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ATRC Podcast
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 Podcast
for November 30, 2007 - Episode 79
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Play time 50 minutes - Program Notes
 "Nothing
in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.
Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear
less." ~Marie Curie
On the show:
CENIC announces their annual conference, this year in
Oakland; Windows Vista SP1 is no speed demon; Firefox 3
is out in beta; the @ONE Winter Institute has been
announced; TiVo and Nero announce a partnership to bring
recorded TV to your computer; Microsoft goes to
Siberia; 3C Media solutions announce their annual
student film festival; Greenpeace rates the electronics
manufacturers; South Korean technicians have developed a
new plastic fiber cable; the US Congress is poised to
approve thought police legislation; the gaming
industry is growing by leaps and bounds; and we feature
a book on Photoshop CS3.
David's Blackboard feature of the week is titled "That
Old Saw Again" wherein he issues the same old
advice that every semester brings. Haydn's Teaching with Technology segment
does a post-mortem on the recent teaching tips
extravaganza.
The Tech Talk Topic this week an interview with Elaine
Armstrong and Chris Norcross on Books (eBooks, that is),
and Blogs.
Technology News Briefs
-
 CENIC,
the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in
California, will hold its 12th annual conference
March 10-12, 2008 at the Oakland Marriott City
Center. Every year, the best and brightest of
California and beyond come together to showcase
their achievements in research and education in a
wide variety of disciplines, and to demonstrate the
advantage to which they've put their access to
CalREN, the California Research and Education
Network.
Click here for more information, to register, or
to nominate for awards.
-
If you are waiting for Windows Vista SP1 to resolve
some of the performance issues related to the new
Microsoft operating system, stop waiting. It
doesn't. According to
bink: "Extensive testing by the
exo.performance.network (www.xpnet.com) research
staff shows that SP1 provides no measurable relief
to users saddled with sub-par performance under
Vista." In the mean time Microsoft will also
be releasing SP3 for Windows XP which does, tests
indicate, boost the performance of XP by 10%.
-
 Firefox
3 beta 1 has been officially released (3.0b1).
New features include improved security, improved
ease of use, better integration with Windows Vista
and Mac OS X, richer personalization, new graphics
rendering engine, better CSS support, and numerous
bug fixes.
Click here for download link and instructions.
Remember this is beta software and is for testing
purposes. It is not recommended for production
work.
-
The @ONE Winter Institute--three days of hands on,
instructor facilitated training--will be held at Los
Angeles City College on January 16-18. The
cost, including meals, is only $75. Hurry to
sign up for your training track. Spaces are
limited.
Click here for specifics on training tracks and
registration information.
-
 TiVo
and Nero have announced a joint project to deliver
recorded television to the home computer.
According to a
TiVo press release quoting a Nero executive:
"The partnership with TiVo extends the TV experience
for the connected digital home, enabling easy access
anytime, anywhere to the most extensive TV
content...Our core technology enables the creation
of new categories in consumer electronics, changing
the way that users interact with both hardware and
software. Our proven technology adds media
functionality to the world's leading consumer
electronics, personal computing and software
products." In other words, even Mom is going
to be able to digitize a TV show and burn it to DVD.
-
Microsoft has announced it will be constructing a
data center for 10,000 servers in Irkutsk, Siberia.
Click here to read about it. It gives a
whole new meaning to "My computer is frozen."
-
3C Media Solutions (the artists formerly known as
CCCSat) have announced their Third Annual Student
Film Festival. Its purpose is: "To encourage
and reward students for achievements in video, film
and broadcasting by distributing their work
exclusively on the 3C Media Solutions Network and
live web cast. And to award them industry standard
products and services to further their education."
Deadline for entries is January 31, 2008.
Click here for details and the entry form [PDF].
-
Greenpeace has posted their sixth issue of the Guide
to Greener Electronics. The winners? A
tie between Sony Ericson and Samsung. Not
green, but greening. The losers?
Microsoft, Philips and Nintendo, who finished dead
last scoring zero across all criteria.
Click here to read the report.
- Researchers from the Korea Institute of Science
and Technology have "developed a new type of plastic
optical fiber that could potentially be used to
provide low-cost fiber connectivity from the
consumer to the provider" (ars
technica). The solution to the "last mile"
problem is the Holy Grail of the cable industry, and
at last it may be within reach. The new
plastic fiber is not as fast as glass fiber, but it
is fast enough, transmitting data at 2.5GB/s.
Its chief virtue is its flexibility, which is far
superior to glass.
Click here for the Korea Times report.
-
 Thought
criminals, prepare to encrypt your communications.
According to a
CNet article, "Congress is about to approve the
Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism
Prevention Act of 2007. This is not necessarily a
good thing for Internet users...VRAHTPA
establishes a new federal commission tasked with
investigating Americans with "extremist belief
systems" and those who may engage in 'ideologically
based violence.' This effort is expected to cost $22
million." The article warns about mission
creep from the commission which could condemn anyone
who disapproves of the practices of the US
government.
- The Entertainment Software Association (ESA)
reports in "Video
Games: Serious Business for America's Economy"
[PDF] that the video game industry grew 17% from
2003 to 2006, four times faster than the US economy.
Growth of units sold (for PC and consoles) from 1996
to 2006 went from 74 million to over 250 million.
The gaminig industry contirbuted $3.8 billion to the
US economy in 2006. Most surprisingly, from
2002 to 2006 employment in the gaming industry rose
by 4.4 percent, while it declined in the software
industry apart from gaming (ars
technica).
-
 Featured Safari Tech Book Online:
Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Adobe® Photoshop®
CS3, by Scott Kelby. "Scott Kelby, the
world's #1 bestselling Photoshop author, and the man
who changed the Photoshop and digital photography
world with his ground-breaking, award-winning
"Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers" unveils a
exciting, brand new way of thinking, and working in
Adobe Photoshop that will not only change the
industry again, but it will change the way we all
work in Photoshop forever, so we can finally spend
less time fixing our images, and more time finishing
them."
Palomar maintains a subscription to Tech Books
Online, and the books can be accessed from any
computer on the campus network.
Contact the library for information about off-campus
access.
Training Opportunities
- Academic Technology Workshops
- We have finished our training for this semester.
Our schedule for next semester has not yet been
published.
-
Elluminate Training
- Elluminate is our new econferencing system.
There are many excellent training resources
available through the
Elluminate training center. Live,
instructor led training seminars--conducted through
the Elluminate interface--occur regularly and
may be scheduled through their web site.
-
@ONE Training
- The @ONE Winter Institute--three days of hands
on, instructor facilitated training--will be held at
Los Angeles City College on January 16-18. The
cost, including meals, is only $75.
Click here for information.
Blackboard Feature of the
Week - David Gray
That Old Saw, Again
 Yes,
it’s “that” time of year again, when I pull out
the old saw on getting ready for next semester.
Recall that your Spring 2008 Blackboard courses
already exist, but when created they are just
empty shells. It’s up to individual instructors
to copy material into these new course sites,
using the course copy tool. (Click
here for instructions). Also remember
that students won’t be able to access these new
course sites until you manually make them
available, so it’s fine to transfer over
materials and only after that begin updating
dates and semester information.
Also worthy of note is that, just after the
New Year, we will be upgrading to the newest
version of Blackboard. There are going to be
some relatively minor changes to the way the
Discussion Board looks, and if faculty want to
they can always log into the BbSandbox system
(at
http://bbsandbox.palomar.edu/) and see this
latest version in action now.
Note: To get to David's vodcast site,
click here.
Teaching with Technology - Dr.
Haydn Davis
Teaching Tips Extravaganza Post Mortem
On November 28 we hosted an "extravaganza" where
various faculty members made presented online
teaching tips to their colleagues. All the
tips were excellent, and the presentations were very
well received. They were filmed, and when the
encoded versions are available we will present them
here to be seen. Presenters included Mary
Cassoni, Mike Lockett, Terry Humphreys, Jim Eighmy,
Kathy Grove and John Tagg. Click the link
below to receive the PDF handout from the event.
Tech-Talk-Topic - Elaine
Armstrong & Chris Norcross
Books and Blogs
Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
Project Gutenberg was the first producer of free
electronic books (ebooks) available over the
Internet. The Project Gutenberg collection was
produced by tens of thousands of volunteers.
Internet Archive:
http://www.archive.org/index.php
The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit
that was founded to build an Internet library, with
the purpose of offering permanent access for
researchers, historians, and scholars to historical
collections that exist in digital format. Founded in
1996 and located in the Presidio of San Francisco,
the Archive has been receiving data donations from
Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the
organization started to grow to include more
well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive
includes texts, audio, moving images, and software
as well as archived web pages in their collections.
Google Book Search:
http://www.google.com/books
The world's largest repository of digitized
books, a major proportion of which are uploaded in
full-view and PDF formats. Google Book Search
is a highly accessible resource for great books from
the world's great libraries.
Bloglines:
http://www.bloglines.com/
Bloglines is a FREE online service for searching,
subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs
and rich web content. With Bloglines, there is no
software to download or install -- simply register
as a new user and you can instantly begin accessing
your account any time, from any computer or mobile
device.
Bloglines is a window to a whole new world of
dynamic content that is being created and
distributed over the new "live" web. You can make
your own personalized news page tailored to your
unique interests from our index of tens of millions
of live internet content feeds, including articles,
blogs, images and audio.
Bloglines shields you from the confusion of news
feed standards -- RSS, Atom, and others. Bloglines
allows you to search for, read and share any updates
from your favorite news feed or blog regardless of
its authoring technology.
Last, but not least, Bloglines provides you with
the tools you need to begin creating your own clip
blogs and blogrolls. Become a publisher, share your
thoughts and opinions!
Music
 The
music for today's show was provided by
Magnatune.com,
and is used through their Creative Commons license for
podcasts. Today's album was "The
Almanac" by
Shira Kammen.
"The trouble with
jogging is that the ice falls out of your glass." ~
Martin Mull
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