Monday, August 16, 2010

Same sad story, different day. “It's not a failure spying, it's a feature a service!”

http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=12872

ISP TalkTalk UK Responds to Privacy Concerns Over URL Monitoring Service

August 16, 2010 by Dissent

Broadband ISP TalkTalk UK has kindly responded to a number of the concerns we raised about its forthcoming security service. The controversial system shot into the headlines last month after several of the internet providers customers noticed that their website browsing activity was being monitored (“stalked”) without consent.

The ISP then promptly moved to allay any fears of privacy invasion by stating that the activity, which allegedly makes an anonymous record of the URL (website) addresses visited by all of its customers, was part of a new free security service targeted to launch before the end of 2010; following a proper public trial.

Read more about what they’re doing and ISPreview’s concerns about it on ISPreview.



Ubiquitous surveillance tool? War-driving gets an upgrade? Perhaps Google will adopt these.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/08/16/0314224/Dutch-Hackers-Create-Wi-Fi-Sniffing-Drone?from=rss

Dutch Hackers Create Wi-Fi Sniffing Drone

Posted by timothy on Monday August 16, @04:58AM

"The WASP, or Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform, has been built out of a hobby-grade airframe and open source Ardupilot autopilot, reports sUASnews. In the words of the Rabbit-Hole website, it's a 'Small Scale, Open Source UAV using off the shelf components. Designed to provide a vehicle to project cyber-offensive and defensive capabilities, and visual / electronic surveillance over distance cheaply and with little risk.'"

Want a drone of your own? The makers have some pointers to helpful resources.



For my students...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20013638-36.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

How online research can make the grade

Not too long ago, the golden rules for high school and college students turning to the Web as a research tool were simple: treat digital content that's never been in print with suspicion. Be careful what you Google. And thou shalt not touch Wikipedia.

But the Web has grown up a bit in the past few years, and the presence of digital research journals, fact-finding social media tools, textbook exchanges, and e-readers have made it a much more complicated landscape for anyone who encounters the education world's slow march beyond the traditional textbook. When things have shaken out, it may be a world where free-for-all online information hubs are accepted--or, if proponents of "collaborative knowledge" have their way, even embraced.

"We have 16 million articles," said Jay Walsh, a spokesman for the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia. "It's impossible to say that they're all going to be great and you're not going to find any vandalism. So a healthy dose of media literacy helps any student looking at that information."

In a 2005 study, scientific journal Nature found, based on a survey of articles pertaining to various disciplines, that Wikipedia was on a par with Encyclopedia Britannica when it came to the accuracy of information within. It was a win for supporters of the idealistic concept of collaborative knowledge. And some academics say that it's now sufficiently stable and commonplace that they're all right with students using it for basic knowledge--just not citing it.

… "Wikipedia should not be used as a primary source," Walsh said. "We completely support that. We would not encourage people to cite Wikipedia in their papers. That's not what it's for.



http://blog.jingproject.com/2008/11/jing-videos-in-powerpoint-wind.html

Jing Videos in PowerPoint (Windows Only)

Next time you have to give a presentation, wow your audience with an embedded video. This will help you explain certain things without the usual static screen captures and bullet points.

There's a couple of ways to do it. There's the easy way, which requires you have a copy of TechSmith's SnagIt software. SnagIt's Add-in makes it easy to drop a video into a slide. I've made a Jing video showing this process. You can learn more about all the SnagIt add-in's here.

You don't have to have SnagIt in order to put Jing videos in PowerPoint presentations, but PowerPoint doesn't make it obvious like inserting an image. I've found and tried a couple of resources on the Web.


(Related)

http://www.labnol.org/software/tutorials/embed-swf-insert-flash-in-powerpoint-presentations/3721/

How to Insert SWF Flash Movies in PowerPoint Presentations

Related tutorial: How to Embed YouTube videos in PowerPoint Slides



WOW! I'll need some time to fully appreciate this, but I suspect my students will love it!

http://www.xplana.com/xplanaPortal/#user/0

Xplana

The social network for learning.

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