For $29.00, you can get a USB memory card that will fit in your wallet.
From The Chronicle-- Michigan is considering requiring at least one online course to graduate from high school:
The new requirement would appear to be the first of its kind in the nation. Mike Flanagan, the Michigan state superintendent of public instruction, said he proposed the online-course requirement, along with other general requirements, to make sure students were prepared for college and for jobs, which are becoming more technology-focused.
"We don't want our kids left in the global dust," Mr. Flanagan said. "It's an experience we need to have."
From News@Nature:
Wikipedia is growing fast. The encyclopaedia has added 3.7 million articles in 200 languages since it was founded in 2001. The English version has more than 45,000 registered users, and added about 1,500 new articles every day of October 2005. Wikipedia has become the 37th most visited website, according to Alexa, a web ranking service.
But critics have raised concerns about the site's increasing influence, questioning whether multiple, unpaid editors can match paid professionals for accuracy. Writing in the online magazine TCS last year, former Britannica editor Robert McHenry declared one Wikipedia entry — on US founding father Alexander Hamilton — as "what might be expected of a high-school student". Opening up the editing process to all, regardless of expertise, means that reliability can never be ensured, he concluded.
Yet Nature's investigation suggests that Britannica's advantage may not be great, at least when it comes to science entries. In the study, entries were chosen from the websites of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica on a broad range of scientific disciplines and sent to a relevant expert for peer review. Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two encyclopaedias; they were not told which article came from which encyclopaedia. A total of 42 usable reviews were returned out of 50 sent out, and were then examined by Nature's news team.
Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively.
...via Smart Mobs
Papers that summarize other papers
Papers that tell you what things cost
...then mobile phones:
About an hour into a typical show on U2's Vertigo tour, Bono tells the crowd to hold up their mobile phones, in what has become the modern-day equivalent of flicking on a lighter. Instantly, thousands of blue-tinted screens illuminate the darkness as he marvels at the spectacle.
...
Then the band launches into the song "One," and Bono encourages the audience to use their phones to send a text message (also known as an SMS) to the one.org Web site, a sort of digital petition voicing support for poverty relief in Africa. Later, during the encore, the names of all who did so are scrolled on the same screen, and each receive a message of thanks from Bono on their phones.
This is one of the most visible examples of how the mobile phone is being used as a communication tool between artist and audience, turning the concert event into a much more interactive experience.
...via Smart Mobs
we make money not art reports on self-healing paint for Nissan cars:
Nissan has invented a transparent vehicle body paint that repairs scratches on its own. Even if the car is attacked with a Y10 coin the paint should be able to cope with the damage. Within about a week, the paint will repair the scratch. "Of course, you could speed the whole process up by pouring some warm water over the affected area — that would probably repair it in a matter of minutes," explained a spokeperson.
...via Smart Mobs
via receiver, an article about innovative uses in mobile phone use in Africa:
One such regional innovation is the public mobile phone. We might consider mobiles as belonging to individuals, but in Africa, as elsewhere in the developing world, handsets often pull double-duty, used by multiple family members, shared among friends (perhaps by swapping SIM cards in and out), or perhaps by a whole set of users in a village or neighborhood. Across the region, many people make their living by selling individual calls on handsets. These micro-entrepreneurs play an important function in extending connectivity to people who can not afford their own handset, or who might only require an occasional call.
The most famous example of this model is Grameen Village Phone, formed originally in Bangladesh. Grameen Village Phone has recently introduced its programs in Uganda and Rwanda. A similar franchise model is found in the phone shops of South Africa, where tens of thousands of locations provide GSM-based telecommunications services. Developed originally to fulfill some of South Africa's universal access provisions, these franchises have proved extremely important to the townships and rural areas in the nation.
But these mobile-based payphone businesses need not have the backing of major telecommunications companies or NGOs. In West Africa, for example, "Umbrella Ladies" simply set up at the side of the road with a lawn chair, a mobile, and some shade from the sun; informal resale of individual calls are common throughout the continent. This is the local user innovation I wish to highlight in this article: the impromptu phone booth!
...via Smart Mobs
So, Google Book Search wants to index the world's books and do it by scanning in as many of those books as they can and make them available for full-text searching.
One response to this is, okay, then they can just ask for permission to scan those books. Part of Google Book Search is the publishers program (now apparently called the Partners Program) which allows publishers to request that their books not be included and to request that they be included as partners, which means that they can participate in the advertising revenue. Partners can also indicate how much of a book a searcher is able to see--basic snippets, whole pages, the whole book
However, there are many many books for which the rights holder is neither obvious or easily contacted. These books are still restricted by copyright and cannot be freely copied or distributed, but the rights holders can't be located to grant permission. Basically these books are simply not available.
Google's approach is to work with libraries to scan these books and include them, contending that the process of tracking down these rights holders would be impossible and also, more radically contending that since their ultimate purpose is a search system where searchers will only see snippets of text and never the entire book (unless permission is explicitly granted through the Partners Program), that they don't need permission to scan the book. Google's argument is that the scanning is a means to an end, that they have rights to perform the end, and therefore the intermediate step is okay too (this is a bold paraphrase of the situation, of course, for more detailed analysis, you might refer to some of the articles cited later).
Google also argues, and I think this is an important argument, that a universal book search must, somehow, be universal or its value is drastically diminished.
Some questions then, about the Google Book Search project. These are questions that the lawsuits may be called upon to solve though whether they can solve them or not, remains a question.
--Is the fact that Google plans to profit from their Book Search critical in determining if this is a project that should be allowed to go forward? Some people have said it might be an acceptable project if done by a government or non-profit organization, but Google will be making money off 'our' books--is that fair?
--There seems little question (to me, at least) that Google Book Search would be a boon for people searching for information. Is the 'greater good' a good enough reason for Google Book Search to go forward?
--Shouldn't creators get paid for what they produce? If yes (and I think most people agree that the answer to this question is 'yes'), how do you balance that with the 'greater good?' Equally important, what if Google Book Search ultimately results in creators getting paid more (because people buy more books, because their publishers opt into the Partners program, etc), does that change circumstances?
--Should creators' rights trump Googles attempts to make a buck? Should creators' rights trump the greater good? Doesn't the greater good also include creators? What if Google Book Search affects their incentive to create? What if (absent Google Book Search) less access or less awareness affects readers' purchase of creators' works, which in turn affects creators' incentive to produce works? How would it be possible to determine answers to these questions?
--If we let Google do this, what's going to be the next step? How will those next steps affect publishers? Creators? Readers?
--Finally, think about this:
There are about 32 million books; 3 million in print, 3 million out of copyright, and the rest of them are still in copyright but out of print; there are very few ways to get to them. (http://paulfrankenstein.org/archives/2005/11/17_live_from_the_public_library.html).
Some of these books could profitably be forgotten forever. But what about the ones that are still valuable and useful?
Google Book Search is clearly still evolving (look at the name changes it's currently undergoing, for example). For additional details and perspectives, you may want to refer to the following articles:
Authors’ Guild v Google: Opt-out is evil, except when we do it. http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/27/authors_guild_v_goog.html. Cory Doctorow. September 27, 2005.
Google Print, in hot water again. http://www.ibiblio.org/pomerantz/blog/?p=288. August 5, 2005.
Microsoft Research DRM Talk. http://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt. Cory Doctorow. June 17, 2004.
Google Sued. http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003140.shtml. Lawrence Lessig. September 22, 2005.
Google Responds. http://weblog.ipcentral.info/archives/2005/09/google_responds.html. IPcentral.info. James deLong. September 21, 2005
Google Print Debate on Farber's IP List. http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/10/google_print_debate_on_farbers.html. Tim O’Reilly. October 30, 2004.
On the "Google Print Book Search Publisher Partner Library Project Program": How we know Google is not like other companies. http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/002429.html. Siva Vaidhyanathan. November 22, 2005.
Live from The Public (Library). http://paulfrankenstein.org/archives/2005/11/17_live_from_the_public_library.html. Paul Frankenstein. November 5, 2005.
...see part 1 here.