Interesting article from ReadWriteWeb about the release of Google Flu Trends that highlights the usefulness of aggregating information from search queries - in this case, relating to influenza. The idea is simple - by tracking search queries relating to influenza (eg queries about symptoms, cures, treatment etc), the team at Google.org (Google’s non-profit arm) they discovered that - after cross-referencing that data against information from the Center for Disease Control - they had the ability to predict flu outbreaks by monitoring search patterns. And the advantage of doing this…? Traditional flu surveillance systems take 1-2 weeks to collect and release surveillance data, but Google search queries can be automatically counted very quickly, making their flu estimates available each day, and thus providing an early-warning system for outbreaks of influenza. The ReadWriteWeb article has a cool animated graph that illustrates this point.

Cloud computing continues to be one of the top “buzz words” as predicted in CORE’s Ten Trends. Released this year from Educause is a new book titled “The Tower and the Cloud, edited by Richard Katz - available as a free electronic download (2.4Mb PDF).

This volume tackles some of the questions and challenges for the education system such as   “How are ‘cloud’ technologies and applications already affecting us?” and “What does that say about how they are likely to evolve and impact us in the future?” Although the focus is primarily on higher (tertiary) education, much of what is described applies more generally to the broader framework of our education system.

In her forward to the book, Diana Oblinger comments;

“While not offering a crystal ball, [the book] does provide a series of reasoned, analytical perspectives on how current trends may unfold, altering our institutions and the higher education landscape in a future that may arrive faster than we expect. In reading it, we are all challenged to move beyond acknowledging the pace of technological change to envisioning all that the tower can be if we embrace the cloud.”

The metaphor of the “tower” (the tradition, silo-ed, autonomous institution) and the “cloud” (the concept of ubiquity, sharing, collaboration etc.) is well explored in each of the contributed chapters, exposing the obvious tensions and paradox, and providing both food for thought and some practical ideas on how things may unfold.

I was particularly pleased to note Katz’s comment that “It is still all about empowerment” - a theme that emerges several times in the book, raising the question; “What is the role of the institution in a world where individuals are empowered to seek solutions anywhere in the network cloud?”

I’ve found this volume of particular interest in light of the work I am currently doing with a school that is aggressively pursuing a vision of positioning itself “in the cloud”, and considering my own organisation where we’ve recently moved some of what we do into the same space. Ideas in the book that particuarly challenge me include the concept of a ‘cloud academy’ (p.22), new models of governance and scholarship (p.108) and the raft of issues around open source and open content (chapter 5) - all of which present huge challenges at a systemic level within our education system.

The figure included at the bottom of page 76 of the book, titled “Towards a Strategically Unified Information Future” (below) bears an uncanny resemblance to the eLearning Framework I helped develop here in NZ five years ago, and also underpins the thinking behind the eFramework development initiated by JISC and partners.

It is when thinking like this that the enormity of the task really impresses itself on our thinking. Adapting to the cloud is not a technical problem, it is a behavioural one - and the fact is that the technology is now enabling the more rapid change in the behaviour of individuals, while being resisted by larger organisations and institutions, be they univeristies, local governments, businesses or government departments.

Now there’s something for everyone in the education system to think seriously about - from the BOT of the smallest rural school, through to the CIOs in our education agencies!

An interesting entry just posted on the ReadWriteWeb blog titled What’s next after Web 2.0? Here’s what you told us…
This blog post is an attempt to synthesize, analyze and categorize all of the responses from a variety of people obtained from their own blog, and through social networks such as digg and Twitter.

As expected, the predicted technological advances focus on the user interface experience, and will require lots more bandwidth! There are optimistic thoughts about personalisation and the development of the semantic web. Security and privacy issues are mentioned, as are business models and revenue - and education gets a good plug in the ‘hard problems in the real world” section.

A very useful post for those interested in scanning the horizon and thinking about what’s coming next - some great links to follow also!

Here’s something that I’ve been waiting to see - and now available as a full MacOS X application to boot! Release notes follow…

The OpenOffice.org Community is today announcing the general availability of OpenOffice.org Version 3. Right from the opening screen, OpenOffice.org 3 has a fresh new look, with a new start screen, new splash screen, new icons, and a host of usability improvements.

The Writer word processor has a cool new slider control for zooming, allows multi-page display while editing, has powerful new multilingual support, and boasts improved notes capabilities. As well as conventional office documents, Writer can now edit wiki documents for the web.

The Calc spreadsheet has been given another increase in capacity - now up to 1024 columns per sheet. It also has a powerful new equation solver, and a great new collaboration feature for multiple users.

Draw can now cope with poster-size graphics (up to 3sq metres), and Impress supports multiple monitors for presentations. Chart now produces much more clean looking graphics by default, and has a range of additional features requested by power users.

The popular built-in PDF export facility has been further enhanced with PDF/A support and a range of new user-selectable options.

OpenOffice.org 3 is now also available for the first time as a full Mac OS X application, bringing the power of the world’s leading open-source office suite to a whole new group of users. And it’s even easier than ever to persuade MS-Office users to upgrade to OpenOffice.org, with new support for MS-Access 2007 ‘accdb’ files, improved support for VBA macros, and a new ability to read MS-Office Open XML files (Microsoft Office 2007 and Office 2008 documents)

OpenOffice.org’s support for extensions is really coming of age with OpenOffice.org 3. A rapidly expanding number of additional features are available from different developers to add great features such as an Impress presenter console, support for business analytics, PDF import, and a whole new way of supporting additional languages.

Links
Official Press Release: http://www.prweb.com/releases/OOo/3/prweb1459364.htm
Download: http://download.openoffice.org
Guide to new features: http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.0
Technical release notes: http://development.openoffice.org/releases/3.0.0.html
Availability of localised versions and ports: http://download.openoffice.org/other.html

Google has just announced its first major upgrade to Google Blogsearch which is now relaunched and looks radically different. Instead of the blank page look of Google.com, Blogsearch now looks like Google News - with the hottest topics from the blogosphere aggregated on the front page. Readers can drill down in 11 different categories, from technology, business, sports and entertainment. Unfortunately education isn’t one of these - which would make it much more useful from my perspective, with such a wealth of education blogs out there I mus admit it’s a bit of a surprise omission. I did find the technology category worth a browse however!

Seems the Chinese are now in the market for producing low cost laptops that utilise open source software for the operating system and productivity software, with the production of the HiVision MiniNote Linux Laptop - for the princely sum of $98!

The following announcement appeared earlier this month on the Tech Video Blog:

“HiVision makes the worlds cheapest Linux laptop at $98 using a new cheaper MIPS based processor (perhaps the Longsoon or the Ingenic), WiFi, 1GB flash storage, it runs Linux, has 3 USB ports, Ethernet, SDHC card reader, audio in and out, voice-chat, skype, multi-tabbed Firefox browser support and Abiword for word processing. Automatic and secure online software updates. Their current model is running a smooth and pretty snappy Linux user interface. In this video, I got to borrow a review sample of the laptop overnight, and I try to show you all the browser and other software interfaces in this extended video review of this cheap MIPS based laptop. Embedded is the way that I hope that most cheap laptops are going to be based on in the near future, Google will hopefully make a great Chrome browser for this kind of Laptop and hopefully that OLPC soon will announce that they will work to improve Embedded Linux based laptops in the upcoming XO-1.5 and XO-2 designs.”

All goes to reinforce that there is a promising future in the open source world, and the development of inexpensive, cloud-connected devices such as this! Here’s a short clip from Youtube that explains it all…

Every now and again something catches my eye straight from ‘left field’, and today it is this article from The Register about a toaster that’s able to burn pretty much anything onto your morning slice, including the news. Called the Scan Toaster, it connects to a PC over USB and downloads everything from local weather conditions and the current time to the morning’s news headlines which it then toasts onto your bread!

As my mother used to say “whatever will they think of next?”

Here’s a really cool video that provides an insight into what one possible future user experience of the Web may be like. Aurora is a concept video created created by Adaptive Path as part of the Mozilla Labs concept browser series. Aurora explores new ways people could interact with the Web in the future based on projected technological trends and real-world scenarios.

As one of the comments on the site says, Welcome to the future — well, one possible future, anyway!

The transfer of my entire blog from Movable Type to Wordpress is complete, and here I am blogging again! Thought the best way of getting back into it would be to list some of the cool tools and applications that I’ve been exploring and playing with during my absence…

Project View - Mobile story telling - Using simple and available technology (such as camera phones or webcams in community computer centers) to create and express individual points of view in story form

GoAnimate - Free site for creating simple animations

Scratch for Second Life - it is what is says - integrate the characters created in Scratch into Second Life

Qrowd - Another PLE option based on RSS feeds from all your favourite sites and create your personal mash-up of the web!

Tag Galaxy - (I wasted hours on this one!) - great application for searching photos on a theme from flickr and viewing them on a sphere!

So - feels good to have my blog back. Now to ponder some more thoughtful posts

Browsing through a backlog of newsfeeds this morning I came across this one via MocoNewsNet:

Fix8, a video chat service that lets users talk via animated avatars, has raised $2 million from SK Telecom (NYSE: SKM), adding to the $3 million it raised last year from Vickers Financial Group. Both fundings are part of the same $5 million first round. In addition to the inv*stm*nt, the company has received a contract from SK Telecom to lead the operator’s efforts at enhancing the mobile chat experience. LA-based Fix8, a division of Mobinex, also has offices in China and Vietnam.

My son and I enjoyed watching the video of Fix8’s capabilities (see below) - unfortunately it’s not available for the Mac, but it certainly looks like a fun app to play with, and is an indication of the increasing move away from simple text as a communication method.