Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

Sometimes I think humans, as a species, are better at teaching than at learning. And sometimes I think the opposite. And then I give up, and try to be good at both.

Cover letter in 140 characters

Tweet yourself into an internship with Under Armor!

http://gizmodo.com/#!5795597/how-to-apply-for-an-internship-in-2011-write-a-140-character-cover-letter-and-upload-your-resume

Video: 2011 Teacher Appreciation Day Message from Secretary Arne Duncan

2011 Teacher Appreciation Day Message from Secretary Arne Duncan

(Sent from Flipboard)

Gore, Ex-Apple Engineers Team Up to Blow Up the Book

If they can bring this to the App Store for under $50 it could be a game changer.

Gore, Ex-Apple Engineers Team Up to Blow Up the Book
WIRED TOP STORIES | APRIL 28, 2011
http://pulsene.ws/1rIrx

What do you do after working for Apple, a company that disrupts entire industries? Easy. You start a company to create your own ... Read more

Mashup editor Pipes - how did I miss this?

OK, still not sure how I've missed this, but I've just run across a mashup editor from Yahoo! called "Pipes."

Using a visual editor resembling a mind map or flowchart tool, you can fairly quickly stitch together content sources and filters to create a "mashup." An excellent example is this mashup of US Census data to display the population of the states in map form.

Another more dynamic mashup called YouTunes uses iTunes download rankings to pick the Top 10 songs, then displays the YouTube for the music videos of those songs.

I was able to use Pipes as a workaround to the Flickr-Flash monster. I wanted a Flickr slideshow based on search results to display on mobile devices such as iPhones, but Flickr's slideshow is in Flash. By using Pipes, I was able to search Flickr based on pre-defined search terms and display the results as an image badge, which I then embedded in a Weebly page, and it displays in iOS just dandy!

So, those of you who are currently taking NET115S, here's a new tool you might want to explore. For those of you who will be taking NET116S in the Fall, guess what we're going to do?

The Wheel of the Sky - Beautiful stop-motion photography

Watch this in Hd if you can!

The Wheel of the Sky
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/meaning-of-it-all/the-wheel-of-the-sky.html

(Sent from Flipboard)

RIP, Flip

If you haven't heard, parent company Cisco has killed off the Flip camera division in a fit of corporate restructuring. Flips are great little video cameras since they upgraded to HD quality (720p), and here at Edison we use the heck out of 'em.

The main reason cited by Cisco for discontinuing the little buggers is that smartphones such as the iPhone 4 are killing off the low end of the market. Wonder if Brutus stood over Julius Caesar's body, holding the bloody knife, saying "What have I done?"

RIP, Flip.

In the meantime, you can get in on the scavenger-feeding frenzy. I scored a Flip Ultra HD at the Piqua HH Gregg store over the weekend for $75. At the time they had two Flip Mino HDs for $75 each, and two Flip Ultras (NOT the HD versions) for $50 each.

Here are some other sources:

http://gizmodo.com/#!5791601/where-to-buy-cheap-flips-now-that-theyre-dead

Interesting snapshot of mobile trends on Flickr

Yes, pun intended. By the time you read this, the iPhone 4 may be the most popular camera on Flickr.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/17/iphone-4-camera/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_m...

Article: Olympus PEN Your Short Film Challenge

Here are some seriously professional short films made with seriously inexpensive cameras!

Olympus PEN Your Short Film Challenge
http://www.coolhunting.com/culture/olympus-48-hour-films.php

(Sent from Flipboard)

Article: Hanna :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews

First line of the week: "Hanna” is a first-rate thriller about the drawbacks of home schooling.

Hanna :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20110406%2FREVIEWS%2F110409995

(Sent from Flipboard)

Gizmodo, the Gadget Guide

My two favorite things Netflix and Mad Men, together at last. Like chocolate and peanut butter, vodka and olives, Bogie and Bacall....

http://m.gizmodo.com//5789263/netflix-nabs-exclusive-streaming-rights-to-mad-...

--Brad

Article: How To Steal Like An Artist (And 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me)

1. This is really neat. 2. I didn't make it.

How To Steal Like An Artist (And 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me)
http://www.austinkleon.com/2011/03/30/how-to-steal-like-an-artist-and-9-other-things-nobody-told-me/

(Sent from Flipboard)

Article: The Web's Copernican Moment

" The second wave is the rise of startups that are adopting a mobile-centric view of the world from the outset."

The Web's Copernican Moment
http://bigthink.com/ideas/37708

(Sent from Flipboard)

Article: Ancient Tablet Found: Oldest Readable Writing in Europe

I was surprised to learn this was NOT an iPad...

Ancient Tablet Found: Oldest Readable Writing in Europe
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110330-oldest-writing-europe-tablet-greece-science-mycenae-greek/

(Sent from Flipboard)

Article: A quintessence of dust

This is absolutely beautiful! Ebert has truly found his voice.

A quintessence of dust
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/03/a_quintessence_of_dust.html#more

(Sent from Flipboard)

A brilliant piece of motion graphics

Excellent use of palette and sound in illustrating on of the most powerful speeches in American history...

http://www.visualnews.com/2011/03/23/the-gettysburg-address-in-motion/

Online news overtakes paper - mobile claims half

You read it here first (in the paper tomorrow).

http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/15/online-news-overtakes-paper-and-nearly-hal...

On becoming an American

When I first saw the headline of this Slate article, I thought it would be another "everything you know is wrong" sort of thing. But actually it is an interesting, insightful and quite touching recollection of the citizenship naturalization process.

The Problem with Question 36

--Brad

Photo retouching revealed!

http://jezebel.com/#!5762410/models-real-faces-before-the-photoshop-magic

The unreal world of beauty photography exposed. Does knowing this make you any less insecure about your own appearance? Of course not!

Insights and Inside Info on IBM's meat-killing Jeopardy machine

Much of the power comes from IBM's carefully curated collection of data. Jennifer Chu-Carroll, one of the scientists who has worked on the project since it began over four years ago, says that Watson excels, predictably enough, when the answer is a detail stored in its database.

http://www.infoworld.com/t/business-intelligenceanalytics/how-ibms-watson-hammered-its-jeopardy-foes-798?source=IFWNLE_nlt_blogs_2011-02-16

Corollary article:

Lest we get too enamored with our technological prowess, however, the authors make some comparisons with biology. “To put our findings in perspective, the 6.4*10¹⁸ instructions per second that human kind can carry out on its general-purpose computers in 2007 are in the same ballpark area as the maximum number of nerve impulses executed by one human brain per second.”

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/world-computer-data/

Hipstamatic and the Death of Photojournalism [Photography]

Hipstamatic and the Death of Photojournalism [Photography]
GIZMODO | FEBRUARY 10, 2011
http://pulsene.ws/10T2w

Read more

Tetrachromacy In Humans

A timely article, given that we have just discussed human color vision and its relationship to RGB (red, green, blue) monitors in NET105S Computer Graphics. You see, students - I DON'T just make this stuff up!

Tetrachromacy In Humans

via NeuroLogica Blog by Steven Novella on 1/25/11

Are you a tetrachromat? Probably not, but it is possible that the rare person is, with the super mutant power of enhanced color vision. OK – I would rather have Wolverine’s regeneration, but enhanced color vision would be cool.

Color vision in vertebrates is a result of the cones in the retina. Vertebrate retinas have two types of light-sensing neurons: rods see in black and white but have good light sensitivity, and so are specialized for low-light (night) vision. Cones are less sensitive than rods, but they respond to a specific range of wavelengths of light – i.e. color. By combining the color information from different cones with different wavelength sensitivities the brain is able to perceive a wide range of colors.

Different groups of vertebrates have different numbers of cones, and therefore a different range and ability to discriminate colors. Birds, for example, are tetrachromats – they have four different cones and can see farther into the ultraviolet than humans. In fact the common ancestor of tetrapod vertebrates was likely a tetrachromat. Most mammals are dichromats with only two cones. It is thought this reduction occurred during the early years of mammal evolution when our mammal ancestors were nocturnal and burrowing animals, and so needed night vision more than color vision.

Many primates, however, (including humans and our close relatives) are trichromats with three cones, and therefore have rich color vision, but not as good as birds. In fact our understanding of the genetics of cones and color vision provided yet another compelling line of evidence for evolution. Trichromatic primates do not have the same cones as their vertebrate ancestors. They did not regain one of the two cones that were previously lost. Mammals have two cones – an autosomal S-cone (a short wavelength sensitive cone), and an X-linked L/M cone (sensitive to median and long wavelength visible light and located on the X-chromosome).

Sometime after the divergence of new-world and old-world monkey, an old-world monkey ancestor underwent gene duplication of the X-linked cone gene. At first these genes would have been identical, but over time they diverged to become distinct cones with separated wavelength sensitivity. In humans these cone genes are 98% identical. The cones added sensitivity to red wavelengths and resulted in trichromacy.

The research into the evolution of color vision has also led to some interested findings about human color vision specifically. It seems that humans have a significant degree of variability in the sensitivity of the cones. You have probably heard that some people are partially color blind, because it is standard (at least in the US) to test all school children for color blindness. But you may not have known that there is variability in the other direction as well, and that there are cases of tetrachromacy in humans.

One possible mechanism for this is that women may inherit two different versions of an X-linked gene for color vision. Women have two X-chromosomes, and in each cell one X-chromosome is inactivated essentially at random. So the retina would have a mixture (a mosaic) of cones from the two versions on the two different X-chromosomes, functionally producing four different cones in the retina.

In one study they found that most women with this condition did not demonstrate tetrachromacy on color vision tests – they still functionally were trichromats. This is likely due to the fact that the cones were not different enough. Although some hypothesize that the optic nerve or perhaps the brain combines the information from these distinct cones and treats them as one stream of color information. However, going against this hypothesis is the fact that 1 in 24 such women (according to one study) demonstrated four-dimensional (or tetrachromatic) color vision. This means that the optic nerve is capable of carrying tetrachromatic vision and the brain is capable of interpreting it.

There may be other mechanisms as well that could result in true tetrachromatic vision in humans. These cases demonstrate the plasticity of biology and the brain in particular. It also demonstrates that spontaneous mutations can result in the addition of function – in this case expanded color vision. Not only has this almost certainly happened in our evolutionary past, but it is happening today in living humans. This is not likely to result in the evolution of tetrachromacy in humans in general for two reasons. The first is that, in our modern society, there likely isn’t any selective advantage to tetrachromacy. Our primate ancestors probably benefited from trichromacy – the speculation being that it enabled them to forage for fruit and vegetables better. But unless we lived in a world dominated by fashion designers and painters, it’s hard to see how tetrachomacy would provide a significant survival advantaged.

Second, humans are a large out-bred population. This does not mean that we are not evolving, but it makes it very unlikely that such a mutation will significantly spread throughout the population. It could by chance become prominent in an isolated population – the so-called founder effect. This has been demonstrated for inherited diseases, but can also occur with favorable mutations like tetrachromacy.

For now tetrachromacy remains in isolated individuals who are lucky enough to have their own mutant power.

Snow blanket

Scene illuminated by solar LEDs and full moon, snapped with Camera +, no flash, cyanographic filter, on an iPhone 4.

--Brad

Article: 45365 :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews

45365 :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20100324%2FREVIEWS%2F100329984

(Sent from Flipboard)

Feature set of the next iPad looks awesome!

Check out this Joy of Tech comic, sent using The Funnies, possibly the best app for reading all your favourite comics on iPad. Get your copy today!

Article: The Certificate Solution

The Certificate Solution
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/12/07/certificate

(Sent from Flipboard)

The Mobile Photo Sharing Boom Is Here

History, trends and tools for mobile photo sharing.

The Mobile Photo Sharing Boom Is Here
MASHABLE! | DECEMBER 5, 2010
http://pulsene.ws/scKM

New mobile photo apps such as Instagram, Picplz and Path represent the next generation of photo sharing — where high ... Read more

Cartoon: Conspicuous Me

Interesting question - how much is too much?

Cartoon: Conspicuous Me
READWRITEWEB | DECEMBER 5, 2010
http://pulsene.ws/rZn4

I can directly thank two people for today's cartoon. One is Deb Ng, who tweeted this a few days ago: If I were to propose a ... Read more

Weebly beta testing mobile rendering

Those of you experimenting with Weebly for website creation will be interested to know that they are now beta testing rendering for mobile browsers. Appending /mobile to your weebly website address will open the site in the mobile version.

http://blog.weebly.com/2/post/2010/11/mobile-website-beta-testing.html

Generally its a stripped-down version of your site, but it does seem to get the basics right. Weebly developers are seeking feedback (that's what a beta test is for, after all) so try it out and let them know your experiences.

It will be nice for those of you developing sites for hand-off to the client to be able to tell them that their sites will be mobile-ready with no more work required on their part!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope everyone has a warm and safe holiday!

--Brad

Why Are the Rich So Good at the Internet?

Why Are the Rich So Good at the Internet?
FAST COMPANY | NOVEMBER 24, 2010
http://pulsene.ws/n9em

Pew Internet has released a report finding that income is the strongest predictor of whether, how often, and in what ways ...

New HTML5 image editor from Aviary

We've been looking at the growing field of online image editor, but they have all been Flash based. Aviary is developing an image editor written in HTML5, which makes it ultra lightweight and ultimately usable on mobile devices not all that Flash-based (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch anyone?). Interestingly, the editing tool has been developed as a widget that can be included in other websites through an embed code. I'll let you know how that works.

Pixlr out-Photoshops photoshop.com

In a comparison of online image editors (those that work solely through web browsers, Photoshop.com is a fairly disappointing entry compared to some others.

Among the fastest and most fully featured I've found is Pixlr. One of the Flash-based editors that seem to be one of the few reasons why Flash needs to hang around, Pixlr's interface looks very much like an older incarnation of Photoshop for Windows.

It supports advanced features such as layers, layer masks, blending options, cloning, filters, distort, vector type, and a surprisingly rich right-clickiness (contextual menus). (Side note: Pixlr's interface is so like Photoshop that we wonder how long until Adobe takes note.)

Pixlr is free to use, imports and saves to Flickr and other online sharing sites and social media apps, as well as to and from the desktop. You can load, edit and save images to and from your desktop without creating a Pixlr account. For most users, this may be more than enough image editing power, comparable to the desktop version of Photoshop Elements.

Article: Community College Times

Program portfolio review? Heck of an idea!

Community College Times
http://www.communitycollegetimes.com/article.cfm?ArticleId=3050

(Sent from Flipboard)

20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web

via 20thingsilearned.com

Google has created an excellent primer on the current state and recent history of web apps and such. Don't let the "comic book" look and feel throw you - this is good info in a concise and understandable format.

Also, it is a terrific example of HTML5 web development.

You want an iPad with that Hyundai?

Owner's manual done digital...

http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2010-11-17-hyundaiipad17_ST_N.htm

Check out this video!

NET student Amy Barr created this video for the contest.

View the video then vote for Amy!

I really dig this video from the AT&T Simplify Your Life video contest - check it out. It could win the $20,000 Grand Prize!

You can see the video here: http://tinyurl.com/2e323rq

eMarketing/Social Media/Web position

Interesting skill set....

>

Awesome name for a rock band...

Longchain Polymer and the Free Radicals

NET225S Writing for Electronic Media - Translation

NET225S Writing for Electronic Media - Translation

NET225S Writing for Electronic Media

 

Translation

 

 

Several events occurred to inspire this lesson in writing for electronic media. First, one day last week I had two messages in my In Box that made me pause:

 

One email alerted me to a comment on one of my blogs from a person in Russia (.ru) and the comment was posted in Cyrillic. The other email is from a student whose first language is Japanese, and in the “From” field, the name is rendered in Kanji.

 

A few days later, I encountered an article in my newsreader that claims that 70 percent of the world’s internet users do not speak English.

 

Now, what was really interesting is that the above-mentioned Russian comment wasn’t lost to me. With barely a thought, I copied the text from the email, opened Google Translate, pasted in the text, and read the result. And this seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Really, though, a tremendous amount of clever programming and computing power is behind this seemingly mundane act. (Google Translate, Babelfish.com and other translation services can translate entire websites - just paste the URL into the translate box.)

 

First, the program must recognize the alphabet, then the language, then the words, then the meaning, and render that into an entirely different language. It made sense. Here is the translation:

 

Excellent article! Many thanks to the author for interesting material. Good luck in development! :)

 

Machine translation (as opposed to human translation) has made great strides in the last few years, as processing power has increased, translation tables have been populated, and artificial intelligence models try to tease out contextual clues. Fluent and instantaneous machine translation has been a staple of science fiction for over a century, and we are now very close to its realization, both from language to language and mode to mode (text to speech or speech to text). There has even been experimentation of voice in language A to text in language B!

 

Machine translation breaks down when we use idioms - words that seem to have one definition but are used in a different way in conversation. Humans are pretty good at understanding idioms, but machines are terrible at it.

 

When we use idioms and metaphors to communicate, and a non-native speaker (or machine) tries to translate, it can sometimes sound like a Star Trek episode. For example, we commonly use the phrase “That’s big of you” when we mean someone is being generous (or sometimes we mean it sarcastically when they are not, but that’s a different problem!). Translating that phrase to Latvian, for instance, results in:

 

Tas ir liels jums

 

It is a word-for-word translation. But if we translate it right back to English, we get something else:

 

It's great for you

 

Uh, oh. “Big” became “great” and “of” became “for.” So let’s say we are in a business deal with a Latvian partner, and she makes an offer that is to our advantage. We reply “That’s big of you,” to indicate that we think she is being generous. However, on the other end, it sounds like we are saying, “That’s great for you!” meaning we think it is in HER favor. That could be taken as an insult, and the entire deal could collapse.

 

So, what can be done to avoid such miscommunication? Let’s try the translation again, this time being more precise with our language:

 

Original phrase: You are very generous

English to Latvian: Jūs esat ļoti atsaucīgs

Latvian to English: You're very generous

 

The more precise and non-idiomatic English phrase avoids the mis-translation seen in the earlier example.

 

The activity for you, then, is to identify five or so idiomatic or metaphorical phrases that you are prone to using. (Review your email archives for one source.) Enter them into a translation site and translate them into several languages, then back to English. See how they change, then try to re-write the original text to remove the idiom or metaphor and use direct language, and run them through the same translators to see whether you have succeeded. Post your phrases, translations, back-translations, revisions and re-translations to your blog site.

Google Docs makes it easy to create, store and share online documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

NET225S Writing for Electronic Media - Brevity

NET225 S Writing for Electronic Media - Brevity

NET225S Writing for Electronic Media

 

Brevity

 

 

One of the interesting consequences of the rise of social media - Facebook and Twitter, in particular - is the prevalence of the “micro-blog,” or a web posting that is extremely abbreviated.

 

Twitter’s post limit is 140 characters. Not words - characters! Including spaces and punctuation. Here’s what you can say in 140 characters:

 

How do you explain Twitter to someone who doesn't follow Twitter? Tweets are trail markers, saying "go this way to find interesting stuff."

 

Actually, that’s 139. The input field on Twitter’s web page counts them down for you.

 

What happens if you want to say more? One option is to use a blog+autopost option, such as Posterous. Here’s a longer post, as it appears on Twitter:

 

Springsteen lost and found: The Promise http://post.ly/198QF

 

That is actually just the title and a shortened URL link to the full blog post at http://edisonnet.posterous.com/springsteen-lost-and-found-the-promise. The URL itself is 69 characters - fully half of the allowed character count for a tweet (what an entry on Twitter is called). Posterous, in addition to posting the entry to blogs, Facebook, etc., will create a shortened URL to save character counts.

 

There are a number of URL shortening services, Bit.ly being perhaps the most popular. These work by building a simple table, using a uniquely generated string of letters and numbers and associating that string with a full URL. When someone clicks on (or enters) the shortened Bit.ly address, the site forwards the page request to the actual URL.

 

Another place characters count is in Facebook ads. Facebook ads are fairly inobtrusive, as web-based ads go. They appear on pages as relevant content, based on either the content of the posts or on information in the user’s profile settings. Here are two ads that appeared on one of my pages recently:

 

 

The disc golf ad appears because I am a member of the Edison Disc Golf fan page. The other is because I graduated from high school in 1977. Your ads will differ based on your preferences and settings. If you notice, just above the Disc Golf Superstore heading, there’s a link to “Create an Ad.” If you want to see something cool and magical happen, paste in a URL of your website (your blog URL is OK) and click the “Suggest an Ad” button. Facebook reads the content of the site and puts in a title, some body text and even a graphic!

 

Note that you have 25 characters for a headline, and 135 for the body text. Edit your title and body text to get a message to a prospective audience. Facebook will show you a preview of what it looks like:

 

 

The next step is to target your ads (you can still do all this without committing to a purchase). Try different keywords and demographics to see how that affects your potential audience.

 

 

If you are interested in how Facebook ad pricing works, click Continue. Otherwise, post a screen capture of your ads (try a few) and some information about your demographic selections to your blog. Specifically address how your ad copy targets the people you identified in your demographic selections.

 

Then try to recreate the ad in a Twitter entry, including a shortened URL to point people to your web address.

Google Docs makes it easy to create, store and share online documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

Springsteen lost and found: The Promise

Listen on NPR until Nov 16.

Tracks written, recorded, abandoned, shelved or reworked in the period between Born To Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, 1976-77, reveal the range of experimentation, mood, and even playfulness of Springsteen's band while they toured waited for lawyers to settle a lawsuit.

Man, was that really 35 years ago? When Springsteen released Born to Run, 35-year-old music was Artie Shaw and Bing Crosby.

How Much Math Do We Really Need?

Sent to you via Google Reader

How Much Math Do We Really Need?

Pickens writes "G.V. Ramanathan, a professor emeritus of mathematics, statistics and computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, writes in the Washington Post that although a lot of effort and money has been spent to make mathematics seem essential, unlike literature, history, politics and music, math has little relevance to everybody's daily life. 'All the mathematics one needs in real life can be learned in early years without much fuss,' writes Ramanathan. 'Most adults have no contact with math at work, nor do they curl up with an algebra book for relaxation.' Ramanathan says that the marketing of math has become similar to the marketing of creams to whiten teeth, gels to grow hair and regimens to build a beautiful body, but even with generous government grants over the past 25 years, countless courses, conferences, and books written on how to teach teachers to teach, where is the evidence that these efforts have helped students? A 2008 review by the Education Department found that the nation is at 'greater risk now' than it was in 1983, and the National Assessment of Educational Progress math scores for 17-year-olds have remained stagnant since the 1980s (PDF). Meanwhile those who do love math and science have been doing very well and our graduate schools are the best in the world. 'As for the rest, there is no obligation to love math any more than grammar, composition, curfew or washing up after dinner. Why create a need to make it palatable to all and spend taxpayers' money on pointless endeavors without demonstrable results or accountability?'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ruby shadow

As the last sunset of October faded, it cast a ruby shadow through cranberry glass.

--Brad

Article: Reframing College Completion

Reframing College Completion
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/10/28/metropolitan

(Sent from Flipboard)

Ghosts? Goblins? Pssh. This is REALLY scary [repost]

I've debate for several days now about whether and how to discuss this, and I've decided that a demonstration of how vulnerable popular web sites are to hacking may be the best thing.

It is common knowledge among internet security professionals, and many savvy users, that the most popular websites - Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. - are especially vulnerable because they do not force secure sessions. Basically what happens is that your initial login is encrypted, but then a session certificate ("cookie") is sent, often through unencrypted web space. If you are connecting to the service through an open, unsecured WiFi network, its like shouting your ATM PIN number across the cafeteria.

To demonstrate how easily this information can be snagged from the air, Eric Butler developed a "demonstration" application called "Firesheep." The Firefox plug-in takes only a minute or so to download and install, and then you are a hacker. No pesky terminal code or anything to worry about.

I have installed Firesheep on my desktop computer, which normally does not use WiFi, and I will be capturing my own accounts. Otherwise, what I am about to do technically violates the terms of service of about every service I am using. Be it known, though, that I am capturing only my own account data, and only for demonstration purposes.

Here is what Firesheep looks like when installed:

Now, I am going to connect my iPad to the same unsecured WiFi network ("Open Edison") and connect to my Facebook account using the Safari Mobile web browser (more about this in a minute). Here goes....

Pop. Almost instantly my account name and service appears. It even shows my profile picture.

If I double-click the entry in the Firesheep pane, I am instantly logged into Facebook using those credentials. From there I have complete account access.

Logging into other services adds them to the Firesheep pane:

And presumably they will stay there as long as I want them. There is no warning from any of the services that my account has been "hacked," because as far as they know, I am the owner of the accounts and nothing is amiss.

Now, interestingly, a few experiments show that logging onto those same services on the same unsecured network, but using an iPad app rather than the generic web browser, hides the account session cookie from Firesheep. For example, if I use the "Facebook app" Firesheep detects the account, because it is just a web app and launches the Safari Mobile browser. But connecting to my Facebook stream through Flipboard hides the session from Firesheep. And on a secured WiFi network (basically one that you have to log into) Firesheep is unable to detect the account cookies.

I'm not sharing this to turn you all into hackers. I'm doing it to make you think about how and where you use your online accounts. While Firesheep comes preloaded with scripts for detecting about a dozen of the most popular web services, "developers" can write their own (again, presumably to test the security of their own services, but then who knows?).

For more about Firesheep and a discussion about implications of web security go to Eric Butler's website http://codebutler.com/firesheep.

Ghost? Goblins. Pssh. This is REALLY scary....

I've debate for several days now about whether and how to discuss this, and I've decided that a demonstration of how vulnerable popular web sites are to hacking may be the best thing.

It is common knowledge among internet security professionals, and many savvy users, that the most popular websites - Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. - are especially vulnerable because they do not force secure sessions. Basically what happens is that your initial login is encrypted, but then a session certificate ("cookie") is sent, often through unencrypted web space. If you are connecting to the service through an open, unsecured WiFi network, its like shouting your ATM PIN number across the cafeteria.

To demonstrate how easily this information can be snagged from the air, Eric Butler developed a "demonstration" application called "Firesheep." The Firefox plug-in takes only a minute or so to download and install, and then you are a hacker. No pesky terminal code or anything to worry about.

I have installed Firesheep on my desktop computer, which normally does not use WiFi, and I will be capturing my own accounts. Otherwise, what I am about to do technically violates the terms of service of about every service I am using. Be it known, though, that I am capturing only my own account data, and only for demonstration purposes.

Here is what Firesheep looks like when installed:

[cid:0A882D1A-7975-43D5-A110-E0463E7B80A8@edisonohio.edu]

Now, I am going to connect my iPad to the same unsecured WiFi network ("Open Edison") and connect to my Facebook account using the Safari Mobile web browser (more about this in a minute). Here goes....

Pop. Almost instantly my account name and service appears. It even shows my profile picture.

[cid:B83C05DD-D116-45EB-96F5-166A75A99BE8@edisonohio.edu]

If I double-click the entry in the Firesheep pane, I am instantly logged into Facebook using those credentials. From there I have complete account access.

Logging into other services adds them to the Firesheep pane:

[cid:B15C94BF-A8E3-4FED-ABBF-56D5510A5B16@edisonohio.edu]

And presumably they will stay there as long as I want them. There is no warning from any of the services that my account has been "hacked," because as far as they know, I am the owner of the accounts and nothing is amiss.

Now, interestingly, a few experiments show that logging onto those same services on the same unsecured network, but using an iPad app rather than the generic web browser, hides the account session cookie from Firesheep. For example, if I use the "Facebook app" Firesheep detects the account, because it is just a web app and launches the Safari Mobile browser. But connecting to my Facebook stream through Flipboard hides the session from Firesheep. And on a secured WiFi network (basically one that you have to log into) Firesheep is unable to detect the account cookies.

I'm not sharing this to turn you all into hackers. I'm doing it to make you think about how and where you use your online accounts. While Firesheep comes preloaded with scripts for detecting about a dozen of the most popular web services, "developers" can write their own (again, presumably to test the security of their own services, but then who knows?).

For more about Firesheep and a discussion about implications of web security go to Eric Butler's website http://codebutler.com/firesheep.>

See and download the full gallery on posterous

What Senior College really means

I have just come from leading the third session of a Senior College mini-course at Dorothy Love Retirement Community in Sidney. About 20 active seniors attended the three Tuesday evening sessions. The topic: Bananas. I decided to take a single, everyday subject - one we all take for granted - and explore it from a multi-disciplinary approach. So, over the course of three weeks we looked at bananas from a scientific, historical, political, economic, cultural, and personal perspective. We made connections from politics to science, from economics to music, and back again.

At the end of tonight's session, one of the participants came up to chat. She smiled and said thank you. Then she said she was born in '18. She had lost her husband of 65 years in June, and she is trying to get out and do more things. And seeing that I wasn't getting it, she said, "college was never an option for me. I was born in Sioux City, and had to go west to find work. I'm grateful for this opportunity to experience what college might have been like for me."

Wow! Let's do it again! Soon.

WidgetBox Mobile simplifies web app development

WidgetBox Mobile is offering a service for designing and deploying web apps for mobile devices, independent of platform, using HTML5.

The service has a monthly fee, but is worth watching as a bellwether of other online app design+deploy options.

Hear Shakespeare in the original pronunciation

University of Kansas production revives 16th century pronunciations to make characters not sound like Gandalf.

Article: Have Scientists Finally Discovered Evidence for Psychic Phenomena?!

A Cornel parapsychology researcher says experiments suggest extroverts can perform better now on tests they'll study for later, and become aroused by future porn.

Have Scientists Finally Discovered Evidence for Psychic Phenomena?!
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-social-thinker/201010/have-scientists-finally-discovered-evidence-psychic-phenomena

(Sent from Flipboard)

Article: The Goldmine Of Opportunities In Gov 2.0

The Goldmine Of Opportunities In Gov 2.0
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/23/the-goldmine-of-opportunities-in-gov-2-0/

(Sent from Flipboard)

Article: Apple reinvents software distribution

Apple haters already be hatin', but my guess is SteveCo will need to invest in a few more trucks to haul the cash to the bank.

Apple reinvents software distribution

http://blogs.yankeegroup.com/2010/10/21/apple-reinvents-software-distribution/

I'm already a convert to one-click buying thanks to my iTunes-iPhone-iPad experience. A couple of weeks ago my Mom was telling me about a book she thought I'd like (Devil in the White City) and she was holding a trade paper copy of it as she sat next to me. My instinct was to search the Amazon Kindle store, one-click buy it and I was reading the author's preface while we were still discussing it.

She said "Why didn't you just take my copy?" Um........

(Sent from Flipboard)

Article: Google Earth: This Is (1945) London

Google Earth: This Is (1945) London
http://searchengineland.com/google-earth-this-is-1945-london-53641

(Sent from Flipboard)

The Social Network - see it!

Just came from screening of The Social Network. Very, very good movie.

Don't know how "true" it is. Don't care. True enough. Immediate. Familiar and strange.

Proves nerds can be both jerks and successful. And money is not always the driving force. Sometimes it is a byproduct.

Food court promotion fail

Have they thought this through?

--Brad

Student pranks prof - sweet!

A student buries the lyrics of the infamous "Rickroll" in a term paper. Awesome!

Be sure to read the comments - especially you, teachers!

I did two similar things. In high school, for a paper about Leonardo da Vinci's "mirror writing," I wrote the paper in mirror writing. (Yes, that was when we turned in hand-written papers. No, I'm not as old as Da Vinci.) Got an A - teacher used a mirror to read it.

In college, in a class called "16th Century Non-Dramatic Literature" (seriously) I wrote my final exam entirely in limerick form. Got an A. Prof was as bored as I was, apparently.

FaceTime comes to the Mac

Buried in the news reports coming from Apple's "Back to the Mac" announcements of new MacBook Air models and a preview of Lion and iLife '11 is word that FaceTime is now available for the Mac in Public Beta.

Install is simple, and FaceTime integrates with your Address Book contacts to make calling easy.

Of course, the first person I called was... ME!

[cid:A9F1F6A1-6CB2-4C86-AFCB-1DA5CBE37A5C@edisonohio.edu]

The significance of course is that the desktop for Mac client effectively quadruples the number of FaceTime-ready devices, as all iMacs, MacBooks, MacBook Airs, etc. running Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6.4 or later) potential clients.

Tagging email autoposts

* Add tags to your post by email (and bookmarklet) by entering them in the subject line: ((tags: New York, food)).

More Posterous email tips.

Pandora find of the week - Tinsley Ellis Live: Highwayman

I was about to recommend a brand new collaboration between Elton John and Leon Russell, "The Union," released Oct 19 2010 on the Mercury label, and then, at lunch, on Pandora up pops an 8-minute burning blues guitar live performance of "Real Bad Way" by Atlanta songwriter-bluesman Tinsley Ellis.

Ooooh, baby! Straight to iTunes for a download of "Highwayman" (2005, Alligator Records) to the iPhone. If you dig blues-rock, guitar, Hammond B3 and electric bass, get this album. At least get the track. You owe it to your ears. Goosebumps!

Dervish! Live streaming video of traditional Irish music from venues around Ireland

Live streaming video of traditional Irish music from venues around Ireland
http://www.livetrad.com/dervish/

(Sent from Flipboard)

Birds

Check out this video on YouTube:

--Brad

SAFETY!

--Brad

9 Free Resources for Learning Photoshop

9 Free Resources for Learning Photoshop
MASHABLE! | OCTOBER 8, 2010
http://pulsene.ws/86nD

This post originally appeared on My Life Scoop, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about using social media and ...

New map of the social universe

The genius that is xkcd does it again!

http://www.xkcd.com/802/

Coming soon to every answer to the question "What does the Internet look like?"

Describe your most rewarding learning experience

The National Institute for the Study of Organizational Development (NISOD) has announced an essay contest for community college students. Describe your most rewarding learning experience with a faculty, staff or administrator at your college. You could win up to $1,000!

Full details and contest rules in the link.

http://www.nisod.org/student_essay/

Submission Deadline

November 8, 2010  (Midnight–Central Standard Time)

Essay Topic

Describe your most rewarding learning experience with a faculty, staff, or administrator at your college.

$3,000+ in Prizes

$1,000 to the Student Author $1,000 to the Faculty/Staff/Administrator Featured in the Essay Complimentary 2011–2012 NISOD Membership to the Student’s College ($1,000 value) Click here for a list of additional prizes

7 Essential Skills You Didn't Learn in College

7 Essential Skills You Didn't Learn in College
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/PeoDifR2X2I/

Shared via Pulse

"There are more writing opportunities than ever, but they require skills that Strunk and White never dreamed of. This course will teach you how to Photoshop images to create a narrative, edit a 20-second YouTube video, compress your thoughts into 140 characters (or clarify them into a PowerPoint presentation that won’t put your audience to sleep), write a wiki entry that encourages other people to edit and adapt it, and ensure your work goes viral, turning readers into vectors for your ideas."

If this sounds a bit familiar to some of you, it's because this hypothetical course in Wired - Writing for New Forms - tracks pretty much point for point my NET225S Writing for Electronic Media course.

Pumpkin Patch

Tipp City mum festival.

--Brad

Video: The Future of the Book. on Vimeo

The Future of the Book. on Vimeo

(Sent from Flipboard)

Make your website mobile-friendly

Developer_World posts an excellent tutorial for making your website mobile-friendly.

If you're not thinking about a mobile audience yet, bookmark this article - you will be eventually!

Disclaimer: this body is artificially thin

When does fashion photography cross the line from "enhancement" to "harm"? That's the question officials in Britain will take up in October when they call for fashion photogs to take a light hand on the airbrushing, claiming that the wispy models seen in fashion mags and elsewhere represent body types that are unusual, unhealthy and unattainable by most women.

Now the British government is taking up their cause. Next month, officials are sitting down with advertisers, fashion editors and health experts to discuss how to curb the practice of airbrushing and promote body confidence among girls and women. If the campaigners get their way, fashion ads and magazines in Britain may soon have to label retouched photos to warn people that the perfect bodies they see are but digital fantasies. 

Read through to the article and tell me what you think.

Assignment - Writing With Keywords for Search Engine Optimization

A new assignment has been posted to Blackboard:

Search Engine Optimization is the process of maximizing your site’s chances of appearing at or near the top of searches in services such as Google. While no single strategy can guarantee best results, there are a few things you can do when writing copy for your site to improve your search results.

Please read the Mashable article to get an appreciation for how intricate this process can be. Then, on the blog site you set up for this class, create a new entry. In that new entry, write a brief description of one of the following topics for a hypothetical website (you may need to do some research, and if you want to choose your own topic, please clear it with me first via email):

• Your site is a review site of the week’s best new independent music;
• Your site is to help publicize a Farmer’s Market/Food Co-Op in your community;
• Your site is for collectors of antique bicycles
• Your site promotes a “green” lifestyle

Write an appropriate blog title with keywords. Include keywords in your entry’s tags. Write about 3-4 paragraphs (approximate) using appropriate keywords in the text.

When you have completed your entry, post it to your blog, and create a second entry. In the second entry, explain how you determined what SEO keywords you would emphasize. Test your keywords by searching for them in Google and link to the top three search results. Do your keywords seem to be directing searchers to the appropriate topic? If not, why not?

Google Docs editing coming to iPad

Finally! Geez!

Google Docs editing coming to iPad
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/09/20/google-docs-editing-coming-to-ipad/

Shared via Pulse

WOW! Try This! Interactive movie based on you!

Arcade Fire and filmmaker Chris Milk have created an experimental web-based film called "The Wilderness Downtown" that uses HTML5, Google Maps and Streetview to incorporate scenes from an address you enter into a multi-windowed web video.

http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

The display of interactive elements and how they draw you into the video are stunning - and frankly a bit spooky. It's processor intensive, so use your best hardware and broadband, but definitely try it for yourself.

Ebert, film and blogging

Roger Ebert raises the bar on film criticism and the blog publishing form in a stunningly beautiful and insightful review of Werner Herzog's documentary 3D film "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" from the Toronto International Film Festival.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/09/shadows_on_the_walls_of_our_ca.html

Ebert draws from his vast knowledge of film craft to weave a story of filmmaking, human origins, and why art matters.

 

Write short

Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites encourage brief messages (sometimes called "micro-blogging").

Facebook even allows you to create ads, but these ads have a severe character limit - 25 in the heading, 135 in the body, or 160 total, which is the same as Twitter.

The advantage is that the "click-through" link doesn't count toward your character limit, and you can attach a picture. You can try Facebook ads yourself without actually committing to running (and paying for) them. As you compose the ad, a preview shows up in the window. Try creating some ads for your own interests and screen-grab the results and post them here.

Here's one of mine.

Is it easy? Hard? Why?

Reading and comments

I have added all of your blogs to my blog's sidebar as a "blogroll." You can use that to quickly get to each others' blog sites.

Please read your fellow students' blogs and offer comments. I have commented on each of your most recent blog posts, and have tried to match my comments to your posts. If your post was short,  my comment was short; if long and complex, my comment was long and complex. That's one of the unofficial "rules" of the internet etiquette - measured response.

As a blog author, you control who is allowed to comment and how. If you prefer, you can "moderate" comments, meaning you must approve them before allowing them to be posted. Is that a good idea? Why or why not?

Keep posting! Just making yourself do it on a regular basis is a good habit to build. Eventually it will become part of you and you'll find yourself posting to your blog almost effortlessly.

So, what are you reading???

One of the more common uses for blogs is to let others know what you're reading, and often it's other blogs.

Some of my favorite blogs I read are:

Neurologica, by Dr. Stephen Novella.

NeuroLogica Blog

Maybe the best, most prolific columnist on topics of skepticism and rational thinking. Dr. Novella regularly fillets magical thinking, sloppy logic and pseudoscience.

Weblog-ed by Will Richardson

Weblogg-ed

Will is an educator who has taken the horns of this whole "read-write web" thing. He's seeing amazing things at the elementary and high school level, and this has implications for higher ed and for web designers in general. Probably not of interest if you're not an educator, but he does have links to lots of cool stuff.

Fatal Exception by Neil McAllister

Fatal Exception | Neil McAllister | InfoWorld

McAllister is a columnist for InfoWorld. He writes about trends in web programming and development. For anyone considering a career in web development or programming, McAllister is a must-read.

So, what are YOU reading?

Post a blog entry with some of your favorite information sites on the web.

--Brad

Welcome to the Class Blog!

Welcome to the blog site for NET115 Writing for Electronic Media. You will create your own blog sites and you will be using these to write, post, read and comment on your classmates' blogs.

I'm creating a "blog roll" - a list of other blogs that I read - and I will include your blog addresses so you can find each others'. I encourage you to add your own favorite blogs to your blog roll.