Category: Internet

Wolfram Tones

Posted on By Tom 1 Comment on Wolfram Tones
Internet, Music

WolframTones- An Experiment in a New Kind of Music.png by RndConnections on Aviary

I’ve not had much chance to play around with Wolfram Alpha. I know it’s an amazing computational engine, and can solve math and many other types of problems. I just haven’t had much need for it, although I can see that it would be a fantastic tool for students. I have, however, spent a few minutes looking at Wolfram Tones. It’s a pretty cool online music composition toy that can kill a bit of time.

The tonal patterns are based on a computational formula developed by Stephen Wolfram in the 1980’s. As such, they tend to be fairly random. There is a degree of control over the sound, however. You can pick a style from a list as follows:

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80% Won’t Post This

Posted on By Tom 6 Comments on 806 Won’t Post This
Internet, Rants

…and that’s a GOOD thing.

Take a look at this popular Facebook status update…

Every person has 1000 wishes. A cancer patient only has one wish, to get better. I know that 97% of Facebookers won’t post this as their status, but my friends will be the 3% that do. In honor of someone who died, or is fighting cancer – post this for at least one hour….

Now look at this one….

Today I’m going to pause to remember all those who are suffering from cancer, as well as their friends and family who are affected by this terrible disease.

…or this one…

Please remember my friend _____, who is battling cancer right now. Feel free to repost if you know someone else that might be concerned about him/her.

The first one is trite and passive aggressive. The last two have similar messages and concerns, and the second even encourages reposting, but to me are much less offensive. There is none of the guilt-inducing “you can’t be my friend if you don’t copy me exactly” sort of language. To me the last two messages are much more effective.

Danielle Foster, a contributing writer at Suite 101, describes this type of Facebook activism very succinctly:

The purpose of raising awareness about an important cause is to inspire people to reflect on the issue. The hope is that after awareness is raised, action will follow. Do status memes promoting awareness accomplish action, or are they merely providing short-lived entertainment and self-validation?…

…What this whole message is really doing is fishing for validation under the cover of supporting cancer victims. If you are the poster’s true friend, you will re-post the message because being that person’s true friend makes you a great person who would not dare dis-honor cancer victims, or the poster’s friendship with you, by not re-posting. You are this person’s friend aren’t you? You don’t hate cancer victims, do you? You had better re-post.

Read more at Suite101: Raising Awareness With Facebook: Does It Work? http://www.suite101.com/content/raising-awareness-with-facebook-does-it-work-a319040#ixzz1D6NkBMuF

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Google Books Explored

Posted on By Tom No Comments on Google Books Explored
Internet

books_logo_lg.png by RndConnections on Aviary

Yesterday Google rocked the eBook world by announcing its entry into the market. Their approach is to host everything in the cloud, and all access would be remote. The upside would be that your books are available on any device. The downside would be that you would have to be constantly connected to read them. There’s supposed to be a download option, but I haven’t read up enough on it. In fact, I’m not going to talk about the new service at all (apart from that brief introductory statement.) I’ll let the rest of the blogosphere do that, and perhaps follow up later. Instead, today I’d like to focus on what Google’s been doing all along with it’s Google Books service.

For whatever reason, I really hadn’t paid much attention to everything that was available in Google Books. It was something I knew about and had used on rare occasion. Lately I’ve been exploring it in depth, and I’m really impressed by all the tools available for research and reading. I’ve hinted at this in the last couple of posts, but this time I’ll take one book and put it through its paces.

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A Few Google Flaws

Posted on By Tom No Comments on A Few Google Flaws
EdTech, General Technology, Internet

The past several posts I’ve been singing the praises of Google. However, all is not perfect in Google Land. There have been the occasional really bad ideas – Google Wave, for example – and the abandonment of some really good ideas, such as Google Notebook. In this post I’m going to stay away from the more published flaws that Google has had to endure. Instead, I’ll cover just a few things that I’ve found to be a bother.

I’ve already mentioned that until only recently, group accounts could not be used for Google Maps, Picasa, or other many other Google products.  That really limited the effectiveness of those accounts.  Fortunately, that has been corrected.  However, there are still a few things that are not quite right.

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Audioboo and SoundCloud – New Audio Hosting Options

Posted on By Tom 4 Comments on Audioboo and SoundCloud – New Audio Hosting Options
EdTech, Internet

wp_Audio_Wall_1280x800

A couple of years ago I lamented about the lack of good resources for sharing audio clips. What I was after was sort of a YouTube for audio. Video sharing sites were becoming relatively common, but audio was another matter. At that time I created a wish list for online audio sharing.  I had suggested some possibilities for audio sharing, but none came close to my wish list.  In fact, most of the hosting sites I mentioned are long gone.

Now there are a couple of new options to fill the bill.  SoundCloud (http://www.soundcloud.com) and Audioboo (http://audioboo.fm) both offer audio file hosting. While very similar, they each have slightly different approaches to how music is shared on their sites.

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Google Docs Rundown

Posted on By Tom 1 Comment on Google Docs Rundown
EdTech, General Technology, Internet

google-docs-vs-microsoft-office-white

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m encouraging our teachers to use Google Docs with their classrooms through our new Spart5.info domain.  Our district, like most in the state, has standardized on Microsoft Office.  We have no intention of changing our basic productivity platform.  I think of Google Docs as a complement to, rather than competitor to Microsoft Office.

Personal Use

I’ve been using Google Docs personally for a couple of years now.   The convenience of cloud computing was just becoming apparent, and I liked the idea of having my work available on any computer I happened to use, as long as it was online.  I first tried it in earnest with an online course I was taking for recertification.  It just seemed like a good place to keep everything together.

I’m using Google Docs more and more now, but most often I use it for documents that I need to find quickly – reference documents such as my resume, circuit ID numbers, etc.  I also use it for keeping notes at various meetings because it’s so easy to share the notes.

I’ve got a little Dell netbook that I use all the time (I’m using it to type this right now.)  Unfortunately, it’s a first-generation netbook with limited processing power and only a 16 GB solid state hard drive.  I just don’t have room for MS-Office, so I rely on Google Docs and the ability to be online just about anywhere.

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Google Conquers the World (almost)

Posted on By Tom No Comments on Google Conquers the World (almost)
Internet

…or at least Spartanburg 5. For the past couple of weeks I seem to have been immersed in Google products. A couple of weeks ago I did a workshop for teachers in our district on Creating Virtual Tours in Google Earth. Part of the presentation involved the integration of Google Docs (documents, presentations, and forms) … Read More “Google Conquers the World (almost)” »