Black hole

According to the Globe and Mail, 90 Dalhousie University students in Halifax, N.S. have been disciplined for cheating. The students gained access to answers to a series of on-line assignments hosted by a protected website which is part of the online courseware created through Blackboard Learning Systems software. The university was tipped off by two fellow students. The thing that amazes me is the magnitude of the cheating... while I'm sure first year Chemistry is a popular course choice for anyone in sciences, I'd still like to know how many students take the course in a semester?

Star Wars geeks rejoice!

Star Wars fans can now celebrate the 30th anniversary of Star Wars by mashing up some of their favourite clips into their own production. George Lucas and company have released to the public over 300 clips from the movie franchise and have provided the site Star Wars Mashups to allow users to showcase their finished products. The site is moderated to ensure that you don't take too much liberty with the clips but also has a "most popular" feature to allow your best efforts to rise to the top. If you've ever dreamed about being part of the Star Wars production team... here is your chance to showcase your talents.

Star Wars Movies at Amazon.com!

Need help choosing a font?

Here's a very cool website if you are struggling to decide which font to choose for your PowerPoint presentation, report, brochure, or web site/blog. Typetester is a well designed and very handy tool which enables you to choose up to 3 fonts and various attributes to compare side by side. Use the sample text or paste your own into the site and view the results. They provide great typography resources and a very handy "get css" tool that lets web developers capture the style sheet of the column they like best. I'm bookmaking the site right now!

Crackberry generation

Are we all becoming addicted to technology? This CBC article asks "Are cellphones and the internet rewiring our brains?". I know that I, for one, have multiple e-mail accounts for different purposes and at least a few of them are checked obsessively! This is an interesting read...

Not so fast!!!!

Well, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is! According to this Wired blog post, Apple is watermarking user names and e-mail addresses in the new iTunes Plus DRM free downloads. So there is no DRM but there is an anti-piracy measure built in, stands to reason. I guess it is still a step in the right direction, however if they are doing this to thwart piracy why do we have to pay a premium price for the removal of the DRM? Is it the hopes of EMI and Apple that we will pay more money for the ability to put the tunes on whatever device we want? However, as Michael Calore reports in his Wired blog post, it's only a matter of time before someone figures out a way to manipulate the file and change the watermark.

As an aside, EMI's website is really awful!

Free music! DRM free that is...

In a move that has music downloaders running for their credit cards ;-) Apple Inc. announced Wednesday the launch of iTunes Plus a worldwide portal, for iTunes Music Store, that will sell only DRM (digital rights management) free tunes. The tracks are reported to sell for $1.29 (us), 30 cents more than most regular, DRM'd, iTunes tracks and will be encoded at 256 kilobits per second as opposed to 128 kbps for regular iTunes tracks. What this means is better sound quality and more portability of songs between devices. Most of the EMI labels catalogue of songs will be available, this includes artists such as Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and Paul McCartney.

Ads on your cell phone

Is nothing sacred? Looks like Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and AOL are lining up to serve us ads on our cell phones. With a number of start up purchases and some home grown applications the big guys are seeing big bucks in our small screens. Business 2.0 has the story here.

Microsoft Surface Unveiled

Microsoft has apparently announced it's latest device, the 30" touch screen / coffee table sized / 150 pound Surface PC. I saw a video of an early prototype of this technology a year or so ago but it is now set to be released to the public. As I've stated before I'm an early adopter but, at between $5,000 and $10,000 us dollars, I don't think I'll be the first guy on my street to own one. The technology is very slick and intuitive, I particularly like the T-mobile application that is demoed. Check out the YouTube video!

That thumb drive speaks volumes!

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) provider Vonage has introduced the V-phone, a bright orange 256 MB thumb drive complete with Vonage Talk Software pre-loaded, a detachable stereo earpiece/microphone, and your own Vonage phone number. The beauty of this little device is that there is no need to install the software on your PC, or restart your machine to use it. Just plug the device into any available USB port, assuming the PC being plugged into has a high speed connection, and start calling! Considering I paid $99 as an upgrade to my Dell PC a couple of years ago for my 64 MB USB drive, the $29.99 (ca) price tag seems reasonable. There is of course a requirement to subscribe to a Vonage service plan, which start at $19.99 (ca). You can compare that to your current phone service and make your own decision whether or not it's worth the expense, and of course there are other VoIP services such as Skype to consider but this little device does have it's merits. If nothing else, there are 250 MB's of free space to store your MP3's on...

Sounds like a great solution for road warriors and students wanting to stay in touch with home, at $20 a month for 500 minutes the return on investment should be decent..."Dad, my marks are good. Can you send money?"

IM studying!

A recent conversation with my 15 year old went something like this...


Me: "I thought you had to study? You have exams soon!"


Him: "I am studying!"


Me: "Then why is the instant messenger bleeping all of the time? Doesn't sound like studying!"


Him: "We have an Internet study group, we are asking each other question."





I slyly peek at the screen to reassure myself that he is actually studying...



Me: "Cool!"