Group items tagged

Google is developing a brand new device, Google Glass, described as a wearable computer. Three contest winners have been chosen to test the device in their daily lives and comment about their experience.

The New York Times website is down today (by some reports it's because Syrian hackers have attacked it), but here's a (probably illegal) copy of a helpful column on "Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User" by the New York Times's technology reviewer, David Pogue. This documents also contains all the comments. All 1149 of them. :) Many of those comments have helpful tips as well. Even though this was published in 2008, it's still helpful.

This web page has an easy and detailed explanation about what a URL is and its three basic parts: the protocol, the server name, and the resource ID.

In theory that's a good resource, Jimin, except that it's wrong. :) The "server name" could be anything, and has very little to do with the domain name. It is true that you can usually log in to a server (a remote computer) by giving whatever program you're logging in with the domain name, but that doesn't mean that the server itself has the same name as the website. That page is also very, very wrong in calling the the top-level domain (.org etc.) the "domain name." It's important to note that that page was almost certainly written by a librarian, not a tech professional. (Of course, I'm an English PhD, not a tech professional myself, but still.) And when I looked at the source code, I could tell that it was hand-coded in HTML, which indicates to me that it's probably many years old. Wish there were a "dislike" button. :)

NY times article about developing nations and access to affordable technology for schools.

What does "High Speed Internet" mean exactly? This article gives you detailed information about the speed of the internet we use everyday and what speed would be the right choice for ourselves. According to the article, "80 percent of broadband users in the United States don't know don't know what speed they are paying for". If you were one of those, you would probably want to go click "Alternative Broadband Speed Test" on the second page of the article and check yours today!

This article the the NY Times explains how the Obama administration is making sure everyone has access/knowledge to a computer

An article from Technology Review discusses an important question many people bring up about the quality of articles on wikipedia. It also discusses the relatively small number of dedicated editors who play a fundamental role in the community. Due to the small number of editors and authoritative contributors to many of the articles on Wikipedia, the article also discusses that an algorithm that assesses the quality of Wikipedia articles could reassure visitors and help focus editors on entries that need improving. The computer scientists (Xiangju Qin and Pádraig Cunningham) have developed automated editorial tool that may reduce the workload that remains for the volunteer workforce.

The Wikipedia guy who came to speak told me about this article -- it's a big deal in the Wikipedia community.