Random
Here's my thoughts recorded on the new Nokia 7610 loaned to me by Christian Lindholm (THANKS!). It's a 6MB video in 3GP format - you'll need the latest version of Quicktime to view it. [Russell Beattie Notebook]
Russell Beattie posts from a new Nokia 7610. A Quicktime video of Russell driving to work and discussing phone cameras and moblogging. This new cameraphone from Nokia looks pretty nice. The video quality is really pretty amazing.
This is a test post from 
, a fancy photo sharing thing.
9-11 Hearings at Audible.com The 9/11 Commission Hearings are available for free at Audible.com. Individual downloads of the testimony of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, former National Counterterrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and others. Of course you won't hear Condoleezza Rice...
Had the opportunity to take part in a panel at SXSW with Tom Hoffman, Kaye Trammel and Mike Sloan. The panel went well, but the best part was meeting Mike, Kaye (and her husband Mark, oh and Triumph the Dog too.. long story...) and connecting again with Tom Hoffman. Was a nice weekend in Austin. Will post more about sessions later, but wanted to note how good these folks are to work with. The panel went well. We actually had a few compliments from folks. Austin is a great city... was a nice time. I look forward to working with Tom, Kaye, and Mike again in the future.
There is a "no photography or videotaping" policy for the sessions. If I had known, I wouldn't have lugged my Canon Digital Rebel with me...
There is also a $90 fine for using any of the power outlets in the halls or in the session rooms. What do they think we're going to do, plug Marshall amps into the power outlets and start playing in the halls?
Pretty blogger unfriendly...
Several folks are talking about the use of the power outlets. I must say I didn't hear anything about it until tonight and only after reading the SXSW Community Blog and Joi Ito's site. Not exactly sure what the problem can be... Am glad I didn't get fined... :-) Concurrently at the Austin Convention Center, The Texas Home and Garden Show is taking place. Wonder if they let them use any water?
I noticed the no photography sign that Ito posted about later in the day. I didn't see it in the morning session when Werbach spoke.
One thing I did see was about 15 folks using flash cameras during the session. Am thinking it may have more to do with speakers getting tired of folks having flash cameras going off in their faces than anything else. But am thinking a sign just telling folks not to use flash photography should be enough.
One sign I did see that made me laugh was the sign indicating that the Smoking Balcony (designated smoking area) was sponsored by National American Spirit Tobacco. Maybe next year the escalator will be sponsored by Otis...
Almost two months without a post although I have been skimming my favorite weblogs via my aggreagator on a daily basis. The new small schools in NYC have just been announced so here's my explanation of where I've been during the past few months. My school proposal was finally approved and we'll be opening our doors in September 2004 with 100 ninth grade students. I'm thrilled, exhausted, and eager to move forward to September. An incredible amount of work has gone into this since last fall but we've really just crossed the starting line. Our first task is to sprint... [Brooklyn BloggEd]
Congratulations Joe...
SXSW /geekoutThe folks at SXSW have a page that highlights all the "cool" things they have done this year to make the conference more accessable and frankly just fun.
Calendar Apps...
For example, if you use calendar applications such as iCal or Mozilla Calendar, you can create personalized calendars of chosen events right from the SXSW website. Each event page has a link to add selected events to your personalized calendar.
Live Audio Streams from SXSW 2004
SXSW will be streaming a live audio feed from interviews being conducted on the exhibit floor. These will also be archived too. During the evenings of the Music Festival, SXSW will be providing live audio streams from approximately 10 music venues.
iTunes Shared Playlists over FREE Wi-Fi
SXSW is sharing their playlist of over 600 songs by SXSW Music Festival Showcasing Artists to WiFi users running iTunes at selected Austin-area wireless hotspots.
Also of note is that the ID badges have RFID chips...
I'm making this post from an Alphasmart Dana. It is a small Palm OS powered device with a keyboard and grayscale screen. This particular model has wireless capabilities so I'm giving it a try as a blogging device.
The browser that comes with it leaves quite a bit to be desired. The form factor, rechargeable battery and relative durability make it an intriguing device for use in the school environment. Like I mentioned the browser that comes with is really not very good. Also the device is running an older processor, so it a bit slow. I am going to take a look around and download a few other Palm OS browsers and see how they work.
Joi Ito has learned a lesson from his $3500 GPRS bill:
"I think that as broadband becomes a standard part of households, more and more people will fill up their iPods and mobile devices with all the content they need from their flat-fee low-cost pipe. Most content isn't THAT time sensitive. I don't see any reason to have to download content on-the-go over expensive gprs when devices can talk wifi or bluetooth and have enough storage to allow you to carry content around."[by way ofMobitopia]
Frank Koehntopp Notes:
Operators have tried to get people to buy the idea that if only they have UMTS, their mobiles will be able to be used for huge amounts of data: music, video and pictures. That is just not true, at least with the current economics. I can see that in my own behaviour: before I leave the house to go somewhere where I can't access the net for a while (like a business trip), I'm making sure I got all my gadgets 'synced', i.e. I have the content that I need while I'm away with me.
I've been thinking about this and recently have begun to use Audio Hijack to pull off audio content and save it to my iPod. Things like segments of Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and specific radio shows. With Audio Hijack I can program it to record and save content for syncing with my iPod.
I'm also using Bluetooth on my Powerbook and my Nokia 3650 to connect my phone to the web via bluetooth and my laptop connection. Using the Opera browser, I save content on my phone, but do not go through AT&T's network to get the content. I save articles and such for later viewing on my phone. Comes in handy standing in line at the store or waiting around in a doctor's office.
I'm sorry but I just have to say this. I cringe every time I use the term "learning object." There, I feel better now.
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Dan Mitchell and Will Richardson are talking about Learning Objects. As I read their posts I noticed that my son was actually using some real, tangible Learning Objects... As I looked around the living room floor, I also noticed that they were "distributed." Now we need an aggregator to help collect them. As for notification, the best method is to walk across the carpet barefoot. This method seems to be the best I've found when looking for distributed "learning objects" of this type.
Shirky: VoIP - Plan A vs Plan B
Plan B, however, is resistant to this strategy, because while it creates the same value as a phone call, it does so without any of the mechanics that regulation attaches to. No dialing, no phone numbers, no phones even, and, most ominously for the incumbents, no charge to the end user. Vonage may be competition, but they don't undermine the idea of charging the user the way Skype or Yahoo Instant Messenger do.
An interesting piece by Clay Shirky. As I read this, I kept thinking of the voice conversation that Tom Hoffman and I had recently using iChat and how well that worked. Could hear him clear as day. Also makes me think about my school and how all of our classroom lack telphone service. Some type of hybrid system that interfaces the building phone network with the our data network would go a long way to getting phones in our classrooms.
Hey, Gang, Let’s Make Our Own Supercomputer
Some class science projects get out of hand.That is certainly the case with Patrick Miller's graduate course in do-it-yourself supercomputing at the University of San Francisco. On April 3, his students plan to assemble the first "flash mob supercomputer" in the school gym.
While brainstorming about how to build a home-brew computer powerful enough to be added to a list of the world's 500 fastest computers, Mr. Miller and his students, along with Gregory D. Benson, an associate professor of computer science, came up with the idea of an electronic barn-raising. They decided to build on the concept of flash mobs, the sudden Internet-organized gatherings with no particular purpose that became an unlikely fad last summer.
I like the fact that after they make their try to join the list of the top 500 supercomputers, the computer will be reorganized to serve as the host of a giant multiplayer video game tournament.
Six Apart is participating in DEMO 2004, and this morning we made some big announcements regarding mobile features for TypePad. You can see some of these features in action at our DEMO or Bust! moblog.
New mobile features from TypePad include, mobile posting to blogs from multiple authors, audio annotations to camera phone posts, and a new Palm client for TypePad.
This is what I've been working on for the past several months. It's a combination of a custom J2ME based mapping client, weblog service and location alerting system. It's being sold to carriers, not to the general public, but you can play with the public weblog site above. This is the piece I developed. It still needs a lot of hardening and ever more features need to be added to keep up with the TypePads of the world, but in general it's your standard weblog service, but with the integration of location information and maps.
I have to admit... I'm a sucker for these type of phone applications.
DEMO 2004The DEMO2004 conference begins tomorrow in Phoenix. A weblog (DEMO 2004 Weblog) is in place for the conference.
DEMO is recognized around the world as the premier event that reveals the products and services poised to have the greatest impact on the technology landscape in the year to come.
Business leaders sent to principal's office - 2004-02-05 - The Business Journal of Portland
On Thursday, 115 community and business leaders are learning what real job stress is like: serving as "principals for a day" in Portland's public schools.
Lewis Elementary took part in this event. Our guest was Dan Williams, Comcast area director of communications for Oregon and Southwest Washington. He got to see a typical day at Lewis... This included visiting in classrooms, talking with parents, and helping to clean up a busted water fountain pipe which was spraying water all over a classroom...
O'Reilly Network: O'Reilly Network -- 2004 Emerging Technology Conference Coverage I was able to attend this the past two years. Unfortunantly, I won't be able to go this year, but the folks at O'Reilly, and many of those attending, do a great job of sharing the information presented. So tomorrow between lunch room duty, and dealing with unruly 5th graders, I'll take a look and see what is being shared...
Jon Udell: Turning consumers into producers
Pay close attention to the pivotal word "experience" -- as in, for example, "the user experience." It's the clue to understanding why Steve Jobs and John Mayer onstage at Macworld, mixing tracks in GarageBand, have more to do with IT's mission than you might think. The quality of experience that we deliver, through software and services, will depend on our ability to negotiate protocols and relationships in a fluid, rapidly-evolving environment. In short: to jam.
If only the folks in my IT department read Jon Udell...
I am constantly amazed at the lack of vision in most school district IT departments, and also in most cases in their curriculum departments. The thing that got me excited about the Internet in schools was not so much the ability to bring resources to the classroom. While that is a worthwhile enterprise, what really excited me was the ability for my students to share their work with others. In the 10 years that I have been publishing this is what has really excited me...
Speaking of user experience... this week coming up is going to be interesting. My teachers will be entering grades in our student information system for the first time. This is a Java based web application... As far as I can tell it was designed by frogs...
We have been out of school for three days now because of snow, ice, and freezing rain. Today everything is covered with a coat of ice. Hopefully the temperature is going to rise later today and start to melt this stuff...
I took the bus out to my school last night to check on the building. Found a busted water pipe in one of the classrooms. One of the school district maintenance guys talked me through shutting off the water for that room, but boy what a mess... Plan to head in this afternoon and see how the clean up is going.
Speaking of buses... Portland has a great public transportation system. If not for the buses nothing much would be happening.
WATCH this video