwaukee, Network, OpenSource, Reading, TED, Technology, Web2.0 | Leave a Comment

Rod Beckstrom provided a very insightful presentation at the 2007 The Next Web Conference about organizations. Two types will define or break you in a Web2.0 world.

An enjoyable, easy read that further suggests leaderless organizations can fuel dramatic change within organization large and small.

Beckstrom, who just spoke at the 2008 TED conference presents content supporting how organizations can flourish when tightly controlled groups embrace the starfish effect.

He notes how Al-qaeda has embraced this type of leaderless organization and it becomes very obvious to any reader the last five years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Read more

Apr

4

WiscNet FTC 2008 - Internet2

Filed Under Education, Globalization, Internet2, Milwaukee, Network, TED, Technology, WiscNet | Leave a Comment

WiscNet’s 2008 Future Technologies Conference at Monona Terrace will feature two keynotes regarding Internet2.

Tuesday May 13th Doug Van Houweling, President of Internet2 will keynote the first day of the conference. Joel Mambretti, Director of the International Center for Advanced Internet Research at Northwestern will be addressing the FTC on Wednesday.

You can register here for the 2 day conference in Madison.

Tags: Internet2, WiscNet, Doug Van Houweling, Joel Mambretti, Madison, global education, trends

Mar

18

OLPC: Green beyond belief

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, Network, OLPC, OpenSource, TED, Technology, Web2.0 | 1 Comment

Mary Lou Jepsen, former CTO of the OLPC project (and current President of PixelQi) was a keynote at the 2008 Greener Gadgets conference in NYC. This short address will surprise you regarding the types of green, advanced technologies built for poor students. Major consumer tech companies should pay attention:

This remarkable laptop for the world’s poorest students has so many green technologies that Apple, Dell, HP and every other laptop manufacturer should be incorporated into ALL laptops:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-TVca1QW-k

And why can’t I replace my Powerbook’s LCD strip for $1.00 similar to the replacement cost built into the OLPC? Well those same manufacturers want you to purchase another laptop…even when I search eBay for a solution.

Tags: energy, conservation, OLPC, Mary Lou Jepsen, globalization, trends

Mar

17

My latest read - The Paradox of Choice

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, Reading, TED | 1 Comment

Have you noticed as of late that almost everything is available…in too many overwhelming choices?

I watched a TED video of Barry Schwartz and was interested to learn more about his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less and learn the downside (and unhappiness) of abundance.

As Schwartz points out consider the types of choice in your local grocery store: 285 cookie options, 85 types of crackers, 95 types of chips, 75 iced teas, 29 chicken soups, 175 salad dressings and 275 boxes of cereal. Welcome to The Paradox of Choice. Try shopping for a new pair of jeans as he described in his TED presentation and the introduction to this book.

In my childhood things seemed simple. There were just three television channels…plus a PBS station. When the new school started I would receive two or three pairs of stiff denim jeans. Every kid in my school would wear the same dark blue demin and would not feel comfortable until the third week of school. By then our clothes were finally broken in via the wash cycle.

Don’t consider this book the opposite of Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. It would be more accurate to describe the book as what happens to individuals overwhelmed by choice.

Read more