Thanks for the link, Kary. To subscribe to the New Yorker, Wired, Vanity Fair, GQ, The Atlantic, Details, New York, and Time, you’ve got to have seven different apps, many of which are bloated. Some issues of Wired, for example, have weighed in at 500MB each. And what do you get inside? Aside from the…
After taking a whole bunch of new high-quality images, I found myself running out of space on my production machine. I briefly toyed with the idea of uploading a big chunk of files to The Cloud — thinking I could just get it back if I ever needed it — but then the voice of…
“I can understand why readers like them so much, and in my position I have to follow the trends,” she said. “Even when I can’t stand them.” So until the trend dies, we’ve compiled a list of do’s, don’ts and best practices for creating and using infographics, whether you’re a blogger looking for content or…
Twitter / Search – “couldn’t remove your contacts” – All Tweets. Similar:The Pope's Prayer for Countering "Fake News"Today is the feast of St. Francis de Sal…CultureThe Alot is Better Than You at EverythingThere is no Englilsh word “alot.” That i…AmusingThe Incredible Shrinking Ad [The Future Web Is Mobile]Is higher education ready for the switch…AcademiaMy copy…
Nothing really new in this article, but it’s useful to be reminded of how valuable our data is to those who want to make money off it (without our permission). Apple allows any app to access your address book at any time—it’s built into the iPhone’s core software. The idea is to make using these…
Since they’re so persnickety about licensing agreements, let’s amend all of our terms of use to require all movie moguls to use a special “Hollywood Edition” of our products. Here are some of the special new features we’ll be giving them… Before you can do a Google search, you have to sit through five minutes…
I know what you’re thinking: Why get a Kindle Touch when you already have an iPad, provided graciously by none other than Seton Hill University? That’s simple. The Kindle Touch’s 6” display features the most advanced E Ink Pearl to date. The biggest advantage to E Ink is it’s anti-glare feature. While there will still…
The original headline for the press release highlights the names of the two groups doing the work, which is of course flattering to the groups, but far less newsworthy to the public the PR people are supposed to be relating with. “A large amount of researcher time is spent formatting documents, rather than getting on…
Leo Tolstoy is scribbling furiously in the light of a dimly burning candle. At such close quarters, its searing heat has covered his forehead in a permanent patina of sweat, making the great novel a true work of toil. Suddenly, in the middle of a particularly vivid war scene, he curses out loud and blows…
Using the iPad requires more than just a change in mindset; it involves a cultural change, one that can be painful. One of the drawbacks I found this semester was that students used and discussed the iPad only in my class. That made my class unique, but it also meant that students defaulted to familiar…
The content is great, but I’m really blogging this because I’m tickled by the writing. Kickstarter is off-the-showroom polished in this regard – the web pages are clean without being sparse, sharp without being oblique, informative without being overwhelming. It feels like french-kissing a Nicholas Felton chart while Edward Tufte snaps photos for his personal…
Apple just released an update of its very nice iBooks. The Kindle still is my preferred ereader for personal reasons, but I prefer to teach with iBooks. Last year when I taught a literature survey, I experimented with asking students to use out-of-copyright free etexts, and to annotate them in iBooks. The fact that iBooks…
With the verbatim tool on, we’ll use the literal words you entered without making normal improvements such as making automatic spelling corrections personalizing your search by using information such as sites you’ve visited before including synonyms of your search terms (matching “car” when you search [automotive]) finding results that match similar terms to those in your query…
In general, I find Turnitin.com’s GradeMark function a time-saver, though the process of creating rubrics is tedious. Over the years, I’ve collected a big list of stock comments that I can drop into a paper easily. Just now, I was re-alphabetizing those comments in order to make them more useful, when the screen started acting…
Testing out the new WordPress iOS app on my iPod Touch. Improved authoring tools, very much appreciated. Similar:I just installed the "Old Layout for Facebook" plugin for Chrome.I just installed the “Old Layout for Fac…CybercultureAfter a pretty crappy day, I found shreds of joy in this clip of socially distanced salsa.In my discipline, teaching small…
A fantastic series of photos exploring the world as it was. The photo of Louie Armstrong playing his trumpet in front of the Egyptian pyramids is pretty cool, but I’m going to call out this one. NASA’s Project LOLA or Lunar Orbit and Landing Approach was a simulator built at Langley to study problems related…
Similar:NASA! Mars!! Panorama!!! Video!!!! Audio!!!!!New video from NASA’s Mars 2020 Persever…AwesomeIt’s alive! What NPR learned from turning its @nprnews Twitter account from a bot into a h…My student journalists tell me they lear…CybercultureBlender Griffin, Part 2After another couple of hours of work, I…AestheticsAn Excerpt from Mechanisms [2]: 'Professor RAMAC'Among the attractions at the 1958 World’…Books@CNN…
The blog format relieves publishers from the tiresome duty of producing covers and front pages and things to make their content more attractive and make readers want it. In some cases, it enables publishers to surrender any responsibility for making content attractive in the first place. There is a prophetic scene in the magnificent movie…
In his “Confessions,” which dates from the end of the fourth century, St. Augustine famously hears a voice telling him to “pick up and read.” He interprets this as a command from God to pick up the Bible, open it at random and read the first passage he sees. He does so, the scales fall…
Just after training camp closed last year, Offensive Coordinator Cam Cameron wondered if the Ravens could put their several-hundred page playbook on some sort of tablet reader. A few weeks later, Head Coach John Harbaugh asked the same question. Now, after almost a year of development, the Ravens’ playbook is completely on a set of…