Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

Saw this youtube video clip today at a Chinese web site. I think it is a combination of advertisement of Intel from various of sources. But still, it is well put together. The article say we may be there in 10 years, I say in 3-5 years. Some of the technology is already existing, but the video gives them a nice twist:

- Watch based communication device;
- Voice control home appliances;
- Home entertainment system links up to home office system;
- 3D GPS navigation system;
- Risk band communication system with online community functionality built-in...

It's amazing how fast the technology inventions are taking place now days... Check it out, really cool!

PC Magazine (May 8th issue) releases the top ten passwords used on the Internet. I don't know how did they gather the data though... Anyway, here is the list:

1. password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password1
9. blink182
10. (your first name)

What's more important is stop using them ASAP. Because the most popular hacking method is "brutal force" (trying possible character combinations / words).

Beijing officials have just revealed the 2008 Olympic Torch design and the planned route of the Olympic Torch Relay. I like the torch design a lot. Both the shape and texture are beautiful. The “Propitious Cloud” texture is a traditional Chinese symbol of peace. I am glad they didn't use any Chinese Dragon or Phoenix symbols which is too much of the old Chinese imperialism. According to the Chinese press, the design was done by Lenovo and the torch implementation was done by the Chinese Space Research Lab.

The Beijing Olympic torch relay, which will travel the longest route and involve the most people in the Olympic history, will display the beautiful Chinese scenery and rich culture to the world, as well as spread the ideas of peace, friendship and harmony. - Jiang Xiaoyu, BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Games).

The Olympic Torch Relay is titled as “Journey of Harmony”. It will begin on March 30th 2008 from Athen, with the lighting of the flame at Olympia. A grand launching ceremony for the torch relay will be held in Beijing on the following day to mark the start, with the flame heading for its first stop Almaty, Kazakhstan, on April 1. A split of the fire will be preserved to accompany the professional mountain climbers to the highest point of earth – Mount Everest at Himalaya.

The entire Olympic Relay will take 130 days traveling 137000 kilometers. The official web site of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Torch Relay is at: http://torchrelay.beijing2008.cn

According to sina.com, a research team lead by the University of Tokyo created a new record of the Internet speed. The record was actually created back in December 31st, 2006 where the Internet speed reached 9.08 Gbps which could be the fastest practical speed of Internet 2. The theoratical speed limit of Internet is 10Gbps. (The practical speed require a 10 percent improvement for recognition) The test was conducted by transmitting data over a 20 thousands miles path using the newer Internet addressing system – IPv6.

According to this speed, transmitting a high resolution movie could only take 30 seconds. The report says a cpacity of 100 Gbps network is under constructiong by the Internet 2 consortium. What are we going to do with all that speed?!

I went into a blog silence in the last couple of days because I was attending the first HASTAC conference (Electronic Techtonics : Thinking at the Interface) at Durham, North Carolina. It was an unbelievably brilliant group of people from all over the world. You can imagine what happens when you put a couple of hundreds of humanist, artists, and scientists under the same roof and talk about technology! The creative thoughts just came left, right and center! The activities and information exchange went non stop from 6 AM to mid night each day. My brain cells just got completely exhausted at the end of the day. This ought be the most intensive yet knowledgeable conference I ever attended.

We arrived at Durham on Thursday afternoon and headed straight to the Nasher Meseum at Duke University for the opening keynote by John Seely Brown (JSB). JSB's talk was on “The Social Life of Learning in the Net Age”. I strongly recommend some of his recent papers on Digital Culture and Learning in the Digital Age:
- Growing Up Digital: How the Web Changes Work, Education, and the Ways People Learn, by John Seely Brown
- Learning, Working & Playing in the Digital Age, by John Seely Brown
- The University in the Digital Age by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid
In fact, I recommend all of the speakings from his website, a true learning experience.

Of course the key-note speakers' in first day are equally inspiring and informative. James Boyle on “Creative Commons, Science Commons, and Open Source” and Rebecca Allen on “Global Interfaces, Intimate Interfaces and the Interface between Art and Technology”. It was a valuable experience to learn about open learning being supported in both the content and technology aspect. I have to say, the 100 dollar laptop final look (green and white) looks really slick!

Aside from the brilliant keynote speakers, all of the panels went on nicely. Great discussions after each one of them. Our panel on Innerspace and Interface turned out well. The discussions at the end were very informative. It was an pleasure that the evening key note speaker Rebecca Allen to be in our session as well. Her experience from the gaming industry provided us a new perspective of the virtual simulation and knowledge building medium.

The second day of the conference took place at Duke university, the activities were even more exciting. It started with a good information session on The Future of Learning: Three Perspectives where focused on how the young generation learners are adopting the new digital technologies and how would us educators accommodate the new needs. The discussions were quite intriguing too. This followed with a great panel on “At the Interface of Everything”, indeed, it was “A rare conversation across domains among digital visionaries. The outcome will be a mind-map of the conference and a game-plan for unforeseeable futures.” This was a fun and engaging session where a little competition was designed for the 12 panelist and the room full of audiences.

Lunch took place with a heated panel on Arts and Technology. All I need to say is the panel started with a super controversial question, “what is arts?”

My favorite part came in the afternoon of the second day. A tour to the well-known “DiVE” (Duke Immersive Virtual Environment) site and a show case of the Open Croquet project. I had the honor to meet with 3 of the 6 key engineers of "Croquet”: David Smith, Mark McCahill, and our old friend - Julian Lombardi. The meeting helped me to further understand the architecture behind the amazing open source platform. We also had a chance to show some of the visitors the Arts Metaverse contents in Croquet world.

As many other conferences, the Electronic Techtonics ends with a nice reception at the Branch Gallery and an “extended dinner” where many participants voluntarily gathered in the restaurant next door to continue the exchange.

The philosophical, sociological and economical discussions really keep your brain swirling. But with the technology as a central piece, the ideas merge seamlessly. It's interesting that this is the first conference of HASTAC where all attendees had a very open mind and trying to get a sense of where does the conference position itself between theories and practices. My experience? This conference is a true collage of academics, technologists and foundations where you find both the true academic needs and technological solutions. I am looking forward to the next year's program on HASTAC.

I am attending the HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) Electronic Techtonics: Thinking at the Interface Conference at Durham, North Carolina in the next few days. Arts Metaverse will make its first appearance in the conference during a panel session Uli and I will be a part of. Here is a quick screen shot of the simulation we will be showing. Thanks to my co-workers at UBC Arts ISIT for their hard work in the past few weeks! The flight is leaving in a few hours, I better catch some sleep...

D'Arcy created this nice screen cast on how to use the great XML publishing tool from New Zealand - eXe for ePortfolio authoring. The newest release of eXe is 0.23 and it works on both Windows and MacOS X. You can also download some nice plugins from the download page. Such as:

# Java Applet iDevice - adds an iDevice for importing Java applets into eXe content.
# SCORM Quiz iDevice - adds an iDevice for utilising the quizzing functionality with SCORM.
# Flash Movie iDevice - requires some knowledge of Flash and related technologies.
# Moodle Discussion Forum iDevice

According to the formal Beijing Olympic ticket center, over 50000 people successfully submitted their registrations through the web site (www.tickets.beijing2008.cn). The overall traffic to the web site in the past 24 hours have exceeded 1 million. The overall tickets requests reach 250000 (most registrations are requesting for multiple tickets). The officials emphasized on the fact that phase 1 is only a "lottery" process which means "Whether you submit your application early or on the last day, you will have an equal chance of securing tickets." So, take your time and plan well for your trip if you are traveling to Beijing.

A press release in regard to the 2008 Olympic tickets was made today by the Beijing Olympic officials (BOCOG). Olympic fans from the world can now register for their tickets purchases starting today. According to the press release, 75% of the overall tickets are reserved for the audiences in China and 25% of the tickets are aiming for the foreigners. There are over 700 million tickets available in total. This means the Beijing Olympic 2008 is expecting for over 175 million visitors around the world.

There will be three phases of the ticket purchasing process. From April to September 2007 is phase 1. October to December 2007 is phase 2 and April to the 2008 Olympic date (august) is phase 3.

Phase 1 is a lottery process, BOCOG is accepting ticket application requests through this ticketing website and designated Bank of China Olympic Ticket Outlets throughout China. Applications for any over-subscribed sessions will enter a random selection. Whether you submit your application early or on the last day, you will have an equal chance of securing tickets.

Phase 2 is “first come first serve” process where fans can purchase ticket through official web sites and banks. 50% of the overall tickets are expected to be sold in this phase.

All remaining tickets will be sold in phase 3 at the competition site or local ticket masters.

The official 2008 Beijing Olympic tickets purchasing information can be found at:

http://www.tickets.beijing2008.cn
you can choose the English version at the top left of the home page.

A tip for North American fans, you might want to try the web site in day time (8:00 AM to 3:00 PM) or the site is extremely slow. And sometimes inaccessible.

Now you can use the popular wii remote controller to navigate through your favorite flash applications or flash games! How cool is that?! Thanks to Joa Ebert and Thibault Imbert, the application WiiFlash was released recently. The application consists of two main parts: WiiFlash Server and WiiFlash ActionScript API. The idea is pretty straight forward and the product is quite exciting. Watch the video for a quick preview of the application.

Yes, we are now officially a member of the newly established consortium (March 28th, 2007) – The Croquet Consortium. This consortium is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to developing and promoting the widespread adoption of open source, Croquet technologies for research, education and industry. Here in the Faculty of Arts, we value the Croquet technology being the open source solution to our scholars whom want to research and develop educational based metaverse. We are currently actively using Croquet in the Arts Metaverse project.

I am looking forward to the upcoming involvement with this exciting community. I am already learning so much from the Croquet developers' list.

Tectonic Shift Think Tank is held in Vancouver tomorrow. It aims to identify the transformation opportunities for Mediawiki and related FLOSS technologies (Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)) for eLearning using free cultural works for Education. Here are some "brain teasers" from the dynamic agenda:

- All you need for the future of eLearning is free content, Mediawiki and Google
- It's better to have a poor quality educational resource that gives you the freedom to adapt and modify for ongoing quality enhancements than having access to a high quality closed resource.
- The conventional education model cannot deliver on the overwhelming demand for education in the developing world
- We can develop superior quality resources using open authoring models when compared to closed content authoring
- Digital mash-ups provide a glimpse of the future of digital learning in a Web 2.0 world - but with the corresponding risks of widening the divide.
- We will find innovative solutions to widen access to learning through digital content, especially for learners who do not have access to technology
- The most advanced technology should be deployed for the most disadvantaged learners
- Access to ICTs is a fundamental right of knowledge citizens - not an excuse for using old technologies.

I wish I can attend but other commitment at work ties me up. I will try to be among the remote participants. Good luck with the discussions!

With competitions on the right, left and center (Google, Adobe and Apple), Microsoft is coming out with “cool” tools to strike back. I have to say, the Microsoft Photosynth is a really cool tool. It is a new technology that analyzes a large collection of photos for their similarities. The analysis allows the software to “map” the photos precisely onto a 3D object that is created in resemble of the real object / architecture in the photos. Then viewing these photos is like a true 3D “walk through” experience. It's similar to Panorama effects but much much much more advanced.

What can you do with this tool? Here are some ideas from the developers at Microsoft Live Labs:

- Walk or fly through a scene to see photos from any angle.
- Seamlessly zoom in or out of a photo whether it's megapixels or gigapixels in size.
- See where pictures were taken in relation to one another.
- Find similar photos to the one you're currently viewing.
- Send a collection - or a particular view of one - to a friend.

This tool reminds me of an interesting application that was born in UBC a few years ago: Autostitch™.

Ok, first the “Desktop Search)”, then “Input Method Editor”, Google really wants a piece of Microsoft's OS pie. It's "Desktop Strategy" is helping Google to gain ground in the client-side applications. Google China launched the Google Chinese Input Method Editor (IME) to allow users to input Chinese without using the OS built-in inputing system. It's a free software which can be downloaded as any other standard Google tools. Input method editors allow writers to write in Chinese characters using the alphabet keyboard. According to Google China officials, Google is considering to develop IMEs for other languages at the moment.

According to Google, the Google Chinese IME will benefit from millions of searched keywords on Google to deliver more precise and versatile character combinations. This means it would save valuable correction time when typing Chinese using standard alphabet keyboard.

One unique feature of the Google Chinese IME is that it can be linked to a Gmail account, enabling users to customize a Chinese IME and have a personal dictionary that can follow them even when they log on from other computers.

The tool was made available yesterday afternoon and it was immediately tested by many users. So far the users find Google Chinese IME is quite advanced in the following areas:

- Precise character delivers when typing long sentences in Pinyin (Chinese Alphabet Pronunciation System). Some Chinese IMEs are weak when typing character combinations that are long than 4 characters.

- Its vast database of keywords, accumulated from its search services include many modern vocabularies really makes the typing more efficient.

- Google Chinese IME has a unique error correction function which helps to correct human errors when typing the alphabets (e.g. A miss-typed Pinyin like “tign” will be automatically corrected to “ting”).

- The fuzzy logic behind the inputing is more intelligent than other Chinese IMEs.

- It supports inputs for both simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese characters.

- Users can create “customized shortcuts” to get the often used character combinations.

- It also support stroke inputing methods in case users don't know the exact Pinyin for the desired word.

- Its English/Chinese dictionary is quite powerful.

With a recent shoulder injury, the 20 lb Dell XPS (with battery and power supply) appears to be heavier than normal. It's interesting that the laptop sizes are going to the two extremes, the powerful ones are evolving from 13 inch to 14 inch to 17 inch to 20.1 inch (Dell XPS M2010)! On the other hand, the manufacturers are also making the laptops to the mini end: 12 inch to 11 inch to 10 inch to 6 inch (the world smallest laptop – Sony VAIO UX)!

Among all of the mini laptops, the 10 inch laptops seem to be the most “popular” and “mature” laptop products. Sony and Fujitsu were the first two companies that started the mini laptop series. But other laptop producers like Acer, Lenovo (IBM) and Apple immediately jump onto the mini laptop wagon.

This obviously is driven by the consumers. There are people like me looking for more powerful desktop replacement laptops, but there are people like my co-workers (whom owns the first generation of mini laptops – SONY VGN-UX) refuses to carry around heavy laptops. It seems more people I know are looking for the smaller solution at the moment, here I find a few models for their selections.

1. The newer version of my co-worker's Sony mini laptop is Sony VAIO VGN-T350P/L. The entire laptop weight only 3.04 lb, it uses Intel M 1.2GHz, 2MB cache memory, 512MB DDR SDRAM, 60 GB 4200 RPM hard drive, 10.6 WXGA LCD display, 10/100M wireless network card and an INTERNAL DVD Recorder! The VGN-T350P/L battery supports up to 9 hours of operation! Wow, my XPS battery only supports up to 2.5 hours and a risk of explosion! :) The advantage of this mini laptop is it's from a reliable series, my co-worker whom own the fist generation of Sony mini laptop has been using it for 3 years and barely had any problems.

2.Fujitsu LifeBook P7230 (FPCM21122) has a nice look, the cool colored titanium skin make it attractive to young people and female laptop consumers. This laptop weight only 2.55 lb! Here is the default configuration with the mini laptop: Intel ULV Core Solo U1400 CPU (1.2GHz，Intel 945GMS chip set)，1024MB DDR2 RAM，80GB hard drive，build-in DVD/CDRW，10.6 inch LCD. What's special about this laptop is it comes with 2 batteries by default and 2 USB 2.0 ports and 1 fire wire port, a multi-card reader, and a wireless network card. Pretty much everything you will need when you are on the road. The advantage of this laptop is it's light weight and more memory)

3.Another one I really like is Averatec 1050-EB1 (AV1050EB1) , it is a Korean brand. The only wide screen mini laptop in the market I think. Weight 3.6 lb. Very slick design, dark red (wine color) skin and milk white keyboard makes it really attractive to the fashion seekers. The set-up of this computer is: Intel 1.1GHz M ULV 733 CPU (855GME chip set)，512MB DDR RAM，10.6 inch WXGA LCD (a very bright wide screen mini laptop with brightness of 240cd/m2)，80GB hard drive，and an internal DVD/CD -RW Drive. It also got both USB and Fire Wire ports, also D-SUB, Type II PC card slot, MMC/SD/MS/MS Pro multi card reader and built-in 802.11b/g wireless card. The advantage of this mini-laptop is it's crystal clear wide screen LCD display.

These are the top three mini laptops in the market today. However the mini laptops are often expensive and when you put all the processing power into a compact package, you can expect things may go wrong soon or later. So, choose wisely and carefully.

Found this video clip from Laura's blog. Really interesting facts... Here are few lines from the video:

It you are one in a milling, in China, there are 1300 people just like you. In India,there are 1100 people just like you.
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According to former Secretary of Education Richard Riley, the top 10 jobs that will be in demand in 2010 didn't exist in 2004. We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist, using technologies that haven't yet been invented.
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Nintendo invested more than $140 million in research and development in 2002 alone. The U.S. federal government spent less than half as much on research and innovation in education.
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1 of every 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met online.
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There are over 2.7 billion searches performed on Google each month. To whom these questions were addressed before Google Time?
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The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the population of the planet.
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It is estimated that 1.5 exabytes (1.5 X 10^18) of unique new information will be generated worldwide this year. That's estimated to be more than in the previous 5,000 years.
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Third-generation fiber optics has recently been tested by both NEC and Alcatel, that pushes 10 trillion bits per second down one strand of fiber. That's 1900 CDs, or 150 million simultaneous phone calls, every second.
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47 million laptops were shipped worldwide last year.
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Predictions are that by 2013 a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computation capability of the human brain
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