Wonderful Thoughts A weblog about latest news and reveiws on technology,science,computing,software and autoblog. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 1 839

Articles from Wonderful Thoughts

A (Personal) Conference Wishlist 2007-09-19 07:59:26 As Andy highlights in the discussion in the comments on his recent post about the ALT-C conference, I think we are all increasingly conscious of the resources that are expended in organising and delivering such events, and in participating in them - particularly, of course, those which involve long-distance travel. I recognise that even in the age of ubiquitous network connectivity and a smorgasbord of social networking and video-conferencing software, face-to-face gatherings still have a valuable role to play, and I still attend a fair number of conferences, workshops and smaller meetings, both in the UK and elsewhere. However, I do try to weigh up whether I can really justify the costs - financial and otherwise - involved, particularly if international travel is required. Even so, I’ve made three intercontinental flights in 2007, which is probably a small number by some standards, but is more than I really want to be making, and quite enough to have my friends reminding me of ...

Student expectations of ICT at university 2007-09-18 23:09:42 Via the Lisa Whistlecroft on the HIgher Education Academy technical mailing list, I discovered this interesting study from JISC looking at student expectations of ICT as they enter higher education in the UK.  It’s dated July 2007, so appears to have been around for a while, although I haven’t seen it before. There’s a lot of material here but in this post I just want to touch on some of the Second Life findings, partly because I have a couple of SL-related presentations to make over the next couple of days. The results are based on a survey of 501 students aged 16 to 18 from across the UK (though the vast majority in England) with at least a low to medium knowledge of ICT. When asked how often they used various technologies, 21% responded that they used Second Life often or occasionally.  This is actually much higher than I would have expected - I would have guessed 10%, perhaps even lower for that age group.  This compares with 44% who maintain their ...

Google Reader graduates out of labs 2007-09-18 21:38:55 Today the Google Reader team has officially announced that the Google Reader will be graduating out of labs and coming into the real world just like many other Labs Graduates such as Gmail, Google Notebook, Google Docs and Spreadsheets and much more products. Google Reader also has some very good features such as trends which show you your reading habits. It also allows you to share what your reading with the world. Here are some statistics about Google Reader compiled by the Google Operating System blog. Google Reader has two kinds of feeds: - feeds that have one subscriber (two thirds from the number of feeds, they’re updated every 3 hours)- feeds that have more than one subscriber (these feeds are updated every hour) Google Reader uses 10 TB for storing all the raw data Google Reader crawls 8 million feeds 70% of the Google Reader traffic comes from Firefox (a lot of geeky users) Google Reader is the only major feed reader that keeps the entire history for all the feeds   ... Google

Google introduces Gadget Ads 2007-09-18 18:42:16 Google officially launched Google Gadgets as an ad unit tonight after about three months of pilot testing. Google’s AdWords platform now supports Google Gadget content in addition to existing text, image, and video offerings. The gadget ads feature an entirely new widget analytics platform for tracking gadget success and interaction, an open caching proxy hosted by Google’s geo-distributed servers, and the introduction of YouTube as a video hosting and transcoding platform free from any Google branding. I previously covered Google’s upcoming advertising widgets in early May. Advertisers can create Google Gadget content in any size supported by AdWords images. In the example shown above Intel combined a Flash game with tabs displaying images and text with more information on the Intel Centrino Duo mobile processor. Each gadget interaction is recorded according to a set list of actions such as mouse over, tab views, entering a ZIP code, subscribing to a web feed, or ini ... Google

Blogging the fast 2007-09-18 15:54:35 My friend Shahed Amanullah, the editor of altmuslim.com, is blogging his reflections on Ramadan throughout the month of the fast. The blog, titled “Hungry for Ramadan”, offers a reflection each day, often focusing on the question of how Ramadan can be a time to introduce non-Muslims to Islam and to build bridges to other communities. His reflections this year include a post on the unhappy confluence of Ramadan and the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and on the lucky coincidence of Rosh Hashonah, Yom Kippur and Ramadan, which happens once every 33 years and will feature Jews and Muslims around the world sharing a fast on Yom Kippur this Saturday. From:…My heart’s in Accra ... Blogging

Racy Wrappers 2007-09-18 03:28:56 Check it out, Hershey’s is coming out with 4 different wrapper designs of the Intimidator himself, Dale Earnhardt. You can only purchase them from January through to the end of May 2008, so make sure you get yours when they come out.The designs will chronicle Dale’s career, and will feature the 1998 Daytona 500 car as well. There will be two Hershey’s Milk Chocolate designs, one Hershey’s Milk Chocolate with Almonds design and one Kit Kat design.I do believe a portion of the sale of these chocolate bars will go to the Dale Earnhardt Foundation.The only article I could find right now about it was at scenedaily.com.That about ‘wraps’ it up for now.Also, I will be very busy over the next 3 days so I probably won’t be able to post until Friday. Sorry! What really sucks is that I will miss Dale Jr’s big announcement on Wed. Oh well, such is life. I’ll fill you in on the details of my absence from blogging later. Take Care all, and see yo ...

Watch YouTube videos from your cell phone 2007-09-18 02:30:28 Avot Media is a company that allows you use their service to view videos from YouTube, Google Videos and other videos on your cell phone. Avot mV is a unique search and discovery service that allows you to search for videos on these sites. You can search and watch videos by pointing your mobile browser to the Avot Mobile Site. You can then start searching for videos or make use of different video listings on the home page and select your favorite channels, once you have done that you will be shown a list of video categories from which you can select and play videos. Avot mV also allows you to create playlist of your favorite videos so that you can play them whenever you want. The number of playlist you can create is unlimited thus allowing you to neatly organize all your videos. The service does not require conversion of videos so that you can view it on your cell phone, Avot mV directly streams the videos to your phone thus allowing you to watch the videos without any additional softw ... Youtube

Google debuts Presentation tool 2007-09-17 21:08:53 Google today debuted their Presentation tool (speculated by me earlier here) to complete the Office suite for Google Docs and Spreadsheets. A first look at it and I must it is quite impressive, the user interface is great and creating a presentation is a breeze. You can check out the new presentation tool by logging into Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Clicking on the presentation will take you to the page where you can create presentation. What’s more you can also choose various themes that are available instead of the plain Jane look to spice up your presentation. Here is a link to a presentation I created, also check out this video which tours around the idea behind using Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Technorati tags: google presentation, google apps, presentation, office suite Copyright © 2007 Techie Buzz From:Techie Buzz ... Google

fixing some romantic damage 2007-09-17 17:31:34 click to go to the flickr photoset A friend of mine, Annet, used her boyfriend’s (also a friend of mine) iBook a while ago but at the same time held it to close to a candle. I’m still not sure what she had on her mind at that time, but well… ^_^ She called me in panic back then (this all happened a couple of months ago) “Mark! what should I do!!!” … Soooooo, (even though it sounded quite bad on the phone…), I told her I would fix it and everything would be all right, I mean, how couldn’t I? A woman in panic on the phone, you *need* to ease that down, no matter what, right? *^_^* Anyway, shortly after, a pic arose on flickr and there I could see that this *massive damage* (on the phone I asked three times “it’s still working right?”, cause I could hardly believe by how it was described to me, that it was still working), was not so massive after all, but still, this would need some work. A little while ago, the boyfrie ...

OpenID - online identity for the social network generation of learners and researchers 2007-09-17 16:36:32 British Library, St Pancras, London, UK Thurs 8th Nov 2007 http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/events/openid2007 Web 2.0, Learning 2.0 and the moves towards PLEs and VREs are encouraging members of UK educational institutions to make increasing use of mainstream Web 2.0 services as part of their everyday teaching, learning and research activities.  In addition, the growing importance of virtual research teams, shared delivery of courses across institutions, a more mobile student base of ‘digital natives’, and the need to support more seamless transition between the different phases of lifelong learning means that we are beginning to see fundamental changes taking place in the educational service landscape. The successful management of identity in this landscape will play a critical role in delivering a coherent experience for our learners and researchers. It is likely that we will see the identity management landscape moving from a national or institutional orientati ...

You Don’t Know Jack? Well … 2007-09-17 10:40:03 Let me introduce you to him. His name is really Clinton Bowyer and he is the driver of the RCR Jack Daniels sponsored #07 Chevy Monte Carlo, and the newest winner on the NASCAR Nextel Cup circuit. In fact, up until this race, he was the only driver to be in the Chase for The Cup and not have won a race.Car owner Richard Childress was not at this race either. It would seem that when ever Richard leaves the country to go somewhere exotic one of his cars hits a ‘milestone’ of sorts. When Richard was on safari in Africa, Dale Earnhardt won his first - and only - road course race at Sonoma. Now Clint wins his first ever Cup race and Richard is in Mongolia.I think that Jeff Burton, Kevin Harvick and Clinton should all pitch in and give Richard a world tour so they can all fight for the Championship and win races over the next 9 weeks of the Chase.I must be honest with you, I missed most of the race yesterday as I was busy, busy, busy! I did catch the last 100 laps though and from ...

Serious Virtual Worlds 2007-09-17 06:30:44 I got sent to Coventry for two days last week. How? Well, I discovered, almost by accident, that all the sessions from the conference were being streamed live onto the new Coventry Island in Second Life.  This doesn’t seem to have been well advertised in advance - I certainly hadn’t heard about it - and, as a result, there were only a few other virtual delegates in-world with me.  This is a shame, since all the sessions were very interesting. Was the virtual side of the conference a complete success?  No, of course not.  Was it useful as an alternative way of attending the conference.  Yes, definitely. The main problem was that the organisers hadn’t put anything in place to allow the virtual delegates to see the presentation slides being used by the speakers.  In a lot of cases, this drastically reduced the impact and usefulness of the talks. To give a feel what being a virtual delegate at the conference was like, I’ve put a vide ...

Closing thoughts on Idea Festival 2007-09-17 05:55:16 This means that when he takes questions at the end of his talk, one of his interlocutors asks, “Can you explain crop circles? And, I’ve been through a wormhole - who can I talk to?” But I found Dr. Kaku’s talk disappointing. He told some excellent jokes - including the Einstein and his driver joke - and hit on some of my favorite sci-fi fantasies (glasses that recognize who people are and brief you on them, so you don’t have to guess at their names). But he didn’t tell me a great deal about physics and certainly not about the branch he’s known for. This may simply be that because string theory is such an abstract, mathematical discipline that explaining what scientists are hoping to find out of the Large Hadron Collider is beyond the scope of an amateur talk. Or it may be, as some critics argue, that supersymmetry isn’t really a predictive theory in the way that quantum theory or special relativity were, and that it may be untestable and ...

Web 2.0 in Medical Education 2007-09-17 01:35:26 Anne Myer Medical Center The Blog about the Second Life medical course http://ammc.wordpress.com/ Clinical Cases and Images A blog that collects images, procedure guides and case studies for use in medical education http://clinicalcases.blogspot.com/2005/07/other-cases.html Deirdre’s Wiki Resources about medical games, mentoring and tech tools http://wiki.usask.ca/db/index.php/Main_Page John Hopkins Medical Podcasts A weekly podcast looking at the top medical stories of the week for people who want to become informed participants in their own health care. http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/mediaII/Podcasts.html iMedExchange An online community that is only available to physicians. http://www.imedexchange.com/ InVision Guide to a Healthy Heart http://www.invisionguide.com/heart/flash/index_reg.html Medicine 2.0 Blog Carnival A series of articles about Web 2.0 in medicine published every two weeks http://medicine20.wordpress.com/ MedEd Portal A storage resource for medical education http: ...

Free RapidShare Premium Account Giveaway 2007-09-16 15:27:15 Techie Buzz has been doing quite well over past few months and I have decided to spread the goodwill, as a part of my goodwill sharing I am announcing a new contest at Techie Buzz. The contest is simple and does not need much efforts. You just have to link back to Techie Buzz once and talk about the Free RapidShare Premium Account Giveaway contest. To win the any one of the prizes all you need to do is enter your post to get qualified for the contest 5 points. You can win 5 months of free RapidShare Premium Account all at once (or $50). So just enter and you could win either 1 or 4 or at the max 5 RapidShare Premium Accounts. The contest winners who win the Premium RapidShare account will also be in the draw to win the other 4 accounts (or $50). The blog post can be as simple as this to be considered as a entry Techie Buzz is organizing a contest where two users will get free RapidShare Premium Accounts on writing a post about the Free RapidShare Premium Account Giveaway contest. It ...