Cory Doctorow:
Dremel, maker of the famed rotary tool that is the favorite of casemodders and hardware hackers, have released a special Hallowe'en rotary tool that is specifically designed for elaborate pumpkin carving.
(via /.)
Cory Doctorow:
Adriaan Tijsseling, maker of the brilliant Ecto blog editor -- used by all of us who work on BB -- has just shipped a MacOS X app called 1001, which provides a slick desktop interface to Flickr, including your friends' photos, photo-strems matching your favorite tags, and an easy uploader.
(via Joi) [Boing Boing]
Mark Frauenfelder:
Very scary Halloween costumes for kids based on current political themes.
The Littlest Prisoner at Abu Ghraib: So easy, so quick, and so terrifying!
Lyndie England (Candy cigarette optional.)
Shoe Bomber" Richard Reid: Add a burnt-cork beard and an electric match from the tobacconist, and your little terror is ready to fly!
Link (Thanks, Stephen!) [Boing Boing]
Cory Doctorow:
Marc Perkel sez, "I'm distributing Fahrenheit 9-11 on my web site. I spent $2000 to buy 100mb line for 2 weeks before the election. If you haven't seen it - take a look and pass the link around."
(Thanks, Marc!) [Boing Boing]
As I mentioned earlier this fall, Errol Morris has produced several political ads in the vein of his Apple Switch ads. The 30-second spots feature folks that voted for Bush in 2000 that are voting for Kerry in 2004. They're presented in Morris' signature style, regular folks talking directly to the camera against a white background about why they're switching. [kottke.org]
Okay, here's the shortbread: it's a 65k-color screen, 220 by 176 pixel resolution. Same click wheel as before. 15-hour battery life (rock!), iTunes is bumping up to version 4.7, iTunes will auto-sync album art so you can see that while playing. Store up to 25,000 photos transfered through iTunes (dunno about iPhoto support for Mac users iPhoto to organize, iTunes to sync. Got it.). Will support Adobe Album or Elements on the PC.
$500 for the 40GB version, $600 for the 60GB version (that's too much, it makes me sad). Estimated shipping in 1-2 weeks.
There is a photo dock and an "AV cable." More on that in a bit.
Also, you guys rock. I've gotten so many emails in the last 20 minutes I can't even count them.
Press Release [Apple]
[Gizmodo]
It lives: iPod Photo. Back in a minute with details.
Lots of tasty details in this post, if you're coming in from a direct link.
iPod Photo: First Details [Gizmodo]
[Gizmodo]Cory Doctorow:
If you're a Californian and you want to make sure your vote counts, check out Paper or Plastic?, EFF's latest Flash campaign, created by the talented Ren Bucholz and friends. Non-Californians: pass this on to your Californian friends!
Electronic voting machines will be used in 10 California counties during the next election. However, every California voter has the right to request a paper ballot, which can be used in a recount and verified for accuracy by each voter. Some election officials are trying to keep this choice a secret, so we want to make sure that you know about the availability of paper ballots. If you live in Alameda, Merced, Napa, Orange, Plumas, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Clara, Shasta, Tehama, please pass this to your friends and neighbors.
(Thanks, Cindy!) [Boing Boing]
Cory Doctorow:
Back in 2001, I thought that this was the coolest Ethernet cord, ever, but I was wrong. Its successor, the new Roadwired CORDZ Multi-Connection Survival Tool is a generation more cool and more versatile. Cased in rugged safety yellow plastic, this retracting 7' RJ-45 cable comes with a set of snap-on ends to convert it to a phone cable, a cross-over or an extension cable. This one went straight into my shoulder bag, and I don't think I'll ever leave home without it.
Damn! Looks like I was too late in trying to buy $9.47 Interpol tickets. The Sunday show is sold out.
So I started a new "Teacher's Toolbox" workshop last night with five brave souls, regaling them in the wonders of the RSS/Wiki/Furl/Bloglines/del.icio.us thing. Coincidentally, Alan and Brian were doing something similar at Educause, albeit with much more organization and preparation. Frankly, I didn't quite know how to approach it; there seems to be a very fine line between inspiration and overwhelm-ed-ness when it comes to these topics. So I ended up giving them the tour yesterday with the idea of putting them to work tomorrow night when we finish. And I think it went pretty well; just a little bit of glazed eye syndrome when we were done.
Will Richardson posts about starting this workshop and I had also started something similar last night too. We just focused on Furl and will discuss RSS in a future session. Most participants seemed to really like Furl and were excited to use it in the classroom. I'm not sure how they will respond to RSS though.
Barbara and Anne are making me whistful about getting back in the classroom. (I spent about 30 minutes with a class yesterday getting them setup with Weblogs and I just didn't want it to end...I'm definitely teaching at least one class next year no matter what.) I just love reading about what they're experiencing with their students and this technology.
Barbara is reflecting on four years of using Weblogs with her students at Middlebury. That's like 25 in blog years; in fact, she's probably got just about as much practical experience with all of this as anyone out there. And it shows. This is just a great post that illustrates the power and flexibility of Weblogs, and it really inspires me to keep looking for more ways to integrate them at my school.
Watching these students take what they have learned in a single semester and apply it to their lives provides me with valuable feedback on why we should integrate technology into our classrooms carefully, thoughtfully, and meaningfully. If we show our students how these tools might work in their efforts to communicate their experiences, to connect with communities and to engage in complex intellectual and artistic endeavors, we can step back, out of the way, and watch them take over their education.
It's that "complex intellectual endeavor" that I find most interesting, because that is what leads to real learning. I've been bemoaning the relative lack of complexity of Weblog uses in K-12, and I swear I get butterflies when I think about how cool it would be to get high school students (or younger) doing the kind of complex work that Barbara's students are doing. And, like Barbara, we need to model that work for our kids. There is energy in this moment, and we really need to find more ways to take advantage of it.
Blogging has to be integrated into the course pedagogy...it is a new means of expression that must be used accordingly with the course goals in mind. In other words, what does linking and commenting and writing evolving, multi-media hypertexts in this virtual space do to the course goals, methods and structures?
Yeah...it is a new means of expression, more than a writing tool. And they are complex texts that can be in constant production, evolving over a long period of time. And that whole aspect of multi-media is something that she and Hector Vila are really getting me interested in.
Anne, meanwhile, is off on another most excellent blogging adventure with her kids. She's embarking on a WebQuest with her Blooming Bloogers using Bloom's Taxonomy (get it?)
Starting today, you are going to take charge of your learning. You will tell the story of what you are learning and what it means to you. You will decide what is worth knowing, You will satisfy your own burning curiosity. You will ask good questions about what you are learning. You will use Bloom's Taxonomy to help you get to some really good thinking. Plan to knock your audience's socks off! You are about to embark on an exciting journey. Stand-by! You are about to enter the wonderful world of weblogging!!!
It looks like a great project that is bound to break some more ground for us all. If you get a chance, let Anne know what you think as she's looking for feedback. [Weblogg-ed News]
I've revised and added some more info to the RSS Quick Start Guide for Educators that I put together about six months ago. Included are ways to merge many feeds into one, getting RSS feeds to show up on your Weblog or Website, and updated instructions for Bloglines and the variety of search feeds out there. It's been interesting to watch how RSS has quickly been gaining more and more notice, and the plethora of feeds out there make it hard to ignore as a way to collect and disseminate information. Please let me know if there's anything I missed. [Weblogg-ed News]
The Jupiter Hotel is pretty damn cool. I checked out Affair @ The Jupiter Hotel this past weekend, which was Portland's first art fair, and featured 22 adventurous art dealers and guest curators who set up temporary galleries in rooms at the newly opened hotel. This was a unique and exciting event!