Monday, January 29, 2007

Linux Foundation and Linux Mobile Foundation established

It is so nice to see the biggest companies in the world do something with the Microsoft constantly trying to lock-in consumers, businesses, and governments with their proprietary "industrial standards". I am especially happy with this list from the Linux Foundation:
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Members (impressive industrial support behind GNU/Linux)

And a few days later, these well-known companies formed the Linux Mobile Foundation:
Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics, and Vodafone

LiMo Foundation

Adobe to Contribute Entire PDF Specification to AIIM - ISO

Good news from Adobe today, it is always good with freedom, and it feels a little bit easier to breeth now. Here is a comment from the standards blog:

With the full specification in that state, the PDF formats will once and for all abandon the rather confusing, schizophrenic existence that they have maintained to date.

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Andbudsrunder på universiteter

Anbudsrunder i det offentlege er trege saker, og ofte vert kravspesifikasjonar skrive av folk som ikkje har fylgd så godt med dei siste åra, dvs. folk som oppdagar mashup-omgrepet for fyrste gong slik rundt 2010:-) ikkje noko negativt med folka, mange av mine nærmaste vener er ikkje akkurat teknofrikar. Her er ein artikkel om "It's Learning" frå NTNU, og her ser ein at anbudsrunda var for fem år sidan, og ein kan rekne med at dei hadde brukt eit par år på å vurdere tilboda, samt at det var litt etterslep på kunnskapen om alternativa. Det er kanskje 7-8 år gamle vurderingar som vart lagt til grunn for at studentane i 2007 skal bruke denne læringsplattforma. Er dette noko å halde på med? Kunne ein ikkje berre gå over til Google Apps for education med ein gong, og få alt saman implementert gratis på eit par veker, og ende opp med 2007-teknologi som fungerar utruleg bra?

– Det vi kan si er at vi har en kontrakt vi er fornøyde med, og som er nøye vurdert ved inngåelse. Den var vurdert etter en anbudsrunde i 2002, hvor It's Learning kom best ut, sier hun.

Akademia ikkje lenger i tet

JonblOGG har eit veldig bra innlegg om e-læring og korleis utdanningssektoren ikkje greier å henge med her. Eg meinar at Universitetene må opne seg opp mot omverda i langt større grad. Det burde til dømes verte eit viktig moment for karaktergrunnlaget å skrive oppgåver som har aktualitet, og gje karakter på korleis studentane greier å tileigne seg lærdom frå kva som foregår på forskningsfronten. Ein kan godt seie at slik har det alltid vore, men når ein går nærmare etter i saumane så er det lite premiering for å vite om forskning som ikkje er publisert i vanlege trykte bøker og tidsskrifter. Ein kunne også arrangere videokonferansar for studentar, og bruke dette som grunnlag for eksamensoppgåver. For samfunnsøkonomi kunne ein til dømes laga ei konferanse med Standford om bruken av konkurranseloven mot XAML er samfunnsøkonomisk optimal? Dette ville vore ypperleg trening i å bruke den samfunnsøkonomiske verktykassa, og studentane ville måtte bruke bloggar og forum for å gripe an problemet, akkurat som samfunnsøkonomane i den verkelege verda må gjere. Dessutan er det vanskelegare å jukse sidan det ofte er lite ferdig stoff på slike nye tema. Her er nokre gode refleksjonar frå Jon Hoem:

"Samarbeidslæring står for tiden sterkt innen sosiokulturell og konstruktivistisk pedagogisk teori, en retning som er populær ved mange tradisjonelle undervisningsinstitusjoner.

Problemet med tradisjonell samarbeidslæring er at den ikke skalerer særlig godt."

"En rekke kommersielle aktører har skjønt dette, at brukeraktivitet, sosiale funksjoner, og brukergenerert innhold har egenskaper som folk finner stadig mer interessante. I første omgang når dette underholdningsmediene, noe som understrekes av at både avissalget og fjernsynsbruken går dramatisk ned. Dette handler om tidsbruk og informasjonstilgang, en utvikling som også vil påvirke utdanningssektoren, selv om denne lever en ganske beskyttet tilværelse."



The IT-crisis

Service oriented architecture is a very interesting topic these days. The institutional repository of the University of Oslo does only contain 25 doctoral thesis, and nothing is searchable via search engines. Compared with the institutional repositories at Stockholm University in Sweden, the University of Oslo missed perhaps 150 000 downloads of doctoral thesis in 2006. Instead they have to wait till they eventually are published in journals or books, and that takes on average a couple of years. I wonder how many citations these thesis missed?

Instead of building up a working institutional repository the it-appartment are more concerned about other day to day work. Is that a good investment? Dave Girouard in Google has some interesting remarks about this phenomenon:

"Google’s general manager of enterprise business, Dave Girouard, says a “crisis” in IT is preventing organisations from pursuing the type of innovations that allow businesses to grow."

"“Information security, as critical as it is, needs to be taken care of by organisations who live and die by it, who invest the money, time, resources and staff. Why should every company in the world have to build up their own expertise and have to maintain servers and provide security?”"

Thursday, January 25, 2007

PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access

"Although Dezenhall declines to comment on Skilling and his other clients, his firm, Dezenhall Resources, was also reported by Business Week to have used money from oil giant ExxonMobil to criticize the environmental group Greenpeace."
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/n7126/full/445347a.html

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

The new era has begun

"It's big stuff says my wise futurist friend Paul Saffo - a long time resident in, and observer of, California's Silicon Valley.

He divides the 20th century economy into two long eras: 50 years of mass production where the worker was the centre of things and the time clock was the symbol of the age. Then as supply caught up with demand across the developed world, the consumer society with the credit card as the symbol.

But after those two 50-year eras, we're entering something else, just as the 21st century starts, says Paul Saffo."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6280489.stm

Monday, January 22, 2007

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access

Talking about justice, we should have an association like this in Norway too!

The GNU/Linux revolution?

"That said, I assume that ports have already been completed on most of those programs on the list "just in case." If so, the tide toward a Linux desktop OS could happen so fast—overnight, in fact—that everyone would be shocked."
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2086366,00.asp

Talking about ICTs and development

"The bulk of these efforts, when co-ordinated, have brought together computer scientists, policy analysts and engineers to mould solutions that make a difference to the lives of ordinary people. At the same time, however, academics from the legal, human and social sciences have also attempted to forge paths that make optimal use of ICTs for meaningful transformation. Many have argued that the best ICT solutions, with free and open source software, among them, will remain meaningless without adequate understanding of how pathways of knowledge and empowerment work."

It is for sure one big challenge to understand how to introduce these new instrument into the society.

Read more about this in the excellent magazine Tectonic

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Linux Foundation to rival Microsoft

This is good news. The OSDL and FSG has now merged to the Linux Foundation.

“It’s really a two-horse race now, with computing dominated by two operating-system platforms, Linux and Windows,” said James Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation.
New York Times

"Ledere er for tunge på tråden" står det i Aftenposten

Det er alltid litt frigjerande å få stilt rett diagnose. Ein treng ikkje ha lest gjennom den glitrande årskonferansa til NHO for å forstå at det ligg litt i dette. Les meir om "The Millennials"-generasjonen i Aftenposten.

Google Soon to Venture into the Realm of Downloadable E-Books

"Google is now reportedly planning on launching an accompanying service that will allow users to search Google Books for titles, and then allow them to download the full-text"
http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/1131

Could this be the final chapter in the life of the book

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2557653,00.html

Friday, January 19, 2007

Monday, January 08, 2007

Curriki

This curriculum wiki looks promising. Take a look for yourself at www.curriki.org

Zotero update available :-)

See www.zotero.org for more information or here.

One Laptop Per Child - 0.1 Watt Dual-Mode screen

"The dual-mode display is also stunning when you look at its power consumption while doing its tricks. A typical laptop screen consumes 8-10 Watts. The OLPC display only consumes 1 and then slips into reflective mode and drops down to .1 Watt (note that's one tenth a Watt!) without visible loss in detail."

A typical Windows Vista stationary PC is using something several hundred, and for what use? Is it worth to destroy the earths climate with useless features on a PC?



Dual mode screen

Saturday, January 06, 2007

Introduction to Economic Analysis for FREE!

This textbook looks like a non-nonsense introduction to economics that will do the job very well as far as I can see. You will find the book and additional learning material here: http://www.introecon.com/

More books here: http://globaltext.org/books/website/books.html

About McAfee:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_McAfee


"Why open source? Academics do an enormous amount of work editing journals and writing articles and now publishers have broken an implicit contract with academics, in which we gave our time and they weren't too greedy. Sometimes articles cost $20 to download, and principles books regularly sell for over $100. They issue new editions frequently to kill off the used book market, and the rapidity of new editions contributes to errors and bloat. Moreover, textbooks have gotten dumb and dumber as publishers seek to satisfy the student who prefers to learn nothing. Many have gotten so dumb ("simplified") so as to be simply incorrect. And they want $100 for this schlock? Where is the attempt to show the students what economics is actually about, and how it actually works? Why aren't we trying to teach the students more, rather than less?"
R. Preston McAfee from California Institute of Technology

Thoughtprovoking article about Wikipedia and historical science

This article is a must read for all historians and contributors to the Wikipedia.
The Journal of American History Volume 93, Number 1 (June, 2006): 117-46

http://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/d/42

Monday, January 01, 2007

Google Scholar and eprint

This article is about what happens with this article. It is available to use and cite before it is printed, and the citation will probably not be catched in Web of Science, and it is a mashup of an open eprint archive and Google Scholar. Just click on "SEEK" behind the references and see whats happening.

From the body of the article:
"Another problem with Web of Science is that it ignores the fact that scientists increasingly publish or post their papers online via open-access journals, personal homepages, e-print servers or in institutional repositories so that others can freely access the material....Relying exclusively on Web of Science and a single citation measure will, in many cases, no longer be an option for making accurate impact assessments.

Scientists now need to make it their job to disseminate their work on as many platforms and in as many different ways as possible, such as publishing in open access and high-impact journals, and posting their work in institutional repositories, personal homepages and e-print servers, if they want their peers to be aware of, use and ultimately cite their work. Publishing a journal article is now only the first step in disseminating or communicating one’s work; the Web provides a multitude of methods and tools to publicize its scholarly worth."

You find the article here:
http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1703