June 5, 2012
MaKey MaKey: An Invention Kit for Everyone
Jay Silver,
Kickstarter, June 5, 2012.
Another Kickstarter project. I will admit that MaKey MaKey caught my imagination. Basically, what it doies is connect to household objects - anything that can carry a small electrical current - and turn them into input devices. Hence for example you can turn a bunch of bananas into a musical keyboard, a hand-drawn pencil drawing into a joystick, and whatever else you can think of.
MOOC.me
Steve Hargadon,
Website, June 5, 2012.
Brand new website dedicated to MOOCs. Sponsored by Blackboard. "MOOC.me lists your already-created MOOC, or help you create and then list one if you need help. This is a service of Classroom 2.0 and Web 2.0 Labs." In other words it duplicates exactly the function of mooc.ca (which, I confess, I have been lacking in managing).
Fear and Loathing and Windows 8
Michael Mace,
Mobile Opportunity, June 4, 2012.
I haven't looked at Windows 8 yet but this sounds ominous: "Windows 8 is a revolutionary transition in Windows, easily the biggest change since the move from DOS to Windows in the early 1990s." As someone who adapted to the new Windows from DOS very slowly (not aided in the least by a special swicth on my mouse that had to be toggled for Windows) I am wary indeed. What Microsoft intends to do, of course, is to translate its lead in deskop operating systems to mobiles and tablets. As a result, "Windows 8 is not Windows... It looks different, it works differently, and it forces you to re-learn much of what you know today about computers." The start button is gone, control panels are gone, and it looks at first glance like the point is to transfer control of the hardware from the user to the vendor. You can't even turn it off! (Well, you can - with "five actions: a hover, a sweep, and three clicks. Plus the command is hidden in a very non-intuitive place."
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Microsoft, Operating Systems, Paradigm Shift]
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