Google Summer of Code

Here's another great way to encourage or support Sakai OpenSource development, too!

Google's Summer of Code: http://code.google.com/soc/

Bottom line:  Student earns $5000 (and a tee-shirt!) for a successful summer project contributing to one of many open source activities. Read the FAQ at http://www.google-melange.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2011/faqs .

Student application deadline is 8 April.

From the FAQ, Google Summer of Code has several goals:

1. Create and release open source code for the benefit of all
2. Inspire young developers to begin participating in open source development
3. Help open source projects identify and bring in new developers and committers
4. Provide students the opportunity to do work related to their academic pursuits during the summer (think "flip bits, not burgers")
5. Give students more exposure to real-world software development scenarios (e.g., distributed development, software licensing questions, mailing-list etiquette)
6. If you are a student with a "geekier" nature, please consider applying.
7. If you are a professor and have a student who shows talent for making the stuff behind the stuff work, please encourage that student to consider applying.

Need to generate or create a Word Cloud?

A quick Google search for "word cloud generator" or "create word cloud" will produce varying results of free online word or tag cloud makers. I personally think the best of these is Wordle.net. Wordle allows you to quickly create a visual representation of keywords and their frequency. The below is one I generated from my own Curriculum Vitae or CV [PDF]:

Re-Post: Dealzmodo Hack: Make Your Old USB Stick Into a Digital Multitool

Cool idea to revive the use of (old) USB drives: http://gizmodo.com/5101651/dealzmodo-hack-make-your-old-usb-stick-into-a-digital-multitool?skyline=true&s=i

With 8GB flash drives available for under $20 and 32GB drives edging into the mainstream, nobody can blame you for shelving old USB sticks. But there are a surprising number of uses for those rickety, sub-gigabyte keychains.

There are nearly endless ways to bring a USB stick out of retirement, and they're not just gimmicks: virtually all USB sticks, 32MB USB 1.1 dinosaurs included, can be repurposed into anything from a lifesaving troubleshooting tool to an entire portable OS. Here are your best options ...

FixMyMovie - Upload, Fix, and Share Your Movies Instantly

Fix Your Grainy, Dark, Low Resolution Videos for Free--High-Tech Video Enhancement Service for Cameraphones, Digital Cameras, and Webcams

If cell phone videos suck because they are dark and grainy, FixMyMovie aims to solve that problem; however, FixMyMovie cannot solve poor directorship--that's still your problem.

In truth, this site and service completely blows me away. It's one of many "new" applications coming out that allow a person to do instant video editing from the comfort of a cell phone, laptop, or any place s/he has a live internet connection (i.e., "internet anywhere = anytime, anywhere applications").

Another software-and-website combination (that I've mentioned before) is Worth1000.com. They offer A.viary.com which is a similar approach and service focusing on Adobe Photoshop-like image and photo editing. Check these both out. I doubt you'll be disappointed.

Wired Campus: Project Aims to Build Online Classroom With Latest Web 2.0 Features - Chronicle.com

Wired Campus: Project Aims to Build Online Classroom With Latest Web 2.0 Features - Chronicle.com

The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Wired Campus noted that Howard Rheingold has won a grant in the Digital Media and Learning Competition to put all of the social-collaborative community tools (aka, Web 2.0) together in the classroom.

As Howard Rheingold commented back, "For those interested in a more complete description of the project, which includes the toolset, curricula (syllabi and teaching notes), resource repository (started here), video documentation and instructional material (in the vein of the first several entries), and the community of practitioners: the text of the award application."

Trendalyzer's Other "Like" Tools

RSOE EDIS - Emergency and Disaster Havaria Information Service - AlertMap: http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index.php?lang=eng

Rich Internet Applications for Language Learning: http://clear.msu.edu/teaching/online/ria/ RIAs are web pages with multimedia interactivity embedded into them. CLEAR's RIA can be created with no programming at all.

Interactive Map: http://www.cer.jhu.edu/index.cfm?pageID=351 The Interactive Map Tool is loosely based on a map metaphor, but isn’t bound to just creating maps. It allows the user to create a hierarchical structure of informational pages that can be nested. Nested pages can include anything from plain images to video and audio files, all with accompanying description text. The sites created in the Interactive Map Tool helps students understand the connections between concepts and spatial context in a way unlike any other. The Interactive Map Tool is loosely based on a map metaphor, but isn’t bound to just creating maps. It allows the user to create a hierarchical structure of informational pages that can be nested. Nested pages can include anything from plain images to video and audio files, all with accompanying description text. The sites created in the Interactive Map Tool helps students understand the connections between concepts and spatial context in a way unlike any other.

MIIM Project: http://maps.umn.edu/ Open Source Web Mapping in K-16 Education. MIIM is a web-based application that introduces K-12 and post-secondary students to principles of geography and GIS. MIIM makes use of several open-source projects, including Mapbender, MapServer, and PostgreSQL.

Tracing the Visitor's Eye: http://www.girardin.org/fabien/tracing/ So far the investigation of spatio-temporal patterns of people mainly rendered a quantitative understanding of the city. In our study, we intend to leverage implicit spatio-temporal data (i.e. latitude, longitude and timestamp) with the richness of people-generated information. Our approach is to consider that uploading, tagging and disclosing the location of a photo can be interpreted as an act of communication rather than a pure implicit history of physical presence. For this purpose, we retrieved from Flickr, large amounts of photo taken by thousands of users in the world’s most photographed cities. Based on the time, explicit location and people’s description of their photos, we design geovisualizations. They reveal patterns of tourists and citizens consuming a city, such as the flow of people between city attractions (see figures below), the monuments areas of influence or what is happening with day/night and working/weekend periodicity.

Gever Tulley: 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do

Gever Tulley: 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do

Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School, talks about our new wave of overprotected kids -- and spells out 5 (and really, he's got 6) dangerous things you should let your kids do. Allowing kids the freedom to explore, he says, will make them stronger and smarter and actually safer.

This talk comes from TED University 2007, a pre-conference program where TEDsters share ideas.

Blogging Across the Curriculum

Blogging Across the Curriculum

I think I can say this is one of my new favorite Web 2.0 sites. It's not that the site is Web 2.0, but rather it gets back to the fundamentals underlying web 2.0--the writing! Of course, the writing (the message, the content) is what is important!

Short on time? Then check out the "How to Blog --> Writing for Weblogs" page. Those short articles are worth the read and will help when designing and implementing the blogging assignment.

MIT Sketching -- Now Technology Helps Teach!

This has got to be one of the coolest, most useful teaching tools I've seen in quite a while. It is not only a method of teaching, notetaking, and/or concept designing, but it does it in a way that is natural to that way we often describe or try to do things. Consider this, have you ever tried to explain an idea or device and ultimately just grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and drew it?

That's what this MIT professor has done. As my Mechanical Engineering boyfriend pointed out, I'm sure there are all kinds of settings that have to be set (gravity, friction, etc.) before it can be used as demonstrated, but as a relatively simple start to exploring statics (think buildings) and dynamics (think spinning wheels), it's a pretty cool way to go. The best part is that you wouldn't necessarily have to set up the room with actual carts spinning down ramps. (Which can be really time consuming and a bit chaotic!)



Le Boyfriend, has also suggested for further interest into virtual prototyping software, you'll want to check out Working Model 2D and/or Adams.

20 Tools For Creating Your Own Games

20 Tools For Creating Your Own Games

This is AWESOME! Forget Second Life! Make your own RPG or Flash-based game without any knowledge of programming necessary. I think I'm going to try to add this as an FDI workshop to the Spring/Summer roster.

The best part? The storyboarding and writing (because everyone knows that good games come from good writing).

How fun!

"Gapminder" (which is actuallyTrendalyzer software)

Gapminder World 2006 is what everyone at TED was talking about. It's not the actual talk about "3rd world countries" that got everyone excited, it was the use of animated, visual data that got all the attention. To be clear, the software in question is not called Gapminder; Gapminder Foundation is the Swedish company that started this. What powers this kind of data mashup is the Trendalyzer software (acquired by Google in March 2007) that enables Gapminder to do what it's doing with the data, but really, you're not interested in all of that. You just want to see it working for yourself to understand that you want it.

About this Talk

You've never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called "developing world" using extraordinary animation software developed by his Gapminder Foundation. The Trendalyzer software (recently acquired by Google) turns complex global trends into lively animations, making decades of data pop. Asian countries, as colorful bubbles, float across the grid -- toward better national health and wealth. Animated bell curves representing national income distribution squish and flatten. In Rosling's hands, global trends -- life expectancy, child mortality, poverty rates -- become clear, intuitive and even playful. NEW: Download this talk in full SD resolution >>