Apple’s big announcement today: An app that allows a teacher to create their own book and publish it to iBook. Thus you can take a Word document and the app formats it to be read on the ipad. Its supposed to be very user friendly. I am excited to use this in my courses this semester. For more info see:
Category Archives: News
What is SOPA?
What is SOPA?
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), otherwise known as H.R. 3261, was started by Lamar Smith (R-TX) and other representatives (bipartisan group with their company sponsors) to the house of representatives (more info on SOPA at Google).
Here are the dangerous parts to this bill (from Mashable):
– Any site accused of supporting copyright violations can be shut down – felony to post copywritten material (without a trial)
– Attorney general has a right to take action against these sites (again without a trial)
– Once accused to copyright violations, no company is allowed to do business with this company and their site needs to be shut down
What does this do? This gives companies and the government the right to stop and shut down an internet site without due process, no court or trial involved, just being accused. So if you post something on Facebook, like a picture that is copyright protected, Facebook could be shut down. That is the extent of this law, and there are lawyers that can help with this, although if you have other issues like immigration problems, lawyers from sites as nationalpardon.org can help with this.
Many from the silicon valley are protesting SOPA, today January 18th 2012. These sites are going dark. Here is a small list of companies doing it (many more are as well and the list can found at the bottom of this post):
- Tor Project
- iSchool at Syracuse University
- Oreilly.com
- Wikipedia
- Mozilla
- WordPress.org
- Minecraft
If you go to wikipedia today this is the message you will find:
“Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge – For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history, history is shared by people travelling and sharing these knowledge across borders but immigration laws prevent this right now, so there are legal resources to work on this now a days, click site to learn more about this. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia.”
FYI – my site could be shut down after my post today because much of my information was paraphrased and/or taken from other internet sites…even though I am citing them here:
Well stopping privacy doesn’t sound too bad?
No it doesn’t, however, given my example above, sites like facebook and youtube could be shut down because you or I post a picture or video that is copyright protected. Under current law, the Digital Millennium Act, when copyright material is found on a site, the site owner is notified they have a copyright protected image posted on their site and they have to remove it immediately. Well that sounds reasonable, right? I mean we need to protect copyright, but SOPA takes it a step too far.
What do hashtags # and other symbols on twitter and facebook mean?
What is twitterspeak? Well it’s how we communicate on twitter and other social media sites of course:)
The hashtag (#) is simply a way to search. This was designed for twitter and is used as a way to search. So if I were discussing mobile learning in a post I could say #mobilelearning and then anyone searching twitter for mobile learning posts could more easily find mine. Now people are using this on facebook, however, facebook does not currently use these to search but that could be changed in the future.
Another symbol used on twitter is the @ symbol. This is used to refer to someone. So if someone were speaking about me, their post might include @raypastore which would then link to my profile. Again this is being used on facebook but does not actually link to the referenced person.
I hope this helps clear up two of the most common ‘symbols’ used on facebook and twitter and help people understand what they mean and how they are used.
CES 2012
For those interested in the latest and greatest gadgets and computer technology coming out this year, check out the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2012 – jan 10-13. Many cool devices will be shown….one of which I am looking forward to seeing is a quad core phone. I would also like to see phones with 10+mp which would not be surprising as 12+ ones have been released overseas.
Here is the link to CES 2012: http://www.cesweb.org/
10 things your IT wants you to know….
Thought this was pretty funny:
1. Don’t argue with me.
2. If you say you’re an idiot for doing something, I’ll likely agree.
3. Don’t lie about what you did, we’ll find out anyway.
4. IT might be awesome and powerful, but even we have limitations.
5. Don’t cry wolf.
6. It’s pretty likely you don’t have the most important job.
7. Like an elevator button, we won’t come to you faster if you keep pushing ours.
8. Email me, we’ve got 5 devices that tell us when we get a new email. However, many of us still only have one that tells us when you left a voicemail.
9. Don’t cry.
10. We can do most, if not more than the things you think we can do, but we don’t because we don’t really care.
Here is a link to the article with descriptions of each point on the list
Self healing electronics
This is absolutely amazing and makes quite a bit of sense.Essentially, wires and devices are cased in a liquid metal, thus, when they break/fail the liquid metal fills in the ‘break’ and allows the process to continue functioning. Technically it’s not self healing but it allows you to continue without interruption until you can fix it. This seems like it would be great for things like airplanes.
MIT expanding open courseware
MIT is going to be expanding open courseware by actually offering certificates from it. However there is a catch, or two:) The certificates will not be from MIT, rather a non-profit organization, and it will cost money.
My thoughts on this concept: Great in theory but this is going to go nowhere. People do NOT have the motivation or time to do things like this. Online courses in general have high drop out rates due to lack of motivation. So my question to MIT, what are you going to do differently here? Why should I take one of these courses and complete it? I just do NOT see the motivation but that does not mean it’s not there, I just might not have read it or maybe it’s still in development.
Star wars vs World of Warcraft
With the upcoming release of Star Wars I thought this was pretty funny:
Google Nexus phone released
Google has finally released their much anticipated Galaxy Nexus phone. It was released in the US yesterday and I got one:) Now for most mobile users I recommend an iPhone for various reasons. For myself and other ‘techies’ this is the phone to get and here is why:
– first phone with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwhich. Will be a few months before other phones get this update OS.
– It’s a google phone so you will get updates straight from google i.e., first. No other phones have this advantage.
– No bloatware. Normally when you buy an android phone is comes pre-installed with all sorts of software that you cannot delete. For instance moto blur for motorola or sense from htc. This is a vanilla version of android.
– It’s a developer phone. This means that you can easily root and unlock the phone. You can also reset it to factory settings.
Well those are the advantages of this phone over all others. If you want to know the reason why I recommend iphones over droids for most users stay tuned, i will eventually get around to writing that article.
Here is a link to the phone to check out the features: http://www.google.com/nexus/
Resume writing tips for the recent college graduate
Do NOT have an objective. You just graduated and are not that career focused just yet.
Keep the resume simple – NO colors or images; simple structure
Education should be first followed by work experience
1-2 pages in length
Tell me what you did at your job AND be specific. Don’t say things like ‘managed a group and came up a solution that helped the save money’ – How many people did you manage? How much money was saved? You need to be specific. Tell me exactly what you did there. These should be written as achievements – what did you accomplish.
Do NOT list acronyms. People do NOT know what ADEGERTD is.
Speak is past tense for jobs you are no longer at. Present tense for jobs you are currently working at.
List your GPA if it was above 3.0
Keep thing consistent – like titles, dates, positions, number of bullets per item
Spell check
Grammar check
Ask someone to read your resume – do they understand every single thing?
Use 12 pt font.
Do NOT write in paragraph format. Please use bullets and keep them simple.
Action verbs should begin each bullet point. For instance – Managed a group, Delivered training, etc.
Show me your best – your resume is designed to get you a job so sell yourself
Use job titles that are meaningful and describe what you actually did.
List most relevant/important jobs first
Look at the jobs you are applying to. Are you using similar terminology?
List computer software that you know – near end of resume
Do not list hobbies unless you need to take up space
Do not leave space, use the entire page if you are going to use 2 pages. Do NOT make it 1.5 pages.