Titan Pad

I  love the idea of collaborating on projects and ideas.  Using the internet just makes it that much better.  Working on the project using the Internet and in realtime is fantastic. TitanPad is a web based program that lets you work on a document over the internet with anyone you invite.  What I like about Titanpad is that no account needs to be set up.  Just create a public document, click on, invite others. A URL will pop up.  Send that URL to those you wish to collaborate with.

Great Stuff.

U.S. Vulnarable to Cyber Attacks?

From the NY Times "Books of the Times" Blog is a book by Richard A. Clarke and Robert K.Knake, entitled, Cyberwar: The Next Threat to National Security and What to do About it.


Who defends our banking system?  Our subway system? Our electrical grid?  If your answer to any of these questions is, "our government", you are wrong.  In this book Clarke, an anti-terrorist expert to both Clinton and Bush administrations, warns that we have become so dependent on our technology that cyber attacks from foreign nations is inevitable.

After the first gulf war, he explains, the Chinese “began to downsize their military” — which reportedly has about one-eighth of the Pentagon’s budget (before adding in the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) — and invest in new technologies, which they believed could give them an asymmetric advantage over the United States, despite America’s overwhelming conventional arsenal.

One of the problems, according to Clarke is the fact that many private entities that control our infrastructure do not communicate well with each other. Also, there is no coordinated defense in place to thwart these attacks.
 
This book is a definite must read.

290 pages
Ecco/HarperCollins

How prone is your laptop to failure?

From time to time I get asked by a colleague on which laptop they should buy?  Perhaps it's for themselves or their son or daughter that they will be shipping off to school?  I try to give them an honest answer on the information that I have garnered over the years.  You know,  if you stick with a brand name you can't go wrong.   Or be careful of the ones on sale for that, too good to be true price, because it usually is.

One of the blogs that I subscribe to, LifeHacker has an interesting little study on the reliability of laptops by manufacturer.  The study was done by SquareTrade.

SquareTrade analyzed failure rates for over 30,000 new laptop computers covered by SquareTrade Laptop Warranty plans and found that one-third of all laptops will fail within 3 years. SquareTrade also found that netbooks are 20% more unreliable than other laptops, and that Asus and Toshiba are the most reliable laptop brands.
You can download the PDF report the full report here.

Belated Birthday

I totally missed the birthday of my father's favorite inventor, Guglielmo Marconi on April 25th. Best known for developing the "wireless radio, my father thought he was greatest inventor of all time. It seems to me now that, according to my father, all Italians were the best.  The best wrestlers (Bruno Samartino), the best discoverers (Columbus) the best singers (Sinatra) etc.    :)

Happy Birthday Mr. Marconi

Idea Paint

Do you long for a white board in your office, home or classroom. Here is a neat way of having an unlimited whiteboard, that you can use dry erase markers on.

Template Change

If you have been following my blog, you are probably wondering, why the style change? It's not that I didn't like the other template. The light colored letters on the black background was nice. Actually it was sweet. I just didn't like how the layout cropped some of the TED videos. I tried playing with the HTML, but alas, that didn't do it. So I played around with all the templates and found one I kind of like and fits the complete TED video. Let me know what you think.

Icelandic Volcano

Great CNN Student news video.

Crawler Notes

If you like to use sticky notes, you will like Crawler Notes. Crawler notes is a small app that lets you place sticky notes anywhere on your desktop.

The Impact of an Image

I am always amazed by the talks given at TED. Below is John Klein and 'Photos that Changed the World.

Shiftables and TED

As I surf the net I keep finding myself drawn to one particular site. This site is called TED. TED is a series of short lectures by people in various fields, such as technology, education and business. The talks vary in length, but are usually no longer than 15 minutes.

One of the short discussions, is by David Merrill, a computer scientist. He created an computer user interface that resemble your childhood toy, blocks.

Please watch the video.