jason | Entries tagged with livejournal

Saw this on TV yesterday for a moment, and haven’t found more recent info, but yuka wants one…
Cell Phone Reads to the Blind : NPR

A new cell phone offers the smallest text-to-speech reading device ever built, a device especially useful for people with impaired vision. The phone and software come with a $2,000 price tag.

If you have normal vision and can read, there are thousands of things you do every day without even thinking even about it, little problems you solve with just a glance — like knowing which coffee bag in a hotel is caffeinated or decaf.

EcoGeek - Technology for the Environment says:

The importance of green buildings can’t be ignored, and this seriously cool community of 52 houses is showing what’s possible in micro-communities. The Drake Landing Solar Community in Okotoks, Alberta has put up 800 solar panels on garage roofs to help cover their heating needs. The solar power-heated community is a first for North America. And this community went WAY beyond just solar water heaters.

And toronto has 1 wind turbine… we so cool.

Yuka and I watched Tony Gatlif’s Exiles (Exils) tonight. I bought it a while ago, but hadn’t gotten around to watching it. It is about two people who walk out of their paris apartment with nothing but their clothes and basically walk to algeria in search of their roots. And hilarity ensues.

Realizing the Potential of Virtual Worlds: Why and How to Support OpenSim reminds me that I have to spend more time online looking at Virtual Environments. I just do!

grand theft childhood? is a book that a student put me on to. Of course children and video games is something of interest to me, but what I found interesting was that though the web site talks about a $1.5 mil. study and serious research I felt like it wasn’t coming from Harvard profs, but from Area 51 enthusiasts. Not there fault, but people need help when it comes to marketing their work… and I don’t mean from publishers.

OLPC News: Windows XO: A Detailed Microsoft XP Video Dissection… of course as we talked about in class this week, people want the windows experience on their XOs because that’s what everyone else has. This post on olpc news is really saddening. Taking the not perfect but really interesting XO and adding XP to it and you get… just another windows product that doesn’t do much. Well, it does get people around the world to buy into it…

What I can’t figure out, and help me here people, is that on one hand the XO is part of the colonialist hegemony of western technology, on another it is the hegemony of constructivism/constructionism. On the third side (and coins do have three sides if you look right, if not more), if you don’t run XP but rather run Linux/Sugar you’re part of the post-colonialist post-modernist (non)hegemony of the techno-counter-insurgency. The only thing I think it is safe to say is that if you suggest people just don’t buy computers at all, unless they’re locally made and sustainable, a la Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful, you are restricting access and participation in the global marketplace.

So, what have we learned from this? Sugar/Linux is the way to go… not cause there’s a real reason that can be defended, but because I feel like it.

WeDo: LEGO’s new robotics system for elementary schools - Boing Boing Gadgets pointed me to LEGO Education News

LEGO has announced a low-end, tethered robotics system called “WeDO” designed to be used in classrooms of elementary-aged children. It won’t replace Mindstorms, but instead serve as an intermediate step between the more fully featured robotics platform and regular, non-robotic LEGO.
The WeDo system will be available at the first of the year. Prices have not yet been announced. I wonder if we could get together with LEGO and sponsor a few kits for some Brooklyn schools.

From their press release:

The complete LEGO WeDo package includes:
• 158 brightly colored LEGO elements, including gears, and levers
• One LEGO USB Hub connects directly to a Mac/PC laptop, desktop, OLPC XO or Intel Classmate
computer to allow control of hardware input (tilt and motion sensors) and output (motor),
thereby bringing models to life
• One motor, one motion sensor and one tilt sensor
• Drag‐and‐drop icon‐based software that provides an intuitive and easy‐to‐use programming
environment suitable for beginners and experienced users alike, developed by a leading
provider of engineering hardware and software, National Instruments
• Activity pack CD‐Rom provides up to 24 hours of instruction and includes 12 activities based on
four themes: Amazing Mechanisms, Wild Animals, Play Soccer and Adventure Stories. Running
alongside programming software, activities are introduced via animations. Teacher notes and
glossary are also included.

Obviously I want one. It will work with the olpc as well.

Randy Pausch, whose last lecture became sensation dies — chicagotribune.com

Slashdot | Thirst For Coltan Fueling African Conflict… I found a number of links and articles about this that I thought to include here, and then I thought, “well, if people can’t be bothered to find out about the damage their consumer choices result in, they should just not bother knowing.” I’m not perfect, but I hope for fair trade purchases as much as possible. And I hope to improve it.

Slashdot | Google’s Knol, Expert Wiki, Goes Live say “Knol’s distinctions from Wikipedia are that authors are identified by their real names (and verified), and that they can share in ad revenue if they choose to.” Knol: a unit of knowledge looks a bit funny to me. Nice to have a site like this, but of course it is pretty empty. I tried a dozen terms such as: child, education, constructivism… even anne of green gables and vampire. No content yet. So, I guess everyone’s now flocking to Knol: a unit of knowledge to write the content, become known, and share revenue. I personally don’t see that as a path to validity.

What is typical, is that only americans get a voice. That’s right. You have to be an american to participate. Of course someone can claim that this is ‘beta’, because of the name verification procedure. I would call this alpha. If Google doesn’t know how to deal with countries outside of america, what does it say for it’s validity as a global player. In some contexts this wouldn’t matter, but what it is doing is giving americans an unfair cultural advantage in the construction of knowledge. They will have all the key terms and ideas, and also will have the most hits. An example of cyber-hegemony at it’s best. Do no evil? Of course not. “We’re your big friend!”

Iain Banks » Iain Banks email Q&A July 2008

A few weeks ago, we invited readers of this website and www.orbitbooks.net to submit questions to be put to Iain Banks by email. Once the three-week submission period was over, we sifted through the submissions and picked half a dozen. Iain then mused, pondered, cogitated and has sent back the following responses:

Everyone should know Iain Banks.

So, I left my laptop on the TTC streetcar last week. It was an old one that I planned on setting up for one of my classes in the fall. I went in to the lost and found today, and there it was. Gotta love it when nice things happen. Thanks to the people who noticed it and took care of it.

I was reading School of Shock: Inside the taxpayer-funded program that treats American kids like enemy combatants on the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center - Wikipedia. I had heard something about their use of shock treatment on children. I sort of ‘assumed’ that it would immediately be shut down, based on the logic that you can’t do to children in a treatment facility what you’re not allowed to do to adults in prison. Now I find out that though the program is under review, it is still running.

[Electroshock Therapy Used On Mentally Handicapped Children - DigitalJournal.com talks about how this aspect of the program is getting phased out, and how the state has tried to shut it down, and this link's only a month old.]

Slashdot | Canadian ISP Hijacking DNS Lookup Errors points us to
Digital Home Canada - Rogers violates net neutrality by hijacking failed DNS lookups which reminds me how far behind governments are in protecting us:

In what appears to be a violation of Net Neutrality by Rogers Cable, Digital Home readers are reporting that Rogers High Speed Internet service has begun redirecting customers “Server not found pages” to webpages laden with Rogers advertising.

The hijacking of the webpage appears to be attempt by Rogers to use its Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology to cash in on the mistakes of its users.

The “Cannot Find Server” web page is typically shown to a user when they type in a web address that does not exist. The purpose of the page is to inform the user that the web site does not exist or a lookup error has occurred so a correction can be made.

Using DPI technology, Rogers inspects the web address request and if it determines that a web surfer has mistakenly entered an invalid web address, Rogers redirects the request and serves up an ad laden webpage selling Rogers products and services rather than allowing the informative “Cannot find server” web page to be displayed.

Family group outdoors, George Eastman House.

Early 20th c. George Eastman House photos now on Flickr - Boing Boing points us to a pile of amazing photos

Jeremy sent me the Baby Animal Alphabet
hedgehogs

Comparing prices: Mac vs. Windows laptops is another article comparing Macs vs PCs. This time it is laptops. Of course they compare similarly configured machines from real companies, not gray market. The answer’s the same as always. Macs laptops cost the same or less than PCs for the same features and function, and the illusory cheaper price is at a cost.

Scenes from the raid at The Bicycle Clinic - Posted Toronto

Slashdot | Logged In or Out, Facebook Is Watching You

“Researchers at software vendor CA have discovered that social networking site Facebook is able to track the buying habits of its users on affiliated third-party sites even when they are logged out of their account or have opted out of its controversial ‘Beacon’ tracking service. Responding to privacy concerns, Facebook has since moved to reassure users that it only tracks and publishes data about their purchases if they are both logged in to Facebook and have opted-in to having this information listed on their profile. But in ‘extremely disconcerting’ findings that directly contradict these assurances, researchers at CA’s Security Advisory service have found that data about these transactions are sent to Facebook regardless of a user’s actions.”

There’s more on this in the Zdnet article.

I remember when I noticed what Skype was doing to my computer when I’d disconnected Skype, and everyone says… “oh, no. it doesn’t do that. they said so…” hee hee.

I’m so naive. I keep thinking that people want to accommodate differences, but usually don’t understand or otherwise ‘get it’ for some reason. Nothing a little blunt force enlightenment won’t clear up… that is, a learning opportunity that just hasn’t come by before. When it happens at the level of implementation of corporate policy I just have to wonder what people are thinking.
Neb. woman with hearing disability sues McDonald’s — chicagotribune.com

A hearing-impaired woman has filed a federal lawsuit against a local McDonald’s, saying workers there refused to let her order food at the drive-thru window.

Karen Tumeh of Lincoln says they insisted she either order at the electronic speaker along the drive-thru lane or come inside to order.

Tumeh wears a hearing aid but still cannot hear while using the drive-thru ordering box at fast-food restaurants, according to the lawsuit.

At least three times since September 2007 workers at a Lincoln McDonald’s refused to let her place her order at the drive-thru window, Tumeh said. In denying her service, McDonald’s violated the federal Americans With Disabilities Act, she said.