One of my readers passed on these links to two basketball-related videoclips. Thought I’d share them with the broader audience.
After watching the March Madness clip, I was wondering if these guys are really that good. Or, was the video clip doctored up? What do you think?
A growing number of professors are turning class lectures into podcasts - free audio recordings that students can download to their iPods or other portable players - students can skip the lecture hall but still hear the lecture. Professors have posted lecture notes, PowerPoint slides and other written class material online for years, but instructors only recently began testing the best uses of the popular audio technology.
Supporters say podcasts help students who miss a class or want to review the material, while professors get points for being flexible and using the latest, hippest gadget. More traditional academics fear that by listening to lectures on the run, students will miss out on learning that can happen only when students and instructors come together.
A few blog related numbers came across my desk, so I thought to pass them on.
The Blog Herald has a brandnew count on the number of blogs worldwide. There are two sets of figures: based on blogs per country, the figure would be around 75 million, which is a patchy figure because it is difficult to count blogs based on the country of origin due to the worldwide phenomenon of people using US companies for hosting their blogs. Based on blogs created at major hosts (a more accurate measure) the figure is actually 134-144 million. So, a round 100 million + blogs figure seems accurate.
The Blog Count is about counting blogs, not active blogs, legitimate blogs (vs spam blogs) or bloggers. Are there a lot of inactive blogs? Yes. Are there a lot of spam blogs? Yes as well. Indeed, maybe 40-50% of every blog on Googles Blogspot domain is a spam blog, but the vast majority of blogs out there aren’t.
Germany statistically has one of the lowest number of blogs per head of population in Europe according to the last Blog Herald Blog Count in July, and notably lags behind its neighbours France and Poland.
Deutsche Welle reports that Germany is still “in the teething stages when it comes to political online journals” however a number of blogs are now starting to be heard, including kamikaze-demokratie. Read more…
The first news item mentioned spam blogs on freely hosted services such as Blogspot and Blogsome. Oftentimes, the spammer leaves no personally identifiable information in any of the profiles or on the blog itself (duh!). Let’s assume for the moment that a spammer infringes your registered trademark, for example by registering “generalmotors.blogspot.com”. Blogger refuses to get involved and remove the infringing site, asking you to contact the spammer directly. Yeah, right. Does anyone have advice on how to proceed?
Macworld writer Dori Smith discussed in the November issue the best blogging tools for the Mac, although I argue that the article is applicable to other platforms (Windows, Linux) as well, since all applications are maintained through a browser interface - hence, it doesn’t matter where you are or what computer you are using.
“According to one recent estimate, a new Weblog is created every second. Everyone from your geeky IT coworker to your Uncle Marvin has one already. So why don’t you? If you’ve got something - anything - you want to share with the rest of the world, a blog is the place to do it. And it’s never been easier to jump on the blogging bandwagon. The tools and services required are inexpensive (and often free) and as simple (or as powerful) as you want.”
“Right now, the blogging tools most popular with Mac users are TypePad and Movable Type, both from Six Apart; Blogspot and Blogger, from Blogger (now part of Google); and WordPress, an open-source tool.”
“These five tools range in power and complexity from simple-but-limited (TypePad, Blogger, and Blogspot) to do-pretty-much-anything-but-may-require-coding (WordPress). Movable Type is somewhere between these two extremes.”
“Two of them—TypePad and Blogspot—also provide the hosting services you need in order to put your blog on the Web. The other three require that you arrange the hosting yourself (though that’s not especially hard to do). (…)”
After discussing all other options, Smith eventually makes it to the premier software tool for blogging and content-management: “WordPress is known for its easy setup. But at the same time, it’s the most powerful of these blogging tools. While WordPress is accessible enough for intermediate bloggers, advanced Web authors will really appreciate it.”
“WordPress is written in PHP and is an open-source app, so its code is freely accessible. And an active developer community works constantly to improve and enhance it. If you want something unusual, there’s a good chance that somebody has already written it (…).”
An October 8 article by Damon Darlin in the NY Times discussed why printing photos at home is an uneconomical alternative when compared to getting it done at a retailer’s photo lab.
Prices of printers have dropped up to 30 percent in the last few months thanks to a savage price war. Is this then the time to buy a photo printer for your home?
After all, for about $200 you can get the Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 8250 that in just 14 seconds spits out a photo that equals the quality of those coming back from the photo finisher in an hour. For the same price, Canon’s iP6600D prints a borderless 4-by-6-inch photo in 46 seconds, but also prints on both sides of dual-side photo paper.
The catch is that after you make an initial investment, you are going to pay at least 28 cents a print, if you believe the manufacturers’ math. It could be closer to 50 cents a print if you trust the testing of product reviewers at Consumer Reports.
In the meantime, the price of printing a 4-by-6-inch snapshot at a retailer’s photo lab, like those inside a Sam’s Club, is as low as 13 cents. Snapfish.com, an online mail-order service, offers prints for a dime each if you prepay. At those prices, why bother printing at home? (…)
It should not take an advanced business degree (to understand) (…) how printer manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard and Canon make their money. They use the “razor blade” business model. It is named from the marketing innovation of King C. Gillette, who in the early years of the last century sold razors for a low price but made all his money on the high-margin disposable razor blades. Printer manufacturers also use this tied-product strategy.
Printers return relatively low profit margins. But the ink, ounce for ounce, is four times the cost of Krug Clos du Mesnil Champagne, which sells for around $425 a bottle. Ink is about the same price as Joy perfume, considered to be one of the more pricey fragrances, at $158 for a 2.5-ounce bottle.
They don’t just get you on the ink. Some photo printers force you to buy the cartridge and paper together in a “value pack.” The ink or printer ribbon can run out before you are through with half the paper, so you risk building an ever-increasing stack of unused photo paper. (…)
That’s not to say that home printers are always an uneconomical proposition. If you want an 8-by-10-inch photo, a home printer will do it for about a third of the $3 a copy Walgreens charges. But before you make the plunge on these specialized printers, you should ask yourself how often are you going to do that kind of printing. Dimitrios Delis, who tracks facts and figures for the Photo Marketing Association, says that 85 percent of all prints are the classic 4 by 6 inches.
Any time you print in volumes - like Christmas cards or the Little League team picture - you’ll be better off having the retailer handle it. “If they want to make many prints at home, it is not economical or convenient,” Mr. Delis said (…).
Read the full article…
“Is there a way to secure an archive with a password?” asked Macworld reader Alberto Martinez recently. I had a similar question, especially when it comes to making backup CDs of your data. Ideally, you store those backups in a secure place other than your home. But, what if someone else swipes them and uses them? Encryption of your data would be nice in such a case.
According to Macworld author Christopher Breen, “If you select a file in the Finder and choose File: Create Archive, you won’t see an encryption option. But you can use Apple’s Disk Utility to create encrypted disk-image archives. I ran through the process, and eventually ended up with an error message: “no mountable file system”. So, below are revised instructions on how to get around this.
New technology - the Internet, e-commerce, blogging are but a few examples - has oftentimes the potential to vastly affect how society operates. Just think of how much time we now spend dealing with email - to the point that no one bothers to even walk across the aisle to the next cubicle. At the same time, new technology nicely plays into the hands of evil-doers as PC Magazine’s Erik Larkin reports in a special 5-part series on the Web of Crime.
“Attacks on personal and business PCs aren’t just being committed by amateurs anymore. You - or your business - may be the next target of a new breed of professional Internet criminals, who now apply underworld tactics to the Web. These cybercrooks use malicious software such as viruses and worms to generate illegal profits. One security expert we interviewed called this type of crime the cocaine trade of the new century.” In his five-part series, Erik shows you the global scope of the problem and how innocent PCs are turned into zombie armies used to threaten and extort money from businesses.
I am sure that the practice of placing bubble stickers on ads all over the city must be illegal, but it is nevertheless funny to see how people respond to the constant media bombardment.
