Firefox and Safari partially support it, Google's Wave and Chrome projects are banking on it, and most web developers are ecstatic about what it means. It's HTML5, and if you're not exactly sure what it is, here's an explainer.
If the DIY community had a universal symbol, it most certainly would be a roll of duct tape. Inexpensive, abundant, strong, and ready to stick to nearly anything, this versatile DIY companion is a must in your DIY toolkit.
This can't be good.
Listing all those empty homes out there
Welcome to Mathalicious. Here, we’re guided by a simple philosophy: Math isn’t something you learn, but a tool you use to learn about other things. Our mission is to help transform the way math is taught and learned by focusing not only on skills but on the real-world applications of math, from sports to politics to video games to exercise.
If you’re a teacher, parent or student, we invite you to use our content in your homes and classrooms. So poke around. Have some fun. Get some smart.
Thirty years ago, two Hungarian educators, László and Klara Polgár, decided to challenge the popular assumption that women don’t succeed in areas requiring spatial thinking, such as chess. They wanted to make a point about the power of education. The Polgárs homeschooled their three daughters, and as part of their education the girls started playing chess with their parents at a very young age. Their systematic training and daily practice paid off. By 2000, all three daughters had been ranked in the top ten female players in the world. The youngest, Judit, had become a grand master at age 15, breaking the previous record for the youngest person to earn that title, held by Bobby Fischer, by a month. Today Judit is one of the world’s top players and has defeated almost all the best male players.
Kodu is a new visual programming language made specifically for creating games. It is designed to be accessible for children and enjoyable for anyone. The programming environment runs on the Xbox, allowing rapid design iteration using only a game controller for input.
5 Amazing Downloads for Educators and Students
Category: Microsoft Research
Submitted Date: 1/29/2010Ideal for students in the classroom or at home, these downloads were selected in honor of National Computer Science Education Week 2009 and are offered to the public free of charge. Explore some of the amazing things you can do with software in your home or school today.
Kodu
Kodu is an exciting new visual programming language designed to be accessible to children and enjoyable for anyone who wants to create cool games. It runs on Xbox, allowing rapid program design iteration by using only a game controller for input. A PC version is available in beta for schools.Photosynth
Photosynth creates an amazing new experience with nothing more than a bunch of ordinary photos. Creating a “synth” allows you to share the places and things you love by using the cinematic quality of a movie, the control of a video game, and the mind-blowing detail of the real world.Robotics Developer Studio
Robotics Developer Studio (RDS) is a Windows-based programming environment for academic, hobbyist, and commercial developers to easily create robotics applications across a wide variety of hardware. Included is a set of visual authoring and simulation tools, as well as templates, tutorials, and sample code to help you get started.WorldWide Telescope
WorldWide Telescope (WWT) enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world. Experience narrated guided tours from astronomers and educators featuring interesting places in the sky. Run it in a browser window or as a standalone application.XNA Game Studio and XNA Creator’s Club Online
The XNA Creators Club Online is a community all about games made by you and creators like you. Create your games by using the XNA Game Studio, submit them for review by the Community, and sell them on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace. Games can be made for Xbox 360, Windows, and Zune.
Working with members of the research community and developers in the Microsoft Office Product group, we are developing a series of technologies for scientists—built on existing community protocols and practices—to advance semantic knowledge discovery.
As of today, we have decided to make using Aviary's suite of editing tools FREE for everyone.At Aviary, we believe that everyone in the world should have access to powerful creation tools. We therefore chose our company mission to be We make creation accessible to everyone. Our powerful set of tools helps fulfill this mission by enabling small businesses, students, artists & creators across different genres.
As a business, we did need to bring in revenues to cover our costs and development and to accomplish this we created a tiered pricing plan for certain types of uses. Although this was financially successful for us, the side effect of this was that our tools and their features (in their full capacity), were not truly accessible to everyone.
The Data Liberation Front
The Data Liberation Front is an engineering team at Google whose singular goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products. We do this because we believe that you should be able to export any data that you create in (or import into) a product. We help and consult other engineering teams within Google on how to "liberate" their products. This is our mission statement:
Whether you're a tech guru who knows your way around your computer better than the company that built it, or a novice just getting acquainted with your system, LookInMyPC is a free app you'll want to download and run at least once, even before you need its diagnostic help. It's like a big verbal X-Ray of your PC, detailing everything from the brand of network adapter you have to the number of user accounts on your system.
Data Crow doesn't just catalog your movies with IMDB look-ups, organize your MP3s and CDs with discographies, or handle pictures. It handles all three, plus contacts, software, books, and much more, and runs on any system.
Data Crow is huge, and can be very intimidating on first boot-up—there are menus upon menus, and it's not immediately obvious how you drop your stuff into this app. Thankfully, there's a beginner's wizard that pops up on first using the app—which can be re-launched from the Help menu if you lose track of it—that walks you through adding, tagging, and managing your media.
Once you get the hang of adding your stuff, you'll start seeing some of the cross-indexing and search powers that Data Crow provides. There are lots of web hook-ins to help you grab cover art and details for your media off Amazon.com and other online sources, and a good number of import tools to save you time if you've already done some cataloging in another app.
You're pinging somebody over email right now, but they'll probably need a reminder or follow-up in two days. CC twodays@followupthen.com, and if that person hasn't responded yet, they'll be automatically re-pinged 48 hours from now. It's a neat service, and it's free.
That's the main way FollowUpThen works: CC a message that needs a second push to an address like 5hours, 2days, 1week, or even 10minutes@followupthen.com, and if your recipient doesn't reply (with FollowUpThen as one of the addressees) before your time period is up, the original message is re-pushed by FollowUpThen.com, with a little email graphical tweak, seen above, and a notice that FollowUpThen is acting on your wishes.
If you want to handle the second notice yourself, add the @followupthen.com timed address to the BCC field, and it will only get back to you, with a reminder of what you sent. You can also send a message directly To: followupthen.com, and your reminder is pushed back to you at the time you specify.
Career blogger Penelope Trunk carries a 2007 article from the Harvard Business Review with her everywhere she goes. The article, called The Making of an Expert, discusses the reality of expertise, which, simply put, is this:
Chrome/Firefox/Safari/Opera: Want proof that HTML5 is the way of the future? Try Sketchpad, a surprisingly robust online painting app that doesn't require Flash, Shockwave, or any other plug-in—just a modern browser and your fingers.
Run by a team that dubs themselves Colorjack, this "Sketchpad" demo shows off the capabilities of modern JavaScript and HTML5 support. You can paint any color in any shade or opacity, take on patterns and "Spirographs," and use all the tools you're likely familiar with from Microsoft's older versions of that old Paint standby.
Whether you're putting together a portfolio web site or just slapping together some slides, knowing how colors affect the minds of your audience makes your message more appealing. Smashing magazine offers a post that serves as Color Psychology 101 for would-be designers.
Classroom Response System
An affordable Classroom Response System (CRS) accessible to all educators
Sugar Labs has announced the first official release of Sugar on a Stick, a Linux-based learning environment that can boot from a USB memory stick. The Sugar platform, which originally emerged from the One Laptop Per Child project, could soon arrive in classrooms.
Lorem ipsum is a block of dummy text in Latin often used in design and publishing to fill space in a mockup. The brilliant Dummy Image Generator is like "lorem ipsum" for images.
If your company is already tightening its belt, it might not do much good asking for a raise during your next performance review. Instead, consider asking for other perks that might be almost as good as cash in your pocket.
Iraq inquiry to recall Tony Blair over possible conflicting evidence
Former prime minister to be questioned in public and private over evidence he gave to panel on invasion's legality
Researchers now believe that being aggressive, intolerant and short-tempered could be a sign of a more advanced nature.
A more childlike attitude to behaviour such as tolerance and sharing, could, in contrast, be an indication of not being as developed, the new study suggests.
Windows: Evernote's desktop software does a good job at clipping screenshots, scribblings, and as-you-think text into your cloud-connected second brain, but didn't look so hot doing it. Evernote 3.5 upgrades the note views, and also improves your search powers.
The great part about your computer is that—unlike you—it doesn't require any sleep. Take advantage of your PC's insomnia by automating time- and processor-intensive tasks while you're counting sheep.
The semi-GDrive upload feature announced earlier this month has gone live, giving everyone with Google Docs a 1GB space to store, and share, files of any kind.
Windows/Mac/Linux: The oft-delayed but much improved 3.6 version of Firefox has landed, offering up faster performance, one-click themes, safer add-ons and plug-ins, better font handling, and a lot more. Grab it now.
Firefox: Mozilla's out with the 1.0 of its Weave project, and it delivers on what it first promised—quiet, complete syncing of bookmarks, passwords, preferences, history, and even open tabs. It also heralds the coming of a really cool mobile experience.
If you're tired of your PowerPoint presentations being a bit tame, Microsoft has released a collection of PowerPoint slide sets that show how you can push the envelope in slide design and get away from boring slides.
They've collected dozens of slide sets that are not only interesting for their color schemes and animations, but also include instructions on how each was created. If you see a set in the collection that you'd like to not only use but learn how to make, download it and check out the attached notes—they'll detail the creation process slide by slide like an elaborate tutorial.
Firefox: As you make the rounds commenting at your favorite blog or composing a lengthy email, avoid misspellings or a bad turn of phrase with After the Deadline's excellent grammar and spellcheck Firefox extension.
This nifty little add-on hides in the background on Firefox until you're ready to use it. The next time you visit a message board, fill out a web form, or leave a comment on your favorite web site, just hit F7 on your keyboard before you send your message into the intertubes. The extension checks for spelling and grammatical errors and underlines them in hard-to-miss bold colors.
Windows/Mac/Linux: Ever wanted to write a script for some repetitive task, but don't know how to code? Sikuli makes it possible for pretty much anyone to automate tasks, by telling it what to do with just some screenshots and simple commands.
