fundamentals

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.

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!

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.

May 22 2008   11:55AM GMT

What is the missing link of integrated circuitry? The memristor!

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Storage, hardware, Technology, innovation, education, learning, invention, conversation, fundamentals, history, memory

The discovery of Thursday’s Word of the Day, memristor, has been theorized about since 1971, when the possibility for a fourth fundamental passive circuit element was first described. The invention, fully described in a Nature article on memristance, The Missing Memristor Found, has thrown the science of integrated circuitry into a bit of…. flux.

[Image Credit: IEEE's Spectrum]

Ok, terrible electrical engineering joke. Leon Chua (the scientist who first hypothesized about the memristor back in the seventies), as quoted by Margaret Rouse in Overheard in the Blogosphere:

“Electronic theorists have been using the wrong pair of variables all these years–voltage and charge. The missing part of electronic theory was that the fundamental pair of variables is flux and charge. “

Read HP’s Memristor FAQ for more information.

NPR’s Science Friday recorded a terrific show on May 9th on the discovery. From the shownotes:

Introductory classes in electronics are big on circuit diagrams involving different combinations of resistors, capacitors and inductors. Now, researchers say that they have discovered a fourth fundamental passive circuit element, one that complements those well-known three and fills in a gap in the basic equations that describe the relationships between voltage, current, and magnetic flux. The possibility of such a circuit element, known as the ‘memristor,’ was first described in 1971, but until now no one has found a device with the properties of that missing element. A group of scientists at HP Labs found that in nanoscale materials, however, the ‘memristance’ property becomes easier to see.

The find could lead to lower power, instant-on computers, as well as novel types of circuitry. We’ll talk with one of the discoverers of the modern memristor about the find and its potential applications.

Listen to the memristor show on at ScienceFriday. com or download the MP3 directly to your hard drive. You can subscribe to the Science Friday podcast there as well.

May 21 2008   11:26AM GMT

What is the origin of Linux?

Posted by: Alexander Howard
open source, Linux, programming, operating systems, Technology, video, YouTube, commentary, learning, invention, Development, fundamentals, history

In the embed below, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, “tells the story of how he went from writing code as a graduate student in Helsinki in the early 1990s to becoming an icon for open source software by the end of the decade. ” (YouTube shownotes)

The video was produced by the Computer History Museum.

[Hat tip to Linux Journal, via Greg Laden]

May 12 2008   9:46AM GMT

Video: Richard Stallman talks about the importance of free software, GNU, copyleft and open sourcing

Posted by: Alexander Howard
open source, operating systems, command line, video, YouTube, commentary, free, invention, copyright, collaboration, freeware, conversation, community, code, fundamentals, history, software development

In these videos, Robin Good interviews Richard Stallman about free software and the open source movement. Stallman created the GPL and the Free Software Foundation to protect the GNU operating system from becoming proprietary.

In the sequence embedded below, filmed, the founding father of open source software answers a series of questions. This interview was originally posted at MasterNewMedia.org in 2006 and features commentary and links from Robin Good.

Q: What is free software?

Q: What are the negative consequences of using proprietary software instead of free software?

Q: What free software do you recommend using?

Q: Can individuals and organizations use GNU/Linux in their daily operations?

Q: What can individuals do to support the open source movement?

Apr 30 2008   6:03PM GMT

May 1st is RSS Awareness Day. Have you checked your feeds today?

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Web 2.0, video, YouTube, new media, Internet, podcasting, blog, cool, learning, free, feeds, event, creativity, screencast, tracking, tool, howto, blogging, RSS, fundamentals, communications, demonstration

Are you hip to Really Simple Syndication? If you’re still behind on the adoption curve, May 1st is RSS Awareness Day.

Daniel Socco of DailyBlogTips offers a detailed explanation of where the idea for RSS Awareness Day came from and what it was intended to accomplish. Check out RSSDay.org for more information.

In honor of the occasion, we’ve made RSS our Word of the Day to help get out the word, so to speak.

For more information, check out:

• Dan Bricklin’s article, What is RSS?
• our RSS glossary
• our podcast explaining what you can do with RSS
• our definition for RSS reader
• Google Reader
• WhatIs.com’s RSS feeds, including the Word of the Day, the feed for this blog, the enterprise IT tips feed and the enterprise IT newsfeed
• The video embedded below from Common Cause, RSS in plain English

UPDATE: Dave Winer wished everyone Happy RSS Awareness Day. I’m glad I tweeted him about it, as he hadn’t heard the news.

UPDATE II: Marshall Kirkpatrick blogged up a storm over at ReadWriteWeb, writing an epic Ode to RSS to honor the day and the technology itself. It’s the best blog post on the subject that I’ve read and will, I suspect, a canonical post about RSS for some time to come. As Marshall points out, blogging and podcasting as we know it simply wouldn’t be possible without RSS.

A hearty thanks to the pioneers and early adopters whose dedication, hard work and dogged advocacy have brought the technology to its present state!

Apr 23 2008   9:27AM GMT

Better Education Through Open Source Robots

Posted by: Alexander Howard
open source, fun, cool, education, learning, courses, academics, design, invention, robotics, creativity, downloads, collaboration, tutorial, howto, blogging, fundamentals, artificial intelligence, conference

Heather Johnson is guest blogging at WhatIs.com this week. Heather is a freelance writer, as well as a monthly contributor for OEDb, a site that helps students select among accredited online schools. She invites comments and freelancing job inquiries at heatherjohnson2323@gmail.com.

There has been a lot of talk about open source hardware lately and its potential effects on research and education. ETech 2008 showcased many examples of open hardware and offered an insightful presentation [PDF] to those who are new to the emerging technology. Likewise, popular sites like Slashdot and bloggers like Scobleizer have been discussing the growing movement.

The increasing popularity of open source software has already had a tremendous influence on education and the world as a whole. Not only are many schools now making the switch to open source programs, leading universities like UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon are involved with developing large open source software projects.

However, we have yet to see open hardware really take off. Ryan Singel of Wired feels that 2008 could be the year and I second that opinion. Leading the pack seems to be open source robotics, which has been embraced by several major universities.

Just last month, Willow Garage’s Steve Cousins gave a keynote speech at ETech 2008 about open source personal robots, which has brought more attention to the subject. Willow Garage is a privately funded lab that experiments with various robotics platforms.

This open source robotics movement can be felt on many college campuses as well. Carnegie Mellon, which I previously stated is involved with open source software, is also building OS personal robots. The university has recently formed a joint project called the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE).

The IPRE is a joint project between Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr College, with sponsorship provided by Microsoft Research. Its purpose is to help advance robotics research and computer science education. The IPRE is currently selling open source robot kits, which are geared toward educators and can be integrated with computer education curricula.

Instructions can be found RobotEducation.org if you are interested in building your own educational robot.

[Image credit: RobotEducation.org]

Apr 16 2008   9:58AM GMT

Video: Matt Cutts debunks 5 SEO myths

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Google, business, IT marketing, video, YouTube, Internet, search engine, search, entrepeneurship, resource, Development, community, howto, blogging, fundamentals, SEM, SEO

Google’s Matt Cutts has long since become the blogosphere’s “go to guy” for information on SEO and webmaster guidelines. WhatIs.com’s Word of the Day today, phantom page, has a link to his commentary on detecting undetectable webspam, for instance. I like the term “webspam,” incidentally, as it neatly describes spamming the entire web, as opposed to individual inboxes or SMS gateways. The video below features Matt Cutts debunking five different SEO myths. The video is from 2006 but is still quite relevant.

While it’s true that there are many other SEO bloggers and a burgeoning industry in search engine marketing, none are quite so well placed within the search engine giants nor so willing to share best practices and commentary. Thanks for your contributions to the Web community, Matt.

Apr 7 2008   4:14PM GMT

Handy tool: online Binary to Text converter

Posted by: Alexander Howard
data, fun, natural language, useful, cool, free, tool, information, fundamentals, humor, communications, Web applications, geek

There are certainly programmers, mathematicians and assorted savants out there who can write and translate directly to and from binary code.

I am not one of them.

If you, too, need to occasionally convert binary to ASCII text or, alternately, amuse yourself by converting especially colorful jokes into safe-for-works form… well, you too might just find this binary to text translation tool useful.

Now you, too, can tell ask your friends to
01110011011101000110111101110000001000
00011100110110010101101110011001000110
10010110111001100111001000000110110101
10010100100000011100110110100101101100
01101100011110010010000001000110011000
010110001101100101011000100110111101101
111011010110010000001110001011101010110
10010111101001111010011001010111001100101110.

[Image source: ThinkGeek]