Group items tagged

"THE Customer DATA centers run by Apple are now entirely fueled by renewable energy, as are 75% of all its corporate facilities, according to the company's recently released 'Apple and the Environment` report. But despite the commitment demonstrated by building one of the world's largest solar arrays, as well as a biogas plant, beside its new iCloud facility in Maiden, North Carolina, the annual review of environmental impact also acknowledges that the total greenhouse gas emissions attributable to Apple's products and operations rose by 34% in 2012."

"Generation YES is a non-profit 501 (c)(3) with a mission to empower students and teachers to use technology to improve education in their own school. Our school-friendly online tools and innovative project-based curriculum build a learning community where students work alongside their teachers as technology leaders, collaborators and mentors. 15 years of research experience and proven scientific results show that when schools trust and collaborate with their students to integrate technology, academic success follows."

"Modern Lessons is a skill-building platform designed for you. It features courses for beginners, experts, and everyone in between. Courses are taught by just a handful of carefully chosen experts and are available free of charge. Create your account to start learning."

"We believe that it might actually be possible to build a ring of balloons, flying around the globe on the stratospheric winds, that provides Internet access to the earth below. It's very early days, but we've built a system that uses balloons, carried by the wind at altitudes twice as high as commercial planes, to beam Internet access to the ground at speeds similar to today's 3G networks or faster. As a result, we hope balloons could become an option for connecting rural, remote, and underserved areas, and for helping with communications after natural disasters. The idea may sound a bit crazy-and that's part of the reason we're calling it Project Loon-but there's solid science behind it. "

"We believe that it might actually be possible to build a ring of balloons, flying around the globe on the stratospheric winds, that provides Internet access to the earth below. It's very early days, but we've built a system that uses balloons, carried by the wind at altitudes twice as high as commercial planes, to beam Internet access to the ground at speeds similar to today's 3G networks or faster. As a result, we hope balloons could become an option for connecting rural, remote, and underserved areas, and for helping with communications after natural disasters. The idea may sound a bit crazy-and that's part of the reason we're calling it Project Loon-but there's solid science behind it. "

"15-Year-Old Kelvin Doe is an engineering whiz living in Sierra Leone who scours the trash bins for spare parts, which he uses to build batteries, generators and transmitters. Completely self-taught, Kelvin has created his own radio station where he broadcasts news and plays music under the moniker, DJ Focus. "

We watched this during #motm13 and discussed what is the difference between innovation, creativity etc. An inspiring video.

"The iPad is renowned as a multipurpose tool but Phillip Island building supervisor Neville Toms might have found an alternate use for it that would have Steve Jobs smiling from beyond the grave."

The X-Ray Goggles make it easy to see and mess around with the building blocks that make up the web. Activate the Goggles to inspect the code behind any web page, from the New York Times to your own blog. Then remix elements with a single click, swapping in your own text, images and more.  Recommended by Doug Belshaw

4 templates to help build your an infographic

Posthaven is the creation of Gary Tan from Posterous fame. Blogs can be created from $5 per month. "Garry Tan and Brett Gibson were two of the cofounders of Posterous in 2008. Posterous was acquired by Twitter in 2012, and while we were happy that it was a meaningful acquisition for the team and investors, we were bummed to see something get shuttered that we believed should last forever. We know how to build every aspect of a great site, and we're setting out to do it again." 

"This is an everyday problem familiar to anyone who uses search engines regularly. So here's some good news for us - and bad news for the big portals: There is a better way to build a search engine. And a Silicon Valley start-up company with the unlikely name of Google.com is showing the way. Google.com started as a research project by a couple of Stanford grad students - which, of course, is just how Yahoo, the directory site that has become the Web's most popular service, began. Yahoo tends to be more valuable than other search sites because its index is created by human beings rather than computer programs. But for the same reason, Yahoo has a hard time keeping up with the Web's explosive growth."

In an interview with Tyler Wood, Fred Benesen explains how and why data is far more subjective than we always recognise. The term mathwashing should be more of a warning to fellow technologists: don't overlook the inherent subjectivity of building things with data just because you're using math. Algorithm and data driven products will always reflect the design choices of the humans who built them, and it's irresponsible to assume otherwise.

"The Puzzle Maker (also known as Puzzle Creator or Editor) is an in-game puzzle editor that allows the creation, testing, and publishing (to Steam Workshop) of custom single-player and co-op test chambers. The Editor also adds new lines from Cave Johnson which, altogether, adds a story to downloaded test chambers. The DLC introduces the player to "The Multiverse" which contains an infinite number of Earths, an infinite number of Apertures, and therefore, an infinite number of test chambers. Puzzle Maker is not intended as a replacement of Hammer, which while more powerful and generalized in nature, is significantly more difficult and time consuming to use. It is possible to export a VMF from Puzzle Maker and open it in Hammer; many mappers do this to add polish or features that are not currently possible using the Puzzle Maker. Some mappers use the Puzzle Maker to quickly iterate through (and test) puzzle designs before building a chamber from scratch with Hammer. It is not possible to load a Hammer VMF file in Puzzle Maker."

Facebook is moving back to its roots in education with this morning's big announcement of custom groups for schools called, not surprisingly Groups for Schools. While I'm dubious about how, if, and why individual teachers may want to use the service… it'll be great for entire schools who don't have the budget or resources to build their very own online community. So here's the deal: Facebook will let you have an area of the site where anyone with your school's or district's .edu email address can get in and participate. It's basically the same model that Mark Zuckerberg used to launch the site many moons ago.

ChartsBin is a web-based data visualization tool that will allow everyone to quickly and easily create rich interactive visualizations with their own data. You can then share your interactive visualizations with others by embedding them in websites, blogs or sharing via Facebook or Twitter. We're focused on building the most exciting and engaging destination for statisticians, and computer scientists in the world.

"You're a teacher at Park Lake Valley P-12 College, an ICT school of excellence. It is an old school with some amazing new buildings. The leafy suburb of Park Lake is located in one of Melbourne's major growth corridors. The school is in the midst of a process of reinvention, embracing change and facing the future." Sound familiar? Jump into this online game and enjoy!

"There are numerous sites that are now offering Tutorials and how-to guides for creating ebooks in iBook Author. As teachers are now comfortable with the idea of creating their own e-textbooks more and more people are looking for resources to learn how to build touch enabled books that take full advantage of the iPad capabilities. Inserting video and high resolution photographs is one thing but how about inserting 3D manipulatives and models that are touch sensitive.". This post offers is a list of some of the resources online.

It never ceases to amaze me how Google has become such an integral part of our lives. Search has evolved in such colossal proportions and especially with the advent of Google instant my belief that Google can actually read my mind has only been fortified. Search Marketers around the world are always on their Toes and as Google states "Don't try to follow our algorithm but try to think about the direction in which we are heading, build content for the users and not the search engines". I sometimes wonder if Google was actually a person he would be an amazing election candidate. But then again the high and mighty also have their share of secrets, secrets that should never come up, what I am about to reveal can be touted as one of the many chapters of the Da Vinci of Google.