In this post [Link] Thomas Hawk details an experience he had with a seemingly dishonest New York camera vendor. What a nightmare! I have never had such an experience, but I almost bought my Nikon D2H [Link] from a vendor I had never heard of that offered a fantastic price. Then, at the last minute I decided I would research them and I found horror stories similar to Hawk's. I ended up buying from a local vendor, Keeble and Schucat [Link] for not much more.
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Brian and Lynn Johnson [Blog Link] have had their baby. He is a handsome baby boy. When I met Lynn she was almost a kid herself. Then she was named Lynn Benson and was a photojournalism student at SJSU. She was not yet 21 I was in my mid 30's. We became great friends. She and I took a country western dance class together at the Campbell Community Center. Some of the older women (my age) assumed we were more than friends and really looked down their middle aged noses at me, especially when the dance teacher Dave Coffman announced that the graduation dance was going to be at the Saddle Rack to which Lynn said out loud that she couldn't go because she was not yet 21. The glares we both got crack us up to this day. Lynn's husband Brian is a really great guy. Susie and I got to spend some great time with them a little over a year and a half ago when we visited them in Chico. We are very happy for them and their growing family. Here is the email we got from Lynn last weekend:
Hello all,
Brian and Lynn Johnson (nee Benson) are pleased to announce the birth of their son, Alexander Blake. He arrived two weeks late at 3:04 a.m. on Saturday, November 19th, tipping the scales at 9 pounds, 4.5 ounces, and measuring 22 inches long.
Lex is a very sweet baby, and the cutest infant that the good people of Massachusetts have ever seen. Baby and mommy are fine, and daddy is over the moon. It will surprise none of you to know that he has already said his first words: "hi" upon his arrival, and "me" the other day. We'll start the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing exercises next week.
I have attached a picture for your desktop viewing enjoyment. :)
Happy belated Thanksgiving, Lynn
Here is a couple of cool cats from the recent CFA International Cat Show in our area. These are done using fd's Flickr toys [Link].
Sorry about the lousy quality of the picture from last night. This morning it is just me and the kitties. I am going to start working on the turkey soon. Sue took her mom to the hospital at about 4:00 am. and they are still there. Sue's mom got ill in the middle of the night. Other than that things are good. I threw my back out the other day but it is much better.
We had a great experience last night. It was wonderful actually, we took my 8 Indian (as in India) student assistants out to dinner. Picture this: Sue and I telling a group of foreign students the story of the Pilgrims, the first Thanksgiving and the other Indians.
It was too cute!
"What blows me away is RSS," Om Malik
In a recent podcast with Steve Gillmor [Link]; Om Malik [Link] said, "What blows me away is RSS. It allows me to create my own New York Times every morning." Gillmor replied, "And, it allows us to create our own Howard Stern." Malik then said, "Yes, and our own NPR, even our own television network." I was so blown away by this that I wrote the exchange down on my grease board where it remains.
RSS is big, very big. What we have seen so far with RSS is just the tip of the iceberg. Right now when a lot of people think of the Internet they think of just two things, Web and E-mail. RSS is neither of those things. That is a good thing because E-mail, thanks to spam, is broken and the web only works if you can get somebody to your Website. RSS combines the best of both the push nature of E-mail and the pull nature of Web. With RSS we see the convergence of push and pull and it adds a whole new dimension, that dimension is time. RSS is time based and it enables the concept of the real-time Web. RSS can turn the static Web into a conversation.
A great definition of RSS can be found here on Wikipedia [Link] and here on xml.com [Link]. I don't need to repeat that. RSS is the digital dial tone (there is that term again) for delivering changing real-time content on the web. It is the XML [Definition Link] based engine behind Podcasting and Videocasting and it enables blogs and wikis to be so much more than they are as mere Web destinations. RSS changes the Internet paradigm. Just look at the explosion of podcasts we have seen in the last year. RSS is being incorporated into everything from browsers to E-mail readers. RSS aggregators are everywhere, in stand alone applications and web applications and the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds is being put into portable devices like cell phones. RSS is download based, so it doesn't demand high bandwidth between the source and the receiver. So, RSS can extend the Internet beyond the network. Creators of RSS feeds are able to shape and manipulate them as are consumers of them. It was the power of RSS that led me to create what I believe to be the first podcast in higher education. To not understand the profound impact of RSS, and how to use RSS in education will soon be to be obsolete.
Technorati Tags: san jose state university, SJSU, CSU, California State University, ssloansjca, rss, pedagogy, podcasting, j-school, Steve Gillmor, Om Malik
Ubiquitous wireless
Q- How is collaboration like basketball?
A- It is a game you cannot win if you have problems getting to the Net.
Yea, I know, you have heard this before [Link] and [Link]! But in a world that is being described as flat [Link], collaboration is everything. The Internet, and the network that gets you to it, is the medium of collaboration. The wireless network, increasingly for our campus, is the digital dial tone of the global collaboration conversation.
Simplicity is the key to wireless. Using 802.11 "Wi-Fi" compliant hardware and software, ideas can flow from people to the Internet and then to other people. It is not just about computers, PDAs and even VOIP phones allow for thoughts and ideas to flow seamlessly. The need to authenticate to the network adds complexity to this process.
Complexity adds a layer of specifications and compliance that must be met. Complexity makes it so that good people and productivity enhancing devices that could play, will not be able to play. Complexity is the enemy of utilization of the medium of collaboration. Complexity disables our students, faculty, staff, industry allies and our partners. In my opinion, anything that adds complexity and blocks access to that medium of collaboration better have a damn super vital reason for existence!
The goal needs to be to enable anybody who is on campus to be able to participate in collaboration in as many ways as possible, with as many types of enabling devices as possible, as long as their participation does not negatively impact others. Wireless has to be everywhere and accessible any time. The idea we stop from getting on the network, may be the idea that changes our campus and the world for the better.
According to SJSU Professor Steve Greene, when Robert Scoble came to our campus to speak to the Journalism and Mass Communications faculty, one of the peolpe in attendance had to provide him their own user name and password so that Scoble could access the wireless network. They should not have had to do that.
Technorati Tags: san jose state university, Tablet PC, SJSU, CSU, California State University, ssloansjca, scoble, j-school
The Student Tablet
In this Channel Nine Video Blog Conversation [Link] Microsoft Evangelist Robert Scoble [Link] talks to Bill Gates about a number of technologies including Tablet computing. What makes this conversation special? You have likely heard plenty about Tablet PC's from both Scoble and I in our blogs. What makes the Gates and Scoble conversation special is that here they talk about the "Student Tablet." The student tablet is a $500 Tablet PC that has been talked about as being available very early next year.
The utility of Tablet PCs has been discussed in many places. There is a blog called StudentTabletPC [Link]. The benefits of Tablets, in education and otherwise, are many and are also discussed here in this Tablet PC blog [Link]. Malu Roldan has led a a Tablet PC project here at SJSU. Here are links to the video that SJSU Media Producer Bob Reynolds produced on SJSU's Tablet PC usage.
The links (you will need real media player:)
Broadband | Medium | Small (dial-up)
Tablet PC's have been available awhile. For some reason they still haven't taken off. In my opinion that is partly because it seems neither Microsoft nor their OEMs seem able to decide who should market them. Unlike Apple's Mac computers you cannot find Tablet PC products in our University Bookstore (where student focused products and student focused financing available for Macs.) The Internet also was slow to take off and existed for a long time before being discovered thanks to enabling technologies like the Web and email. Hopefully, Microsoft will come out with a reasonably priced Student Tablet PC and this will be the gas on the fire the platform needs in education. To me this is the point the Gates and Scoble conversation seems to make.
This may be what it takes to unleash the potential of this technology. Meanwhile, I am test driving an HP Compaq tc4200. This Tablet rocks!
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Jack Quinton died
I may work in Academic Technology now but my heart is, and will always be, in Journalism at SJSU. I worked there for the better part of 17 years, I graduated from that department. It is the reason I came back to SJSU twenty years ago to get a job.
I just learned that Jack died when I subscribed to Cynthia McCune's JMC Journal RSS feed [Link]. Oh man, this was one of the happiest guys I have ever known. He was so young, only 62. In this picture he has a smile. He almost always had a smile. I can't remember him not smiling. It is so hard to believe he is gone. You know, you work so long with somebody and share so many happy memories of them, it is hard to imagine them as being gone. Jack's death is like that.
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Just a couple of pictures from Robert Scoble's recent SJSU visit:
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Scoble talks to SJSU J-school faculty about future of Mass Communications
Today, my long-time friend, former student employee and current Microsoft Tech Evangelist & author Robert Scoble [Link], a former student of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at San Jose State University, returned to our school. Faculty member Steve Greene, who Scoble described in a recent email as, "my favorite professor at SJSU (was always pushing the edge)" introduced Scoble to the assembled faculty.
The school is considering a reorganization to better prepare students for a the changes emerging technology is bringing to the field of journalism and mass communications. As he spoke to the faculty he showed the faculty examples on the Internet of what he was talking about using his Tablet PC. In his candid talk he told the faculty about how Mass Communications has changed since the years he was a student in our school and about how this new technology evolved and is continuing to evolve. He answered the faculty's questions. Professor Cynthia McCune recorded his presentation and the audio of that is here: [Link]. Student Ryan Sholin was also at the meeting and he offers a student's perspective. On his blog Sholin [Link] provides links to many of the sites that Scoble showed in his presentation.
This was a great moment and the audio is well worth listening to, a couple of times in fact, I think. It is like getting a private lesson from Robert Scoble.
To liten to audio, click here--> 66 min, 15.4 MB MP-3 Audio File
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