Site: http://www.kno.com/home
Only available to students with a .edu account at the moment (I think that was how Facebook got started). A simple sell: lighter, cheaper, and even easier. Cheesy videos on their homepage…

More about them on this AllThingsD article: Kno Taking Electronic Textbooks to Web, Facebook – Ina Fried – Mobile – AllThingsD.

Other companies  are entering this arena:

• http://www.coursesmart.com/go/mobile
• http://www.inkling.com/

Also info at Hack Education from earlier this year.

The situation won’t change overnight, and clearly there are no guarantees for success. But this initiative got me thinking…

Google has such scale and digital dominance that it is able (and willing) to step into any market. So what happens when it decides that it can offer degree courses? It will be able to provide an online experience that melds Google Apps, Gmail, YouTube, Google+, video chat, and other elements into a comprehensive and potentially compelling offer. The service will be mobile-friendly, cheap, flexible and socially-enabled. Traditional universities will have much that is better and of higher quality, but will they be able to compete in the new commercial HE environment?

I’ve only just had this thought and it needs further development. Perhaps we’ll conclude that Google can’t really offer a compelling alternative and that the threat isn’t real. However, I would argue that the idea is still worth considering – a scenario in which Google are competitors to universities could be a worthwhile thought exercise which would catalyse internal debate and encourage innovative responses.

In the meantime, Computing Science students might be interested in: http://code.google.com/edu/courses.html

A picture is worth a thousand words…

Via: HTMLGoodies HTML5 Development Center

via The Wonderful World of HTML5.

How does this affect students?

Many universities have created or purchased a ‘uni app’ which provides portal-like information and links. It’s not clear to me whether these apps actually provide long-term benefit to students nor even whether the apps are actually used after the initial download and play.

However, Flurry’s analysis suggests that people generally are kicking back in the evening to watch TV and fiddle with their mobile devices.

Would/should a uni app provide functions and features that can be used during this period, or is it leisure time? Are students switching off from uni life at this point and more interested in doing something else – Angry Birds, Twitter, Facebook, etc?

via Mobile app usage: active all day, spikes in prime time — Tech News and Analysis.

In the blog they talk about enabling serendipitous discovery, with a link to a talk from Director of Future Media, Ralph Rivera. The slides spell out a strategy for BBC Online which is elegantly described in a very visual way:

A very interesting film (54 minutes) about this is available at the infosthetics.com website.

The film includes suggestions that whilst the new tools make it easy for anyone to create visualisations, there’s scope here for it to be done badly.

In Information Services we have a requirement to provide expert and professional support to our academic colleagues and students. I think this is an area we need to watch closely, understand well and start to provide as a defined, supported service. Getting visualisation right will enable us (the University) to help academics tell better stories, and that outcome has all sorts of benefits (better communication, more impact, improved public understanding of science).

In addition to the above film, advice is available on creating effective, usable and accessible visualisations from WebCredible.

Look also at the Guardian’s data store, IBM’s Many Eyes, the BBC’s How big really site, and there are of course many more sites on this subject…

…but the article suggests that a piece of research, soon to be published, showed that the use of Comic Sans in a particular type of survey enticed more information from the participants.

NB: Having followed the links, its clear that the research is about more than just Comic Sans. Entitled "Why Do Consumers Disclose Sensitive Information to Shady-Looking Websites?" it looks at a range of graphic devices (cartoon devil logo, text-speak) being employed to set a tone in the article.

But nevertheless, the SitePoint article goes on to suggest we should A/B split test Comic Sans on some of our web pages. If that membership form becomes more effective when rendered with Comic Sans then do design ideals fly out of the window?

Well, maybe – but as the article points out – there’s more than one informal font in the world, so perhaps Comic Sans isn’t always the answer.

Always wear clean underwear in public, especially when working under
your vehicle.

From the Daily News comes this story of a Stockton-on-Tees couple
who drove their car to ASDA, only to have their car break down in the
car park.

The man told his wife to carry on with the shopping while he fixed the
car.

The wife returned later to see a small group of people near the car. On
closer inspection, she saw a pair of hairy legs protruding from under
the chassis. Unfortunately, although the man was in shorts, his lack of
underpants turned his private parts into glaringly public ones…

Unable to stand the embarrassment, she dutifully stepped forward, quickly put her hand UP his shorts, and tucked everything back into place. On regaining her feet, she looked across the bonnet and found herself staring at her husband who was standing idly by watching.

The RAC mechanic, however, had to have three stitches in his forehead.

–

Interesting that online, this story has them in Leicester or North Florida. And the mechanic was from the AA?!?

I suspect the bigger issue is that were living through a technological revolution, which creates changes in what can be cognitively outsourced and whats worth learning, and where some people can press ahead by leaving out the pointless stuff.

via Some vaguely consistent threads around education in my morning procrastination break. – bengoldacre.

via Charlie Brooker | Want to read this article? Then enter your password | Comment is free | The Guardian.

Forgotten your password? That’ll be the 58th one you’ve not remembered this year, then.

In days of yore, we’re told, people had less leisure time because ­everything – everything – was a protracted pain in the fundament. Want to clean that smock? Then you’ll have to walk six miles carrying a pail of water back from the village well. And that’s before you’ve tackled the laundering process itself, which consists of three hours laboriously scrubbing your soiled garment against a washboard and wringing it through a mangle. By the time you’ve finished, it’s bedtime. Did you remember to clean your pyjamas? No. Back to the village well for you, then.

No wonder the people in medieval woodcuts look so miserable, even when they aren’t being cleft in twain by knights or dropping dead in a flurry of popping buboes. And oh how we modernites love to chortle at their unsophisticated lives. DARK AGE LOSERS PROBLY USED TURNIPS FOR IPHONES LOL!!!!

But in many ways, the rustic serf of yesteryear had a better quality of life than the skinbag-about-town of space year 2010. Computers have freed us from hours of drudgery with one hand, but introduced an equal amount of slightly different drudgery with the other. No matter how ­advanced civilisation becomes, there’s an unyielding quota of drudgery lurking at the core that can never be completely eradicated.

These days it’s commonplace to do everything online, from designing the layout of your kitchen to locating a stranger prepared to kill and eat you for mutual sexual gratification. Tasks that would have taken years to organise and achieve can now be accomplished in the blink of an icon. Or would be, if you could remember your password. But you can’t remember your password. You can’t remember it because you chose it so very long, long ago – maybe three days afore. In the intervening period you’ve had to dream up another six passwords for another six websites, programs or email addresses.

In this age of rampant identity theft, where it’s just a matter of time before someone works out a way to steal your reflection in the mirror and use it to commit serial bigamy in an alternate dimension, we’re told only a maniac would use the same password for everything. But passwords used to be for speakeasy owners or spies. Once upon a time, you weren’t the sort of person who had to commit hundreds of passwords to memory. Now you are. Part of your identity’s been stolen anyway.

In the meantime: you need a new password. One as individual as a snowflake. And as beautiful, too. Having demanded a brand new password from you for the 28th time this month, His Lordship Your Computer proceeds to snootily critique your efforts. Certain attempts he will disqualify immediately, without even passing judgment. Less than six letters? No numbers? Access denied. This is a complex parlour game, OK? There are rules. So start again. And this time: no recognisable words. No punctuation marks. No hesitation, deviation or repetition. Go.

Pass the qualifying round and it gets worse. Most modern password entrance exams grade each entry as you type, presenting you with an instant one-word review of your efforts. Suppose you glance around your desk and pick the first thing you set eyes on, such as a blue pen. You begrudgingly shove a number on the end, creating the password “bluepen1″. You submit this offering to the Digital Emperor, and he derides it as “Weak”.

You can use it if you want. It’s valid. But still; it’s “weak”. So you try again. This time you replace some of the letters with numbers and jumble the capitalisation a bit, like a chef with limited ingredients trying to jazz up an omelette to impress a restaurant critic. The Computerlord pulls a vaguely respectful face. You’ve jumped a grade, to “OK”. You tingle within.

But you can do better. Admit it: you want HRH Computer to actively admire you. You want him to give you a rosette for creating the most carefully constructed password in history, a password that isn’t merely secure, but is beautiful. A password that sings. A password to make angels weep. You will present His Majesty the Mainframe with a masterpiece of encryption, an ornate lexicographic sonata – a creation whose breathtakingly impressive elegance is magnified by the heartbreaking know ledge that no human other than yourself will ever set eyes upon it. This is your private cryptographic poem, your encoded love letter to the machine. Better be good.

So you take bold made-up words, weave them with numbers, stud the souffle with spicy CaPiTaLs and garnish it with a random string of characters carefully chosen for their memorable unmemorableness. You’ve performed reverse cryptanalysis; been a one-man Enigma machine. And your offering pleases God. He deems it “Very Strong”: his highest accolade.

Still glowing, you try out your hand-crafted key for the first time, typing it into the lock. With a soft click, the mechanism turns. Access granted. You are now part of the smocklaundry.com community. How many of your smocks need laundering? When would you like them returned? No problem. Thanks for your custom. Farewell.

Three weeks later your smocks are returned, late and still plastered with hideous stains. You revisit smocklaundry. com to protest. But you can’t remember your password. You can’t remember it because you chose it so very long, long ago – maybe three weeks afore. And in the intervening period you’ve had to dream up another 42 passwords for ­another 42 websites, programs or email addresses.

Your beautiful password is dead. It was simply too complex and too damned exquisite to live in your humdrum world, your humdrum mind. Now you must face the ignominy of clicking the password reset button for the 58th time this year. And as you trudge dolefully toward your inbox, waiting for the help letter to arrive, the cruel laughter of His Computerised Majesty rings in your ears. You have failed, human. You have failed.