Keene Haywood's blog

As the education world begins to get its head around Twitter and the concept of microblogging, a potentially useful way to use this is to look at keywords that are tied to location. Such a tool exists and is quite interesting, almost mesmerising, to watch. But it can also be a quick way for teachers and students to get a snapshot of Twitter posts for a given location. The website Monitter allows one to key in a location and up to three key words and it will then pull Twitter feeds onto the screen. Recording a screencast of the results could be useful in a number of academic areas such as journalism, communications and new media. Plus its just plain fun. So even if you are not Twittering, you can at least play the bystander role and watch others.

Hindsight is 20-20 and no one can really predict the future. In terms of the internet, the term Web 2.0 is starting to seem a bit long in tooth. It is incredible to see where the web has come from just a few years ago. It is a bit harder to predict where things are heading, although a few of the experts have given their two cents about it, which was recently written about on the ReadWriteWeb blog . The big buzzword for the next iteration of the web is "semantic". This word is being bandied about within the context of personalization, artificial intelligence and highly contextualized search. In other words, the prediction is that the web will become a version of itself that is smarter, more powerful and more meaningful to each individual user. It is the lack of true semantics in web technologies that create such a time suck for many people.

Using technology for the sake of art is perhaps one of its finest and highest uses IMHO. We are so often caught up in how technology gives us access to more information, collaboration, communication, etc, but when someone does something with it that is truly artistic it makes you smile. The ever popular Boing Boing blog brought the Perroquet to reader's attention. It is well done slow motion photography and video work done by the fashion photographer Sølve Sundsbø. Called Perroquet, it shows the beauty of the movement in a parrot's wings. Quite mesmerizing...and inspiring.

Keene Haywood (UT-Austin)

Once upon a time it was frowned upon to be "social" in the classroom. Be quiet and let your prof do the talking... stop chatting! Pay attention!

This is some beautiful computer generated art by Glenn Marshall, created with the programming language Processing. He also did the equally impressive Music is Math which is also linked below. Might we see museums of the future filled with this type of art?

Keene (UT-Austin, DIIA)

Windows Cloud to launch in 4 weeks

"Ballmer reveals cloud computing OS incoming" says Pocket-Lint.

Should we be scared??? Should we care??? The first cloud bomb virus to hit the servers this cloud lives on might make some front page news. I'm just sayin'...

Keene Haywood (The University of Texas at Austin - DIIA)

Apple has announced their iPhone Student Developer program which gives accredited higher education institutions the ability to have access to the same development tools and technologies that regular Developers have...for FREE! Instructors and professors can have development teams of up to 200 students. You can apply for the program here. So next time you are wondering what to do for your class, apply for the program and go forth making some great iphone web apps.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas at Austin - DIIA)

Much has been made of Pure Digital's Flip line of pocket video cameras. Inexpensive, convenient, easy to use and decent audio and video quality (for the price). Its made video as easy as point and shoot. Well the ante has been upped some from the vernable imaging gurus at Kodak. They have introduced the Vi6 pocket video camera that shoots in 720p, 60fps, 16:9 aspect ratio using H.264 encoding. This is compressed HD in a form factor about the size of a Flip Mino. Also, the Vi6 can take memory cards (SD/SDHC formats) up to 32 GB giving one lots of room to shoot all those lectures one is attending this semester.