respublica

Internet out

For the past few days our cable internet has gone out for a length of time and then comes back on for a while. I never know what to expect, it goes out in the middle of something and comes on when I'm not there.

I've re-booted checked the connections, nothing stops this. We're probably looking at the dreaded call to Charter repair and if my guess is correct, the guy will waste all kinds of time doing everything else to avoid the source. I think it may be the result of the outside line come loose or chewed by a squirrel.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Where did you leave that cell phone?

Misplace your cell phone?  Who doesn't?

A website which will ring your phone when you type in the number.

It works

Who's online?

A PEW Research Center survey of Americans who use the internet.

The chart shows the percentage of each group wired up.

Bladeless fans

The Dyson people, creators of the bagless vacuum cleaner, have come up with a fan which works without the spinning blades.

The science is beyond me, but it looks cool and may eventually get those big, bulky ceiling fans out of sight.

Typepad is not allowing me to use hyperlinks this morning, hopefully a link to the fan can be put up later today. 

50 Princeton students not really liking the Kindle

According to the Daily Princetonian, the school began a pilot program using Amazon Kindles instead of textbooks.  50 students in 3 classes-Civil Society and Public Policy (ha), Diplomacy in the Middle East, and Religion and Magic in Ancient Rome were given the Kindle.

Many were disappointed and found it difficult to use.  This surprises me in this day and age when college age students have been technologically savvy most of their lives. 

Those students found that the Kindle's ability to make margin notes, highlight passages and finding previous pages awkward and slow.

On the plus side, most found the Kindle easier on the eyes than a normal book which makes it easier to read for longer stretches of time. 

Owning a Kindle, I'd have to say that note saving is quite easy, highlight a passage and it's saved on the home page. 

But currently the Kindle is mainly for reading.  That's the market.  It does make the attempt to include useful ways to save sections and make notes.  I predict it won't be long before the e-readers gin up the format for classroom study.  There's a huge market out there and a huge market means money.  

I love it, frankly.  But then I'm not studying for Civil Society and Public Policy.  Civil Society.  Heh.

Thanks, John!  Our tech guy who needs a Kindle.

Kindle competition

Sony announced today that a new digital reader, The Reader Daily Edition, will be available for sale beginning in December.

This reader is the first to publicly compete with Amazon's Kindle and will give buyers access to free and affordable books through its eBook Store.  It will also feature a wireless 3G connection so that books can be downloaded wherever the owner might be which is what the Kindle does now.

What's new is this reader will give access to local libraries which will allow anyone with a library card to download available books.  The book will disappear on the date the book is due. 

Libraries which make this program available can be found by typing the zip code of the local library into the library finder form on the device. 

We'll see how this works out, it may be a huge hit or the Kindle will continue its dominance.  I love having a  Kindle but competition makes everyone better.

Price come December will be about $399.

"The Big Ten Clearly Gets Social Media"

An uproar in the SEC, Southeastern Conference, began last week when conference officials sent out a dictate that all social media would be banned at games. 

"Fans may not disseminate … any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information concerning the Event." 

The reasoning was that the use of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc, to send updates, photos and video were cutting into the exclusive TV rights the SEC has with CBS and ESPN. 

After all manner of criticism over this rule, SEC officials decided yesterday to tone down the rule.  They have now revised their guideline to read: 

"video will still be off-limits, it looks like tweets, Facebook status updates, and even pictures will be acceptable, so long as they are for non-commercial use."

But let's take a look at the Big Ten, the SEC's polar opposite when it comes to social media.  According to Brett Feddern of The Bleacher Report: 

The Big Ten seems to be taking the exact opposite approach, a sign that they clearly get the direction of where the world is headed. Their social media campaign encourages and embraces fan participation. 

The Big Ten actively promotes the use of social media, sharing content online in a plethora of different formats so that fans can redistribute and utilize. On their website, they offer a large selection of team podcasts for download and offer the ability to embed their videos so bloggers can post videos to their sites. They also list all of the Big Ten team Twitter and Facebook accounts and encourage fans to continue sending them more information.

Good job Big Ten.  Now it's time to find out what the Big 12 is doing.

The giant, incomprehensible Hadron Collider is struggling

This front page story from the New York Times is one of the most incomprehensible pieces I've seen.  If you're a physicist maybe you can make sense of it.

The biggest physics machine in the world is in Geneva and is filled with magnets meant to "whiz high-energy subatomic particles around a 17-mile underground racetrack ".  The magnets have somehow lost their ability to operate at high energies.

The goal of this collider is to produce a particle known as the Higgs boson thought to be responsible for imbuing other elementary particles with mass, or to identify the dark matter that makes up 25 percent of the cosmos.

And there's more.  But it is all mumbo jumbo to me, except the part where "the public is paying for this."

Congressional Twittering

Which members of Congress Twitter?

Here's the list.

You can also see how many people are following each officials, tweets.

There is also a site called Tweet Congress which you can follow on Twitter, or just go to the site if you don't want all those twitters.

There is also the Capitol Tweet, created by the Sunlight Foundation to keep people informed on the latest congressional tweets.  I've added that widget to my sidebar. 

Um, no I haven't added the Capitol Tweet live stream to my sidebar.  It is way too big. 

Battery app

iPhones have apps.  Not new news.  But, Battery Go! which has become one of the most downloaded apps from Apple's iTunes store is news.

Battery Go! is a 99 cent download which was created by three Valparaiso University students who thought developing an application for iPhone would be an interesting summer project.  They succeeded faster than they expected and their app has become more successful than they may ever have dreamed and the three may have found a career they hadn't planned on.

In simplest form, Battery Go! allows the iPhone user to calculate how much battery power they have left for certain tasks such as phone calls, watching movies, playing games.  iPhones use more battery power than ordinary cell phones which makes knowing when a charge is needed important. 

Congrats to the three guys from Valpo, the university one of our daughters went to and a place we hold dear.