Pee-wee Gets An iPad! from Pee-wee Herman Similar:Washington Post Cartoonist Who Quit Over Bezos Cartoon Wins Pulitzer PrizeA.I. Is Getting More Powerful, but Its Hallucinations Are Getting WorseDoctor Bashir, I Presume #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 16) Smarmy hologram des…Pater Noster Passenger ElevatorsAP wins reinstatement to White House events after judge rules government can’t…
Great collection of essays that capture the wonder of now-ubiquitous technology that was once strange. Oliver Wendell Holmes on photography in 1859, Mark Twain on telephones in 1880, Philip G. Hubert Jr. on the phonograph in 1889, up to James Fallows on the personal computer in 1982. These eight excerpts show the attempts of writers,…
What are the capabilities of MIT’s Scratch, a kid-friendly programming tool? In about 30 minutes, I create a working ball-and-paddle game. The last two videos show some further tweaking for another 15 minutes. I presented these videos to my students in the context of a unit on games and education. HTML5 HTML5 480p FLV360p FLV360p…
Looks like the rumors of an Apple tablet are creating ripples… the HP tablet apparently has two hinged screens, which seems to put it into the smartbook category. On Wednesday, Mr. Ballmer, Microsoft‘s chief executive, will unveil a novel take on a slate-type computer during his evening keynote at the Consumer Electronics trade show in…
Thanks, John, for sending me this link. Smart phones are great. But I’m not going to blog on my Blackberry. Reading texts from my mom is easy, but I’d rather not read a New Yorker story she emails to me on a 1.5”-by-1.5” screen. The ability of smart phones to do pretty much everything doesn’t…
I completely missed this, which I stumbled across via the Reeves Library blog. Previously, we only offered Personalized Search for signed-in users, and only when they had Web History enabled on their Google Accounts. What we’re doing today is expanding Personalized Search so that we can provide it to signed-out users as well. This addition…
Alex Reid offers his commentary on this Sports Illustrated promotional video, that imagines how the magazine experience might work on a color tablet reader. In this YouTube video, the WonderFactory and Time present the “future of the magazine” (including more interactive advertisements, oh goody). Hmmm…. I wonder if the future of Sports Illustrated (the magazine)…
Part of an Ars Technica review of Google’s new operating system. Longtime Ars readers may be familiar with my periodic rants about the increasing disutility of the “volume/directory/file” metaphor for modern networked machines. Saving files, copying them, syncing them–this is all pointless clerical work that I want my computer to do for me. Bravo. Similar:A.I.…
I’ve had a Kindle DX for a few weeks now. I’ve been using it as I read The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland to my daughter. I haven’t yet used the Kindle to buy any books, but I’ve stuffed it with out-of-copyright classics and academic PDFs. It takes maybe 5-10 minutes to set up the text…
I just excerpted and linked to a story from the Huffington Post Blog, and after I checked my blog I found a strange link floating above all the rest of my text, making both my own text that was under the link and the link itself illegible. I had already included a link to the…
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I’ve long been annoyed by the fact that Verizon hijacks my URL typos and sends me to its own lame search service. The opt-out instructions are designed to look pretty ominous, so I decided I’d call Verizon customer support, and have them do a remote connect to my computer and perform the procedure for me.…
Listservs, a trademarked software for running e-mail lists whose name is often used to refer to the lists themselves, were once a “killer app” that tempted many professors to try the Internet in the first place, back when many established scholars were skeptical of computers. A Chronicle article nearly 15 years ago proclaimed the exciting…
I’ve blogged before about how much I dislike Adobe’s arrogant use of popups that take over your computer while you are trying to do something else. This morning, I set up the computer my kids use so that my son would be able to follow the simulated progress of Apollo 11 on wechoosethemoon.org. That meant…
The LA Times technology blog critiques the new Google Reader interface. For example, let’s say we have a news article that we like. Well, might as well click the “like” button, right? OK, now we’ve told the Internet that we think it’s cool, and we can see a list of strangers who also think it’s…
From a thoughtful review of the Kindle: The Kindle DX’s five-way joystick is quick, convenient, and expertly designed. (Plastic Logic’s touch screen really isn’t markedly better than using Amazon’s joy stick, but that’s because the touch options are fairly rudimentary.) The problem is the dearth of good places to direct the cursor. That’s a real…
Teen tries out a Walkman for a week. It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact…
Big, two-dimensional drop-down panels group navigation options to eliminate scrolling and use typography, icons, and tooltips to explain the user’s choices. — Jakob Neilsen Similar:A.I. Is Getting More Powerful, but Its Hallucinations Are Getting WorsePater Noster Passenger ElevatorsThis morning I awoke to YouTube’s live footage of crowds circling a mosque in Mecca. For m…My crowd…
Roundtable Chair. Charlie Lowe, Grand Valley State University Scott Banville, University of Nevada, Reno David Blakesley, Purdue University How can open source software, open access publishing, and commons-based peer production (CBPP) principles help us to create a sustainable university? How can they positively impact the social and economic development of the university and expand the…
I arrived late and completely missed the first talk, so I’ll start with the three I did see. Surveillance of Power and the Power of SurveillanceMike Edwards, United States Military Academy at West Point Hansel and Gretel in Cyberspace: Following Breadcrumbs in a Forest of HypertextMary Karcher The Digital Emergence of the Public/Private AuthorityCasey McArdleBall…