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November 30,
2007 |
Contents |
-
Technology
News
- The Blackboard Feature of the
Week:
"That Old Saw, Again"
- Teaching with Technology:
"Teaching Tips Extravaganza Post Mortem"
-
Tech Talk Topic:
"Books and Blogs"
- For more, see
podcast notes page for Episode
79.
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Technology & Download 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
contenthttp://www.palomar.edu/atrc.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 usershttp://www.palomar.edu/atrc.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.
The 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.
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 - Shay
Phillips 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!
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