Author: grabe

Chrome

The tech news the last few days promoted the arrival of Chrome – a browser from Google. If you are a windows user, you can download Chrome now. Mac users will have to wait (you can sign up for information).

I downloaded Chrome and took a look. My first reaction was – nice browser, it seems to work. I have been trying to read some things online to try to determine what I am missing. Why spend the time and money to generate another browser. There are a few things you notice from the demos. You can type anything into the web address window and if the entry is not a web address the browser assumes you want to search. That is a little different. I think it is called the “omnibox”.

The Google folks must have anticipated that “the differences” would not be obvious so they commissioned a comic book to explain things. As I understand some of the technical details, the present advantage lies in independence of processes (one page can crash and this will not influence another page), a new implementation of javascript, and a more socially-based method of debugging (using automated feedback from willing users). The independence thing is technically interesting – each “tab” kind of works like another browser. I can’t really say my browser crashes frequently, bit perhaps this will be a larger issue as we move beyond viewing pages and on to more demanding apps.

From other sites, I get the feeling this venture also has to do with a browser that can be trusted to support the “cloud apps” that Google sees as the future. In offering users a browser, Google knows there will be a browser that works well with other Google products.

The missing piece at present seems to be “plugins”. The comic books describes some of the issues with plugins, but plugins and other add-ons offer the features I like the most in Firefox. Plugins in some form must be on the way.

What could be wrong with another browser? Have you ever had the experience that a function you want to perform (e.g., Yepshot) is only available on another browser? The occasional annoyance aside, I think it is a good thing that there are multiple competitors in any field.

Now, if Google could just get their Mac version finished so I could invest enough time to really see how things work.

I wonder if the IE for the Mac will ever resurface.

The Chrome story according to Wired.

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Share a Gmail Account

Cindy forwarded a post by Kim Cofino that describes how to share a Gmail account with others (e.g., an elementary class). For whatever reason, Google allows the attachment of additional information to the name in a Gmail address and this additional information could be the name of a student (for those who are familiar with web forms, it appears to work in a similar manner to the attachment of variables to the URL). For example, information could be added to my Gmail address as follows: markgrabe+cindyg@gmail.com.

As I read the post, this hack does not get you all of the way to where you want to go. You need to also add a filter to gmail to recognize expected additions (in this case the names of students). With the filter, when the filter is tripped by an incoming email, a label appears in the Gmail sidebar. So a filter set to detect cgrabe would be triggered when incoming mail was addressed to markgrabe+cindyg. Once applied, students could connect to the common account and check the sidebar to see if they have received any email.

The Cofino post includes a link to a screencast that offers a demonstration.

Is this worth the trouble? I would assume the value is in convincing the administration that you will take responsibility for the email of  your students because you will have the capability of screening all material.

Could the system be abused? I would think so. There is not really a way to set priviledges to my knowledge so you still really have one account and no way to identify who might be sending outbound mail or who looks at what within the mail received. With access to the account, couldn’t you assume the identity of the teacher or any other student?

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Net Neutrality

The net neutrality debate has become more real with Comcast’s decision to cap downloads. However, with Comcast, the present cap is set so high, one would have to be into a lot of online video to approach the cap. I suppose heavy use of NetFlix might quality, but the targeted folks are likely BitTorrent users. As long as the cap is based on volume and not MIME type I am less concerned.

I wonder if there is any way to actually learn how much content a household downloads? If providers keep such data, it would seem reasonable to make it available to users.

TechCrunch has put together a post that summarizes many of the pros and cons and has generated a good deal of discussion.

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A little more Friedman

I have not commented on the words of Thomas Friedman for several months. It is about time. His themes are pretty much the same, but I think we need reminding.

Friedman’s editorial of Aug. 26 used China’s impressive display in hosting the olympics to reiterate his position on what the U.S. is up against. In about a week, a new book, “Hot, flat, and crowded” will be released. I have my copy preordered through Audible and I have listened to the short “teaser” offered for this commitment (similar to another book I recently completed – Earth: The Sequel). 

As I understand the theme, Friedman is trying to argue that the current energy situation offers anyone willing to seize the opportunity a tremendous opportunity for innovation and related economic rewards. Of course, the question is whom is best positioned and most motivated to seize the opportunity.

If the hurricane presently taking aim at New Orleans and the gulf does anywhere near the damage of Katrina, energy will very quickly become foremost in our minds and probably the leading election topic. 

Maybe the frequent ads of T. Boone Pickens will be taken more seriously.

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Online Presidential Election Info

I went to a football game last night and missed the final evening of the democratic convention. I have since learning that iTunes offers all of the speeches from the Democratic convention (and I assume from the Republication convention) as a public service.

I decided to explore a bit online and see what resources were available.

Candidate web sites:

Obama – McCain

News Sites:

CNN – Election Center 2008
MSN – Your Vote 2008
NPR – Election 2008
USAToday – Extreme Election 2008


Issues – Education:

CNN – Issues – education
Education Writers Association (new to me)

Issues: Technology

Cnet

Educational Activities:

Education World – election 2008 WebQuest
Scholastic

Misc.:

The Guardian – YouTube Recommendations
 (dated, but funny)

Yes, I know. I did forget to include resources from the “no spin zone”. What fun is an election if the news is “clear and unbiased”.

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Friends?

I met my two Fall classes for the first time today. A total of 270 students and an impossible situation for making a personal connection with many of them. In commenting on this topic, I noted that my syllabi offer a link to this blog and suggested that I use this blog to comment on professional and personal topics. I indicated that most of them were probably more familiar with MySpace and FaceBook and I suggested that I would leave those sites for them.

I do have a FaceBook account and within a couple of minute there was an invitation.

I do think the social networking sites are interesting, but I have mixed feelings about the “friending” thing within university academic settings. I remember listening to a presentation in which the presenter basically said – let’s let them have their space. The power of the sites for multi-way and multi-level interaction is what makes the sites so powerful, but also what makes them a little weird in my situation. My daughter is my friend, but the site suggests I might want to “friend” these other 20-somethings who are friends of my daughter. Hmm. Whether or not I had ever actually met any of them with a few reciprocated clicks of the mouse I might introduce them to 200 Intro Psych students at UND. Not saying this would be a bad thing, but I think I will concentrate on writing blog posts.

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Personal Home Pages

This is kind of useful. Mashable.com offers a comparison of 14 options for personal home pages. I use both Netvibes and iGoogle myself. The core idea is that personal home pages provide the means to integrate a wide variety of information sources and make this information available at a glance. You can craft this page using widgets so you need little experience creating web pages. You can set your browser to automatically bring up this page when it is launched. Local weather, a todo list, RSS feeds, images from Flickr, etc. integrated as your home page.

Resized screen capture of my igoogle page.

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