Saturday, May 28, 2011

A. Kipta's Blog 05/28/2011 (p.m.)

  • Czech Republic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    The Czech state, or Lands of the Bohemian Crown as it was known until 1918, was formed in the late 9th century. The country reached its greatest territorial extent during the 13th and 14th century, under the rule of the Přemyslid and Luxembourg dynasties. Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the Kingdom of Bohemia was integrated into the Habsburg monarchy as one of its three principal parts[citation needed] alongside Austria and Hungary. The independent Republic of Czechoslovakia was formed in 1918, following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire after World War I. After the Munich Agreement (signed by Nazi Germany, France, Britain and Italy), Polish annexation of Zaolzie and German occupation of Czechoslovakia and the consequent disillusion with the Western response and gratitude for the liberation of the major portion of Czechoslovakia by the Red Army, the Communist party won plurality (38%)[9] in the 1946 elections. In a 1948 coup d'état, Czechoslovakia became a communist-ruled state. In 1968, the increasing dissatisfaction culminated in attempts to reform the communist regime. The events, known as the Prague Spring of 1968, ended with an invasion by the armies of the Warsaw Pact countries (with the exception of Romania); the troops remained in the country until the 1989 Velvet Revolution, when the communist regime collapsed. On 1 January 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully dissolved into its constituent states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

    tags: genealogy geography

  • Moravia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    Moravia (Czech: Morava; German: Mähren (help·info); Silesian: Morawijo; Polish: Morawy) is a historical region in Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, and one of the former Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Silesia. It takes its name from the Morava River which rises in the northwest of the region. Moravia's largest city is Brno, its historical capital.

    tags: genealogy geography

  • Bohemia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    Bohemia (Czech: Čechy;[1] German: Böhmen (help·info); Polish: Czechy; French: Bohême; Latin: Bohemia) is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague. In a broader meaning, it often refers to the entire Czech territory, including Moravia and Czech Silesia,[2] especially in historical contexts, such as the Kingdom of Bohemia. Bohemia has an area of 52,065 km² and today is home to approximately 6 million of the Czech Republic's 10.3 million inhabitants. It is bordered by Germany to the southwest, west, and northwest, Poland to the northeast, the Czech historical region of Moravia to the east, and Austria to the south. Bohemia's borders are marked with mountain ranges such as the Bohemian Forest, the Ore Mountains, and the Krkonoše (Giant Mountains), the highest within the Sudeten mountain range.

    tags: genealogy geography

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Thursday, May 26, 2011

A. Kipta's Blog 05/26/2011 (p.m.)

  • Wiki Rubric

    "This rubric may be used for assessing individual and group Wiki contributions."

    tags: wiki rubrics

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Tuesday, May 24, 2011

A. Kipta's Blog 05/24/2011 (p.m.)

  • Edistorm

    "Edistorm takes the metaphor of sticky notes on a boardroom wall and brings it online allowing anyone - anywhere to brainstorm with only a web browser. Each user picks their favorite ideas and Edistorm brings the best ones forward. ... Edistorm is always free for anyone adding ideas to a brainstorming. Feel free to invite anyone you'd like."

    tags: brainstorming collaboration

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Sunday, May 22, 2011

A. Kipta's Blog 05/23/2011 (a.m.)

  • 5 myths about teachers that are distracting policymakers - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

    "There’s a lot of talk today about making our schools better and our teachers more effective. Researchers confirm that the right teachers can make a big difference in how much students learn, even in the most challenging schools. But scholars, educators, union leaders and policy wonks still disagree, sometimes vehemently, over what good teaching looks like. And it’s a high-stakes question. Political leaders at every level are demanding we evaluate and pay teachers based on student test scores and value-added statistical formulas. If that turns out to be a bad strategy, the long-term ramifications for the nation could be staggering. Incredible as it seems, 11 years into the new millennium decision makers are still opting for a patchwork teaching policy that often lowers entry standards to keep salaries and preparation costs down. We spend too much time debating 20th century arguments — e.g., whether or not Teach for America or university-based certification programs are the best ways to recruit and train teachers. What we need instead are millions of well-prepared, highly savvy teachers who know how to teach the iGeneration and work successfully in teams in order to serve diverse public school populations that include large numbers of English language learners and students from poverty. Teaching in the 21st century is complex, challenging work, and the fiction that “anyone can be a teacher” threatens our future."

    tags: teachers policy education

  • Will books survive eBooks? - Ezra Klein - The Washington Post

    "Do traditional books have some advantages over eBooks? Sure. But my hunch is a lot of those advantages are not advantages so much as things we’re used to about traditional books and not used to about eBooks. Take this paragraph from Ned Resnikoff’s defense of the book: Because we’ve come to take printed books for granted, we tend to overlook their enormous flexibility as reading instruments. It’s easy to flip through the pages of a physical book, forward and backward. It’s easy to jump quickly between widely separated sections, marking your place with your thumb or a stray bit of paper or even a hair plucked from your head (yes, I believe I’ve done that). You can write anywhere and in any form on any page of a book, using pen or pencil or highlighter or the tip of a burnt match (ditto). You can dog-ear pages or fold them in half or rip them out. You can keep many different books open simultaneously, dipping in and out of them to gather related information. And when you just want to read, the tranquility of a printed book provides a natural shield against distraction."

    tags: ebooks

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Saturday, May 21, 2011

A. Kipta's Blog 05/22/2011 (a.m.)

  • Theory and Distance Education: A New Discussion Simonson, et. al.

    "Theories guide the practice and research of distance education. Traditionally, theories of distance education have been derived from classical European or American models based on correspondence study. Recently, telecommunications systems have significantly altered the practice of distance education in the United States and have produced a uniquely American approach to this field. This has created the need for a new theory to guide the practice of distance education. This theory, called Equivalency Theory, is described and compared to the historical theories of distance education."

    tags: distance_education theory

  • College 2.0: Transforming Higher Education through Greater Innovation and Smarter Regulation | Institute for a Competitive Workforce

    "Digital technology has not only changed many economic sectors, it has transformed them by lowering costs, increasing access, and delivering the personalized, customized, and interactive experiences that consumers have come to expect. Higher education, however, has yet to experience the kind of disruption and subsequent gains in productivity realized by other knowledge-based industries. While colleges and universities have used technology to streamline back office functions, improve research collaboration, and give teachers new tools to manage their classrooms, they have yet tap the potential of digital technology and embrace private sector-led innovation to transform learning, dramatically lower costs, or improve overall institutional productivity."

    tags: higher_education innovation

  • 10 questions to assess the quality of your mind maps

    Do you have a systematic way of determining if your mind map is “done?” How do you know it’s as good as it can be? Here are 10 questions you can use to evaluate the quality and completeness of your mind map – a “report card,” if you will

    tags: mindmapping quality

  • eFoundations

    A blog about Web 2.0, the Semantic Web, open access, digital libraries, metadata, learning, research, government, online identity, access management, virtual worlds and anything else that takes our fancy by Pete Johnston and Andy Powell. Pete and Andy both work for Eduserv where they also write for eFoundations LiveWire.

    tags: blog web2.0 semantic_web open_access digital_archives

  • What impact are your resources making? : JISC

    "Measuring the impact of a resource you’ve put online can be difficult – but a newly updated JISC toolkit will help content creators, publishers and other information professionals understand the reach of their digital assets. They can use the kit to help guide them through different aspects of measuring impact, both qualitative, such as focus groups, and quantitative, such as web metrics. Users of the toolkit are also  encouraged to contribute to updating the hands-on advice by adding their own advice on topics like how to conduct an interview, using Google Analytics, writing a suitable survey and setting up log file analysis, all designed by the Oxford Internet Institute."

    tags: online content resources

  • Mark Zuckerberg Wants Kids Under 13 to Join Facebook, Uses Bogus Excuse to Explain Why They Can’t | Hack Education

    COPPA does not stop Facebook from allowing users under age 13 to join the site. COPPA does not stop any website from allowing users under age 13 to join. What COPPA does require is stricter privacy measures from websites aimed at those under 13 and at websites that know they are collecting personal information from those under 13.

    tags: coppa children social_networking facebook

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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

A. Kipta's Blog 05/19/2011 (a.m.)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Tuesday, May 17, 2011

A. Kipta's Blog 05/18/2011 (a.m.)

  • Monitor the Internet for Your Hard-to-Find Ancestors Using Software Agents

    "The GenealogyAgentSM website helps you monitor the Internet for your hard-to-find ancestors for new or updated information. If you are tired of repeatedly checking the same websites or conducting the same searches only to find the information for an ancestor has not changed, we can help. Our GenealogyAgents are designed to help you monitor websites and multiple genealogy site searches for any changes related your ancestors. Ancestor EmailGenealogyAgents are software agents that act on your behalf to monitor websites and conduct multiple genealogy site searches for any new information on your ancestors. We will send you an email message once a month to let you know if our GenealogyAgents detected any changes related to your ancestors."

    tags: genealogy monitoring

  • Trend Micro RootkitBuster - Trend Micro USA

    "Scan for hidden files, registry entries, processes, services, drivers, kernel code patches, ports, operating system service hooks, and Master Boot Record (MBR) rootkits. Clean or remove hidden files, registry entries, and services. The latest version features an even more sensitive detection system."

    tags: antimalware antivirus free

  • Documents To Go for Android Smartphones: Word and Excel on your Android Smartphone

    Whether you’re an organization looking to mobilize your sales professionals or an individual looking to increase personal productivity, leaving your office or laptop behind does not have to mean leaving your crucial files and work behind. Now you can get your work done no matter where you are by using Documents To Go to view, edit and create Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files as well as view Adobe PDF files on your Android-powered smartphone. And since it is full featured yet easy to use, Documents To Go is one mobile office suite that makes good business sense.

    tags: mobile documents office_applications android

  • Autoruns for Windows

    "This utility, which has the most comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations of any startup monitor, shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and shows you the entries in the order Windows processes them. These programs include ones in your startup folder, Run, RunOnce, and other Registry keys. You can configure Autoruns to show other locations, including Explorer shell extensions, toolbars, browser helper objects, Winlogon notifications, auto-start services, and much more. Autoruns goes way beyond the MSConfig utility bundled with Windows Me and XP. Autoruns' Hide Signed Microsoft Entries option helps you to zoom in on third-party auto-starting images that have been added to your system and it has support for looking at the auto-starting images configured for other accounts configured on a system. Also included in the download package is a command-line equivalent that can output in CSV format, Autorunsc. You'll probably be surprised at how many executables are launched automatically!"

    tags: tech_tips utility software free

  • Malwarebytes : Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is a free download that removes viruses and malware from your computer

    "Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free sweeps away malware infections but does not include Realtime Proactive Protection. Think of it like a malware-destroying broom - you can use it to clean your computer, but your computer won't clean itself (just like Mom used to say)."

    tags: antivirus antimalware free

  • Sysinternals Suite

    "The Sysinternals Troubleshooting Utilities have been rolled up into a single Suite of tools. This file contains the individual troubleshooting tools and help files. It does not contain non-troubleshooting tools like the BSOD Screen Saver or NotMyFault."

    tags: tech_tips troubleshooting

  • HijackThis - Trend Micro USA

    "Scan your computer with HijackThis version 2.0.4 to find settings changed by spyware, malware, or other unwanted programs. HijackThis version 2.0.4 is now Windows 7 compatible. It generates in-depth log reports for Windows-operated systems, including Windows 7."

    tags: antivirus security malware

  • Virus Bulletin : VB100 award - latest comparative

  • csrss.exe - What is csrss.exe?

    The Microsoft Client Server Runtime Server subsystem utilizes the process csrss.exe for managing the majority of the graphical instruction sets under the Microsoft Windows operating system. As such Csrss.exe provides the critical functions of the operating system, and its termination can result in the Blue Screen of Death being displayed. Csrss.exe controls threading and Win32 console window features. Threading is where the application splits itself into multiple simultaneous running tasks. Threads supported by csrss.exe are different from processes in that threads are commonly contained within the process, with various threads sharing resources within the same process. The Win32 console is the plain text window in the Windows API system (programs can use the console without the need for image display). In mobile devices such as notebooks and laptops, the process csrss.exe is closely dependent on power management schemes implemented by the system as defined under the Control Panel option.

    tags: windows operating_system database

  • ProcessLibrary.com - The Online Resource For Process Information!

    he Unique and indispensable process listing database. Now counting 140,000 processes and 55,000 DLLs.

    tags: windows operating_system database

  • Sophos Anti-Rootkit - Free Rootkit Detection and Removal Tool

    Our free software, Sophos Anti-Rootkit scans, detects and removes any rootkit that is hidden on your computer using advanced rootkit detection technology. Rootkits can lie hidden on computers and remain undetected by antivirus software. Although new rootkits can be prevented from infecting the system, if you had any rootkits before you installed your antivirus, they may never be revealed. Removing rootkits without compromising system integrity is particularly challenging and needs to be done with care.

    tags: antivirus

  • An Exploration of Burnout Among Online University Professors

    "Stress and burnout have emerged as a serious concern for today's higher education instructors. As the growth in distance education continues, the demands on online academics will increase, potentially leading to the burnout. This study examined the correlation between years of online work experience, gender, educational level, academic training, and burnout. The correlation was not found to be significant among these areas. In addition, this research examined stress among higher education faculty members with online courses. The analysis revealed there were appreciable differences in syndromes for burnout when comparing online and traditional teaching methods. In fact, it appears as though the online instructor is less stressed than his/her face-to-face counterpart."

    tags: online_teaching stress

  • Exploring burnout among university online instructors: An initial investigation

    "Burnout has been identified as a significant issue among those in instructional positions. The purpose of the present research was to identify and describe the status of burnout among higher education online instructors. The population for this study included responses of 76 online instructors employed by baccalaureate granting institutions within the United States. A demographic survey and the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey (MBI-ES) were used to collect data from respondents. Data analysis revealed online instructors possessed an average score on the emotional exhaustion subscale, high degree of depersonalization, and low degree of personal accomplishment."

    tags: online_teaching stress

  • News: Built for Distance - Inside Higher Ed

    "Does teaching online increase the risk of burnout? Scholarly research devoted to the topic is thin and offers no definitive answers. One study, based on 2005 survey data from 76 online instructors from a mix of institutions, found that the online instructors tended to feel less competent and successful in their work than the average college professor or K-12 instructor. They also tended to depersonalize their students and colleagues more. But the authors acknowledged the weakness of the sample size, and the study ultimately raised more questions than it answered. “We’ve had an immense amount of interest in this research,” recalled Mark A. McKnight, an assistant professor of business at the University of Southern Indiana and one of the study’s authors, in an interview Wednesday, "which was interesting, given that we didn’t have any real significant findings.” Despite all that interest, a scan of national databases only turns up one paper published since then that directly addresses the issue: a 2009 Journal of Distance Education study conducted by two other researchers who used the same procedures. But the new study actually ended up with a smaller sample size, and the results suggested an opposite effect. “In fact, it appears as though the online instructor is less stressed than his/her face-to-face counterpart,” the authors wrote."

    tags: online_teaching

  • MLibrary launches project to identify orphan works | MLibrary

    "The University of Michigan Library’s Copyright Office is launching the first serious effort to identify orphan works among the in-copyright holdings of the HathiTrust Digital Library, which is funding the project. The vast majority of HathiTrust’s holdings are in-copyright (73%). An unknown percentage of these are so-called “orphans,” that is, in-copyright works whose owners cannot be identified or located. The lack of hard data on the number of orphans in the corpus is a significant impediment to the creation of a legal or policy-based framework that would allow scholars and researchers to access these works. In a paper recently published by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), John Wilkin, Executive Director of HathiTrust, extrapolates from known statistics about the corpus, and speculates that the majority of works published since 1923 may in fact be orphans (“Bibliographic Indeterminacy and the Scale of Problems and Opportunities of ‘Rights’ in Digital Collection Building”; http://www.clir.org/pubs/ruminations/01wilkin/wilkin.html)."

    tags: copyright public_domain library digital_archives

  • Blogger Outage During Finals Week Rattles Some Students and Professors - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education

    "For more than 20 hours this week [week of May 9, 2011], Google’s free Blogger service suffered an outage that temporarily removed some posts and prevented the posting of new items. That glitch came at a tough time for some professors and students who rely on the service for class blogs, as students were kept from posting final class projects."

    tags: blogging

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Monday, May 16, 2011

A. Kipta's Blog 05/17/2011 (a.m.)

  • Handbook For Writing Proposals, Second Edition (9780071746489): Robert Hamper, L. Baugh: Books

    "Proven techniques and invaluable advice for writing winning business proposals—revised and updated! What makes a winning business proposal? It highlights your skills and services, meets your client's needs, and clearly sets you apart from the competition. Since 1995, Handbook for Writing Proposals has helped thousands of professionals develop winning proposals. This exceptional handbook guides you through the unique nine-step proposal-writing process from the initial RFP to the client presentation. In this revised and updated version, the authors show you how to: * Choose the RFPs that give you the best chance of success * Showcase your company's skills and services * Set realistic time/cost schedules and budgets * Avoid the mistakes that sink most proposals * Build client relationships that bring you repeat business * Tailor your writing for an international business audience."

    tags: business proposals writing

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Sunday, May 15, 2011

A. Kipta's Blog 05/15/2011 (p.m.)

  • Tryx Camera Pays Tribute to the Well-Loved Flip Camcorder - NYTimes.com

    "he Tryx ($250) is a very simple camera. It has only two buttons. It has no optical zoom. It doesn’t have an image stabilizer. You can’t remove the battery. You can’t set the aperture or shutter speed. Casio is calling it “the Flip of still cameras.” That, of course, is a reference to the incredibly simple Flip pocket camcorder. People loved the Flip because it worked: the first time, every time. When something happened worth filming, you pressed the big red button on the back. You didn’t mess with tapes or disks or menus or mode dials or flipping out a screen. That’s why the Flip became outrageously popular. Its maker sold two million Flips in the first six months. It became the No. 1 bestselling camcorder on Amazon.com, and remained there ever since. As of last month, its sales represented 37 percent of all camcorders, and kept climbing. And then Cisco killed it."

    tags: technology photography

  • Home - Bachstiftung

    "The J. S. Bach Foundation is performing the complete vocal works of Johann Sebastian Bach over the course of around 25 years. Each month, one of Bach’s over 200 cantatas is performed in the town of Trogen, in Switzerland’s idyllic canton of Appenzell. All concerts, workshops and reflections are available on DVD and the texts are published in book form."

    tags: music education

  • Help Crack the Sensor-Size Code - NYTimes.com

    "If there’s a single factor that predicts the quality of the photos you’ll get from a camera, a single letter grade that lets you compare cameras, it’s this: the sensor size. Big sensors absorb more light, so you get sharper detail, better color, and clearer low-light images. Small sensors, on the other hand, pack too many light-absorbing pixels into a tiny space. So heat builds up, creating digital “noise” (random speckles) in your photos.But here’s the problem: it’s really hard to find out how big a camera’s sensor is. The manufacturers diligently bury this detail. It’s not on the box, it’s not in the ads, and sometimes it’s not even on the camera’s Web site."

    tags: technology hardware photography

  • A World of Cables, Unknotted - The New York Times > Personal Tech > Slide Show

    "You can spend weeks researching which TV or Blu-ray player to buy, and then you would still have to deal with the conundrum of the cables. Other format wars get resolved fairly quickly and definitively (Blu-ray over HD-DVD, VHS over Beta), but cable formats last, it would seem, forever. Add to that the urgent up-selling from certain big-box electronics retailers, and you would think the cables are the most critical component in your audio-visual setup. Cables are important, but they should not be expensive. To help untangle some of the confusion, here is a simple, somewhat opinionated taxonomy of most of the cables that we deal with in our lives. It’s completely up to date — until the tech industry adds another confusing format to the pile."

    tags: technology hardware cables

  • Simple Passwords Remain Popular, Despite Risk of Hacking - NYTimes.com

    "Back at the dawn of the Web, the most popular account password was “12345.” Today, it’s one digit longer but hardly safer: “123456.” Despite all the reports of Internet security breaches over the years, including the recent attacks on Google’s e-mail service, many people have reacted to the break-ins with a shrug."

    tags: security passwords

  • To Stop Cheats, Colleges Learn Their Trickery - NYTimes.com

    "As the eternal temptation of students to cheat has gone high-tech — not just on exams, but also by cutting and pasting from the Internet and sharing of homework online like music files — educators have responded with their own efforts to crack down."

    tags: education cheating

  • New York Times Knowledge Network

    Building on The Times’s decades of active involvement in education, The New York Times Knowledge Network offers a wide range of distinctive adult and continuing education opportunities, including online courses, programs and Webcasts. Some of our programs are offered directly by The Times, while others are presented in collaboration with universities, colleges and other educational institutions. Students in our online continuing education classes benefit from the expertise and experience provided by the faculty of renowned educational institutions, and from the full resources of The New York Times. Some courses are supplemented by The Times’ articles and multimedia. Others have The New York Times’ editors or reporters as guest speakers or instructors, sharing their timely insights and informed perspectives. In areas ranging from art to business, writing to politics, journalism to science, online programs from The New York Times Knowledge Network are as rich and varied as The New York Times itself.

    tags: education nytimes resources

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Saturday, May 14, 2011

A. Kipta's Blog 05/15/2011 (a.m.)

  • Photopic Sky Survey

    "The Photopic Sky Survey is a 5,000 megapixel photograph of the entire night sky stitched together from 37,440 exposures. Large in size and scope, it portrays a world far beyond the one beneath our feet and reveals our familiar Milky Way with unfamiliar clarity. When we look upon this image, we are in fact peering back in time, as much of the light—having traveled such vast distances—predates civilization itself. Seen at a depth thousands of times more faint than the dimmest visible star, tens of millions of other suns appear, still perhaps only a hundredth of one percent thought to exist in our galaxy alone. Our Milky Way galaxy is the dominant feature, its dusty arms sweeping through the frame, punctuated by red clouds of glowing hydrogen. To the lower right are our nearest neighbors, each small galaxies themselves with their own hundreds of millions of stars."

    tags: astronomy photography interactive

  • Remove XP Anti-Spyware 2011, Vista Security 2011, and Win 7 Internet Security 2011 (Uninstall Guide)

    "XP Anti-Virus 2011, Vista Total Security 2011, and Win 7 Home Security include some of the names that a new name-changing rogue will randomly use when installing itself on a victim's computer. When this particular rogue is installed, it will install itself as a variety of different program names, with each having their own graphical user interface depending on the version of Windows that the computer is running. When installed, this rogue pretends to be a security update for Windows installed via Automatic Updates. It will then install itself as a single executable with a random 3 letter name and configures itself to launch, if not already started, every time you start another executable. It will also modify certain Windows Registry keys so that when you launch FireFox or Internet Explorer from the Window Start Menu it will launch the rogue instead and display a fake firewall warning. Once started, the rogue itself, like all other rogues, will scan your computer and state that there are numerous infections on it. If you attempt to use the program to remove any of these infections, though, it will state that you need to purchase the program first. In reality, though, the infections that the rogues states are on your computer are all legitimate files that if deleted could cause Windows to not operate correctly. Therefore, please do not manually delete any files based upon the results from this rogue's scan."

    tags: malware tech_tips

  • Welcome to IBSTPI

    For more than two decades, The International Board of Standards for Training, Performance and Instruction (ibstpi®) has been developing and validating the standards for professionals in the fields of training and performance. Over 400 organizations worldwide in a wide variety of sectors, including private industry, academia, military, and government, are using our standards to improve both individual performance and organizational results.  We set standards by articulating and promoting the integrity of professional practice through research, development, definition of competencies and education.

    tags: associations training instruction

  • ThinkUp: Social Media Insights Platform

    ThinkUp is a free, open source web application that captures your posts, tweets, replies, retweets, friends, followers and links on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. With ThinkUp, you can store your social activity in a database that you control, making it easy to search, sort, analyze, publish and display activity from your network. All you need is a web server that can run a PHP application.

    tags: social_networks database analysis tools

  • QR Code Generator - QR Code Tracking System - QR Code Android - QR Code iPhone

    Get your unique QR Code at BeQRious and include it in your latest advertisement. Make your advertisements the center of attention by adding a QR Code to all of your ads. Don't find yourself out dated or left behind. Spice up your ads today with our QR Code technology!

    tags: qrcode generator

  • DoodleBuzz: Typographic News Explorer

    DoodleBuzz is a new way to read the news through an experimental interface that allows you to create typographic maps of current news stories.

    tags: visualization news

  • BBC News - Microsoft confirms takeover of Skype

    "Together we will create the future of real-time communications so people can easily stay connected to family, friends, clients and colleagues anywhere in the world." Skype will now become a new division within Microsoft, and Skype chief executive Tony Bates will continue to lead the business, reporting directly to Mr Ballmer.

    tags: microsoft skype

  • Microsoft Windows, Skype Integration Poses Security Challenges - Security - News & Reviews - eWeek.com

    The level of “meshing” is what security vendors should be alert for, Matt McKinley, U.S. director of product management for security vendor Stonesoft, told eWEEK. His gut feeling is that it will be a big part of the mobile platform, especially considering the general perception that Microsoft is falling behind in that space against Apple and the iPhone. Skype services will also be part of Windows Phone, Ballmer said at a May 10 press conference.

    tags: microsoft skype security

  • Security Challenges For Microsoft Skype Integration | eWEEK Europe UK

    Skype will come under “greater scrutiny” from cyber-attackers after it becomes part of the Windows ecosystem, Paul Ducklin, head of security at Sophos, predicted on the Naked Security blog. ... The level of integration will also determine how future security fixes for Skype will be released. ... If, as expected, Skype gets rolled into the mobile platform or continues to be a stand-alone product, it will maintain its own patching schedule. ... That would actually be better from a security standpoint, since otherwise Skype may get lost amongst all the other Microsoft products. If there’s a significant integration with the Windows platform, then it will be part of Patch Tuesday, which will definitely make things easier for network administrators to keep up-to-date.

    tags: microsoft skype security

  • Microsoft, Facebook could use Skype against Google

    Facebook may not have bought Skype, but the social networking company may still reap the benefits. Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that it had reached a deal to buy Skype to buy the voice and video communications company for $8.5 billion in cash. In a press conference Tuesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the software maker will connect Skype to major Microsoft services, like the Outlook email client and its Xbox and Kinect gaming systems. Industry analysts, however, surmise that Microsoft may be willing to go outside its corporate walls and connect Skype with online partner Facebook.

    tags: facebook microsoft skype

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Thursday, May 12, 2011

A. Kipta's Blog 05/12/2011 (p.m.)

  • Search Yale Digital Commons

    "Powered by Yale's Office of Digital Assets and Infrastructure, Cross Collection Discovery (CCD) provides a way to search across Yale's collections of art, natural history, books, and maps, as well as photos, audio, and video documenting people, places, and events that form part of Yale's institutional identity and contribution to scholarship. CCD virtually unites the collections of the University and allows discovery of related content held by different campus units. CCD supports broader dissemination of Yale's intellectual and cultural assets to the Yale community and the world. CCD is part of the Yale Digital Commons (YDC), a collaborative framework for developing services to support the lifecycle management and use of Yale's digital assets. The service harvests, aggregates, and indexes information about digital and nondigital collections managed by different campus units. Users can search all of these collections from a single publicly accessible website and be redirected to the unit where the content is held for more information."

    tags: digital_artifacts open_access learning_objects

  • Home | Yale Office of Digital Assets and Infrastructure

    "The Yale Office of Digital Assets and Infrastructure is a Provost-sponsored initiative to develop a university-wide digital content strategy. Established in the Fall of 2008, ODAI was created to ensure that Yale University remains competitive in an era when knowledge creation, dissemination, and preservation are increasingly dependent on digital content infrastructure."

    tags: digital_artifacts open_access learning_objects

  • eLearn: Feature Article - E-Learning and Management Information Systems

    "E-learning is the "learning" process revolution enabled by new technologies that, hopefully, will present an effective and efficient learning process that doesn't exist today. Learning management systems (LMSs) are responsible for "learning" activities, while university management information systems (UMISs) are responsible for handling University managerial activities. Sociotechnical systems recognized many years ago that organizations functioned most effectively when their social and technological networks were compatible [55]. This is the case exactly with e-learning systems. LMSs can't provide the managerial functions needed to support universities, and UMISs don't support the "learning" process. Both systems have to integrate and operate together to support educational institutions and e-learning. "

    tags: elearning lms vle

  • Will the Internet Destroy Academic Freedom? - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education

    "The cherished principle of academic freedom may be Googled to death, according a new article in the journal called—appropriately—the Journal of Academic Freedom. Philo A. Hutcheson, associate professor of educational-policy studies at Georgia State University, writes that academics used to be seen as society’s experts, but the Internet makes everybody think they are experts because knowledge is at their fingertips. And if society no longer believes professors have special expertise, it may no longer grant them the ability to pursue controversial ideas that grow from it."

    tags: internet

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Shared by editor at 08:32

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

A. Kipta's Blog 05/10/2011 (p.m.)

  • vineme - Timeline for the World

    vineme is a social platform that allows the world to crowdsource content by time, tags, places, and people. Every search on vineme shows content on a timeline giving you a new perspective of our world while discovering content in new ways.

    tags: content crowdsourcing timeline

  • Jeff Clark - Portfolio

    This is a simple index into some of my more interesting or useful applications. Most of them are interactive and allow you to explore some data or create an interesting image. They were all created using Processing , which is built on top of java but specialized for use by visual artists and designers. Opening the interactive applications by clicking on some of the links below may take 15-30 seconds in order to start up java.

    tags: visualization data

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Shared by editor at 08:31

Monday, May 9, 2011

A. Kipta's Blog 05/09/2011 (p.m.)

  • 10 Tips For Designing mLearning And Support Apps: Instructional Design and eLearning: Tips, Advice and Reviews

    Probably the most realistic model for mobile learning and performance support is similar to how people use phones for other purposes—in short bursts of activity. Users probably won’t sit for an hour going through a full-blown eLearning course on a phone. The more likely scenario is that people will squeeze a mobile learning segment in between other activities. And they will access a performance support app while doing a task. Think micro-learning and micro-instruction, which is ideal for informal learning and learning augmentation. See Clark Quinn’s Designing mLearning for more on this.

    tags: education instructional_design mlearning

  • 12 Fabulous Flip Camera Alternatives For Education… A Must Read! | 21 st Century Educational Technology and Learning

    Enjoy this list of 12  alternatives dedicated to sustaining all of those amazing classroom activities that the Flip Camera has made possible. Ever since the Cisco announcement to discontinue the manufacturing of the Flip on April 12, 2011, I have been researching and creating this list of alternatives. I think you will enjoy and find comfort in knowing that some of your favorite Flip lessons can still be possible… even after your last Flip fails!

    tags: camera alternatives education

  • Hitman Pro

    Hitman Pro 3 is a fast all-in-one tool to locate, identify and remove viruses, spyware, trojans, rootkits and other malware. Hitman Pro 3 will quickly show if your PC is infected with malicious software.
    Hitman Pro 3 uses innovative cloud computing techniques to detect and remove potential malware threats with minimal impact on system performance.

    tags: antivirus antimalware

  • How to Improve Your Problem Solving Skills — Ian's Messy Desk

    Solving problems creatively means getting past your self-limiting thoughts. Creative problem-solving has countless uses. Too often, people associate creative problem-solving with crises or difficulties, or think of it as something that’s used for games and puzzles or special kinds of jobs.  Creative problem-solving skills are required for achieving exceptional performance in most tasks. The term “problem” simply refers to a difference between the current situation and a desired future outcome. Finding a way to exploit an opportunity is a form of problem-solving just as is coping with a crisis.  Any improvement to work processes or products fits the definition of a problem.

    tags: problem_solving strategy

  • Careful what you click, and accept no substitutes | TechBlog | a Chron.com blog

    Earlier this month, I wrote about dealing with rogue antispyware on my son’s Windows PC, both in TechBlog and in my Always On column. In those pieces, I detailed his use of an excellent scanning and removal program, HitMan Pro. But as is sometimes the case when I recommend security software, I’ll hear from readers who complain that it didn’t do what I described, or that it caused some issue on their systems. What I find usually has happened is that they didn’t actually download the program I recommended. With HitMan Pro, I’ve heard from a couple of folks who grabbed what they though was the program, ran it, and then were prompted to buy a registry cleaner from Uniblue Systems before they could remove what was found. When my son ran Hitman to clean his PC, and when I ran it later to watch its behavior before writing, there was no such prompt. I re-downloaded HitMan this morning and ran it again on a Windows 7 virtual machine on my iMac, and again saw no Uniblue prompt. So, I’m pretty sure the folks who e-mailed me got the wrong software. But how? On its download site, HitMan Pro’s developer offers three different links for downloading the version to be used on 32-bit Windows PCs. One is direct from developers SurfRight, but the other two are to third party sites: CNet’s Download.com and a site called Softonic.

    tags: deceptive_advertising

  • Content Sharing on the Web - How People Share and with Whom?

    A recent study done by AOL and Neilsen offers interesting insights into how people share content on the web and what kind of content do they prefer sharing. Email is still the most preferred mode for sharing content with friends and family but message boards are popular for discussing content with the public. News, product information and how-to articles are more likely to be shared than say deals or just-for-fun items.

    tags: social_media sharing study

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Shared by editor at 08:32

Sunday, May 8, 2011

A. Kipta's Blog 05/09/2011 (a.m.)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Shared by editor at 20:37

A. Kipta's Blog 05/08/2011 (p.m.)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Shared by editor at 08:32

Saturday, May 7, 2011

A. Kipta's Blog 05/08/2011 (a.m.)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Shared by editor at 20:40

Friday, May 6, 2011

A. Kipta's Blog 05/07/2011 (a.m.)

  • The Citation Project: Preventing plagiarism, teaching writing

    "The Citation Project is a multi-institution research project responding to educators' concerns about plagiarism and the teaching of writing. Although much has been written on this topic and many have expressed concerns, little empirical data is available to describe what students are actually doing with their sources. At present, therefore, educators must make policy decisions and pedagogy based on anecdote, personal observation, media reports, and the claims of corporations that sell "solutions." The Citation Project begins the process of providing descriptive data. Our team systematically studies student papers that were produced in college writing courses and that draw on sources. Our purpose is to describe how student writers use their sources. With this information, educators will be able to make informed decisions about best practices for formulating plagiarism policies and for teaching rhetorically effective and ethically responsible methods of writing from sources."

    tags: plagiarism citation writing teaching

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Shared by editor at 20:38

A. Kipta's Blog 05/06/2011 (p.m.)

  • Inventables: Find new materials

    We sell materials that designers, artists, and inventors use to develop new products and push the boundaries of what's possible.

    tags: hardware materials technology inventions

  • A Web & Mobile App for Reading Comfortably: Readability

    "Read in Peace, Everywhere. Readability is a web & mobile app that zaps online clutter and saves web articles in a comfortable reading view. No matter where you are or what device you use, your reading will be there."

    tags: reading apps readability

  • Background Information - Open Educational Resources - UMUC Subject Resources at University of Maryland University College

    "Open educational resources (OERs), according to an often-cited definition, are “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others” (Atkins, Brown, and Hammond, 2007, p. 4). In other words, OERs are any type of educational material that’s freely available for teachers and students to use, adapt, share, and reuse. "

    tags: open_education resources oer

  • Including Engaging Dynamic Content in WebTycho Conferences - DE Oracle @ UMUC

    "This article examines the benefits of using Open Educational Resources (OERs), discusses how to find dynamic content from non-educational providers and make it instructionally relevant, and reviews various methods for including dynamic OER content within the WebTycho conference area. It also links to a tutorial on how to embed objects in WebTycho conferences."

    tags: open_education resources oer

  • New FREE UNU Book: 'The Why and How of Open Education - With lessons from the openSE and openED Projects' | EDUCAUSE

    "This UNU Book on 'The Why and How of Open Education' is an introduction to Open Education (OE), giving practical guidance on the design and delivery of OE courses while wrestling with theoretical considerations of this new and emerging domain. Educators are the main targets, but it will also be relevant to policy makers, senior education managers and the learning industry as a whole. The book draws from three sources: first from well-established online learning ecosystems, including Open Source Software communities; second from existing Open Courses in traditional formal education and related design models such as the Meta-design framework (Fischer, 2007); and third from EU funded research and pilot projects: FLOSSCom (2006-2008), openSE (2009-2011) and openED (2009-2012). This piloting work enabled a thorough analysis and modification of assumptions that emerged from sources one and two.

    tags: ebook open_education resources

  • DE Hub Database of Research on Distance Education

    "Welcome to the DE Hub Database of Research on Distance Education. This searchable web database contains details of 7,124 books, articles, conference papers and reports on various aspects of distance education and distance learning from publishers in Australia and overseas. Material in the database is drawn from the Australian Education Index, produced by Cunningham Library, with additional material sourced from a variety of international organisations and publishers. Submissions of suitable material for inclusion in the database are welcome. By submitting your material you are bringing it to the attention of an international audience with an interest in distance education. As well as indexing material we will also include links to the websites of relevant publishers and organisations. Please contact drde@acer.edu.au for further information."

    tags: education research database distance_education

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Shared by editor at 08:33

Thursday, May 5, 2011

A. Kipta's Blog 05/05/2011 (p.m.)

  • Navy in Space monograph

    "This monograph has been out of print for many years and paper copies are no longer available through the Naval Aviation History Branch or the Government Printing Office. This electronic version has been placed on the Naval Historical Center's homepage because it is an excellent reference source for information about the Navy's role in space. As an electronic document, there is a compromise between picture quality and the capability of the optical-character-reader software to correctly identify the text in the monograph, which results in the picture quality being less than optimum."

    tags: science space navy

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Shared by editor at 08:32
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