Starter for 10/6

Hello Everyone!

I will be discussing the Espresso Book Machine on 10/6. (I apologize to my fellow classmates in 513--I had this idea before we talked about it in class, honest!!)

I'll be discussing the basics of the Espresso Book Machine, what it is, where EBMs are located, etc., and then we can talk about some ethical issues related to its implementation and use.

If you would like to read some background material before Tuesday, click here to find out more about the EBM's recent deal with Google to print public domain books from the Google Book Project.

Other 10/1 Starter

Howdy,

I'm doing my starter topic on the new and upcoming operating systems in the PC world -- Windows 7, Snow Leopard, and Chrome. I plan to talk about added and deleted features, as well as each company's OS business strategy, and talk a little about where the PC OS is going with the advent of netbooks, multi-core systems, and smartphones. Here are some optional wikipedia readings:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_OS

See you then!

Arthur

10/1 Starter

Hi everyone, for my starter I am going to be talking about visual search engines. Higher internet speeds and better graphics support on browsers and computers have allowed visual search engines to become a viable alternative way to search the internet. I think the best (and most fun) way for you to prepare for my starter is to play around in a few visual search engines. You can see what it is like to search in these engines and you can also get a feel for the many different interfaces a visual search engine can uses.

Bing Visual Search Galleries - http://www.bing.com/visualsearch

Search-Cube - http://www.search-cube.com/

oSkope - http://oskope.com/

With the exception of Bing, there are "how to" links to help you figure out how to navigate through results.

Have fun!

HTML Quiz!

Do you want to test yourself about how much you know about html?
Here is a HTML quiz for you. :)

W3Schools' HTML Quiz:

TextMate for Mac Users

TextMate is my favorite text editor, particularly because it is simple to switch language formats if you're interested in using other mark-up/programming languages.

And the nice thing about fancier text editors is the shortcuts: for example, control-shift-bracket key(<>) will automatically create a

tag for you to populate, among other things.

Here's a link for more info:

TextMate-Text Editor for Macs

Text Editor: ConTEXT

ConTEXT is my preferred text editor. You can use it to edit many different types of files. In HTML files and other programming languages, it color codes the tags for you.

Enjoy!

Starter 9/22

I’ll be presenting about the federal government’s new Web site Apps.gov, where federal agencies will able to buy cloud computing applications and services. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra unveiled it just this week. Cloud computing is a model in which software is delivered over the Web rather than installed on individual PCs or local servers. The goal is to trim the government’s $75 billion annual IT budget.

As part of the program, Google announced that it is going to dedicate a part of its computing infrastructure to serve the federal government exclusively.

Please read the New York Times article that gives a good overview of the initiative:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/now-even-the-government-has-an-app-store/?ref=technology

Additional reading, if you’d like:
The official announcement from the CIO:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Streaming-at-100-In-the-Cloud/

All about the Google deal:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-apps-and-government.html

And the Apps.Gov site itself:
https://apps.gov/cloud/advantage/main/start_page.do