Mindsigh

Web 2.0 – It’s all about the people

Posted by Jerry on February 23rd, 2007 — Posted in Journal, New media, Technology, Writing

Beth’s Blog has a great remix of Marnie Webb’s Ten Ways to Use Web 2.0 Tools – well worth a visit because it underlines the key principle that it’s about the people first and foremost 🙂

Cheers
Jerry

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Visited countries map

Posted by Jerry on February 22nd, 2007 — Posted in Journal, Travel

Here’s a great way to share your travels – create your own visited countries map. I was amazed when I thought back to the places I have visited over the years, to find that I’ve actually visited quite a few countries (16) coverin 7 percent of the globe – mostly during my studies, some holiday and some business travel. But the map is of course only one representation of place – in most of these countries I have only visited one or two cities, rather than the whole country as the map might imply. So the big blob of China, for instance is there, but I have only visited Beijing in that country – as part of a tour with the band.

create your own visited countries map or vertaling Duits Nederlands

If you follow the links above you can also create a visited states map of the USA – something I hope Sharon will do when she heads over there next year 🙂

Thanks to Thomas McEldowney’s blog for this link

Cheers
Jerry

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New Media Literacies website

Posted by Jerry on February 21st, 2007 — Posted in Journal, New media, Technology, Writing

MIT’s New Media Literacies website is integrating new media into education for K-12 students. The site  makes good use of participatory technologies – blogs, Flickr, and so on to stimulate students. And it showcases free videos and student activities. One of the best introductions I’ve seen to video-blogging or vblogs is the tutorial by Steve Garfield, John Barth, Jason Crow and Four Eyed Monsters on Flickr

The series includes:

• Welcome to videoblogging
• Is videoblogging news?
• basic production
• Community and conversation
• Film making2.0
• Ethics and Ownership
• Vlogs as citizen media

It’s well worth a visit 🙂

Thanks to Beth’s Blog for the link.
Cheers
Jerry

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Hi-tech fibre is green… er orange actually

Posted by Jerry on February 20th, 2007 — Posted in Journal, Technology

From fishing rods to warships and presumably motorcycles too, a new nano-fibre has been developed from …er… carrots. Developed by Dr David Hepworth and Dr Eric Whale, the fibre material – to be first used in fishing rods – is a renewable resource that is pretty much carbon neutral – so it’s great for the environment. According to Dr Hepworth, when the material is burnt the carbon it creates is cancelled out by the carbon absorbed by the carrots when they were growing.

The new fly fishing rods being manufactured at the inventors’ company, CelluComp in Burntisland, Fife, Scotland go on sale in March. They will retail at about the same price as normal fishing rods, and each contains about 50 percent carrot, using about 2kg in its construction, – according to an article in The Scotsman dated 9 Feb 2007.

The pair got together during their PhD studies at Reading University, when studying biological materials. The nano-fibers in the carrots are extracted and combined with high-tech resins to create a substance that can be moulded into any shape, flexibility or weight as required. The product hits the market just when there is global shortage of carbon fibre (which is extracted from non-renewable oil)

And if the process results in a sudden surge in the carrots futures market, they can always use turnips parsnips or swedes 🙂

I’m wondering whether there might also be a new strong thread here that could be used in clothing or other textile manufacture – the way kevlar and carbon fibres are used today in motorcycle gloves and jackets. The possibilities of these biocomposite materials seem endless!

Cheers
Jerry

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New Literacies Sampler book – online!

Posted by Jerry on February 19th, 2007 — Posted in New media, Technology, Theory, Writing

This is an excellent read, with many of my favourite authors – Colin Lankshear, Michele Knobel and Angela Thomas to name a couple 😉

And better still,  New Literacies Sampler is not only available as a hard-copy book, but has also been published electronically online by the publisher – now THAT’s what I call a forward thinking publisher!

Thanks to Angela for pointing to this one 🙂

Cheers
Jerry

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