Tuesday, March 20, 2012


Hey! It's New Jersey. “Hate the ex-boyfriend” isn't the same as “hate the gay guy.” (“Hate the cop ex-boyfriend” is really really not the same)
Woman accused of creating false Facebook page in ex-boyfriend’s name gets probation
March 19, 2012 by Dissent
Peggy Wright reports:
A 41-year-old woman was admitted today into a special probation program and agreed to undergo a psychological evaluation to resolve a charge of creating a scathing Facebook profile in the name of a Parsippany police detective.
Without admitting to the charge of identity theft, Dana Thornton, formerly of Belleville, was accepted by Superior Court Judge David Ironson into Morris County’s Pre-Trial Intervention program for first-time offenders.
Thornton will be supervised on probation for 12 months. She must perform 50 hours of community service and submit to a psychological evaluation and follow any recommendations for counseling.
Read more on The Daily Record.
I can’t help but compare this case to the Dharun Ravi case. Both this woman and Ravi were first-time offenders. Both engaged in online conduct that could have made people feel embarrassed or harassed – or that could have harmed reputations.
One – the older one, who should presumably know better – gets probation. The younger one risks a 10-year prison term because his motivation wasn’t revenge for a personal break-up but presumably bias.
Does this seem equitable to you?


Well, that clears things up...
How Much Is Your Data Worth? Mmm, Somewhere Between Half a Cent and $1,200
… For buyers, user data is dirt cheap. User profiles -- slices of our digital selves -- are sold in large chunks, i .e. at least 10,000 in a batch. On the high end, they go for $0.005 per profile, according to advertising-industry sources.
… Facebook and Google make roughly $5 and $20 per user, respectively. Without your data in one form or another, their advertising would be mostly worthless, so perhaps your data is worth something in that range.
But let's not forget the rest of the Internet advertising ecosystem either, which the Internet Advertising Bureau says supported $300 billion in economic activity last year. That's more than $1,200 per Internet user and much of the online advertising industry's success is predicated on the use of this kind of targeting data.


The Never-Ending Story.
"Google has once again stood up in court for the rights of users and services online, this time defending Hotfile from copyright infringement accusations. [Quoting the article]: 'Google takes a sort of hard-line approach via the DMCA, telling the court that however the MPAA may try to mislead them, Hotfile is in fact protected under safe harbor provisions. And furthermore, Google suggests that the MPAA's approach is contrary to the language in and precedents surrounding the DMCA. The onus is on copyright holders to alert a service to the nature and location of an infringement, and the service's responsibility is to alert the user if possible and remove the material within a reasonable period of time'"
The full brief has been uploaded to Scribd. The MPAA, naturally, has requested that the amicus brief be rejected by the court:


Also sure to be amusing...
"Word from Ars Technica is that OnLive, a service provided that seems to totally flout Microsoft licensing and offers iPad users a Microsoft Desktop for free (or a beefier one for $5) isn't being sued by Microsoft as this blog quotes: 'We are actively engaged with OnLive with the hope of bringing them into a properly licensed scenario.' The people who are angry include Guise Bule, CEO of tuCloud. He accuses Microsoft of playing favorites with OnLive — whose CEO is a former Microsoft executive — while regularly auditing license compliance for companies like tuCloud that provide legitimate virtual desktop services. Bule is so mad that he says he is forming an entirely new company called DesktopsOnDemand to provide a service identical to OnLive's, complete with licensing violations, and dare Microsoft to take him to court. Bule hopes to force Microsoft into lifting restrictions on virtual desktop licensing that he says inhibit growth in the virtual desktop industry, and seem to apply to everyone except OnLive."
One of the restrictions applied to licensed remote desktop providers is that each user must have his own dedicated machine (pretty onerous in the days of 16+ core servers costing a mere grand or two).


How do news stories differ depending on the media? Winston Churchill wrote long, opinionated articles for “The Times.” It seems that news got shorter (if more colorful), then had to be “entertaining,” and now can simply be “Peyton Manning is a Bronco! Click here for more.”
March 19, 2012
Pew Research Center - State of the News Media 2012
"In 2011, the digital revolution entered a new era. The age of mobile, in which people are connected to the web wherever they are, arrived in earnest. More than four in ten American adults now own a smartphone. One in five owns a tablet. New cars are manufactured with internet built in. With more mobility comes deeper immersion into social networking. For news, the new era brings mixed blessings. New research released in this report, The State of the News Media 2012, finds that mobile devices are adding to people’s news consumption, strengthening the lure of traditional news brands and providing a boost to long-form journalism. Eight in ten who get news on smartphones or tablets, for instance, get news on conventional computers as well. People are taking advantage, in other words, of having easier access to news throughout the day – in their pocket, on their desks and in their laps. At the same time, a more fundamental challenge that we identified in this report last year has intensified — the extent to which technology intermediaries now control the future of news. Two trends in the last year overlap and reinforce the sense that the gap between the news and technology industries is widening. First, the explosion of new mobile platforms and social media channels represents another layer of technology with which news organizations must keep pace. Second, in the last year a small number of technology giants began rapidly moving to consolidate their power by becoming makers of “everything” in our digital lives. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and a few others are maneuvering to make the hardware people use, the operating systems that run those devices, the browsers on which people navigate, the e-mail services on which they communicate, the social networks on which they share and the web platforms on which they shop and play. And all of this will provide these companies with detailed personal data about each consumer."

(Related?) Is communication just communication? Are emoticons an adequate substitute for “tone of voice?” (Do today's teens even recognize tone of voice?)
March 19, 2012
Pew: Teens, Smartphones & Texting
Teens, Smartphones & Texting - "Texting volume is up while the frequency of voice calling is down. About one in four teens say they own smartphones." Amanda Lenhart Senior Research Specialist, Pew Internet Project
  • "Teens are fervent communicators. Straddling childhood and adulthood, they communicate frequently with a variety of important people in their lives: friends and peers, parents, teachers, coaches, bosses, and a myriad of other adults and institutions. This report examines the tools teens use to communicate, with a particular focus on mobile devices, and then places the use of those tools in the broader context of how teens choose to communicate with people in their lives. The volume of texting among teens has risen from 50 texts a day in 2009 to 60 texts for the median teen text user. In addition, smartphones are gaining teenage users. Some 23% of all those ages 12-17 say they have a smartphone and ownership is highest among older teens: 31% of those ages 14-17 have a smartphone, compared with just 8% of youth ages 12-13."


Perspective (Some would say the government is a drag on the economy)
Internet accounts for 4.7% of U.S. economy
The Internet contributes more to the American economy than the entire federal government, according to a new study by the Boston Consulting Group.
The Internet accounted for $684 billion, or 4.7% of all U.S. economic activity in 2010, Boston Consulting Group found. By way of comparison, the federal government, contributed $625 billion, or 4.3%, to the nation's output.


Some of my students don't have room for more ink, but I can see temporary (but long term) tats with the logo of your phone company being the hip new fashion accessory.
Nokia Files Patent for Haptic Feedback Tattoo
… Discovered by Unwired View, Nokia’s Haptic Communication patent describes an electronic device, probably your smartphone, that generates a magnetic field that stimulates ferromagnetic ink that’s been stamped, tattooed, or taped to skin. The ink’s reaction creates perceivable stimuli that responds to digital content on the smartphone.
Translation: Notifications on a smartphone will trigger a vibration in the magnetic ink attached to your body. A text could trigger a specific vibration pattern, while a voicemail could trigger another.


An Infographic for my student Geek Dads (and Geek Moms)
Tech-savvy dads: We're geeks and proud of it
According to a survey sponsored by Cisco Home Networking Business (who knew Cisco was in the business of geek dads?), these self-proclaimed nerds are eager to pass on their high-tech knowledge to their sons and daughters. And get this: instead of retreating to their rooms and slamming their doors in that special way only angst-ridden teens can, the kids are into it, giving both parties an opportunity to spend more time together.


For my “geeks who write?” (Interesting that the Amazon “Used” price is more than the “New” price...)
"The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), now in its 16th edition, is the de facto style guide for American writers. It deals with aspects of editorial practice, grammar, usage, document preparation and more. It's just one of many style guides for writers. The Microsoft Manual of Style, just released in its 4th edition, attempts to do for the technical writers what the CMS has done for journalists and other writers."


Sometimes you want a tool that is “just like X, but isn't X” fortunately there are probably hundreds of them – unfortunately they are not always easy to find.
If you are looking for a free alternative to Google Docs for your group document editing needs, Substance is a great option for you. The web-based writer is much like Microsoft Word, only a little simpler. It’s easy to use and navigate for users of all levels. Best of all, because it is open source, it’s one hundred percent free!
You can invite an unlimited number of other users to edit the document with you. Users can subscribe to a document to be alerted whenever a change is made. This way, you will always be in the loop with what your collaborators are doing to the document. If you are working with a large document, they will have a convenient table of contents feature.


People still use paper? How Egyptian!
Believe it or not, some people still print documents to physical pieces of paper. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software takes those printed documents and converts them right back into machine-readable text.
Google Docs
Google Docs has integrated OCR support.
To get started, open the Google Docs website and start uploading a file. You can’t scan directly from your scanner into Google Docs; you’ll have to scan the document as an image or PDF file first. If you don’t have a scanner, you can try scanning a document with your smartphone’s camera.
FreeOCR
FreeOCR is a simple, easy-to-use frontend for the open-source Tesseract OCR engine, originally developed by HP Labs.
Cuneiform OpenOCR
Cognitive Technologies developed Cuneiform as a commercial OCR solution, but eventually released it as freeware. Cuneiform OpenOCR has an unpolished interface, but there’s an excellent OCR engine underneath.
The download page is in Russian — scroll down and click the “english version” setup link to download and install Cuneiform.


I might create a “Math bundle” and a “Computer Security bundle” and so forth.
Bundlenut is a simple service for organizing a set of links and sharing them with others. To use the service just visit Bundlenut and start entering the links that you want to include in your bundle. You can include comments about each of the links. When you have added all of links that you want to include in your bundle, Bundlenut will assign a unique url to your bundle. Anyone with access to that url will be able to see all of your links and comments about those links.
You can use the service with or without registering. The advantage of registration is that you can go back and modify your bundle whenever you would like to.
Applications for Education
Bundlenut could be a useful service to use when you want students to read and evaluate a specific set of online resources like primary source documents.


I like #4
Today I had the privilege to participate in Discovery's Beyond the Textbook forum. One of my take-aways from the day's conversation is that most of the technologies that we want to use to make textbooks interactive and meaningful for students already exist, we just need to organize and utilize them in a way that makes sense for teachers and students. I've combined that take-away with a recent request from a reader to delineate some ways that teachers can use Wikispaces to create this list of ideas for using wikis in classrooms. Please feel free to add your suggestions, with links if possible, in the comments below (please note, I'll be on planes for the next 18 hours so there will be a delay between your comment submission and its appearance on the blog).
1. As a digital portfolio of student-created videos.
2. As a place for students to share notes on each unit of study in your courses.
3. As an alternative to textbooks. Work with colleagues in your school or department to create a multimedia reference site for your students. Include YouTube videos that use the "choose your own adventure" model to allow students to pursue areas of interest.
4. As an alternative to textbooks. Have students create reference pages for units of study in your course. When you do this students become responsible to each other for creating accurate and meaningful content that they can refer to when it comes time for assessment.
5. As a place to track, document, and manage on-going community projects. In my district every student is required to complete a community service project before graduation. As a homeroom or "common block" advisor teachers are supposed to help their students take the necessary steps to document that work. By creating a homeroom wiki you create a place where students can make weekly updates about what they have done to complete their projects.

(Related) Even the tweets are interesting.
I've spent the day with a group of educators invited to Discovery HQ in Silver Springs, Maryland to participate in a forum titled "Beyond the Textbook." As with a number of the events I've attended recently, I've opted to storify the notes, Tweets, and blog posts (and I should add here that these don't just come from the participants at the event but from those that participated in the discussions via the Web.


Quick! What's another word for Thesaurus?
Graph Words is a neat little site that provides webs of related words. If you're like me and you tend to use the word "awesome" a lot and want to mix it up, type "awesome" into Graph Words to see a web of alternative word choices. Click on any word in the web to generate a new web of more related words. Give it a try with this web based on the word "awful." Your webs can be downloaded as a PNG image.

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