“In order to be really good as a librarian, everything counts towards your work, every play you go see, every concert you hear, every trip you take, everything you read, everything you know.” – Allen Smith, PhD
The OLPC has reinvented their signature laptop and come out with a new model that looks more like an e-books, is more energy efficient, and will cost only $75. This new model looses the keyboard, but but functions through two touch screens, one of which can function as a keyboard. Another development on this project has been the adoption of Microsoft’s Windows as the machines operating systems. The new laptop will have a dual booting system.
Colombia’s Caldas region has signed up to offer OX laptops to about 65,000 children. Caldas’ governor Mario Aristizabal expressed the desire to offer children in this region the same advantages offered to children in developed countries around the world. There are plans for Manizales to join the OLPC project as well.
You can read about the new design here, and about the Colombian project here.
The Mali government has begun work to create a library that will house material from Timbuktu’s golden age. Material consists of works of law, history, poetry, and science, much of which has been gathered from private collections, and storerooms, many having been in danger of decay for lack of proper care.
The material is being made available on the web through Aluka, a project which works to make digital content from and about Africa available on the web. Aluka does require users to be members to access their content. The project also counts with the help of the Mellon Foundation and Northwestern University.
You can read more about this story form an article in the NYT.
A few days ago OCLC and Google Books created a partnership that will allow uses of both services to benefit, and better locate library material. OCLC member libraries who already have agreements with Google Books will now be able to make their MARC records available through Google, which will increase the visibility of material. Basically this partnership will allow users of the web to search for books and other library material be guided towards specific library catalogs, which will then provide full access to books that are already part of Google Books. Ideally this set up will drive up traffic for libraries both online and in person. Web users will be able to access full text books from home, but those who wish to borrow the books will be able to see local libraries’ holding.
You can read OCLCs press release on the matter here.
Microsoft Research just came out with a tool that allows you to see the galaxy up close. After downloading the free software, WorldWide Telescope will bring you to a wide range of images of the galaxy, which you can then explore. The interface is easy enough to use, just use your mouse to scroll across the sky and zoom into whatever catches your attention. As you zoom in and out, the browser allows you to access information which has been hyperlinked to provide more context to what you are seeing.
The WorldWide Telescope functions by gathering the best images of telescopes around the planet and in space, and it seamlessly knits them together to create a holistic image.
This is a video showing the program and describing what it can do.
The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) is a collaboration, started in 1989, of the 53 Commonwealth head’s of state to promote open and distance learning (ODL), as well as sharing resources and technologies. COL works with government officials to promote information and communication technologies (ICT) as a means to impact the areas of education, learning for livelihoods, and human environment.
One of the projects launched by the COL is the WikiEducator, a website that gathers people who believe education should be free and available to all. They aim at helping users plan, and develop educational projects, especially those based on free content. Through their Learning4Content program they are working at conducting workshops, train educators, and develop free educational content. At times all of this work is done virtually, other times participants have been able to meet to collaborate.
COL also helped coordinate the development of a Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC). During its initial stage, the VUSSC will focus on creating courses in Tourism and Hospitality, and Small Business Management.
The COL understands that millions of children worldwide have no access to basic education, and many more are taught by poorly trained teachers, and study in schools with few resources. Estimates are that about a billion adults worldwide are illiterate, or have received a very rudimentary education. And while COL focuses on the Commonwealth countries, it aims to help improve opportunities for all adults, children and the generations to come.
I truly love the “radical” idea behind these projects, that education should be free and accessible to all! May the Commonwealth of Learning continue with many more great projects!
Audio historian David Giovannoni, who from First Sound, seemed to have found the first human voice recording in a French patent office. The recording is of a human signing “Au Claire de la Lune” and is dated back to 1860, almost two decades earlier than Thomas Edison’s recoding of “Mary had a little lamb.” The clip is only ten seconds long, and the quality is not great, but it is amazing that the recoding exists.
The audio was captured using a phonautograph, a machine invented by Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville, which created visual recordings from sound waves. The machine has a needle that recorded sound waves onto paper coated in soot from an oil lamp. Now the sound was extracted at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory by creating digital scans of the original papers and a “virtual stylus”, and then compensated for the fact that the original machine was hand cranked which created a distortion because the turning wasn’t always constant.
Earlier this week Footnote.com and the National Archives and Records Administration offered a new Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The actual memorial consist of two large granite walls inscribed with the names of over 58,000 American casualties of the way, the online version, which was created by combining over 2,000 photographs of the actual site, make the walls searchable from your home computer. The new version also allows you to link each name to the person’s service record, and add content to the record.
This project is different from a previous one called The Wall, which is maintained by the veterans of the 4th Battalion 9th Infantry Regiment. The Wall originally went online back in 1996, and has been evolving ever since. The Wall allows you to search by name, but in addition offers links to “Today’s Wall Birthdays” and “Today’s Wall Causalities,” and provides some basic facts of the war.
The physical Vietnam Veterans Memorial is located in Washington DC, was designed by Maya Lin, and holds 58,249 names, it is managed by the National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior. Each day rangers gather items left at the site (except food and flowers), which are then tagged and taken to the Archive for future preservation. Although the full archive is not open to the public, selections of it are on display at the American History Museum.
The Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial site does warn that is has been experiencing high traffic, so connections might be slow.
You can read more about the online Vietnam Memorial from an article in Wired Magazine here, and read the Wikipedia entry here.
Stanford law professor Larry Lessing has come up with a new tool (still in beta) to try and keep the USA government clean and honest. The Change Congress aims to enlist the help of volunteers across the country to keep track on their representatives’ responses on a variety of issues, and then make this seemingly abstract information, concrete through Google mash-ups. Lessing wants congress representatives to commit to four different issues; 1) to promise to not take money from lobbyist and Political Action Committees (PAC), 2) support publicly financed elections, 3) help pass legislation to stop spending money on questionable projects in their districts, and 4) to help make Congress a more transparent place over all. Candidates who wish to be measured by these guidelines can do so by filling out a form on the website.
It is hoped that the project will have bi-partisan appeal, and that volunteers across the country will participate. The project anticipates that there is wide ranging dissatisfaction with congress in general, and that this energy can be channeled into making congress a more accountable place for all of us.
You can read more about this project from an article in Wired Magazine here. You can read Lessig’s blog here, and his Youtube page here.
Yesterday Wired magazine had an interesting article titled “Web Has Unexpected Effect on Journalism,” about the effect that the web has had on journalism, and it’s not what I would have initially thought. The article explains that, rather than making journalism more democratic, the web instead serves as a medium for recycling many of the same stories over and over. Some of the examples given include how “international news” has been boiled down almost exclusively to Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan, leaving the rest of the world uncovered.
On the flip side, the article does mention that many journalists are adaptation to new environments and using the web to their advantage. Apparently many journalists have taken to writing blogs and many appreciate readers input on their stories.Still there seems to be a difference between how large “mainstream media” and “private, personal” blog treat participation; curiously the “mainstream” blog seem to allow more participation from readers, while owners of personal blogs tend to limit comments to those deemed more palatable.
You can read the complete article by David Bauder here.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has recently published Information Economy Report 2007-2008 which notes that the digital divide is still very much an issue that must be addressed. The report explains that while digital penetration is growing daily through the world, most developing countries are still far behind (with the few exceptions of countries like Korea and Singapore).
The report notes that in terms of information communication technologies, mobile phones are opening new pathways for people around the world to communicate and access information, and are in many occasions frog leaping several steps in the communication development process. Countries with high rise in mobile phone penetrations are starting to experience a new form of commerce, “M-commerce”. People in countries such as Nepal and Ghana are using mobile phones to buy and sell products, as well as keeping in touch. This same report illustrated their point by commenting on results seen in Thailand. The study showed that a 10% increase in computer literary will produce a 3.5% in productivity increase.
In terms of internet penetrations, most developing countries are also still far behind, with internet access being prohibitively expensive, even when it is available. Still the silver lining is that just a few years ago the developed world had ten times more access to internet, and now the disparity is only of 6 times the amount. I guess this is an improvements, but the situation is still highly unequal.
And while a discussion on access is very important we also still need to have a discussion on related policy issues that should ensure equal access, plus security for users.
A couple of days ago the BBC had an article about this issue. You can read it here. For more visual information on this issues check out the for the Internet User Stats showing a variety of graphs on internet penetration, growth, and usage divided by geographical regions.
