Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Amazon’s Kindle

October 24, 2007

There have been persistent rumours that Amazon is about to launch an electronic book device called Kindle. Engadget claims to have a photo and a copy of its specification, and an article in the New York Times gives a price tag of between $400 and $500, and predicts a launch later this month.

Such rumours are given further credence when Mary Meeker, one of the leading financial analysts of the first wave of Internet companies in the 1990s, noted the product in a talk last week about Web 2.0. She makes the point that: “We know what Apple did with iTunes, could Amazon do the same for books?”

Personally, I’m not convinced, especially as it will be supporting Amazon’s own, proprietary e-book standard rather than the open e-book standard, something which education is becoming increasingly wary of. But what do I know? I still have vinyl records at home…

Tags:, ,
Posted in Comment, Technology | 1 Comment »

Oxford 2.0

October 22, 2007

The Economist is running a series of online debates it is dubbing ‘Oxford 2.0’. The debates are based on the formal, Oxford University Union-style forum in which one side makes a proposition and the other side opposes. This week’s inaugural debate takes the proposition: “This house believes that the continuing introduction of new technologies and new media adds little to the quality of most education”.

A fascinating debate is in progress between those who argue that technology is transforming education and those that think technology has completely failed to deliver on its many promises. The proposer is Sir John Daniel, a man who has spent much of his working life at UNESCO trying to introduce technology into education across many countries. Although he says it saddens him to propose the motion he admits that there are very few examples of effective educational technology deployment.

Take part in the debates until 26th October at:
http://www.economist.com/debate/index.cfm?action=hall

Posted in Comment, Technology | 1 Comment »

Computer Science Writer of the Year

October 19, 2007

A few months ago I mentioned that I’d won the Computer Science Writer of the Year award for a piece on how computers are helping people with dementia. Just thought I’d mention that, for anyone who’s interested, the EPSRC have published the winning entries.

Posted in Prizes, Technology | Leave a Comment »

Mood Blast

October 17, 2007

I’ve been looking into one of the newer technology crazes – microblogging – a term used to describe the practice of posting simple, bite-size updates on your current personal status to a range of Web 2.0 services. These little postings can form a kind of running commentary on where you are and what you are doing. Leading names in this field include Twitter, Tumblr and Jaiku.

I’ve yet to really work out what practical use these services could have, although I can see the attraction for teenagers who feel the need to be aware of their gang’s activities at all times. There is clearly something in it as Google have just bought Jaiku.

There are quite a few of these services and the minute one becomes wildly successful another seems to pop up which has better features. Add to this the existing chat and VoIP services like Skype, which also allow the display of your current status, and one is quickly led to the problem of keeping all these services up to date: a kind of update-anxiety.

However, no sooner had I thought there might be a problem than someone has created a solution in the form of MoodBlast – a single application which is displayed in the menubar of your Mac desktop and allows you to type one line of updated status information and then send it to all your micro-blogging and chat services at once. I tried it with Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook and it seems to work, although it strikes me that a client that allows you to mass update from a mobile phone when you are out and about might be more helpful.

Posted in Technology | 2 Comments »

Buzzword Review

October 5, 2007

My new account has come through from Buzzword. They apologised for the delay and explained that they have had a lot of requests and are still polishing off the service.

Anyway, I’ve given it a spin using my Mac’s Safari browser. The service has a nice, fresh interface with minimal amounts of menu and toolbar clutter at the top of the screen. There are simple menus for the usual document things plus a small number of toolbars that cover fonts, paragraphs, lists, tables, comments and images. File formats supported are Buzzword’s own file format, Word, Microsoft XML 2003 and RTF.

To create a new document was a bit on the slow side, as I had to wait for Buzzword to load the editor and fonts. I also tried to upload, from my hard-disc, a Microsoft Word version of my Web 2.0 report, which as anyone who has tried to read it will know, weighs in at a hefty 50-odd pages. Although, again, this took several seconds, Buzzword seemed to upload everything accurately and laid it out as expected. Something I particularly liked was that the page numbers are displayed as a long, thin, vertical strip on the far right of the window, and you can move straight to a chosen page by clicking on its number.

Its most interesting feature though, (more…)

Tags:, ,
Posted in Technology | 3 Comments »

Zoho expands the service cloud

October 4, 2007

Just a quick update to yesterday’s item. Zoho, a company who provide a number of online service cloud packages like wordprocessing and spreadsheets, have announced that they have launched an online service that allows people to create databases. Once the database has been set up, the user can add/edit entries and query the database in standard SQL (an extremely important standard in the world of databases). This can (allegedly) all be done through the browser window with no desktop application or downloads. This is a major extension to the range of office desktop-type activities available through a Web service since, as far as I can tell, Zoho are the first to do this.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Technology | Leave a Comment »

Service cloud covers Microsoft

October 3, 2007

In August I wrote about a report on the future of office document software (e.g. Microsoft Office, Open Office), that I was involved in editing. One of the things that the report’s author, Walter Ditch, highlighted when looking to the future direction of these systems was the possibility that they would be superseded by online services that will allow us to create, edit and store our word processing and spreadsheet files online, without any need to install software on our computer. Such services are sometimes referred to as provision through ‘service clouds’.

An example of this is GoogleDocs, which allows you to create and edit files online, and there has been some speculation that Microsoft would follow suit. On Monday, Microsoft duly announced a limited, beta trial of its Office Live Workspace, which provides some of its Office document functionality through a service cloud.

However, Office Live Workspace is limited in scope: it lets you upload and share your existing Office documents through an online workspace but does not allow you to create new documents or edit existing ones. It is pitched as a collaboration tool that allows you access to your documents, through the browser, from any computer.
(more…)

Tags:, ,
Posted in Technology | Leave a Comment »

Opening University research papers to the public

September 27, 2007

The Open University officially launched a website today that allows public access to the research papers that its academics produce. The Open Research Online website allows anyone to search the online database by author’s name, or to use keywords from the title or abstract of the paper. You can also browse through a list of departments and disciplines and subscribe to an RSS feed of announcements about new papers.

This project, which is the sixth largest such repository in the UK according to today’s search on the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR), is part of a growing movement to provide free access to publicly funded research. This is being driven by the fact that universities have become increasingly concerned by the increase in subscription fees that are charged by the international journals. Up until now, these journals have been the only places where research papers are published.

An excellent by-product of this is that the general public and small businesses can gain relatively easy access to the fruits of university research. As the OU says: “The repository serves the dual purpose of recording the University’s research activity and, where possible, making the full text of the research publicly available”. As we all pay the taxes that ultimately fund most academic research, this is an important and welcome development.

Tags:
Posted in Technology, Work | Leave a Comment »

Three-dimensional lunch

September 25, 2007

Several years ago I shared office space with a university team that was developing what was then the new fangled technology of 3-D printing. These rapid prototyping machines could generate a solid, three-dimensional model of an object that had been designed on a computer screen. Watching them weave something solid out of thin air using tiny, two-dimensional layers of special plastics and resins, sprayed one on top of another, was fascinating.

Things seem to have moved on though. Wired magazine reports that an artist husband and wife team have developed the CandyFab 4000 – a 3-D printer that uses sugar rather than plastics and resins. With this machine they can construct solid, caramelised versions of objects drawn on a computer.

Think of the potential. A crème brûlée that plays your iTunes. Surely this has to be the epitome of Tech Lunch?

Tags:
Posted in Lunch, Technology | 2 Comments »

nOU to blogging

September 14, 2007

The Open University is one of the world’s largest, oldest and most respected practitioners in technology-supported distance learning. So you’d think blogging would be the technology du jour.

However, it appears this is not necessarily the case. A very interesting survey by Lucinda Kerawalla and colleagues at the OU found that, of nearly 800 Open University distance learners, only 18% thought that blogs and blogging would be ‘useful’ or ‘fairly useful’ within the course. Even more interesting was the fact that only 8% of the students who were about to embark on courses that may well utilise blog-based work had their own blog, and only just over half had ever even read a blog. A further 35% of the sample did not want the OU to provide a blog as part of their studies.

The authors note in their conclusions: “These findings suggest that, although educators recognise the potential for blogging to support learning, most students do not agree” (p. 176).

Of course the OU caters for an audience that is likely to be older than the typical cohort of a traditional university, but, given the astonishing levels of media-hype and supposed general public interest in Web 2.0 services and technologies these figures make sobering reading.

Posted in Technology, Work | Leave a Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »