This week saw an odd migration of geeks in and out of Austin. Early this week the tech geeks all left the capital of Texas en mass, while music geeks all boarded trains, plains and autos headed for Austin. And if you're still suffering from jetlag and whiplash, here are a few stories you may have missed.
Download Squad SXSW2008 coverage continues
Southy by Southwest Interactive may be over, but we scored some amazing interviews with movers, shakers, and up and comers. Check out our interview with Guy Kawasaki where he discusses his new startup on a budget, Alltop. And keep checking back for more interviews and special coverage from SXSW.
Last week Microsoft released the first public beta of Internet Explorer 8. And while it's still a pretty early release with serious compatibility issues with many web sites, IE8 does have a few pretty nifty features. And it only took a couple of days for Firefox extensions emulating those features to pop up.
I was fortunate enough to see David Pogue's keynote on the opening day of the Pennsylvania Educational Technology Expo and Conference this Monday in Hershey, PA. PETE&C is a state-wide conference aimed at bringing together school technology directors, teachers, principals, IT professionals, and vendors to advance the state of technology in education.
While listening to Pogue briefly touch on many emerging trends and technologies like VoIP, improved text-to-speech, "Web 2.0" sites, and ubiquitous wireless, it became clear from the audience gasps and collective jaw-dropping that educators are not keeping up with technology changes. Demonstrations of technologies that have been around for more than two years were causing the educators to feverishly put pen to paper so they can take things like Skype back to their schools to use in the curriculum.
An increasing number of educational institutions are putting courseware online for public consumption. We've known for a while that MIT had OpenCourseWare, but now Yale, Utah State University, Virginia Tech,and other schools are putting more educational content online. Some institutions are using YouTube while are others are using iTunes to allow web users entrance into their courses and lectures.
What do the educational institutions get out of putting their content online? Many things, including luring potential applicants, cheap marketing, money from donors, and keeping alumni connected to their alma mater. On the flipside, online courses offer users the ability to gain knowledge and skill in areas they may not be able afford a college class in.
Some professors have been trying this on a smaller scale. Individuals put some of their written materials on their websites or post podcasts and video podcasts on to video sharing sites. However we applaud entire universities who are coming together to make a wholesale stab at spreading knowledge through the Internet.
If the television landscape is a "vast wasteland," YouTube must be a vast waste universe. But the thing about YouTube is that for every Chris Crocker there's a UC Berkeley.
The University of California Berkeley has begun posting full length lectures on the video sharing site. There are already over 200 videos online covering topics from biology and physics to the "principles of nonviolence," and university officials plan to continue adding to the collection.
While watching videos won't earn you a degree, you can probably learn a thing or two by virtually auditing these courses. And lest you think the university's giving something valuable away for free, showcasing lectures from some of the most engaging professors is a great promotional tool for the school.
Now, if they could just make a good lecture half as engaging as a video from the "leave Britney alone" guy. So far most of the UC Berkeley videos have only been viewed a handful of times.
Apparently it's foreign language week here at Download Squad, because a few days ago we told you about Mango, an excellent online resource for learning a new language. And today we've discovered LiveMocha, a site that not only lets you learn to speak a new language, but also lets you practice your language skills with other users.
Fortunately you don't have to choose between the services because they're both free. But since there's a social aspect to LiveMocha, we have to warn you that once you sign up, you should expect to receive a bunch of emailed friend requests. This is great if you're looking for folks to practice speaking with, but can be annoying if say, you registered with the site just to check it out for a few minutes.
Like Mango, LiveMocha features a number of easy to follow lessons in several languages. LiveMocha lessons are available in Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, and Spanish. The site features a clean interface with illustrative pictures and easy to understand voices. But what really makes LiveMocha stand out is its social angle.
You can do text chats or have voice and/or video conversations with users who want to practice a language you speak. In other words, if you're an English speaker trying to learn Hindi, you can find someone who speaks Hindi and start a conversation. Or if someone else wants to learn English, they might try you. This is miles ahead of the old fashioned, practice with the person sitting next to you in German 101 method.
Learning to speak a foreign language can be hard work, especially if you don't have someone around to practice speaking and listening with.
Mango is a new online website that makes learning foreign languages a whole lot easier. When you begin a lesson, you will hear a brief conversation, and then you can flip forward and backward through a series of slides at your own pace. Mango does an excellent job of combining audio clips and written text. Want to hear a phrase again? Just click the sound icon. Want to skip ahead, just click the slide advance button.
There are a variety of languages to choose from, including Chinese, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Mandarine, Brazillian Portuguese, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. The lessons are almost all geared toward English speakers, but the infrastructure would easily lend itself to adding lessons for native speakers of any language.
You can choose from about 100 lessons for each language, so while Mango might not qualify as an advanced language course, it's a pretty good way to start learning a new language or to brush up on the Spanish you never really learned during high school.
Mango is free while in beta, although you'll need to register for an account. We're not sure whether the ultimate plan is for Mango to become a subscription-based or advertising-supported service, but we're assuming the developers wouldn't have put together this fine resource without a plan to make some money off it one day.
In keeping the school theme we have been running with, a newer educational tool to enter the market is Edu 2.0. This web based education website that holds features for teachers, student and parents that aid in learning wherever the user is connected.
There are four main sections to the site. A teaching section where teachers can host a class using a specially designed learning management system. The learning section where students can participate in classes at their own pace. A resource section where contributed resources complete with quizzes, experiments, projects and self paced course can be followed and taken. Then there is the community section. This allows for collaboration between members, sharing and collaborating on educational interests.
Edu 2.0 is free to sign up to, and provides a wide range of topics including art, computers, english, foreign languages, health, math, science, and physical education.
Teachers are getting their very own space in the social network scene, thanks to Yahoo!
Yahoo! Teachers is the latest entry into the social network space. This social network collaborative space is a peer network put together by teachers and for teachers with the help of Yahoo!. When launched, it will allow teachers to create, modify and share standards based curriculum.
Yahoo! Teachers is free for all teachers, administrators and education specialists. It is not out in the market yet, but there is a beta sign-up form on the website. Teachers do however have access to locate peers across the US by entering their zip code and locating school to register themselves.
As kids the world around get ready for "that time of year" and the sense of dread excitement builds, we find ourselves looking for ways to make this school year a little easier than the one before it. Being nerds, we turn to software. This year, Download Squad has hand-picked some promising shareware/freeware tools for that should come just as handy as the mandatory two boxes of tissues required by the school of each student.
The first is a crossword-puzzle generator for Mac and Windows called Crossword Forge. Now, crossword makers have been around for a while, but this one gets an A+. It does crosswords and word searches (complete with accidental profanity filter--a must) and a spelling checker. It will even spit out a Flash-drive online puzzle so your students or kids can go the paperless route.
A List Apart wants some information from you for a new survey they have released online.
Statistics have never been compiled for the Web Design profession, including designers, developers, project managers, writers and editors. This survey is aiming at tracking such questions as who we are, where we live, job titles, skills, education, and background.
By filling out the 37 question survey online, A List Apart will not only increase the knowledge about the industry, but each participant will be entered into a random draw to win a ticket to An Event Apart, an Apple 30GB video iPod, a jump drive, or a t-shirt.
The contest and survey remains open until May 22nd 2007, and data will be presented on A List Apart.
Google has announced a partnership with the Rwandan Ministry of Infrastructure, and the Kenya Education Network that will result in the use of Google Apps in Rwanda's educational institutions and government ministries, as well as in Kenya's universities. Both of these African countries will now have access to free communication tools that include email, shared calendars, instant messaging and word processing under their institutions current domain names.
There are two main packages of the Google Apps that are being provided free of charge. With 20,000 users in Rwanda, The National University of Rwanda, the Kigali Institute for Education and the Kigali Institute for Science and Technology will have Google Apps Education Edition. The countries government ministries using Google Apps Standard Edition. 50,000 students at the University of Nairobi will be the first ones offered the Google Apps for Education in Kenya, with 150,000 additional students signing on at a later date.
Google has just issued a press release stating that this initiative will be helping Google to further organize the world's information, and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google's philanthropic Freudian slip is showing, don'tcha think? Gates can run around throwing money at the worlds problems all he wants, but I bet this secures Google a permanent spot in the hearts of many a socially conscious geek.
One of my favorite parts of being a college student is the fact that I have access to pretty much any and every scholarly journal and article database on the planet. That's why was so excited to read about The New York Times' decision to provide their premium TimesSelect service free of charge to anyone with an .edu email address. TimesSelect offers exclusive Op-Ed columns, early access to the newspaper's Sunday edition, and access to up to 100 free archived articles (dating back to 1851!) per month.
True enough, I could probably get all that through the databases I already have access to, but the ease of being able to simply log into the NYT site to view an article instead of having to look it up in a database goes a long way.
Unfortunately, it seems that @alumni.school.edu and similar addresses are ineligible for this offer.
I've been waiting for this announcement for a while: Thomson ResearchSoft has finally announced the availability of EndNote X for Mac. The upgrade brings the new compressed library format to the mac, as well as PDF integration, and customizable library views. I say it's about time; I can finally stop keeping my libraries on the PC, which has had v.X since Spring. In addition, They've added some Mac-centric touches, like Spotlight integration (individual references can be returned by Spotlight searches) and customizable toolbars.
For those of you paying attention: yes, the screenshot is from the PC version of X. The Mac version has been released, but I haven't seen my copy yet. Our account rep says it's on its way.
For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about: EndNote is a database program that is specifically designed to manage large bibliographies, share references with colleagues, and quickly search for information in a number of specialized online bibliographies and databases. It also, and perhaps most importantly for most people, integrates with Microsoft Word to reformat citations in documents to the house styles thousands of different academic journals and publications. Many researchers, graduate students, and academics of all kinds can't live without it. It retails for $299.99, but ask if your institution has a site license. Many do. There is a free 30-day demo available.
There are many, many awesome Google maps mashups out there. There seem to be so many out there now, and so many people are easily creating there own, for business, and personal uses.
The Virtual Video map is another one of those great Google map mashups. However, this one integrates YouTube videos.
The purpose for this creation is the advancement of distance education. It was put together for distance learning's in the fields of pedagogy (The art or profession of teaching), andragogy(an attempt to develop a theory specifically for adult learning), technology, and instructional systems.
In this instance, teachers and students can communicate by exchanging electronic files.
This won a Webby a few
years ago, and I'm surprised it hasn't come up before, but Soda
Constuctor is a favorite of mine. Designed as a teaching tool, Soda Constructor is a Java toy for designing little
robots, made of strings and connections. These automotons can be animated, on their own, and try to walk around an
environment you control (things like gravity are adjustable). Lots of fun tinkering around, but even more fun to really
try and build something stable an interesting. Thanks to Mark for sending this
in!
This week saw an odd migration of geeks in and out of Austin. Early this week the tech geeks all left the capital of Texas en mass, while music geeks all boarded trains, plains and autos headed for Austin. And if you're still suffering from jetlag and whiplash, here are a few stories you may have missed.
An increasing number of educational institutions are putting courseware online for public consumption. We've known for a while that 
This won a Webby a few
years ago, and I'm surprised it hasn't come up before, but 
