Category: Technology

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Education Globalization Reading Technology

Latest read: Naked Conversations

With a lot of anticipation I read Robert Scoble’s Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers.

naked conversations

For some time I had been skimming his blog Scoblizer since he became Microsoft’s first official blogger and rose to instant superstar.

As if that ‘permission’ by Microsoft made blogging okay for Corporate America. While his feed is loaded in my NetNewsWire this book is really really entry level…or if you have not read any book about blogging.

While many on Amazon rave about it (maybe my expectations are too high) it really is a rehash of plain – common – sense approaches to having honest communication or “chats” via a blog.

Maybe for the mid-size corporation looking to communicate to their customers…but don’t good companies talk to their customers already?

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Education Globalization Internet2 Technology WiscNet

Boreas comes to Wisconsin

Wisconsin is moving in the right digital direction, literally at the speed of light. Announced yesterday the UW System is connected to a new network named Boreas.

Boreas was the name of the Greek God of the North Wind, but today it is knows as the Broadband Optical Research, Education and Sciences Network. This enhances UW-Madison’s connection to the high speed Internet2 network about 20,000 times faster.

Yes a leap in network speed x 20,000. Its part of a larger Regional Optical Network or RON, connecting the UW system to Iowa State University, the University of Iowa and the University of Minnesota.

This serious bandwidth increase cements Wisconsin (and the Midwest) as a base for future economic development, federal research and education. Quite simply to be “in the arena” of computing power and research collaboration the jump was necessary to remain at the top in today’s globalized world. Update posted at The Chronicle

Tags: , Boreas, Internet2, network, Madison

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Design Education Technology Virtual Reality

Copywrong

The real golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.
I’m always disappointed to see how copyright handcuffs what an artist can create. For example:

stitcher

This message is from RealViz’s Stitcher program, a photographic virtual reality rendering program. “Due to legal issues” you cannot look at an image if the camera focal length is really wide.

What could a visual artist create without this man made limitation?

Technorati Tags: , photography, virtual reality, artist, creative

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Education Globalization Technology

Google’s new “My Maps”

Google continues to revolutionize the way social networks can thrive in a web2.0 world. The only problem with this is the amount of time it will take to render VR imaging for My Maps.

Now the challenge for Google Earth will be to permit users to embed rich media (Flash, QuickTime VR) into these elements…then the interactive element would really fly if they can sync rotation of the VR object and Google Earth. I’m ready for the next release of Google Earth to support that feature!

A beautiful view of Kaneohe Bay on the island of Oahu. Click here to enjoy this in real-time.

nuuana pali

Technorati Tags: Google, My maps, photography, Nuuau Pali, trends

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Design Education Globalization Technology WiscNet

New Master Degree: Web2.0

The University of Michigan has a Master of Science in Information degree in Social Computing which brings online communities, social networking and user content into a formal degree program. Very interesting. I actually like the competency requirement.

12 credits from:

SI 508: Networks: Theory and Application (3 credits)
SI 532 Digital Government I: Information Tech and Democratic Politics(1.5 credits)
SI 583: Recommender Systems(1.5 credits)
SI 631: Content Management Systems(3 credits)
SI 679: Aggregation and Prediction Markets(1.5 credits)
SI 683: Reputation Systems(1.5 credits)
SI 684: eCommunities: Analysis and Design of Online Interaction Environments(3cr)
SI 689: Computer-Supported Cooperative Work(3 credits)

And pass a competency requirement in

SI 539: Design of Complex Web Sites (3 credits)
SI 543: Programming I (Java) (3 credits)

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