Oops!

This is one of those situations that is very funny - as long as it happens to someone else. A CNN anchor had her microphone on and was talking to someone in the bathroom. The sound feed was played live on top of a speech from George Bush. Fortunately for her, she said some very nice things about her husband, but unfortunately for family relations, she called her sister-in-law a "control freak". Thanksgiving dinner should be a fun time in that house this year.

You can watch the clip at YouTube.

Google vs. Microsoft Heating Up

Google just announced their first shot at taking on Microsoft Office. They are offering a free service designed for small and medium sized businesses to host email, chat, calendar and web page creation. Word processing and spreadsheets will be rolled in soon. This is going to be very interesting and I think is a harbinger of things to come. Instead of having huge, bloated programs installed on our PCs, I think we'll be consuming software as subscribed services. We'll only pay for the functions we use, and upgrades will be handled by the hosting service. Keep your eyes on this...

More details here.

50 Coolest Websites

Time magazine recently published a list of the 50 coolest web sites. Faithful readers of DigitalEdu (both of you) will be shocked to discover that we were not included in the list. Don't let this inexplicable oversight keep you from enjoying the list. It really is remarkable the level of innovation that is appearing on the web recently. I wish the academic community was at the forefront of it, but that is not the case.

Goggles

I'm a big fan of mapping technology and I think Google Maps is the best mapping web site and Google Earth is most likely the coolest program ever written - particularly for the price. In my in-service presentation last week I talked about mashups and how interesting it is to see people use technology in a way that the original producers never anticipated. Well, my son showed me a pretty cool site that uses the Google technology to create a rudimentary flight simulator. It's called Goggles - check it out!

In-Service Week

It's been a very busy week - I did presentations every day on various topics, and I thoroughly enjoyed (as always) talking to the faculty. There was a lot of interest in my sessions on the latest trends on the Internet. I plugged this blog at every session, so if any of you are reading this as a result, welcome! Please feel free to use the comments area to post any ideas you have about ways we can leverage technology in an academic setting.

User Generated Sites Among Fastest Growing

This isn't earth shattering news to anyone who is following developments on the web, but Nielsen/Net Ratings announced last week that half of the fastest growing web sites on the Internet are ones that are based on user developed content (like MySpace, YouTube and Flickr).

This is in-service week at our colleges and I'm doing a session called "Geek Report" where I'll be talking about the latest trends on the Internet. What I'm really interested in talking about is how we can harness this obvious desire for people (particularly teens) to be active participants on the web. I am going to pose that question to the attendees and I'll post any good ideas here later in the week.

Vacationing in the Digital Age

I'm back from two weeks in the mountains and it was a great experience. One of the weeks was spent in Mammoth - a place I went every year growing up. The picture you see here was taken at Crystal Lake which is a beautiful alpine lake I visited a number of times in the past. I discovered on the hike however that one of two things had happened since the last time I was in Mammoth:

1. The trail became about 40% steeper
2. I became old

Given how volatile the geology is in Mammoth, I'd like to think it's the former, but I suspect the latter is more likely. It's also the first time in a long time that I have hiked into the backcountry and I must say that technology has certainly improved. Having a GPS receiver was wonderful - it was great knowing I could wander off the trail a bit and not worry about finding my way back (a veritable digital trail of bread crumbs). I was surprised to discover I had cell service (shows you just how "back" in the backcountry I was), which came in handy because I had the lake all to myself and spent too much time reveling in the beauty of the place. I was able to call my wife and let her know that I was running late and not to worry.

This wonderful technology has a downside of course, which I discovered as I was packing. My checklist went something like this:

Laptop? Check.
Video games for family installed on laptop? Check.
Broadband wireless card? Check.
Power cord for Laptop? Check.
Cell phone? Check.
Cell phone charger cord? Check.
iPod? Check.
New songs downloaded for the trip? Check.
USB cable for iPod to re-charge from laptop? Check.
Cable to connect iPod to car stereo? Check.
GPS Receiver? Check.
Extra Batteries for GPSr? Check.
Route programmed into GPSr? Check.
Alternate route programmed into GPSr? Check.
Take a virtual tour of route using Google Earth? Check.
Program interesting side trips found using Google Earth into GPSr? Check.

You get the idea - looks like a trip into the land of the perennially Anal Retentive Geeks (imagine what my wife has to deal with). I did manage to avoid checking my work email the entire time however, so I'll consider myself relatively normal (and my family enjoyed the video games).