Update your profile with a picture

Update your profile with a picture. It can be a picture you take of yourself (serious or goofy), or of something that you like to do, or even of your pets.

Then post your thoughts on internet privacy. What kind of information is ok to post? Were you weary of posting an actual picture of your face or were you very comfortable with it? When looking through your profile settings, did you add your email or your last name. Should you? Did you change your screen name?



Certainly posting your entire name, address, and social security number anywhere is STUPID! But on-line communities will become important to you. Whether it's a social network (facebook, myspace) or a professional network, these work best when there's a certain amount of sharing. What is too much sharing?

Cluster Map Scavenger Hunt

Thank you for visiting our blog! We are studying the power of the internet and blogging. Just visiting our site has registered you on our Cluster Map.




A Cluster Map is a picture of a map with red dots on it representing where people are when they view a website. It lets you see just how far your words are being heard, how "flat" the world is becoming. Please send the link to this post to anyone you wish. Ask them to send it on too. The point is to see how many states, even countries we can get! Then come back here and post a comment about where you sent out your request.

As a token of our appreciation, check out this Christmas Computer Joke.

How much Alice?

Can you believe we only have 2 more weeks of class together? Let's reflect on the use of Alice in our course. Your honest feedback is very important to me. I'm always looking for ways to improve this course.

So this week before winter break, we will learn more on keyboard and mouse events and have an assignment we do partly together and then you will customize it. (Pretty much what we've been doing so far.) The week after our break, you will be given a very open-ended, longer assignment to create a video game.

With that in mind, please take this poll. Then elaborate in a reply.

How much Alice is enough?
	We should have done this all semester
	We're doing about the right amount of it
	It's been fun, but it's not really a programming language
	I'm already tired of it
View Results

Web Poll from Free Website Polls

Videos in Education

So I've been wondering how videos could be used in school. When would they be appropriate. How would it look? How should school change to be more inline with the 21st century?

Think of an assignment you have been given in high school that would have been so much more fun and engaging if you had done a video instead of a paper or powerpoint presentation. Explain.

Or search youtube for something simliar. Here is an example of someone finding the area of a room. It's maybe not all that exciting as a video, but it sure beats creating a posterboard, don't you think? And here's one of some guys trying to understand velocity (but mostly crashing into the sidewalk). Did they learn anything?

What else besides creating videos should school do to make it more relevant to your life????

QR Codes and BilltoMobile

Two recent technologies have really got me to thinking. Read and comment on either below, or go out on a limb a think about what changes this might mean.

1. A web resource called BilltoMobile allows anyone with a cell phone (YES, a basic cell phone works) to be able to charge digital purchases to their cell phone bill via their cell phone. No need to use carry credit online anymore. Just charge purchases to your phone. Read more here.

2. QR Codes (or Quick Response Codes) are 2 dimensional bar codes that can be interpreted by your cell phones camera as a url link. You simply take a picture and your mobile web browser goes to the intended web site. Read more here.

This takes the term "window shopping" to a whole new level. Imagine seeing something you'd like to have, maybe clothes your friend has on or a video game advertised in a magazine. You could just QR the barcode and pay for it with your cell phone. 3 days later it appears in the mailbox!

The Power of Video - Share your favorites

I'm very interested in how people use video to express themselves and how teachers can capture that energy into learning. So I will probably blog several times about video.

But to start things off, let's share our favorite youtube videos. Here's mine: scary cat

Make sure to share one that is of an individual expressing themselves (in a school appropriate way!). I'm not interested in professional ones or music videos, but people willing to let you into their lives, showing their talents and their faults. People being vulnerable. I will be watching them all, so make sure they are squeaky clean!!!

Technical tip: to get your words to be a link (see my "scary cat" text), use the following style in your reply. Use everything BUT the 2 backslashes (\). I had to put it there to keep it from being a link. You must do this for full credit. Feel free to ask me in class or email.

<\a href="http://www.youtube.com/yourvideoURLhere">scary cat<\/a>

What does 3G mean (and other acronyms)

I was wondering what "3G" meant in all the cell phone commercials ("on the worlds fastest 3G network.."). So I googled "define 3G network" and found out that it means "Third Generation". Well that makes since. The First Generation was analog, when people carried around huge bags for their phone. The Second Generation was the switch to digital and smaller and smaller handsets. Now the Third Generation is high speed digital which let's us add internet surfing and broader bandwidths for video

What other acronyms do you wonder about? The computing industry is full of them. The next time you hear some letters, look them up with the "define" keyword in Google and tell us what it means.

Search the net from a cell phone

No, I'm not talking about using a smart phone. You can search the net from any cell phone that has Text Messaging! Simply call or text an organization called ChaCha and someone will do the search for you and TM you back the answer. Give it a try and tell us what you asked and what the answer was.

Call 1-800-2Cha-Cha and speak the question you have or
Text ChaCha (242242) with the question

2-3 mins later, you will receive your answer!

Christmas Gadgets

What gadgets do you want for Christmas? Here's some things I've run across recently that I wouldn't mind finding under my tree:

1. iPod Multi-headphone Splitter - so you and your friends can listen to the same music
2. Digital Picture Frame - just plug in your cameras SD card and it automatically makes a slideshow for your desk or dresser
3. USB FLash Drive with PIN-entry
4. Rear-Window LED scrolling display - so you can send messages to the car behind you
5. Webcams

What other cool things are out there?

Google Maps Street View

Have you played with Google Maps Street View yet? Just look up your address and click on "Street View" and you can "drive" down the street, seeing actual sights! There's even an "inappropriate" button to report things that shouldn't be seen.

Can you imagine the size of disk farm that must house this application? Google has even applied for a patent to put data centers on ships at sea and harvest the energy in waves for power. Truly green power?!

Mosquito Ringtone

Have you heard about the ringtone that is so high pitched adults can't hear it? Go here to listen to it for yourselves. I've been told it is a very high whistle sound, but I don't hear it. Ask your parents to listen and reply on this blog how many of them do and don't hear it.

From DVD to YouTube

Here's an interesting tip from CoolCatTeacher on how to take video from a DVD and rip it to your computer. Now you can use this video in MovieMaker or the like, manipulate it, and even post it to youtube.

What can you see doing with this. What fun videos could you make. What are the legal issues here?

What can Live Web Cams be used for?

Check out this live web cam (before next week, when the puppies get sold). Then comment about what other (positive) purposes live web cams could be used for. What are the issues around this technology?

Broadcasting Live with Ustream.TV

These people set up this live web cam to keep an eye on their investement. They breed and sell these unique shiba-inu puppies.

The Revolution of the Wii Controller

Watch this video about a scientist who uses a Wii controller to create 3D games.

What could YOU do with a Wii controller?

How can WE harness the power of YouTube?

Google Rules the Computing Universe?

Google's Desktop OS

In case you haven't noticed, Google now has its well-funded mitts on just about every aspect of computing. From Web browsers to cell phones, soon you'll be able to spend all day in the Googleverse and never have to leave. Will Google make the jump to building its own PC operating system next?

What is it? It's everything, or so it seems. Google Checkout provides an alternative to PayPal. Street View is well on its way to taking a picture of every house on every street in the United States. And the fun is just starting: Google's early-beta Chrome browser earned a 1 percent market share in the first 24 hours of its existence. Android, Google's cell phone operating system, is hitting handsets as you read this, becoming the first credible challenger to the iPhone among sophisticated customers.

Will Google be the next Microsoft?

Vista Out, Windows 7 In

From PC World:

Windows 7: Due out Jan 2010

Whether you love Vista or hate it, the current Windows will soon go to that great digital graveyard in the sky. After the tepid reception Vista received, Microsoft is putting a rush on Vista's follow-up, known currently as Windows 7.

What is it? At this point Windows 7 seems to be the OS that Microsoft wanted to release as Vista, but lacked the time or resources to complete.

What are your experiences with Windows Vista?

A Picture is worth 1000 Words

These pictures are from a project initiated by Chris Jordon. He states:

"Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 410,000 paper cups used every fifteen minutes. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. The underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming."

This is a picture of 426,000 cell phones, the amount discarded everyday in the U.S.










Here's a blown up version of the same picture.















Find and post another picture that you feel really says a lot. What does it say to you?

How Much Info is too much Info

Read the first couple of paragraphs about this incident involving possible hacking of a voting machine in 2003. It seems legit, because a google search showed many other articles, including one by Princeton University.

Then listen to this guy tell you exactly how to hack this particular kind of voting machine. It's a bit of a spoof. There's actually not quite enough information to actually rig an election. You would still need to know the file format the program is expecting.

But here is my question. Should this be legal? Should it be legal to have a web site that tells you how to hack something as important as a Presidential election? Or how to make dangerous things or how to mug a pedestrian or how to do other "bad" things. And who decides what is "bad".

Finally, include a hyperlink in your post to a "good" site. A site you think provides "good" information. Maybe something you use from time to time. To get a hyperlink, select the text, then click on the icon with a fence link and type the URL.

Framed by Your Computer

from Time Magazine...

"Using Facebook photos as evidence, police in South Burlington, Vt., have charged a high school athlete with possession of alcohol - the second time in a year they used the website to make an underage bust. In June girls on the high school lacrosse team were ratted out by online pictures. The town's chief of police says his officers don't surf social-networking sites. In both cases parents first pointed out the photos."

Comment on possible unintended consequences of revealing too much on-line. Or comment on the legal issues that arise in your mind with this article.

Social Good on a Search Engine?

Check out www.goodsearch.com. It's a search engine like google, but it donates to charity every time a person uses it. Then post a comment on this blog. Below are some possible topics to blog about:

What do you think of search engine? Does it do all the things you need? Does it do something unique? Does it lack something?

What do you think of combining charity giving with internet usage. Does it matter who chooses the charity? Or all they all equally good? Or does it just feel good to give so easily. Who was today's charity?