Trading textbooks for laptops

Post ImageIn case you missed it, we’re in the year 2005 now, and I don’t know about you but I expected far more schools to have laptops by now:

An Arizona high school is set to become one of the first ebook-only schools, as it preps to hand out laptops to 350 students this fall. The cost for the laptops at Vail High School will be about $850 per student, compared to about $600 for textbooks. The school plans to supplement electronic versions of traditional textbooks with online articles assigned by teachers.

I like the idea of using computers in school for more than just “computer class” or research in the library. Seems to me that Tablet PC’s would be better suited for a classroom environment, but maybe the price is still a little prohibitive.

Read: Engadget

Lisa's Birthday Bash!

Post ImageHappy Birthday Lisa! Just got back this afternoon from the big bash up at her family’s cabin in Bonnie Lake, which is near Vilna, northeast of the city. The people, food, drink, and weather were all great, what more can you ask for, really? Lisa’s cabin is really nice, thanks so much for having us!

Megan and I drove up sometime yesterday afternoon (we got going rather slowly) and arrived in time for some relaxing on the beach before dinner. We followed the instructions Lisa had provided, and while we found the place okay and went through some interesting towns like Andrew (where we saw this sign) we decided that the route was really more complex than it needed to be. Needless to say, we came home a different way!

After dinner, the rest of the evening consisted of drinking games, some birthday cake (that no one ate!), drinking around the campfire, and generally, more drinking resulting in lots of empties! A grand time was had by all (at least I think it was). Quite a few people had to leave early for work, but those of us who did stick around just took it easy.

All in all, a great weekend! Lisa’s party seems to get bigger and better every year, so I look forward to the 2006 bash! You can check out all the photos I took at the party on Flickr.

G8 approves major African aid boost

Post ImageThe members of the G8 agreed on Friday to boost aid for Africa to $50 billion. If you read my post on Live8, you probably already know that I don’t think throwing more money at Africa is going to solve anything. They have problems that cannot be solved by money alone.

The leaders presented the deal as “a message of hope that countered the hatred behind the London bomb attacks.”

“We speak today in the shadow of terrorism but it will not obscure what we came here to achieve,” Blair declared, flanked by fellow leaders of the G8 and seven of their African counterparts on the steps of the Gleneagles hotel in Scotland.

Excuse me, but what does rich terrorists setting off explosions in rich nations have to do with Africa? The notion that the poverty in Africa is a breeding ground for terrorism is quite simply, stupid. Throwing absurd amounts of money into an extremely problematic continent is one thing, but trying to pass it off as countering terrorism is ridiculous.

I understand that the London attacks required some sort of response, but I think that response should have been clear and separate from whatever else the leaders were trying to accomplish.

Read: Reuters

Testing Community News

Post ImageA few days ago I wrote about how the University of Alberta was planning to purchase the Hudson’s Bay Building in downtown Edmonton. I figured the story would a great way for me to test out some of the community news sites available, so I wrote a story out, took some photos, and started testing. I particularly like the idea of having “normal people” create and edit the news, as opposed to the media outlets we have now.

I first discovered NowPublic when I was in Seattle. It walks and talks like a community news site, so this was the first one I tested. Here is the story I created, and here is what I thought of the site:

  • Creating stories and footage (images or other media) on the site is faily easy and exactly what you would expect. Once you create the story, others can add footage or reports to it.
  • I had taken some photos so decided to add them as footage to my story. In theory it should have been easy, but it turns out that my photos were all at a resolution larger than NowPublic allows. So I had to delete all the blank images it created, and then resize my images and try again.
  • The layout of the site is questionable perhaps, I don’t like how the story appears below the footage.
  • One of the really cool features of NowPublic is tagging. You can tag your stories and footage so that they are easier to find.

I liked NowPublic, even though the process of adding footage was a little difficult. The other site I tested was WikiNews, from the same people who created the wonderful Wikipedia. Here is the story I created, and what I thought of the site:

  • Adding a news item in WikiNews is a little more difficult than NowPublic, mainly because you have to be familiar with the formatting the wiki uses. At the very least, the learning curve is steep compared to the WYSIWYG interface at NowPublic.
  • One nice thing about WikiNews is that anyone can edit your story, hence the idea of the wiki. That feature isn’t available at NowPublic, as adding footage or reports isn’t quite the same.
  • I like how the concept of a “source” is built into WikiNews, and the formatting is uniform.
  • Adding images to a story isn’t as easy as NowPublic, simply because the method of uploading images is a little more cumbersome.

After using both sites, I think I would recommend NowPublic over WikiNews, simply because it’s much easier to use. I think WikiNews is more conducive to community participation though, and that was after all the reason I was testing these sites at all. I guess another distinguishing feature is that with WikiNews you need to have a story to write, whereas with NowPublic, you can simply add some footage and let others write the stories. It’ll be interesting to see how the sites (both of which are basically in beta mode) mature.

It occurred to me as I was testing the services that maybe we really don’t need them. Blogging, photoblogging, and other conversational applications all do essentially the same thing anyway. Combine them with a powerful aggregator like Technorati, PubSub, or something similar, and you’ve got your community news.

You can check out the photos I took for my news story here – they are all licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

Scoble interviews Ballmer

Post ImageRobert Scoble has landed a huge interview for Channel9. Yesterday he sat down with Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, for a ten minute chat:

Q: You’re famous for the “developers, developers, developers” speech. Why are developers so important for Microsoft?

A: At the end of the day the innovation in the software business and the IT business comes because someone writes a great piece of code. Even in the hardware frankly most of the innovation comes because someone writes a great piece of code. An important piece of code. A great piece of code.

All the solutions, whether we create them ourselves, whether they are created by our partners, or our ISVs, it all starts with developers, developers, developers.

You can download the video here, or read the transcript here. Awesome Scoble!

Read: Channel9

Is using open Wi-Fi against the law?

Post ImageYou might have heard in the news recently that “wardriving”, or using someone’s open wireless connection from your car, is once again a hot topic. It seems that a man in Florida was arrested for “hacking” into an open network connection from his vehicle. Here’s what the folks an Engadget had to say:

If stories like this one result in more users setting up WEP (and, yes, we know it’s not very secure, but it’ll block “casual” intruders) on their machines, fine. If, however, every time we open a laptop in a public place (some of which, like New York’s City Hall Park, have public WiFi access), we’re tagged as a potential criminal, something truly valuable will have been lost.

I completely agree! The problem is that the law under which the man was charged was written before anyone had considered wireless network connections. Here’s what CNET found out about the topic:

Is it legal to use someone’s Wi-Fi connection to browse the Web if they haven’t put a password on it?
Nobody really knows. “It’s a totally open question in the law,” says Neal Katyal, a professor of criminal law at Georgetown University. “There are arguments on both sides.”

The law in question, of course, is in the United States. I am not sure if Canada has something similar, though I would be willing to bet that we do. I certainly hope the matter is resolved soon, because in two years I think it will be commonplace to have entire cities covered in wireless access – assuming that WiMax equipment is manufactured sometime in the near future.

Read: Wi-Fi Alliance

Batman Begins

Post ImageI finally went and saw Batman Begins last night. I don’t have too much to say, other than if you haven’t seen this movie, you probably should! It was, in a word, amazing. I totally think they should remake every Batman movie ever made.

All of the performances were excellent, with the exception of Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes. She just didn’t fit the part, and looked out of place in every scene. I used to think that Michael Keaton was the one and only Batman, but Christian Bale changed my mind about that. He played the character amazingly well, and very convincingly. Morgan Freeman is one of my favorite actors and his character was probably one of the more interesting ones. I was surprised, but I actually liked Liam Neeson as a villain. And finally, probably the best performance in the movie, was Michael Caine as Alfred. Wonderfully cast!

The movie is appropriately dark, and does a nice job of building up the story. In fact, you don’t see any “dark night” action until the second hour of the movie. The Batman gadgetry is pretty cool, even the half-tank, half-Hummer Batmobile (called the “tumbler”). And the city of Gotham finally looks the way it should.

Perhaps the only part of the movie I didn’t like was the very end when a reference is made to The Joker. I would have appreciated a complete and total break from the previous Batman movies a lot more than a 95% break. Though I suppose that is a very small price to pay for such a wonderful movie.

I liked Batman Begins so much, I’d be willing to go see it again!

Read: Batman Begins

Terror in London

Post ImageBy now you’ve heard about the terrible bombings that rocked London earlier today. Instead of recount again what happened, I figured it would be more useful to share some of the interesting images, perspectives and links I have found.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and at times like this, it’s easy to see why. As you might expect, the most popular tags in Flickr for the last 24 hours are blasts, bombings, londonbombblasts, terrorism, and many others, all similar. Here are some of the pictures I found most interesting, scary, and real:

Obviously, there are lots of people blogging about the attacks too. Via Scoble, I came across memeorandum, a site that “presents an automated hourly synopsis of the latest online news and opinion, combining weblog commentary with traditional news reports.” Very interesting to read. The top searches in Technorati all have to do with the London attacks, and as a result they have setup a special site featuring posts and information related to the bombings. BoingBoing has an extensive post covering the attacks, with images and reader comments. Here’s a first-hand account:

A funny thing happened to me on the way to work this morning. My tube blew up. So forgive me if the following isn’t as witty, perspicacious, or just plain hilarious as my usual posts, but I just want to write down what happened as I remember it; partly to get my own head round it, and partly because I think it’s got the makings of an anecdote to rival the time I had sex twice once. So erm, yeah, try to bear with me through the boring bits – you’ll eventually get to a Hollywood-style explosion with a hint of post-apocalyptic fallout.

The BBC is featuring Reporters’ Log, written by their correspondents on the ground, as well as a “Have Your Say” page with tons of comment. WikiNews has some excellent coverage. Across the Atlantic is one of many blogs updating as the news happens.

I have tagged everything with london77 in delicious, and I’ll add new stuff there as I come across it.

Read: BBC News In Depth

Update: Reconsider installing Tablet PC patch!

Yeah, maybe reconsider installing the patch I pointed to earlier. Check out my one minute audio recording to hear why: tablet_update.mp3