The demo for Sprout looks pretty cool — check out the link below. And their Ben Harper demo piece is pretty cool (and he’s one of my long time favorite artists too.) Unfortunately it looks like the site’s got some growing pains after their first day or two of official launch. There’s a note today that they’re not taking new account registrations pending some additional server resources. So you can look, and hopefully actually be able to play sometime soon.
What’s the deal with Yahoo lately? Personally I’m a big fan of their products. I use their email — Flickr — my personal home page is Yahoo driven. And I use Yahoo mobile on my blackberry — its great. The other day is synced my BlackBerry address book with my Yahoo mail address book — very cool. They regularly sponsor Yahoo Hack Days. They were one of the first big companies to make an ajax toolkit available. They use Drupal for internal projects. Sure, google has a lot of cool stuff too, but Yahoo somehow feel friendlier and more open to me. So why do they sound like they’ve lost their way? Hopefully they’ll get themselves straightened out and back on course. And please don’t let Microsoft buy them!
On the Grand Text Auto blog, author Noah Wardrip-Fruin is publishing sections of his upcoming book, and inviting review comments. This doesn’t quite replace the traditional academic book peer review process — MIT Press is still insisting on that step. But it is an interesting extension of that idea. In looking over the posts and comments so far, it looks like he’s getting substantial input with the comments he does get. Although the process of reading, analyzing, and then crafting a comment is pretty time consuming — not that I feel qualified in any way to offer Professor Wardrip-Fruin a comment myself. But for a blog that, as per the article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (2/1/2008), gets up to 200,000 visitors per month, there are not an overwhelming number of comments — this time commitment issue may be a factor. Also in traditional academic circles you don’t get any credit for an anonymous blog post — in contrast to participation in a peer review panel. But its a terrific experiment, and I’m sure will yield a fresh perspective that will add significantly to the peer review results.
I was recently requested to make a recommendation on pc-based internet video conferencing for remote applicant interviews. We have a growing number of non-US applicants, and scheduling a video conference facility is inconvenient and expensive. It would be great to be able to use an office computer for a group to interview an applicant — and even better to be able to remote in faculty from two or three locations for a virtual meeting with the applicant. With Skype, iChat, Webex, and all the others, you’d think we’d find something. But for this specific need we tried, but didn’t find anything suitable. The results are below — if anyone out there know of something that will work, please let me know!
Here is a growing archive of documentary films dealing with American folk and roots cultures. All can be streamed directly from the site. In additional to the films themselves there are also background materials on the films and other resources such as teaching guides, additional readings, and more. The site was started by film maker Tom Davenport, and provides exposure for films that would probably otherwise go largely unseen. There’s a lot of great roots music in here too.
folkstreams.net: About Folkstreams
I’ve explored the use of the WordPress multi-user version, WordPressMU, for a couple of projects, and have found it a very promising version. I’m attracted to it, as it offers the possibility of one installation that powers multiple blogs. It also imposes limitations on how extensively each of those blogs can be configured, which is what you want in the typical multi-blog hosted solution its intended for. But most of my projects have their own individual, unique requirements, so I’ve found it doesn’t really serve my regular requirements. But I continue to consider it for implementing wider use of blogs for classroom and project use at the school. Major installations include wordpress.com and blogs.law.harvard.edu . I recently contacted Harvard to learn more about their use, and received a standard reply which contained the following: Read the rest of this entry »
Content provided by Randall Rode, a professional technologist based in Clinton, Connecticut, USA
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