Category — Software and Culture

I made it to newark airport… My only hangup of course is that is did something to my back yesterday afternoon and basically haven’t slept much, but eh, that only caused me to walk up and down 34th street for 10-15 minutes wondering where the heck the penn station door was, because I’d never been in before, eventually i just decided to walk against traffic and voila, it was at the end of stream of people. Beyond that, the symposium looks interesting, I’m really happy that I was invited even though… it means flying across the u.s. 2 times in 48 hours so that i can be back in time for the digital archives class.

Governance and conflict resolution in probably a better construct for the Linden Lab meeting, but I think that I’ll easily fit in, and make some of my points. The symposium is all day tomorrow. Tonight I’m trying to meet up with my friend and colleague David Silver, whose teaching until 8pm.

Net Neutrality Song:
A new, downloadable song by Kay Hanley, Jill Sobule, and Michelle Lewis in favor of net neutrality. Nice, but the chorus sounds too much like it’s going to be “Hey Mr. Tambourine Man.”

And coming on the heels of this gloomy analysis of the congressional vote — heck, they even got Alcee Hastings to vote against it! — it does put one in mind of Tom Lehrer’s Folk Song Army (”they may have won all battles, but we had all the good songs”).
in favor of net neutrality

————

i think it does sound a bit like mr. tamboruine man… but it is at least it is an interesting take on a musical protest against the powers-that -be changing the rules about the internet.

snubster – beta:

the snubster difference
Aren’t you tired of all of those people out there trying to grab
all of these fake friends online? It’s all about how many people
can I pretend to be friends with to make myself feel better.
Welcome to a better way at snubster.

—-

solid.

bridges.org:

Comparison
Study of Free/Open Source and Proprietary Software in an African
Context: Implementation and Policy-making to Optimise Community Access
to ICT
The Software
Comparison research project provides
the needed background information and advice to
people who want to make
sound software choices for public computer labs in Africa.
The
final report represents the first comprehensive analysis of software
choices
in the African public-access context. The study looked at 121 computer
labs in Namibia, South Africa and Uganda, examining the range of
factors that affect software choices; the realities of the current
situation in Africa; and the long-term implications of software choices
for Africa. This
research was led by bridges.org and supported by Collaborating Partners
SchoolNet Africa, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC)
and the Open Society Institute (OSI). In addition, a number of
field-study partners provided access to computer labs for the study. A
high-level
Advisory Group, comprised of experts in the field from both sides of
the debate, was actively involved in the study on a regular
basis: reviewing project documents (methodology, report drafts etc.),
providing feedback and additional resources.

——

interesting study

New Open Access Journal for human-centered ICT research:

——

interesting new journal.

i4donline.net ~ News Archive:
The International Open Source Network, an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme, has produced a 48-page primer on ‘Free/Open Source Software and Education’, which is now available for free public download. The primer is intended to help policy-makers and decision-makers understand the potential use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in education.

———-

this is good news

Literary tests for a digital world:
The Information and Communications Technology literacy assessment is intended to measure students’ ability to manage exercises like sorting e-mail messages.
——-
is this something we really want measured by testing?

Google comfort button : ‘The infamous “I…:
Google comfort button: ‘The infamous “I feel lucky” is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.’ [via visakopu.net]

This is very interesting…. it seems to me to be sort of like when you walk down the street and something is missing, like a store closed, or perhaps they moved the newspaper machines or something, just something ‘not quite right’.

:::: open ::::: The Digital Artisans Manifesto: “We are not the passive victims of uncontrollable market forces and technological changes. Without our daily work, there would be no goods or services to trade. Without our animating presence, information technologies would just be inert metal, plastic and silicon. Nothing can happen inside cyberspace without our creative labour. We are the only subjects of history.
“

(Via .)

it is worth a read.

Something for the Text Fan…: “‘NanoBlogger is a small weblog engine written in Bash for the command line. It uses common UNIX tools such as cat, grep and sed.’…”

(Via Words – big ones and little ones….)