e-Clippings (Learning As Art)

Your integrity for a...t-shirt?

A little while back, I looked at a new search product named PowerSet. I thought it was interesting and kind of added it to my list of things to keep an eye on. Then I get this email (below). You can read it but the gist is, write something good about Powerset and we'll give you a t-shirt. Wow. Really? A whole t-shirt? I don't have any of those.
How stupid a PR hack do you have to be to do something like this? Do you see that in the distance? Its your disappearing credibility. Thanks for playing. Since I blogged about you, do I get a shirt?

"Greetings friends of Powerset,

Since we have so many Club Powerset t-shirts left over from our launch party, we've decided to give them away.  However, nothing in life is free, but some things are easy.

All you have to do is write a blog post highlighting something cool, unique, interesting or surprising that you found in the Factz section of Powerset.  Factz show up whenever you type in a topic name found in Wikipedia or when you ask a simple question.  We've written a blog post to give you all the details you need to find Factz; http://www.powerset.com/blog .

Once you've written your post, send us an e-mail at feedback@powerset.com with your t-shirt size, address, and link to your blog. On Friday, June 20th, Powerset will post links to the best blog posts and send out t-shirts to those who participated.

We look forward to your creativity!

Cheers,
The Powerset Team"

msnbc is 'predicting' the news?

First, I should say that if you notice any glaring and repeated omissions of the letter "N" in my posts for a while, it's because my "N" key has started becoming unresponsive and I eed to get it fixed.

Second,  what's the idea here? I understand predicition markets, I even understand using them as a 'wisdom of the crowds' approach to current events. What I don't understand is a for-real news site using them.

Third, look at the number of votes cast...not exactly earth-shattering traffic...

Blackboard Designers Discover...a navigation bar...and more wonders...

Stephen  points to a press release from Blackboard which heralds some of the new, cutting-edge features of their support site. Among them are:

"A Static Navigation Toolbar so visitors can get around the site  quickly and easily;
My Bookmarks" allowing users to book mark pages they want to revisit  within the site;
Your Last 10 Pages" so users can see the last ten actions/tasks they logged;"

You know, with vision like that, maybe they did invent learning.....bookmarks...I need to go tell someone about bookmarks....

Anybody else see this? The head of SBC wants to charge Google et al for coming into your home...

...maybe he should pay my cable modem bill. (Story Link) Check out this gem of a quote:

"Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using,"

Tell me again who is using his pipes for free? I thought that check I sent in every month took care of "his pipes".

Lunch Room RSS

A lot of people have already hit this one but I just got to post it as well. Seems that lil' 'ole Allegheny College has created an RSS feed for its lunch menu. FYI, today's special is Turkey Vegetable Primavera.

Mark's Mental Cleaning Catch-All Post

Expect no order here and you'll get none. Just had some of these things in the loop too long and need to put them out there.

IM Smarter: Became aware of this little service (a proxy for IMs) when I friend of mine who had disappeared behind corporate firewalls, suddenly re-appeared.

My Web 2.0 BETA (Yahoo!): Strike 1 - doesn't render right in Opera. Kinda creates this 3-tiered Web; your's, your community's and the whole world. So its like Friendster and  del.icio.us rolled into one sort of. But will I use it?

"Collaboration Sessions: How to Lead Multidisciplinary Teams, Generate Buy-In, and Create Unified Design Views in Compressed Timeframes" (Boxes and Arrows): Haven't read it yet but isn't that a great title?

"I want a portable wiki -- a WalkAbout Wiki (with TagAbout GPS technology...)" by Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

Some good coverage of the "The Games, Learning, and Society Conference" held this summer at the Univ. of Wisconsin.

The Slingbox: I still think this could really impact learning. I just haven't figure out how yet.

newsmap: I've posted this before but I just keep coming back to it and I want to figure out how to use visual aggregations of information like this better.

alphaworks: Am I always the last to know about these sites? This is IBM's emerging technologies site - kinda like Big Blue's version of Google Labs.

Blogstar Theater

Near as I can tell, the folks at Blogstar Theater use the content from various posts around the

 

blogosphere as raw material to be converted into vignettes and then acted out.

 

...and if you play DOOM backwards....

Lawsuit blames shootings on video game
'Grand Theft Auto' led teen to kill, lawyer claims

The Associated Press

Updated: 9:00 p.m. ET Feb. 15, 2005

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. - A lawsuit claims the video game "Grand Theft Auto" led a teenager to shoot two police officers and a dispatcher to death in 2003, mirroring violent acts depicted in the popular game.

Take your gaming to the next (painful) level...

...found this somewhere...

"Shocking Battle Tanks" When you shoot your opponnent's tank with your little infrared beam, their controller shocks them. Hmmmm. What if we hooked them up to car batteries and you both stood in pools of water?

Shocker from Forrester: "eLearning Plays An Increasing Role In Business Strategy"

Six Enterprise Learning Management Suites Evaluated

"CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 10, 2005--While many firms adopted eLearning technologies to educate their workforce to gain a competitive edge, savings on travel costs remains one of the largest benefits. Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR - News) finds that today firms are more closely integrating learning applications with other company activities and elevating the role learning plays in their businesses' success. To help clients identify the best learning management system (LMS) for them, Forrester recently evaluated six LMSes. This technology allows firms to control, measure, and report on their deployed learning offerings, and often provides additional features such as analytics, performance management, and learning content management."

You're kidding me right? E-learning can save money on travel? Companies are integrating e-learning  with, oh, I don't know, let's call it workflow? This is stunning. I need to sit down.