Google AJAX Search API

I'm not totally sure what to make of this one, but it sounds interesting. It seems that Google has created a search function that allows you to insert a Google search area into your site in a custom way. One of the most practical seems to be that it would allow you to use Google to search your site.

One of the really intriguing ones is the blog comments search API. You can add a small Google search area next to a blog comment area, and then the results can be added to the end of the comment as "clippings." Sounds like a great idea for educational purposes. I would like to see something like that for discussion posts, too. That way, you can quickly find results to back up your posts in an academic settings.

I haven't fully dug into these ideas yet, but they sound interesting.

iPhone. Wow.

I've been thinking about getting a smart phone recently. mainly because I need something to make me look smart every time I open my big mouth (and insert my foot). Nothing really seemed like a perfect fit for me. Then, Apple came to the rescue with the iPhone.

All I can say is Wow. I want one. This has the possibility to revolutionize mobile computing, communications, and especially education. You may have read the articles about it, but you NEED to see Steve Jobs intro of the phone at MacWorld. It's pretty long, but will make your jaw drop a couple of times.

Here is the link to the video. Click on the second one about the iPhone intro. It won't seem like the right video at first, but it is:

http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/j47d52oo/event/

Snap Causes Hades to Freeze Over

I've seen this on several blogs recently, so I thought I would give it a whirl. Snap has created a web preview feature for links in Web sites. You just hover your pointer over a link, and a small preview of that site will pop up for you. Some sites haven't been added to this service, so you may get a window that says "waiting to be added to previewed" or something like that. Still a pretty cool feature, and easy to sign up for. I added to this site, if you want to try it.

Snap is a new search site that I guess is trying to add something new to the search engine. Wait a second.... a cool web search innovation that didn't come from Google first? I know it is going to freeze in Dallas this week, but I guess I had better check the forecast for Hell....

Top Ten "Benefits" Of The New Microsoft-Ford Partnership

I usually try to stay positive here at Geekdomville, but this was too good to pass up. Ford and Microsoft are planning on launching a car software system. Now, you may love Ford, but I tend to think Ford stands for "Found On Roadside Dead" or "Fix Or Repair Daily." And, while I don't personally hate Microsoft, I think they are far inferior to Mac, Linus, and, well, just about everything out there. So, I thought I would speculate on the, ummm, benefits of owning a new VistaCarPC2007:

• Your engine begins to slow down after owning it for a year due to Spyware clogging it up.
  
• Your entire car freezes up and stops running when you turn on the AC, radio, cruise control, and windshield wipers due to a command-line/ low-virtual-memory/ something-you-don't-understand conflict something or other
  
• Your dashboard isn't compatible with that new cool cup holder you bought, unless you download the dashboard patch
• You will constantly be attacked while driving down the road by roving bands of Ford hating computer hackers that have now gone mobile
• Your seats have to increase their virtual memory when you have too many people seated in it just so you can drive forward.
  
• You will also have to constantly be on the alert for viruses hidden in any attachments, including bumper stickers, Jesus-fishes, and Sonic restaurant window trays
• Firewalls will stop you from turning on to main streets, while allowing you to easily drive down dangerous alleys population by prostitutes and gangsters
• Constant annoying pop-up window fliers wanting you to play their in-car poker games
• When your tire blow out, who knows how long it will be before they release a patch. If ever...
  

And the worst of all....

• Those snobbish Electric Car\iMac hybrid owners that constantly remind you how superior their vehicle is in every way....

New Year, New Firefox Version

So, it's a New Year. Cool. What am I looking forward to in the next year? What new Geekdom goodness am I drooling over? Lots of interesting movies, TV shows, and music to think about. Plenty of new techie things being announced that are pretty exciting. Some may happen, some sound like corporate hype (the hack-proof Vista, anyone?). The one that I think will definitely happen, and will probably live up to it's hype, is the new version of Firefox scheduled for this year.

Well, Mozilla says that Firefox won't be released officially until the end of 2007, but I am still looking forward to it. The Alpha version was released in early December. The people that are developing it "hope that it will be a major step toward making Web applications indistinguishable from programs that are installed on the desktop."

This, to me, sounds like the missing piece in Web2.0 development. Programmers that are creating applications for the web are sometimes limited by browser specifications. Now that a browser is looking to make Web2.0 a reality, I think we will see even better online applications.

I found out over the holidays that some people are afraid of Web2.0 concepts, especially the thought of storing documents or projects that they are creating online. What if you internet connection goes down? What if the website crashes? well, those are always a possibility. But creating anything comes with risks. If you create a Word document and store it on a hard drive - what happens when your drive crashes? Zip drive back-ups can get lost, CD-R backups can get drop and broken, etc. There is always a risk of loss. Even printed copies can get lost, accidentally thrown away, etc. We've just gotten over the fears in existing project creations. I think we are just going to have to wait until people get over fears of Web2.0 technology, too.

Congratulations! You Are Time's Person of the Year

Just don't expect a prize :) This has been all over the Web, but I think it is still cool. And it's Christmas time, so I don't exactly expect to stay o n top of this blog while I am relaxing on vacation. Anyway, due to the growth or user input based websites like YouTube and Wikipedia, Time magazine has decided to name the entire world person of the year.

Of course, this is due to the growth of the Web2.0 revolution, which I have been heavily focusing on in this blog. This is great news for Ed Tech folks like me, because the more recognition online tools get, the more development there will be on that front. I read about a YouTube like site for artists the other day. I need to dig that one out. Stuff like this is really exciting for the future of Online Education.

Of course, I say I will be taking a break for Christmas, but who knows? So much geeky news to report. A new Transformers movie trailer to drool over, cool new websites popping up every where, and I finally got to see an episode of Battlestar Gallactica this weekend. Yes, I am the only geek in the world without cable. So I had to wait until I was out of town in a hotel to see it. But, the upside is that, while flipping through cable channels looking for something to watch, I finally found a Star Trek series that my wife actually likes (Voyager).

Putting It All Together: An Online Lesson

So, I've been talking about all of these random tools for online education. But what can actually be done to teach with these tools? Here's one idea I have for a lesson. Combine an online PowerPoint presentation with an embedded audio from a podcast. Then you have a complete lesson that accommodates all three learning styles (the kinesthetic people have to click to go to the next slide).

Here's an example. This is my presentation from the 2006 IOL conference in Austin. I uploaded the PowerPoint to SlideShare, and re-recorded the audio with Odeo Studio. All online, all free, all pretty cool. The audio was pretty much a one-shot, quick re-do on my home computer this last weekend, but it is possible to use a free program like Audacity to record your speech, then edit in music and sound effects, and finally upload that back into Odeo.

powered by ODEO

Click on the play button to hear the audio. Something like this may need a good set of instructions for students to follow, but could end up being a good, low cost alternative to something like Camtasia.

YackPack: Will Voice-Based E-mail Catch On?

We've all ran into the same big problem with e-mail: it's so hard to read a person's mood in the message. Are they angry, happy, bored? Many an enemy has been made in the world over the mis-typed or ill conceived response. Even a smiley really doesn't help that much - mainly because so many people misuse them. "Your such an idiot :)" - so obviously a joke... right? Phones usually always beat e-mails in the accurate communication department. So, can you combine voice with e-mail to overcome these problems?

Some companies can have made attempts at this. Google Talk introduced a Voice Message system for email that I've touched on before. YackPack is a website that seems to move the concept of email totally into the voice realm. Basically, with YackPack, you record messages to leave for people that are also on YackPack. They can then open the message, listen to it, and respond to it.

Sounds like a fun tool, but will it catch on? We tried it at my office, and it died out pretty quick after the cool factor died down - like, after one day of use. Other tools, like Google Talk and Skype, still find usage in my everyday work flow. But YackPack didn't quite catch on. I still think it is a step in the right direction.

The biggest problem for us was that YackPack has a funky interface that is unusual to learn. It's not hard, it just is so different from how e-mail is set-up. I think they could greatly improve "the Yack" if they just made the message retrieval and response system function and interface like e-mail currently does, rather than create an entirely new system. It takes a good chunk of time to learn the voice recording side of it as it is - so leave something in there that is familiar at least.

I've also seen tools that create online voice-based discussion boards. I've discussed this concept on Moodle discussion boards in the past. Martin Dougiamas, the creator of Moodle, had a great point. If all of your discussion is in a voice recording, you can't quote someone and respond to that particular chunk. You also can't search through the voice messages to even find a specific quote. You have to listen to the whole thing all over again. It's just a much slower, time consuming way of doing asynchronous discussion.

I think another good reason that text-based e-mail and discussion will continue to dominate voice-based alternatives is the silence factor. You can type e-mail without having to close the office door for privacy. That can't happen with YackPack.

Google Talk is probably more of the step in the right direction - messages recorded and sent to an email address still show up as an e-mail, but you can play the voice recording straight from the e-mail (built-in player is included, if the recipient has Gmail). It would be nice for them to give the options of then responding to the message in voice or text, but for now the only option is text. Also the built-in player in Gmail is Flash-based, so it should be easy to send that player to non-Gmail addresses, too - but so far you can't.

The possibilities are there, and the ideas are in motion... so it will be interesting to see how these pan out.

Heroes Still Rocks

Yep - so far I have been watching every episode of the new Heroes TV show. And, yep - they all still rock. I guess I like Sci-Fi, so maybe I was pre-destined to love this show. But my wife likes it also. If you haven't seen any of Heroes yet (or have missed some), you can watch every episode online here.

So, my question is, which do you think it is?

IF you "save the cheerleader", THEN you "save the world"

- OR -

FIRST, "save the cheerleader", NEXT "save the world"

I tend to go for the second one. Or maybe some kind of combination of both. But I also have a theory about that painting of Hiro "fighting" a T-Rex. Most of those paintings have still come true. For example, Jackie and Claire look the same, so how do we know it wasn't Jackie getting killed in those paintings? And, they don't always show what we think they show. Remember the painting of Peter dead? Well, he did die, but then he absorbed the healing powers of Claire and came back to life.

So, the painting of Hiro fighting a dinosaur? I think he is just retrieving the sword from a museum when he starts pretending to fight with a statue of a dino. Why do I think this? Because there is no way that NBC can afford the CGI of a dinosaur in a TV show. Unless there is a Heroes movie in the works? Hmmm.....

SlideShare: Share Your PowerPoints Online

What is my deal with PowerPoint recently? I guess I have really been looking for ways to do PowerPoints online. I love Google's efforts to put Office-like applications online. But they are missing the whole PowerPoint deal. I think that online PowerPoints would have great online educational purposes. For example, take the ZohoShow that I wrote about earlier. Record an audio lecture to go along with that online using something like Odeo, and embed the audio player underneath the Slideshow. You will then have an online lecture that appeals to audio, visual, and kinesthetic learners (they have to manually click to go the next slide).

One tool that I found interesting as I searched for an online PowerPoint solution was SlideShare. SlideShare is a tool that works like YouTube, but for PowerPoint presentations. In fact, the layout and functionality are pretty much the same. The difference with ZohoShow is that with Zoho, you can create and edit the PowerPoints online. SlideShare just allows you to upload and display completed PowerPoints. But it still works nice. And, it's free.

ZohoShow and SlideShare both do not support animations or slide transition effects. The animations part is important to point out because, if you have something that appears in order on a slide - say, a series of pictures - that effect will be lost once you upload the presentation to either site. Especially those that like to bulleted list items appear one at a time. The way to get around this is to create one slide for each effect that you want to add (using PowerPoints copy and paste slide feature) and then upload it. Here is the same PowerPoint from my earlier post uploaded into SlideShare: