Internet opens elite colleges to all

By Justin Pope, AP Education Writer Sat Dec 29, 10:06 PM ET

Yahoo News

Gilbert Strang is a quiet man with a rare talent: helping others understand linear algebra. He's written a half-dozen popular college textbooks, and for years a few hundred students at the elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been privileged to take his course.

Recently, with the growth of computer science, demand to understand linear algebra has surged. But so has the number of students Strang can teach.

An MIT initiative called "OpenCourseWare" makes virtually all the school's courses available online for free — lecture notes, readings, tests and often video lectures. Strang's Math 18.06 course is among the most popular, with visitors downloading his lectures more than 1.3 million times since June alone.

Strang's classroom is the world.

In his Istanbul dormitory, Kemal Burcak Kaplan, an undergraduate at Bogazici University, downloads Strang's lectures to try to boost his grade in a class there. Outside Calcutta, graduate student Sriram Chandrasekaran uses them to brush up on matrices for his engineering courses at the elite Indian Institute of Technology.

Many "students" are college teachers themselves, like Sheraz ali Khan at a small engineering institute in Peshawar, Pakistan, and Noorali Jiwaji, at the Open University of Tanzania. They use Strang and other MIT professors as guides in designing their own classes, and direct students to MIT's courses for help.

Others are closer to MIT's Cambridge, Mass., campus. Some are MIT students and alumni, while others have no connection at all — like Gus Whelan, a retiree on nearby Cape Cod, and Dustin Darcy, a 27-year-old video game programmer in Los Angeles who uses linear algebra regularly in his work.

"Rather than going through my old, dusty books," Darcy said, "I thought I might as well go through it from the top and see if I learn something new."

There has never been a more exciting time for the intellectually curious.

The world's top universities have come late to the world of online education, but they're arriving at last, creating an all-you-can eat online buffet of information.

And mostly, they are giving it away.

MIT's initiative is the largest, but the trend is spreading. More than 100 universities worldwide, including Johns Hopkins, Tufts and Notre Dame, have joined MIT in a consortium of schools promoting their own open courseware. You no longer need a Princeton ID to hear the prominent guests who speak regularly on campus, just an Internet connection. This month, Yale announced it would make material from seven popular courses available online, with 30 more to follow.

As with many technology trends, new services and platforms are driving change. Last spring marked the debut of "iTunes U," a section of Apple's popular music and video downloading service now publicly hosting free material from 28 colleges. Meanwhile, the University of California, Berkeley recently announced it would be the first to make full course lectures available on YouTube. Berkeley was already posting lectures, but YouTube has dramatically expanded their reach.

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Russia launches final satellites for its own GPS

Tue Dec 25, 2007 8:37pm GMT

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia successfully launched a rocket on Tuesday carrying the last three satellites to complete a navigation system to rival America's GPS.

The military-run GLONASS mapping system works over most of Russia and is expected to cover the globe by the end of 2009, once all its 24 navigational satellites are operating.

A space rocket blasted off from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome on the steppes of neighbouring ex-Soviet Kazakhstan, from which Russia rents the facility.

"The launch was carried out smoothly at 10:32 p.m. (1932 GMT)," RIA news agency quoted a spokesman for the Russian space agency as saying. "We expect satellites to separate from the booster on the orbit at 2:24 a.m. (2324 GMT)".

Work on GLONASS -- or Global Navigation Satellite System -- began in the Soviet Union in the mid-1970s to give its armed forces exact bearings around the world.

The collapse of the Russian economy in the late 1990s drained funds and the plans withered, but President Vladimir Putin has ensured the project is now being lavishly funded from a brimming government budget.

Officials said GLONASS would mainly be used alongside the U.S. global positioning system, which Washington can switch off for civilian subscribers, as it did during recent military operations in Iraq.

(Writing by Chris Baldwin, editing by Richard Meares)

Googling for Your Grade

Time, Thursday, Dec. 20, 2007 By S. James Snyder/New York

It's the week before finals, and Jamie Wilkinson's students are getting nervous. No matter how many videos they post, how many blogs they subscribe to, how many friends they sign up, it just isn't working. They aren't reaching enough people; they still aren't famous enough.

And no, they aren't goofing off.

On the contrary, becoming famous is the main point of Wilkinson's class, organized through Parsons The New School for Design in New York City. All semester long his students have monitored their own progress, fully aware that a piece of Internet-scouring software, not their teacher, will be issuing the final grades. And as the 15 students regularly check the class's blog for the latest rankings, Wilkinson has structured his curriculum to give them tips on how to get — and stay — famous in this increasingly saturated virtual world.

"Actually, we don't call it being online famous; we call it 'famo,'" says Wilkinson, who conceived the "Internet Famous" course along with friends and semi-famo digital artists James Powderly and Evan Roth. The trio came up with the idea after realizing that their online strategies for distributing and promoting their own art would one day become essential tools for emerging 21st century artists trying to break through the static.

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Queen launches YouTube channel

BBC News

The Royal Channel will feature her Christmas Day message as well as recent and historical footage of the monarch and other members of the Royal Family.

The launch marks the 50th anniversary of the Queen's first televised festive address in 1957.

The palace said it hoped the site would make the 81-year-old monarch's annual speech "more accessible to younger people and those in other countries".

Changing times

The opening page of the channel, which went live just after midnight, bears the title "The Royal Channel - The Official Channel of the British Monarchy" and features a photograph of Buckingham Palace and the Queen's Guards.

This year's festive address will appear on the site at about 1500 GMT on Christmas Day.

Back in 1957, when the Queen delivered her first television message, she acknowledged the need to adapt to changing times.

"I very much hope that this new medium will make my Christmas message more personal and direct," she said from her Sandringham estate in Norfolk.

"That it is possible for some of you to see me today is just another example of the speed at which things are changing all around us."

Clips from garden parties, state visits, prime ministers, investitures and a day in the life of the Prince of Wales will all be available to watch on the channel.

Newsreel

Among the older clips is footage from a film by Lord Wakehurst called Long to Reign Over Us, which has never been released to the public.

The former Tory MP, who died in 1970, was a keen amateur film maker and charted many key royal events, including the death of King George VI, the Queen's accession and her coronation.

The site also has footage of Queen Alexandra's West End tour among the rose-sellers in 1917 and silent newsreel of the 1923 wedding of the Duke of York and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon - the Queen's parents.

Announcing the launch of the channel, a spokeswoman for Buckingham Palace said the Queen "always keeps abreast with new ways of communicating with people".

She added: "She has always been aware of reaching more people and adapting the communication to suit.

"This will make the Christmas message more accessible to younger people and those in other countries."

The Royal Channel can be viewed at www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel and the Queen's Christmas message can also be downloaded as a podcast from www.royal.gov.uk.

Single brain cell's power shown

There could be enough computing ability in just one brain cell to allow humans and animals to feel, a study suggests.

BBC News

The brain has 100 billion neurons but scientists had thought they needed to join forces in larger networks to produce thoughts and sensations.

The Dutch and German study, published in Nature, found that stimulating just one rat neuron could deliver the sensation of touch.

One UK expert said this was the first time this had been measured in mammals.

The complexity of the human brain and how it stores countless thoughts, sensations and memories are still not fully understood.

Researchers believe connections between individual neurons, forming networks of at least a thousand, are the key to some of its processing power.

However, in some creatures with simpler nervous systems, such as flies, a single neuron can play a more significant role. The latest research suggests this may also be true in "higher" animals.

The team, from the Humboldt University in Germany and the Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, stimulated single neurons in rats and found this was enough to trigger a behavioural response when their whiskers were touched.

A second research project from the US suggests the computational ability of the brain cell could be even more complex, with different synapses - the many junctions between neurons and other nerve cells - able to act independently from those found elsewhere on the same cell.

This could mean that, within a single neuron, different synapses could be storing or processing completely different bits of information.

Computing power

Dr Douglas Armstrong, the deputy director of the Edinburgh Centre for Bioinformatics, said the research did not mean all neurons had an individual role to play but that, in some instances, they might be capable of working alone with measurable results.

He said: "The generally accepted model was that networks or arrays make decisions and that the influence of a single neuron is smaller - but this work and other recent studies support a more important role for the individual neuron.

"These studies drive down the level at which relevant computation is happening in the brain."

Surf the net while surfing waves

BBC News,

For a decade, "surfing" has come to mean browsing the net rather than riding ocean waves on a plank.

But a surfboard has now been developed that lets surfers surf while surfing. The prototype board has been built by Devon "shaper" Jools Matthews.

It houses a laptop, solar panels, and video camera, and is to launch at the Intel GoldCoast Oceanfest on 18 June.

The world's first wi-fi board uses a high-speed net connection point - hotspot - positioned on the beach.

Chip makers Intel has commissioned the unusual surfboard as part of the free sports and music festival in North Devon to show off how technology can be brought to the sea and sand.

The board will have its maiden outing on the waves when it is used by international pro surfer Duncan Scott at the event.

Ride with the best

"As a professional surfer, explorer, writer, film producer and world traveller, being able to communicate quickly and effectively is critical to my success," said Mr Scott, who also advised on the board's design.

"In the near future," he added, "via wireless real-time streaming, it could be possible that observers will, for the first time, actually be able to 'ride' a wave with the best surfers in the world."

The board itself is 9ft 4 inch long board, ideally suited to the particular waves found along the UK's "Surfers' Paradise" in North Devon.

The technology, supplied by Intel, is tucked away neatly in the board, inside a specially designed waterproof casing.

The casing is made of a tough but lightweight tray, and has a silicone seal, a crystal PVC cover and an aluminium gasket.

The tablet laptop has a wireless chip, a 1.7Ghz processor and a 80Gb hard drive.

Power comes from the solar panels fitted onto the board, and it also has a video camera which can store 64Mb worth of wave-catching action.

Serious side

But even though it is all a bit of fun, serious efforts have been made to ensure the technology did not interfere with the ride and feel of the board, said Intel.

The laptop weighs in at 2.3kg and its position in the board was careful calculated to maintain the desired balance for surfers.

"It's all about giving people the freedom to get online when and where they want - and this technology demonstrates that with a bit of imagination you can do just that," said Tim Hatch, Intel's consumer marketing manager.

The GoldCoast Oceanfest takes place from 18 to 20 June at Croyde beach in North Devon.

Unilever uses SFIAplus to get more from its IT skills

Rebecca Thomson, ComputerWeekly.com, 19 Dec 2007

Unilever has adopted an IT career framework to help managers and employees understand IT skills and capabilities within the company.

The firm, which owns brands such as Hellman's, Knorr and Domestos, hopes the framework will help it to exploit IT more effectively by making it clear what skills are available.

The intranet-based framework was created using a best practice model from the British Computer Society. The company used SFIAplus, which contains the Skills Framework for the Information Age model, to make it clear what IT roles were needed and the development necessary to fulfil these roles.

Work on the career framework started in 2006, when a cross-regional team identified 10 "role families" from the 78 skills held in SFIAplus. Role profiles were then created for each of the role families and aligned to a future IT function.

The functions were created using browser-based skills manager software from the BCS.

Employees can now access the profiles and compare their own IT skills to those required for either potential or current roles. They can then enrol on to a relevant development programme to reach the required skills level as well as gaining appropriate external accreditation.

Daryl Beck, director of Unilever's IT academy, said, "It is all about enabling Unilever to gain competitive advantage through IT. For the members of the IT team it is about having the right qualifications, being professional, and enabling the business to move forward."

He added that the changes were part of a business change at Unilever. "Over the past two years we have been putting in a new IT model, and this has enabled that new group to understand what was expected of them."

The challenge, he said, was to convince employees of the benefits. "It is not just a sheet of profiles, it is a change programme. People do not like change, and the biggest challenge is convincing people this is what they should be using.

"We have had to spend a huge amount of time this year talking to people about the benefits of the framework and new skills."

CIO Must Read: "Breakthrough IT"

In his new book, consultant Patrick Gray examines how to take your IT organization from a cost-centric services provider to a valuable business partner. Here's a hint: Do your homework.

John Soat, Informationweek.com, Dec 17, 2007 08:17 PM

Gray is the president and principal of the Prevoyance Group. "It means foresight in French," he says. "And there was a domain name available." His new book is "Breakthrough IT: Supercharging Organizational Value Through Technology" (John Wiley & Sons; 2007), a detailed outline, including chapter summaries and action items, of how to transition IT from a corporate utility to a strategic asset.

On the book jacket, Mark Lutchen, CIO of PricewaterhouseCoopers, describes the book this way:

• As business changes, so, too, does the role of the CIO and the overall IT organization. In "Breakthrough IT," Patrick Gray provides a necessary road map for shifting IT from an operational entity that simply manages technology, to a powerhouse that combines strategy and technology to deliver measurable business results and long-term value.
  
  

I talked with Gray to get some insight into how he sees the role of the CIO having to change to accommodate "breakthrough IT," and what CIOs should do to accelerate that change.

The first thing, Gray says, is a mindset makeover. "The CIO has an asset no one else has: Visibility into the whole organization," he says. "The CIO has more of a vision into the organization than anybody else." Unfortunately, CIOs haven't traditionally thought of that enterprise view as something they can leverage.

In fact, the biggest obstacle to CIOs moving into positions of strategic importance is that they're used to being thought of as "operational" types -- and of thinking of themselves that way. "It's a matter of getting out of that operational mode, and of thinking of IT as a [business] tool in and of itself," Gray says.

Another factor that keeps CIOs out of the business strategy circle is that the CIO position isn't thought of as a developmental role. CIOs mostly come up through the technical ranks and that's all they really know, he says. They're not groomed to be C-suite leaders like other CXO positions. If you go to Wharton or Sloan, for instance, and talk with a hundred of their MBA types, only one or two may aspire to be a CIO. "Companies need to pitch the CIO as a valuable C-level position," he says.

So what can CIOs -- and those who aspire to be CIOs -- do to make themselves more strategic and less operational? "The biggest thing: Get out of technology for a while," he says. "Get some experience where IT is not your primary focus."

As for transitioning your IT organization from a cost-centric services provider to a business partner, the first step is getting the services piece right. And that means getting IT to a high service level, and then getting it out of the CIO's purvey. "That's something a middle manager should handle," he says. It's important to get the CIO out of the mode of constantly fighting fires. That way, the CIO can have these "Aha! moments," where he or she might see, for example, that the company is going into a new market and that the ERP system that was just put in won't accommodate that market very well, Gray says.

Another important point: CIOs need to do their homework about the companies they work for. CIOs aren't usually experts on the company's products or markets, Gray says, and they need to be in order to realize, and be able to explain, the true value of IT across the enterprise. "It's a big shift in focus," he says. The CIO needs to go "from being a pure technologist to being a student of the business."

And CIOs need to insert themselves into areas not traditionally thought of as involving IT. For example: product development. "I think there's a space in product development for IT," he says.

The main thing is for CIOs to get out of the mindset of being simply technologists and services providers, and into the mindset of being business executives and strategists, Gray says: "Then the CIO can make the argument [to upper management], 'Hey, you're spending all this money on IT. What more can we do?' "

Startup Unveils Tools to Build Phone Apps Across Platforms

Ribbit developers design programs to record, track, or make calls, integrated with sites or other apps.

Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service

PCWorld, Monday, December 17, 2007 5:01 AM PST

A Mountain View, California company is launching today a platform designed to let developers create telephony applications they can embed in Web pages and existing Web-based services.

Ribbit's back-end technology includes a software switch that essentially connects Internet-based voice communication services with mobile phones, landline phones and text messages. On top of that connection is the Ribbit API that lets developers build applications that unify the wide variety of communication methods.

Developers can build applications that include functions such as recording, sending and receiving voicemail, and making and receiving calls. The applications can be built using Flash, embedded into any Web site, and integrated into existing Web-based services. The platform supports many existing Web-based calling services, such as Skype, GoogleTalk and MSN.

Developers can charge end-users for the applications, and Ribbit can handle the billing for them. There are several ways developers can offer and charge for their products, and in some cases Ribbit will share revenue with developers.

Ribbit showed off one application a developer has created that embeds phone capabilities into Salesforce.com. By keying a code into a mobile phone, users essentially replace their current voicemail with Ribbit for Salesforce. Then users can listen to or see text transcripts of their mobile voicemail messages within Salesforce. They can send the messages to colleagues and tag them for easy sorting later.

Users can also make and receive phone calls through their Salesforce page. Such calls are automatically logged in their Salesforce application.

Ribbit for Salesforce will cost US$25 per user per month for end-users. It is currently in a private beta with more than 90 companies, and should be widely available in February, according to Ribbit representatives.

Salute America's Heroes, a veterans' association, has built essentially a call center application that lets veterans who work for the group make and receive browser-based phone calls while at home. The capability is integrated into a Web site that also hosts tools they use while making the calls. The capability allows the association to take on the cost of the calls rather than reimbursing workers for the use of their home phones.

Ribbit designed its own softswitch, which runs on Linux blades and has been certified in an Alcatel-Lucent lab to meet the capabilities and reliability that telecommunications providers typically require, said Ted Griggs, CEO and co-founder of Ribbit. Ribbit's network operations center is hosted by a third party in Virginia, and the company is working on opening one on the West Coast to offer geographic redundancies. It can add capacity simply by adding more servers.

Another, more consumer-oriented application is available to try on the Ribbit developers page. The AIR iPhone is essentially a software-based voice over IP phone that looks just like Apple's iPhone. Users can make and receive calls to mobile and fixed-line phones, including from the contact list in the phone, on their computers.

Ribbit hasn't quite yet configured its offering in terms of pricing for such consumer applications, but expects to in the first quarter of next year. In the case of the AIR iPhone, Ribbit would share revenue from end-users with the developer.

Ribbit says that more than 650 developers are working on new applications, although on Friday only two were listed on the developers site. "Dozens" are near release, a few additional applications should be available on Monday, and many more should be available in the early months of next year, according to the company.

Ribbit opened its offering to developers in August but plans to officially launch the company, along with details about how its technology and business model work, on Monday.

Happy Birthday to The Transistor: Where it all Started

Arguably the 20th century's most important invention made its debut 60 years ago today.

Sharon Gaudin, Computerworld

Sunday, December 16, 2007 6:00 AM PST

You can forget inventions like air conditioning, television, the computer and the Internet. The single most important invention of the 20th century was the transistor, according to some researchers and analysts, .

Yes, that's right. The transistor. The little-talked-about transistor is the building block for the processor. Without the transistor, some say our servers would be three-stories high and laptops would be a prop on Star Trek. Our televisions would still use tubes and our cars couldn't guide us to the nearest Indian restaurant.

Heck, without the transistor, what would the digital economy look like? Would Microsoft and Google have become giants? Would geeks have become cool, rich guys driving BMWs?

Probably not.

Sixty years ago -- on Dec. 16, 1947, to be exact --the transistor was invented at Bell Labs, igniting a series of changes and advances that would change the way people listen to their favorite music, do their jobs, pay their bills, educate themselves and buy everything from books to used toaster ovens. Transistors inside pacemakers keep our hearts going. Computer chips run inside our cars, cell phones and even tiny, implantable LoJack-like devices that find our lost pets. The personal computer and the Internet have been phenomena, but how usable and ubiquitous would they be without millions of tiny transistors running inside laptops, desktops and servers.

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