As more people get smart phones, they're looking for ways to make them useful for search and other web activities. Although Google and Yahoo have introduced mobile versions, there are also other players in the game:
While Google and Yahoo are trying to extend their Web search engines into the wireless world, mobile search startups like 4Info and Promptu are trying to make the most of what people use cell phones for today -- voice calls and text messages.
4Info, a Palo Alto, Calif. startup, is aiming to popularize text messaging as a way to search the Web, presuming that cell-phone users want quick answers rather than page after page of search results. By sending text messages to 4Info's designated shortcode -- an abbreviated phone number used for information services -- users can receive sports scores, weather reports, flight information, and even package-tracking data. 4Info plans to sell keyword-related advertising, and has struck a deal with Gannett (Research) to promote its text-message services in the pages of USA Today.
"People want answers, not links," says Amol Joshi, 4info's senior vice president for business operations. "Google has the disadvantage of being a Web search firm."
...via Smart Mobs
People make up passwords they can't remember, then they end up using 'password' as their password. As discussed in this brief article you need to think about passwords that are both secure and memorable:
Vu, who is a assistant professor in the Psychology Department at California State University, Long Beach, goes on to say that the average password is easy to crack, but access to biographical data makes guessing that much easier with favorites being birthdays and children’s names. "My colleagues and I use an easily obtained cracking device called LC4 to crack passwords," she said. "It sources a dictionary to try words and combinations of words. It often cracks a password without knowing anything about the user. My research says that 60 percent of passwords can be cracked within a few hours, and some in less time than that."
Proactive password protection demands a requirement of upper or lowercase letters, numbers, special characters, and the like. Users generate a private password from these elements. The idea is that using these mechanisms makes cracking a password that much harder but her research has found a big trade-off between memorability and security. "The easier to remember a password is, the easier it is to crack," she said. "The ones that are harder to crack are the ones that are hard to recall and there’s the problem."
When you think about all the important things (your money, your personal information, your financial and legal records, etc) that you access online via passwords, you begin to understand (most people reading here probably already do understand, but hey, you can use this article to harangue your colleagues and loved ones) why it's really, really important to have secure passwords. Passphrases rather than passwords are more difficult to crack. Taking things you can remember and twisting them in ways that they are more difficult to crack (include symbols and numbers for example) but still something you can remember provide one way to keep more secure passwords.
Pictures of prototypes for the $100 laptop for the OLPC project
Like the police blotter only...not.
The most notable thing about it so far is that it has comments, which is excellent. So far the posts have been more police blotter-like than conversational, but it's a great start and it will be interesting to see where they go with it.
They do have a category for the Chief of Police (and also an irritating setup where the URL never changes when you click on a link unless you choose to open a new window) and he's made one entry so far. It'll be interesting to see if he gets more conversational too.
A project at WikiMedia with the mission:
Wikiversity is a centre for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities. Its primary priorities and goals are to:
- Create and host a range of free, multilingual learning resources, for all age groups in all languages
- Host scholarly/learning projects that complement existing Wikimedia projects (eg. a project devoted to finding good sources for Wikipedia articles)
- Host and foster research based in part on existing resources in Wikiversity and other Wikimedia projects (such as Wikibooks, Wikisource etc.)
- See more on Wikiversity/Scope and Wikiversity:Online Course. In the fulfillment of its mission, other tasks and goals may be initiated and developed by participants to support learning and the creation of new content.
Among the things I found interesting here is a list of how people can participate in this project:
Some Ideas for Effective Initial Participation
- Add or tweak some notes at a course portal. History now seeking students![1]
- Tweak a random text[2] for readability.
- Create an interesting topic portal.
- Wikiversity:Create a Random Lesson Plan
- Assemble an initial list of links useful to others interested in the topic.
- Add an outline bullet
- Add a factual paragraph or bullet to an article or its associated discussion page.
- Publish an essay question and answer or a term paper at an appropriate location.
- Write a draft quiz at an regarding a random Wikipedia article[3] or other subject of interest and publish it at an appropriate link in a learning trail.
- Take a quiz at Wikiversity:available quiz list. Grade yourself or others, if you dare.
- Publish your course notes, lesson plans, topical essays, or reference works for others to review, modify or fork.
- Come discuss how to improve Wikiversity at our current mailing list[4].
There are definitely some ideas here that I can see for eXtension.
Interesting look at what an 'unconference' might be as compared to a conference:
Conference vs Unconference
Attendees vs Participants
Exhibitors vs Participants
Recruiting speakers vs Recruiting participants
Content planning vs Content facilitation
Direct marketing vs Word of mouth marketing
Handouts vs Wikis
12 month planning cycle vs 12 week planning cycle
Top down vs Bottom up
Wisdom of experts vs Wisdom of crowds
Magazine coverage 2 months later vs Live blogging/podcasting
Slides vs Stories
Panels vs Conversations
Best practices vs Practicing
An article at ZDnet about the Iowa State C6 virtual reality room:
The equipment in this room has not been updated in six years. But with money from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the C6, which is operated by the Virtual Reality Applications Center (VRAC), will receive new equipment this year for a grand opening in 2007.
The difference between the equipment currently in the C6 and the updated technology to be installed this summer, "is like putting on your glasses in the morning," said James Oliver, the director of Iowa State's Virtual Reality Applications Center and a professor of mechanical engineering.
The new equipment — a Hewlett-Packard computer featuring 96 graphics processing units, 24 Sony digital projectors, an eight-channel audio system and ultrasonic motion tracking technology — will be installed by Fakespace Systems Inc. of Marshalltown.
...via Smart Mobs
From Infothought:
1. Google query syntax underwent some subtle changes over the years.
Not too long ago, you couldn't enter more than 10 words into the Google search box. Or to be more precisely, you *could*, but subsequent words were ignored. I bet the Google founders were thinking "10 words ought to be enough for everyone," and mostly there were right – but for some advanced uses, especially with the Google Search API, a little more is helpful. Then, a while ago, Google increased the words limit to 32 words. This is probably OK for a few more years!
Another change is that Google ignores stop words nowadays. Stop words in search engines are words like "the" or "a" which are too tiny or common to be useful additions to most searches. However, Google is now accepting them as semi-normal words (one remaining difference being that they're not highlighted, or linked to the dictionary). This means in Google.com, you get different results when search for [the tale of a cowboy] vs [* tale * * cowboy] vs [tale cowboy]. (I'll be using square brackets around search queries – they're not to be included in the search.)
Another operator changed its functionality during the years; a couple of years ago, you could only query Google for [site:something.com], but not [site:something.com/something/]. Today, you can add folders to the site operator.
From a recent Gartner report:
IT experts are more likely to suffer from stress than any other professional, according to the survey.
A staggering 97 percent of people working in IT claim to find their life at work stressful on a daily basis.
Four out of five IT consultants feel stressed before they even enter the workplace, in anticipation of another day juggling complaints, pressure from managers and daily targets.
And a quarter of IT experts are under such enormous pressure to perform at work they have taken time off suffering with stress.
...via Digg
According to a new survey social networks attract nearly half of all web users:
The number of visitors to the top 10 social-networking sites soared in April, attracting nearly half of all Web users, a market research firm says.
The top 10 sites collectively grew 47 percent in the United States from the same month a year ago to 68.8 million unique visitors, Nielsen/NetRatings said. The sites reached 45 percent of active Web users.
The top five sites are MySpace, Blogger, Classmates Online, YouTube, and MSN Spaces.
I've been in Gainesville, FL at the NETC 2006 conference with a number of other EIT and ECM people. I've learned a number of interesting things, talked to folks from other states about what they're doing with technology, and seen a bit of the University of Florida campus. I'm not making a presentation this year, but ISU Extension has been very well represented among the presenters giving talks on podcasting, SQL, videoconferencing, Filemaker, CSS and others, as well as organizing discussion roundtables.
The image above is from a presentation on content capture methods with Floyd Davenport, Robin Brekke, David Anderson, and Mykola Sarazhynskyy.
Marc Rosenberg discusses trends in e-learning:
- E-learning will become more than "e-training."
- E-learning will move to the workplace.
- Blended learning will be redefined.
- E-learning will be less course-centric and more knowledge-centric.
- E-learning will adapt differently to different levels of mastery.
- Technology will become a secondary issue.
...via SmartMobs
For Matt, who I'm sure knows them all by heart:
- Not following basic typographic rules
- Being too creative with navigation
- Creating a cluttered navigation system
- Making sure the site requires certain technology to work
- Thinking that accessibility is only about blind people
- Ignoring web standards
- Not keeping search engines in mind from the start
- Basing the site structure on your organisation structure
- Using grey text on grey background
- Skipping the feasibility study
...via elearningpost
From Wired News, research into using brain-wave signatures for security access:
Their idea of utilizing brain-wave signatures as "pass-thoughts" is based on the premise that brain waves are unique to each individual. Even when thinking of the same thing, the brain's measurable electrical impulses vary slightly from person to person. Some researchers believe the difference might just be enough to create a system that allows you to log in with your thoughts.
A pass-thought could be anything from a snatch of song, the memory of your last birthday or even the image of your favorite painting. A more achievable alternative might present you with predetermined pictures, music or video clips, to which you would think "yes" or "no" while the machine monitors your brain activity.
Oh, wait, that’s ‘What to do with a dead Hard Drive…
Alan Parekh talks about the top 5 things to do with a dead hard drive, including:
A 
and From PCWorld.com:
Vinny Aceto, a Boston information technology specialist, is a 12-year veteran at helping fix people's PCs over the telephone and in person. Aceto says he has preferred telephone tech support over on-site service calls ever since he was attacked by a rabid PC owner.
"I was trying to explain to this sales manager [that] his hard drive was dead and I couldn't recover his presentation," Aceto says. The customer turned beet red, picked up his PC, and hurled it out his office window, Aceto says. The PC fell three stories and smashed to pieces in the parking lot. Next, the man jumped over his desk and tried to assault Aceto. Luckily people rushed into the office and stopped the attack.
Inside Knowledge has an article about Euan Semple, knowledge manager at the BBC and his efforts to introduce collaborative tools. It's not a new article, but it's new to me and provides an interesting discussion of ways that people adopt and use new tools. I particularly like his description of people's response to the tools: "Some are very enthusiastic, others are interested, while a third group, which is getting smaller, looks horrified and bored,” he says.
He also talks about the need for enthusiastic early users as well as a critical mass:
The bulletin board is largely self-policing, self-organising and self-managed. To achieve this, Semple says you need a large and diverse group of people. “There’s always an early-adopter hump to get over until enough people are using it. Different interests must be represented for the environment to work as an ecology.” By not pushing the tool too heavily at the start, employees heard about it, used it, found solutions to problems and told others of their experiences. Talk.gateway is now the second most visited site on the intranet, with 8,000 people connecting to it each month, out of approximately 25,000 staff. Discussions range from procurement issues to debates on the BBC’s decision to broadcast Jerry Springer the Opera.
...
Web logs (blogs) were the third tool to appear. While many companies still debate their value within an organisational setting, the BBC now has 150 employees blogging. “A big leg-up was when Richard Sambrook, director of World Service and global news, started a blog, which is fan-bloody-tastic,” says Semple. “It’s really authentic. In his own voice he writes about the real issues at work, the challenges his department faces, and external factors and influences. It’s really brave.” Sambrook currently tops the BBC leagues, with 8,000 visitors in just over a month.
...via elearningpost