Banned Books

September 29 to October 6 is banned books week.  Google has put together a web site on banned books which is well worth viewing.  Of the 100 best novels of the twentieth century (according to the Radclisffe publishing course (now transplanted to Columbia)) forty-two have been challenged or banned in the United States.  The most challenged/banned book of 2006-2007?:  And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell.  "[A] heartwarming tale. Older readers will most appreciate the...larger theme of tolerance at work in this touching tale." - Publishers Weekly

New Sony Reader

Sony has announced a new version of their stand-alone eBook reader, called "Reader."  The new version (the PRS-505) will be released in the upcoming days and will feature faster-responding, higher-contrast epaper, 8 levels of greyscale rather than 4, a thinner profile than the old Reader, a better button layout (it couldn't have been worse) and new color schemes.  Amazon is also releasing the "Kindle" soon, which will compete head-to-head with the Sony Reader.  Rumor has it that Apple will also be releasing an iPhone clone that will serve as an eBook reader (CNet).

Excel Bug

If you have signed a contract to work 850 hours at $77.10 per hour, you may want to send back the Lincoln Navigator.  An Excel 2007 calculation but was discovered this week.  Open Excel and enter the formula =77.1*850 in any cell.  The result will be displayed as 100000, rather than the correct answer 65535.  It turns out there are 12 known floating point numbers near 65,535 and 65,536 which are calculated incorrectly in this fashion.  "Of the 9.214*10^18 different floating point numbers that Excel 2007 can store, there are 6 floating point numbers (using binary representation) between 65534.99999999995 and 65535, and 6 between 65535.99999999995 and 65536 that cause this problem" (bink).  Microsoft is working on a patch and will release it as soon as possible to the normal update cycle.  Older versions of Excel do not display the bug.

The Ultimate Steal

The Ultimate Steal.  Microsoft is making an offer students can't refuse.  Students can now purchase Office 2007 Ultimate edition for a mere $59.95.  Who is eligible?: "...students who are actively enrolled at educational institutions and have a valid e-mail address from the institution" (Microsoft press release).  Youl know that Palomar email address that you thought was useless?  No longer!  The promotion is active not in the US, Canada and the UK, and will become effective in France, Italy and Spain beginning September 20.  It will run through next April.  "Office Ultimate 2007 includes the entire Microsoft Office toolset that students are accustomed to working with and more, including Microsoft Office Word 2007, Microsoft Office Excel® 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 with Business Contact Manager, Microsoft Office Access™ 2007, Microsoft Office Publisher 2007, Office OneNote 2007, Office Groove 2007 and Microsoft Office InfoPath® 2007."  Click here for the Ultimate Steal web site.

Blogging with your iPhone

Typepad from Six Apart is the first blogging company to offer blogging tools for the iPhone and the new iPod Touch. "The TypePad iPhone application was designed from the ground up to be optimized for Apple's innovative multi-touch iPhone display. TypePad bloggers can easily create new posts, edit existing posts, manage comments from their community, and configure settings to send photos directly from their iPhone to their blog. The TypePad iPhone application will also work on the recently announced iPod touch" (TypePad press release). Within a day, Moveable Type (oops, I earlier said WordPad, sorry) also announced an iPhone plugin for their service.

Parental Cell Phone Control

AT&T this week announced a new service: "AT&T Smart Limits for Wireless," which permits parents to "stay in touch with their children while controlling the children's mobile phone use. AT&T Smart Limits for Wireless™ is a feature-rich service that allows a parent to set usage limits on a child's talk time, text messages, instant messages (IMs) and downloads, manage how and when a child can communicate, restrict access to mobile Web sites and allocate minutes among users of shared wireless plans."  If you are one who does not find multiple contradictions in the phrase "AT&T Smart Limits for Wireless" you may want to investigate the service.  Click here for the AT&T press release, here for more information on the service, which is priced at $4.99 per month per line.

New Optiplex

Dell has launched a new Optiplex, the 755 desktop.  "Dubbed the "world's most manageable, energy efficient commercial desktop ever," the system touts Energy Star 4.0 compliance and an Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) "Gold" rating. Additionally, the 755 can be snapped up with Intel's newly-unveiled Core 2 Duo with vPro technology, a 256MB ATI Radeon HD 2400 graphics card, up to 8GB of RAM, and your choice of mini-tower, desktop, or small form factor enclosure" (engadget).

E-testing Advantages

In a new report [PDF] by two Villanova School of Business professors, the argument is made that "...giving electronic tests can actually reduce cheating and save faculty time" (see HTML summary from Inside Higher Ed).  Timed tests drawn from randomly drawn from questions pools were used.  "Forty-five percent of students who took part in the study reported that the electronic testing system reduced the likelihood of their cheating during the course."  Further, "...professors reported recouping an average of 80 hours by using the e-exams" (Educause Connect).

News of Grants

News of grants:  We have two to report, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) "Digital Humanities Start-up Grants" for public and state controlled institutions of higher education, deadline for application October 16; and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) "Digital Innovation Fellowships," deadline for application October 3.    The NEH grants are involve new, digital approaches to presenting information in the humanities.  Click here for full information.  The ACLS grants require the applicant have a PH. D.  They support work for an academic year on a major scholarly project that takes a digital form.  Click here for full explanations.

California Voting Machines De-Certified

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen acting on the advise of numerous analysts and computer science researchers, de-certified California electronic voting machines in favor of paper ballots.  "The systems developed by the likes of Diebold, Sequoia, and Election Systems & Software were riddled with software-writing flaws and security holes that made the likelihood of error or foul play unacceptably high. The fact that the electronic systems had no reliable paper back-up – certainly not before one was mandated by law in many states, including this one – only made the systems’ vulnerabilities all the more unnerving. Not only could an election go badly wrong or be outright stolen; there was no guarantee anybody could prove it if it happened" (Los Angeles City Beat).  Click here to hear an interesting audio interview aired recently on NPRs Science Friday with Matt Bishop, one of the principle researchers and leader of a "red team" responsible for finding security holes in the recently de-certified systems (mp3 format).

End of the Free Lunch for Web Storage

Google, Microsoft and Apple all announced changes to their online storage services last week.  Google announced, essentially, the end of free, unlimited storage.  Paid storage upgrades for behemoth Picasa or GMail folders (soon to be added, Google Docs & Spreadsheet folders) can be had at the rate of $20/year for 6GB (on top of the 2.8 already provided free of charge by Google), running up to $500/year for 250GB.  To find out more, login to your GMail account and click the "Upgrade your storage" link.  Windows Live SkyDive is a free beta solution that provides 500MB of free Internet file storage for any purpose.  Click here to find out more.  You can create personal, shared, or public folders using the service.  Apple, not to be left behind, also bumped up the storage associated with .Mac accounts to 10GB, while keeping subscription to .Mac the same, at $99 per year.  Yahoo already offers unlimited storage for Yahoo mail users.  Microsoft hotmail has upped their storage limit to 5GB.

For-pay web-based storage

Google, Microsoft and Apple all announced changes to their online storage services last week.  Google announced, essentially, the end of free, unlimited storage.  Paid storage upgrades for behemoth Picasa or GMail folders (soon to be added, Google Docs & Spreadsheet folders) can be had at the rate of $20/year for 6GB (on top of the 2.8 already provided free of charge by Google), running up to $500/year for 250GB.  To find out more, login to your GMail account and click the "Upgrade your storage" link.  Windows Live SkyDive is a free beta solution that provides 500MB of free Internet file storage for any purpose.  Click here to find out more.  You can create personal, shared, or public folders using the service.  Apple, not to be left behind, also bumped up the storage associated with .Mac accounts to 10GB, while keeping subscription to .Mac the same, at $99 per year.  Yahoo already offers unlimited storage for Yahoo mail users.

The YouTube Generation

The Pew Internet & American Life Project recently published a report [PDF] indicating that 57% of all Internet users have watched videos online and most of them share what they find.  Other interesting findings: 74% of broadband users watch video online; just 31% of dial-up users watch video online; 76% of young (18-29) Internet users watch video online as opposed to 39% age 65 ot older.  49% of young Internet users say they have consumed videos from YouTube.

Rome Reborn

Rome Reborn 1.0 was released this week by the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia.  It is the product of 10 years of research and labor by archaeologists and computer specialists.  "The goal of 'Rome Reborn' is to create a digital model illustrating the development of ancient Rome from the earliest settlement in the late Bronze Age (ca. 1000 B.C.) to the beginning of the medieval period."  "They are calling it the largest, most comprehensive simulation of a historic city ever created" (CNET).  The 3D display of historical development is very much a dream at this time, and the developers have focused on showing the city as it was in 320AD under Constantine.  The best review we have seen thusfar is in the blog News for Medievalists.

Microsoft Donates Tools to Fight AIDS

Microsoft Research released this week their software source code and tools to help science progress toward an AIDS vaccine (MS press release).  "The source code for a set of software tools developed by Microsoft Research to advance AIDS vaccine research and development is available for download starting today from Microsoft’s CodePlex Web site. By sharing the code openly and at no charge with the worldwide AIDS research community, Microsoft hopes to spur other scientists and researchers to take up the tools and even build on them, thereby speeding the way toward a vaccine. "  Click here for an overview of the tools.  Kudos to Microsoft for donating millions of dollars worth of research materials in an effort to halt this human disaster.