learning

Dec 10 2008   11:43AM GMT

Happy 40th birthday, computer mouse!

Posted by: Alexander Howard
hardware, Apple, Technology, cool, learning, invention, gadgets, desktop, tool, science, fundamentals, history, geek

Today the computer mouse celebrates its 40th anniversary.

Pictured is version 1.0, held held by inventor Douglas Engelbart.

[Image credit: CERN Courier]

Modern mice have come a long way since this wooden prototype but the essential function — transferring physical motion to moving a cursor on the screen — remains the same.

 

Some great factoids about the computer mouse, via Wikipedia:

• The name ‘mouse’ originated at originated at the Stanford Research Institute, where researchers noted its similarity of the cord to a certain rodent’s tail
• Bill English, builder of Engelbart’s original mouse, invented the so-called ball mouse in 1972 while working for Xerox PARC.
• The first mouse shipped as a part of a computer came with the Xerox 8010 Star Information System in 1981
• Inclusion with Apple’s Macintosh is where the mouse really took off

The BBC has posted videos of Englebart explaining how the mouse got its name and the first demonstration of the mouse in a fascinating story that includes extensive quotes from the inventor.  (Sorry, no embeds available for BBC video content.)

Gearlog also has a great guided tour of 40 Years of The Mouse, if you’d like to take look back at the evolution of modern computing’s most ubiquitous peripheral.

Just move that cursor over and click on the hyperlink above — and thank Engelbart for his vision.

Oct 15 2008   9:00AM GMT

What is Blog Action Day? A chance to help fight global poverty.

Posted by: Alexander Howard
open source, small business, business, Web 2.0, media, Technology, Internet, useful, cool, culture, education, learning, free, academics, volunteer, green, event, entrepeneurship, resource, Development, tool, politics, blogging, buzz, science, communications

Blog Action Day is, according to its founders, “an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day.”

In 2007, the issue was the environment. In 2008, the theme is poverty.

By coordinating the efforts of many bloggers (more than 10,000 different sites, as of this morning), the organizers hope to galvanize improvement in the lots of the world’s poor. As measured by the World Bank, substantial improvements have been made since the 1980s.

Even so, one quarter of the world continues to subsist on less than $1.25/day.

Here’s what you can do to help:

• Participate in the One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC). Just head over to laptopgiving.org.
• Tune in to BlogTalkRadio’s 12-hour Blog Action Day talkathon to discover how dozens of prominent bloggers and technologists will be helping in the effort.
• Support microlending efforts at Kiva.org. Learn more about microcredit, Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank in this Business Week article, “Can Technology Eliminate Poverty?
• Read WebTeacher’s post describing a social business to find out how this form of concerned commerce works.
• Donate to or participate in the development of the technologies described at PracticalAction.org. These include micro-hydro plants, small-scale wind generators, affordable solar lanterns and biogas plants.
• Learn more in online poverty resources listed on BlogActionDay.org.

Spread the word!

Sep 5 2008   7:19AM GMT

Rapping about CERN’s Large Hadron Collider? Not the end of the world as we know it.

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Technology, fun, video, YouTube, cool, culture, learning, free, academics, MP3, futurism, music, science, humor, geek

Need a breath of fresh air and humor heading into the weekend? Check out this hilarious video of the Large Hadron Rap on YouTube. Hat tip to Cosmos Magazine for the discovery. This leads up to the highly anticipated moment next Wednesday when CERN turns on the Large Hadron Collider over in Geneva, Switzerland. Combining humor, science and music, this video brings some geeky fun to the exploration of the fundamental particles of matter, including our understanding of antimatter, dark matter and the elusive Higgs Boson.

According to the YouTube shownotes:

• Kate McAlpine, aka DJ AlpineKat, is the rapper. She works as a science writer for CERN.
• Will Barras, a PhD student in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh, is responsible for the thumpin’ beats.
  
• The images used came from particlephysics.ac.uk, space.com, the Institute of Physics, NASA, Symmetry, and Marvel
• The dancers doubled as camera people, with some work by Neil Dixon. Stock footage is CERN’s.
• The original mp3, lyrics, and vocals can be sampled and remixed from McAlpine’s directory on MSU.edu.

Those lyrics are easily several orders of magnitude more complex than the average gangsta rap. Babes, bling and bluster is replaced by the Big Bang, dark matter and bosons. I posted them below for your enjoyment:

The Large Hadron Rap

Twenty-seven kilometers of tunnel under ground
Designed with mind to send protons around
A circle that crosses through Switzerland and France
Sixty nations contribute to scientific advance
Two beams of protons swing round, through the ring they ride
‘Til in the hearts of the detectors, they’re made to collide
And all that energy packed in such a tiny bit of room
Becomes mass, particles created from the vacuum
And then…

LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.
The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead
And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.

We see asteroids and planets, stars galore
We know a black hole resides at each galaxy’s core
But even all that matter cannot explain
What holds all these stars together – something else remains
This dark matter interacts only through gravity
And how do you catch a particle there’s no way to see
Take it back to the conservation of energy
And the particles appear, clear as can be

You see particles flying, in jets they spray
But you notice there ain’t nothin’, goin’ the other way
You say, “My law has just been violated – it don’t make sense!
There’s gotta be another particle to make this balance.”
And it might be dark matter, and for first
Time we catch a glimpse of what must fill most of the known ‘Verse.
Because…

LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.

Antimatter is sort of like matter’s evil twin
Because except for charge and handedness of spin
They’re the same for a particle and its anti-self
But you can’t store an antiparticle on any shelf
Cuz when it meets its normal twin, they both annihilate
Matter turns to energy and then it dissipates

When matter is created from energy
Which is exactly what they’ll do in the LHC
You get matter and antimatter in equal parts
And they try to take that back to when the universe starts
The Big Bang – back when the matter all exploded
But the amount of antimatter was somehow eroded
Because when we look around we see that matter abounds
But antimatter’s nowhere to be found.
That’s why…

LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.
The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead
And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.

The Higgs Boson – that’s the one that everybody talks about.
And it’s the one sure thing that this machine will sort out
If the Higgs exists, they ought to see it right away
And if it doesn’t, then the scientists will finally say
“There is no Higgs! We need new physics to account for why
Things have mass. Something in our Standard Model went awry.”

But the Higgs – I still haven’t said just what it does
They suppose that particles have mass because
There is this Higgs field that extends through all space
And some particles slow down while other particles race
Straight through like the photon – it has no mass
But something heavy like the top quark, it’s draggin’ its ***
And the Higgs is a boson that carries a force
And makes particles take orders from the field that is its source.
They’ll detect it….

LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.

Now some of you may think that gravity is strong
Cuz when you fall off your bicycle it don’t take long
Until you hit the earth, and you say, “Dang, that hurt!”
But if you think that force is powerful, you’re wrong.
You see, gravity – it’s weaker than Weak
And the reason why is something many scientists seek
They think about dimensions – we just live in three
But maybe there are some others that are too small to see
It’s into these dimensions that gravity extends
Which makes it seem weaker, here on our end.
And these dimensions are “rolled up” – curled so tight
That they don’t affect you in your day to day life
But if you were as tiny as a graviton
You could enter these dimensions and go wandering on
And they’d find you…

When LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.
The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead
And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.

Aug 20 2008   6:58PM GMT

Video: MIT’s OpenCourseWare — Introduction to Algorithms (Lesson 1 and 2)

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Google, programming, software, Technology, video, useful, education, college, learning, courses, free, academics, Class, public domain, tutorial, fundamentals, software development

Thanks to a friendly Creative Commons license, these introductory lectures could be uploaded to Google Video by Peteris Krumins from the host on MIT’s OpenCourseWare website. In his post about them on his blog at catonmat.net, Peter also has posted his notes on each lecture. As he notes, the first lecture is given by MIT professor Charles E. Leiserson, the “L” in the authors of the seminal book, Introduction to Algorithms. In other words, if you’re looking for an entrance point to understanding algorithms, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better authority or context.

Here’s Lesson 1:

And here’s Lesson 2:

Thanks, Peter, and enjoy!

Aug 1 2008   10:29AM GMT

Video: Jimmy Wales on Google’s Knol

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Google, business, Web 2.0, video, YouTube, Internet, search engine, search, innovation, commentary, learning, free, academics, public domain, social publishing, Silicon Valley, collaboration, wiki, conversation, community, tool, blogging, buzz, communications, Web applications

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, talked to WNYC’s Brian Lehrer about Google Knol, a new competitor to the world’s largest online encyclopedia.

Jun 17 2008   9:53PM GMT

What are the best new features of Firefox 3?

Posted by: Alexander Howard
open source, applications, Web 2.0, software, video, Internet, innovation, cool, learning, reviews, resource, downloads, freeware, screencast, tutorial, communications, Web applications

After downloading Firefox 3 today, I noticed the speed difference. Thankfully, there were no problems with transferring any settings or plugins, either. I’m a huge fan of the keyword search of Web history in URL address field. The sharp rendering by the Gecko engine makes for more attractive browsing as well.

Mozilla’s user experience guru, Mike Beltzner, took the time to demonstrate some of Firefox 3’s best features in this detailed screencast, embedded below.

Note: This screencast won’t scale to size, so it may look misformatted on this blog. Try the link above if the overhang is just too hard on your design sensibilities.

[@Firefox Answers]

Jun 11 2008   3:56PM GMT

Video: What is Intellipedia? Burke and Dennehy explain how wikis are being used at the CIA

Posted by: Alexander Howard
innovation, culture, learning, invention, collaboration, community, tool, information, trend, geek, government, enterprise 2.0

Download Title
Sometimes celebrity is all about context. Stars of film, sport and stage may be instantly recognized and celebrated on the street. Other notables may fly under the radar — often intentionally so. Here at Enterprise 2.0, however, the “Intellipedia Evangelist” and “Intellipedia Doyen” have received rockstar treatment ever since their presentation this morning. Thanks to help from Alex Dunne, I’ve embedded their presentation above.

Ivy has blogged about Intellipedia before, nearly a year ago. Since then, the agencies have been making steady progress in exploring the potential for wikis and blogs internally and using them for information sharing, discussion, surfacing subject matter experts and deciphering the intelligence puzzle embedded in the massive amount of monitored noise. The question of adoption or barriers around older generations turned out not to be at issue. It’s not an age problem at all — the number one contributor at the CIA is 69 with 40 years of exp. Young people conform to a given culture quickly; it’s really about how the tools are presented and valued. Getting the first couple of edits made is the most important thing to novice users, given the need for a low barrier to adoption. One of the first projects at Intellipedia was an acronym list, in fact, which was a perfect fit for those “novices” and an invaluable tool for new employees that needed to decipher internal jargon.

I may be able to get an video with the two later, though given some concerns about too much exposure from their press office, we’ll see. When I met with both men in person this afternoon, along with a project manager from the NSA, each offered more insight into the cultural barriers inherent in opening up intelligence sharing through wikis at the agency. Given that national security, highly classified information, sources and methods could all be exposed, there are plenty of relevant concerns. That being said, Intellipedia was created in the aftermath of 9/11, when the relationships, structure, connections and methodology employed by the nation’s intelligence agencies were being reexamined at a fundamental level. The inspiration for the project sprung from seeing the style of information sharing and collaboration engendered and enabled by wikis, particularly in the history and discussion pages. Now, facts and analysis may be shared, vetted, sourced and debated internally, with a focus on discovery instead of control. Notably, the suite of social computing tools that are being used are distributed throughout the sixteen different intelligence agencies. Where analysts once might have used email and slides to share knowledge, now they can move their insights ont othe platform. Agents in Iraq can (and do) edit and collaborate in real-time with great effect with the distributed global intelligence community, posting videos, documents and commentary. Simply replacing Powerpoint with a wiki turns out to an incredibly powerful tool.

There are some crucial differences between Intellipedia and Wikipedia, the world’s most famous wiki. At Intellipedia, contributors must always be identified and operate from an attributable point of view, vs. Wikipedia’s famous neutral point of view (NPOV). At Wikipedia, the bulks of the edits tend to be made by a core group of editors, vs contributions by many from the intelligence community. And, obviously, the discussions and facts cited are highly classified and secure.

Sean and Don also presented 3 core principles of social software for enterprise users that everyone would do well to consider:

1. Work at broadest audience possible
2. Think topically, not organizationally
3. Replace existing business processes

I should note that there have been some rumors flying around the conference that the famous CIA World Factbook might be made into a wiki; unfortunately, this speculation was dashed as just that. Just goes to show — it’s hard to get good intelligence unless you go right to the source.

Jun 10 2008   11:26AM GMT

What is a social spreadsheet? Dan Bricklin and SocialText combine wikis with workspaces at Enterprise 2.0.

Posted by: Alexander Howard
open source, interoperability, applications, enterprise, Internet, innovation, commentary, cool, education, learning, academics, social publishing, interesting, invention, event, creativity, collaboration, freeware, Development, community, information, productivity, spreadsheet, history, communications, interface, software development, conference, enterprise 2.0

Ross Mayfield, founder of SocialText, a maker of enterprise wiki software, announced the launch of a new social spreadsheet at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference. In his presentation to a packed hall of technology executives, developers, media and social media mavens, Mayfield first addressed the state of Enterprise 2.0 before asking a simple question:

How can you work with structured data in an unstructured way?

He noted that the killer app of the PC generation that came of age in the 1980s was the spreadsheet, pioneered by Dan Bricklin in the form of VisiCalc. That app was what led many early adopters to buy an Apple and tap into the productivity gains brokered by the IT revolution.

Spreadsheets are now used for communication, lists, tables and two-dimensional layout. Mayfield asserted that they’re the most common database on the planet.

Workers collaborated originally by using sneakernet and floppy disks to share spreadsheets.

Now, we play “email volleyball with attachments” — a descriptive and all too accurate summation of how files ping pong around a network, introducing version control issues, 90% error rates. As Ross sees it, reverse engineering a spreadsheet on a web page misses the potential.

For the past two years, Socialtext has been working with Dan Bricklin to combine the usability and collaborative power of a wiki with the organization and flexibility of a spreadsheet. Meet the social spreadsheet, a “multi-user wiki-based spreadsheet program that simplifies version control, reduces errors and increases productivity.”

The software is able to cross organizational, structural, geographical and temporal boundaries. In the short video below, (available on Viddler for sharing or on YouTube), Dan Bricklin explains what a social spreadsheet is, how it works, how he was involved in the project and what users can expect from the software.

The social spreadsheet is open sourced and will be used in XOs for the One Laptop Per Child project worldwide, providing access to a quintessential IT tool for farmers, village merchants, businessmen, teachers and thousands of other individuals in the developing world.

Thanks again to Dan Bricklin for taking the time to talk to WhatIs.com.

May 22 2008   4:00PM GMT

Observing Memorial Day: How to celebrate the fallen online

Posted by: Alexander Howard
video, Internet, useful, learning, event, resource, history, memory

Next Monday is Memorial Day. During the federal holiday, most U.S.-based workers will take the time to be with family, pay their respects to fallen soldiers and family members and celebrate the unofficial beginning of summer.

Last year , Edward Rothstein suggested in the New York Times that on Memorial Day, consider turning off the computer and firing up the barbecue.

Unfortunately for sysops, network admins, webmasters and anyone else tasked with maintaining mission-critical systems or guaranteeing 99.99% uptime for an online service or ebusiness, the Internet won’t pause to pay its respects.

[Image Credit: NASA, via FlipSideShow.com]

If you’re stuck in the server room or need to catch up on help desk tickets, here’s a short list of places to pay your respects.

You can find more information about official observation of the holiday at USMemorialDay.org.

The History Channel’s Memorial Day website features videos, battle maps and a forum for veterans. According to this article from K.C. Jones, the interactive site “includes information about conflicts ranging from the American Revolution to the current war in Iraq, a span of time in which an estimated 1.4 million U.S. soldiers have lost their lives.”

If you’re an teacher or parent interested in educating your students more about the holiday, Education-World.com has a list of 5 Lessons for Teaching About Memorial Day.

USVets.tv will have a live webcast of Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. speaking at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at 1 PM EST.

May 22 2008   2:14PM GMT

What is the history of the ARPANET? A 1972 documentary tells the story of the birth of the Internet

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Networking, data, Technology, Internet, innovation, learning, academics, invention, collaboration, community, network, science, fundamentals, history, communications, government

“The Heralds of Resource Shaping” on Google Video tells the story of the origins of the Internet. At thirty minutes, this documentary is a bit longer than the average online video (or attention span) but well worth the time for anyone interested in learning more about the ARPANET. The speakers interviewed in the embed below  are listed in the Wikipedia entry for the “The Heralds of Resource Shaping.”

If you’d like to learn who invented the Internet — as opposed to the man who “took the initiative in creating the Internet” — you may be disappointed. In fact, as Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn wrote, “

No one person or even small group of persons exclusively “invented” the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community.

The Computer History Museum created this high resolution image of an ARPANET logical map circa 1977, for those interested in a visualization of the early network.