Beyond the Mouse

Here's a really fun video of people interacting with computers other than with a mouse. They use their eyes, their arms, their speech.



Right now, it's all just for fun and for art's sake. But what kinds of things could it lead to? For example, you know how with email and text messaging and facebook, it's so hard to articulate sarcasm or excitement or disappointment? Well what if the message could express your exact feelings and not just your words? Powerful!

New Vocabulary - Jailbreak

The word "Jailbreak" is now used to refer to hackers of the Apple iPhone. It means "to hack an iPhone to install unapproved software." I gather it took only weeks to break the new iPhone 3GS, which went on sale in mid-June. Now, a hacker known as 'geohot' has release the first jailbreaking software.

So what do you do with it? OK, so you can create your own apps, you can probably "get" other apps for free, but what else? Apps are generally only a few dollars and most people only use a dozen or so. It's not like it's a big expense. What am I missing?

The thrill of the challenge....

Text a Robot

Chalkbot, is a robot project from the Lance Armstrong's Livestrong Foundation for cancer awareness. During the Tour de France, you can text the robot anything and it will write it in chalk on the road.



You simply text 'LIVESTRONG' followed by your chalk message to 36453. You will get some kind of confirmation when it's written. The idea is to honor someone who has/had cancer.

I'm sure some people will be rude, but I'm facinated with this totally open and trusting enterprise. You'll probably get some kind of advertisement about Lances charity, but we're all pretty immune to ads nowadays.

What would you have the Chalkbot write?

Microsofts new search engine, Bing

Well, it showed up on my computer today, Bing. Microsoft's new search engine that is to compete with Google. In my class, Sheehan wanted to know more about it, so we googled it. (I'll let that sink in for a moment.)

Hey, do you think they named it Bing so in the future we can say, "I don't know, why don't you bing it?!"

Bing is supposed to be a better search engine because it learns what are "good hits" from previous searchers. Have you used it? Have you noticed an improvement?

Working hard in AP class

My Advanced Placement students, particularly Adam, were working very hard today (sarcasm). Check out the Text-to-Speech abilities of Windows. Go to Control Panel->Speech -> Text-to-Speech tab.

Whatever you type, a scary robotic voice will try to say out loud for you. You can change the voice and the speed.

I think they use this technology on books for the blind. So it's fun and important!

Do you sleep with your cellphone under your pillow?

Recent study suggests many high school aged students sleep with their cellphone under their pillow on vibrate, and text all night long. Do you?

The New York Times now has an article Texting May Be Taking a Toll in their health section about this very same thing:

"The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who say it is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation.

It's hard. You don't want to be "left-out." But you also don't want to be sick.

Our Sorting Video on YouTube

Here's a youtube video my students made after learning about sorting methods in our programming class. I think they had fun doing it, and maybe learned a little deeper. (It's better with the audio. Does anyone know how to get the track "authorized?")

When is a Tweet not a Tweet

Astronaut Mike Massimino, in the space shuttle Atlantis, is sending tweeting on Twitter from space. Or is he?

"Astro_Mike", as he is known on Twitter, wrote "As I closed my eyes to sleep last night I thought, 'These eyes have seen some beautiful sights today' ". More than 300,000 followers (growing exponentially every hour) are hooked. The media is hooked.

But others argue that he's really sending messages from the on-board computer to an assistant on earth who is posting the tweets for him.

Does this count as "Tweets from Space?" It sure is close, and fascinating, and as close as I'll ever get to experiencing space.

New Names for Windows

Here are a couple of new names for our favorite operating system, Windows:

Windoze - For when it is taking forever to do what you wanted, and you doze off

Window$ - For when they want you to pay for an application that is probably free somewhere

cna yuo raed tihs?

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch atCmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in awrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer bein the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raedit whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed erveylteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and Iawlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

iPhone Apps - Write your own!

We're trying to learn how to write applications for cellphones. Prof Max Buot of Xavier Univ came and talked to us about his fun/success in writing a statistics app for his students to use instead of a calculator. As part of that discussion, we learned about 3 very funny applications:

1. Sam new about an app called "I am rich." It's just a stupid screen saver of a red gem, but it costs $1000 to download. So if you have it, you must be rich!

2. I had heard about an app that you play like a flute. You blow across the speaker and use the keys to make different sounds

3. We wondered if anyone had made a "seizure" application yet. We do this in QBasic, where you change the background color rapidly. Be careful!! It's not called the "seizure" app for nothing.

What kind of app would you like to have?

What's the diff between JPG and JPEG files?

Nothing really. They are both called "jay-peg" files. They both can be compressed at different rates to allow a good trade-off between size and quality. It's just Windows calls them .jpg by default and Mac calls them .jpeg by default.

It's kind of like the difference between .htm and .html. Old timers are used to only 3 characters for the extention. But newer OS allow 4 now, and sometimes it's more descriptive to do so. So, your choice.

The problem is when you are typing the filename "me.jpg" or "me.jpeg" into a website or program. How do you know which? "My Computer" does not distinguish.

DO YOU KNOW???? HELP!!!

Pokemon harmful to your health?

While learning to program rollovers for a web site, my student Greg told us of a Pokemon episode that had caused about 10% of its viewers to suffer seizures. It had 6 seconds of red and blue screens flashing quickly back and forth.



This means we are responsible for the graphics we put out on the internet. If we want to be seen and heard, it doesn't make sense to hurt our followers.



Are there other examples of things you have seen on web sites that were irresponsible?

Stackular

Look what this kid does instead of video games, he stacks cups! For an hour a day!! He's the current world champion. It can even lead to acting in commercials.

Fun with Music

Here's a really addicting site where you can create 4-bar music. Try holding the mouse down like a "pen" to draw your music! This is what my heart sounds like:

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

Be Prepared

In class today, we used the Scout motto: Be Prepared. We couldn't remember if this was the motto of the Boy Scouts or the Girl Scouts. Turns out it's both!

And, NO, the Girl Scout motto is NOT "Buy my cookies?!" (Sorry Greg, Mitch and Bishoy)

Do the Boy Scouts have a fundraiser?

Rocking Skateboard

I saw some kids using these on Spring Break. Have you tried it?

"This product is quite different from the former usual style that has four wheels. What you have to do is just twist your body when you stand on our new product. Without kicking the ground as usual, the board will keep you moving forward. It's so flexible that it's easy for you to control the direction."

Conficker Virus

You may have heard some horror stories about the Conficker Virus that was supposed to attack on April 1 and do who-knows-what kind of damange. Well it didn't. But it was an interesting story about the mutation of hacks. Now, virus don't do random things like delete your files. They generally try to make money off you by offering bogus web purchases.

This Conficker Virus also was new in the way it started a peer-to-peer process, not a simple phone-home to a web site for instructions. That's why it's been so hard to track down the hacker. So basically, they still don't know what it is supposed to do or that it might still do it at some later date.

So just to be safe, double check that your virus scanners are updated or run a Conficker specific one.

Do you know anyone who got this?

Facebook - Don't like the new look

I've been trying to keep an open mind about the new look of Facebook, but I've decided I prefer the old. At first I liked it better, because it was easier to see everyone's status' which is what I look at the most. But now my friends are posting mass pictures and I have to scroll through them all to get to what I want to see.

Do you like the old or the new look of Facebook better?