From ZDNet comes the article “Microsoft on Vista - the time of worry is over“. I must say I stopped worrying about Vista a long time ago, in fact I don’t think I ever did worry. I just went out and invested in the most expensive piece of technology I have ever bought - a shiny new HP laptop running Vista. Since that time I have experienced a raft of emotions, frustration and anger being the most common. I still can’t get wireless networking working reliably and I have spent a huge amount of time trying. Anyway, I did have a bit of a laugh at this latest article which reports on the Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference. There is a link to a new site called the Vista Compatibility Center. As reported in the ZDNet article:
During his keynote, Brooks took the wraps off a new portal site, the Windows Vista Compatibility Center, that is designed to provide users with a single place to check whether specific hardware and software is compatible with Vista. The site currently lists 9,000 devices and software products (3,500 apps and 5,500 devices) — a number that Microsoft is planning to expand via customer and partner feedback. The site will be all about helping to “bust the myth” that Windows Vista is not compatible with many apps and devices, Brooks said.
When you go to the site you get a page with the headline “The Windows Vista Compatibility Center will be launching soon, please check back.” With my odd way of looking at things I immediately thought perhaps there are no compatible devices yet!
Anyway - I applaud the initiative, there should be more of these. I wish there was a site like this available when I made my purchase. I will certainly be looking for similar sites when I make future purchases, it could save a lot of frustration and dissatisfaction. Over the last number of months I have been frustrated at hardware, software, security vendors and pretty much anything else that was bundled on this laptop that had the potential to be interfering with wireless networking. Most of those companies probably had nothing to do with the networking fault but it has still tarnished my opinion of them. I can’t wait to see if I have one of the compatible devices!
Virtual worlds are getting quite a bit of attention at work at the moment and for good reason. Clearly there is a huge potential for their use in education and momentum in this area is really building. Like many I have experimented a bit with platforms like Second Life but am now wanting to do more. Second Life, while being great for some uses may not meet all requirements for everyone. I am particularly interested in installing my own virtual world and there are a number of options. Once installed, the first thing I need to do is start building or populating my virtual worlds and so far this is not easy for a novice. A lot of effort seems to be required to start creating appealing and useful artefacts for these worlds. What I’d really like to do once I have created something is to be able to transport it into another virtual world so that I can get some re-use out of it. Some sort of standards and mechanisms for such transportation would be great here. Interoperability specs here we come!
So it was with interest I read this post on the readwriteweb blog.
‘Teleporting’ sounds a lot more interesting than ‘harvesting’ (metadata). Sharing and re-using assets from virtual worlds is going to be very important and I look forward to hearing more about work in this area (perhaps we will see an OpenSocial for virtual worlds).
A while ago I blogged about companies providing time to their employees to innovate. Google do it, Atlassian are trialling it and being public about it. Here are some updates from the Atlassian blog on the trial so far.
Telstra’s Whereis Everyone service is bound to raise a few eyebrows. It’s great if you want to locate a few friends and they are happy for you to be able to locate where they are at anytime but….. what about any privacy concerns? Are you happy to be located anywhere anytime? The press and commentators, as usual, is going to town on some of the more alarmist uses.
We have very little privacy left in our lives - some would argue that it disappeared some time ago. Anyway, here’s another example of technology with the potential for intruding further into our lives. Telstra has some great sales pitches - its certainly nice to be able to know your kids are on their way home or how you can find your misplaced phone (is it really that accurate?) but are we becoming immune or blase to these invasions of privacy? If we know we are being monitored so closely will that affect our behaviour in any way (as in Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon) or are we simply past caring?
Wikipedia also has an interesting modern definition of the Panopticon. I had a rant about this previously after reading “John Twelve Hawk’s” “The Traveller” (must have a look to see if the sequel is out yet). Anyway, if you are interested in this type of technology from legal/policy/social perspectives, you might like to go along to UNSW’s free one day seminar ‘You are where you’ve been - technological threats to your location privacy‘ on 23rd July. Just don’t forget to turn your (Telstra) phone off before you go .
Over the last few days I have seen this reported in newspapers and online (here’s a couple of online ones - ABC, ZDNet). The articles generally say that ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is set to remove restrictions on domain name suffixes. Currently we are restricted to suffixes that denote countries (eg .au) and a some generic types (.com, .net etc). The new regulations will open this up to allow suffixes such as .pepsi, .paris etc which certainly allows a massive increase in the numbers of useful names that could be created.
These articles then go on to imply that this will solve the problem that we have with domain addresses set to run out in 2011 or thereabouts.
It’s my understanding that this is not the case. Domain names are not Internet addresses. Internet addresses are the numbers we often see in our browsers such as 123.456.789.098. It is these numbers which are set to run out. These numbers use an addressing system called TCP/IPv4. IPv4 is running out of available numbers. Numbers are released in blocks to regions around the world and available blocks of numbers are becoming a scarce commodity. Many of these numbers that have been allocated are not in use and it would be useful if there was some way of recovering these unused ones.
Many organisations and governments are working on a numbering system called TCP/IPv6 which dramatically increases the number of available Internet addresses. It is the implementation of IPv6 that will solve the problem of lack of Internet addresses - Domain names are simply aliases for these numbers. These aliases make it easier for us to navigate around the Web as they are meant to be easier for us to remember than the numbered addresses.
Every now and then you come across something that really inspires or impresses you. That’s what happened to me when I came across Edusim3d, an open source virtual world designed for use with classroom interactive whiteboards.
The best way to describe Edusim3d is simply to link to the video on their website and let it speak for itself.
At the VET eStandards Expert Group meeting yesterday there was an update on the four projects selected for the emerging technology trials. The one that I was really interested in is the trial Canberra Institute of Technology is doing on Virtual Worlds. The platform they have selected is Croquet, an open source development environment really worth looking into if you have any sort of interest in virtual worlds.
Have a look at the Croquet website, the people behind it (such as Alan Kay) and you will get a feel for why this platform is worth some serious consideration if you are considering your own virtual worlds project.
I had an opportunity to present at our ePortfolio Symposium the other day and gave a brief presentation on what form ePortfolios could take if we were to support them from a lifelong learning perspective. I think one of the challenges for many ePortfolio implementations is that they are bound to individual organisations rather than learners. While some (many?) may offer access of some form after learners have left the organisation - does that access really benefit the learner in the best way possible?
To be successful from a lifelong perspective, ePortfolios must be ‘learner owned and learner controlled’. Implementing this has its own set of challenges. The presentation seeks to identify what some of those challenges may be such as policy, trust, who can or should provide such services, access, ownership, the short lifespan of many of the technologies we are using (much shorter than the length of our careers), standards and interoperability etc.
To illustrate some of these points I look at a few services on the Web that are being used by learners to enable some form of eportfolio related services then have a look at a services model for ePortfolios based around a model originally put forward by the JISC in the UK.
The OECD is having a Ministerial meeting in Seoul on June 17-18 on ‘the future of the Internet economy‘. Can’t afford to get on a plane and head over there to give your opinion? Well, they’re offering you the chance to have your say via YouTube. There is a YouTube channel inviting people to send their opinion/question in and there’s a chance that these leading policy makers will respond to it as part of the conference.
If you’ve got something to say that you think will make a difference, why not give it a go?
Looking for ways to explain what social networking, Twitter, podcasting etc is all about? Commoncraft do a great job of this with simple, cartoon like videos where they manipulate paper cutouts and a voice over using clear, plain English.
Here’s one on social media:
CommonCraft offer a number of free to use videos from their commoncraft show as well as licensed videos that you can purchase. They do a really great job of explaining concepts that might be complex to some, in a really simple easy to understand manner.
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