Skip to main content

Home/ ThoughtVectors2014/ Group items tagged useful

Rss Feed Group items tagged

1More

HAL :: [hal-00190328, version 1] Literature Review in Learning with Tangible Technologies - 1 views

  • what would a school look like in which the technology disappeared seamlessly into the everyday objects and artefacts of the classroom? This review is an attempt to explore this question. It maps out the recent technological developments in the field, discusses evidence from educational research and psychology, and provides an overview of a wide range of challenging projects that have attempted to use such 'disappearing computers' (or tangible interfaces) in education
12More

Literature Resource Center - Document - 0 views

  • Sam Rosenthal, who's the founder of a label called Project Records
  • iTunes and the other music players have had in the past; buying to own
  • Spotify really is changing here is we're talking about access to music.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • if they really like it they will share it and their friends will discover it and they in turn will listen to it
  • Daniel Ek is the founder and CEO of the music streaming service Spotify
  • But again, what I sort of emphasize that we're paying the labels. We don't pay the artists directly.
  • What we're really trying to do here is move people away from piracy into a legal model that contributes revenue back to the music industry.
  • Yeah, I do want to address that because I feel that it's important to mention that it's still early days and Spotify's only two years in using the service, almost three. But in that short period of time now we've become the second largest revenue generator for the labels in Europe and we've paid out more than a 150 million dollars back to the music industry.
  • He recently wrote on his blog that 5,000 plays on Spotify generates a little more than six dollars, and in comparison 5,000 track downloads at iTunes generates for him $3,400. I mean, it's a big gap there.
  • I definitely think that we want to have access and that's the big shift here, but I do think that ownership still plays an important role. You do want to own the things you really care about.
  • At the same time one of the big criticisms that we've heard from artists is that the royalties that they get from Spotify are so low that it might as well be piracy.
  • I think if you keep creating great music people will in fact listen to it and they will in fact buy it if they think it's a great record.
7More

Pink Floyd: Pandora's Internet radio royalty ripoff - 0 views

  • The latest example is how Pandora is pushing for a special law in Congress to slash musicians' royalties – and the tactics they are using to trick artists into supporting this unfair cut in pay.
  • We hope that many online and mobile music services can give fans and artists the music they want, when they want it, at price points that work. But those same services should fairly pay the artists and creators who make the music at the core of their businesses.
  • Nearly 90% of the artists who get a check for digital play receive less than $5,000 a year. They cannot afford the 85% pay cut Pandora asked Congress to impose on the music community.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Last year, we joined over 130 other bands and artists to oppose Pandora's campaign to cut the royalties paid for digital radio spins.
  • We've heard Pandora complain it pays too much in royalties to make a profit. (Of course, we also watched Pandora raise $235 million in its IPO and double its listeners in the last two years.) But a business that exists to deliver music can't really complain that its biggest cost is music.
  • Netflix pays more for movies than Pandora pays for music, but they aren't running to Congress for a bailout.
  • Everyone deserves the right to be paid a fair market rate for their work, regardless of what their work entails.
1More

Using interactive technology to improve health : is weight loss just a mouse-click away? - 2 views

  •  
    "Since 1980, the prevalence of obesity among U.S. adults has more than doubled, accompanied by increases in chronic conditions like heart disease and diabetes. This high prevalence and associated disease burden continues to be a threat to public health. Despite years of efforts to stem the tide of obesity, successful weight loss has proven difficult to achieve and sustain."
1More

Nonprofit Organizations' Perceptions and Uses of the Internet - 0 views

  •  
    How non-profit organizations utilize the internet
1More

Augmented Reality in Education: Shaw Wood Primary School uses Aurasma - YouTube - 1 views

  •  
    Video of new augmented reality tech in education
2More

Barcode - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data relating to the object to which it is attached. Originally barcodes systematically represented data by varying the widths and spacings of parallel lines, and may be referred to as linear or one-dimensional (1D). Later they evolved into rectangles, dots, hexagons and other geometric patterns in two dimensions (2D). Although 2D systems use a variety of symbols, they are generally referred to as barcodes as well. Barcodes originally were scanned by special optical scanners called barcode readers. Later, scanners and interpretive software became available on devices including desktop printers and smartphones.
  •  
    Barcodes are symbols just like any other, but they can only be read by computers! They're kind of like paintings for computers.
1More

Digital View news articles - Museum Interactive Displays - 0 views

  • Museums are increasingly using digital video presentation to engage with visitors. Moving away from traditional VHS and DVD delivery, new dedicated digital media players offer an extremely low cost, yet highly reliable option for all types of looping content. Digital View - a specialist in the provision of these solid state digital media players - has even added a range of low cost interactive options to its range of ViewStream™ & VideoFlyer™ digital presentation tools. Everything a museum needs; from buttons, levers and motion sensors, to touch screens, RS-232 and full AMX / Crestron connectivity. Interactivity that is simple to program, simple to integrate and fast-to-the-touch - ensuring the best visitor experience.`
2More

Simulacra and Simulation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 1 views

  • "Simulacra and Simulation" breaks the sign-order into 4 stages: The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where we believe, and it may even be correct, that a sign is a "reflection of a profound reality" (pg 6), this is a good appearance, in what Baudrillard called "the sacramental order". The second stage is perversion of reality, this is where we come to believe the sign to be an unfaithful copy, which "masks and denatures" reality as an "evil appearance—it is of the order of maleficence". Here, signs and images do not faithfully reveal reality to us, but can hint at the existence of an obscure reality which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating. The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality, where the simulacrum pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original. Signs and images claim to represent something real, but no representation is taking place and arbitrary images are merely suggested as things which they have no relationship to. Baudrillard calls this the "order of sorcery", a regime of semantic algebra where all human meaning is conjured artificially to appear as a reference to the (increasingly) hermetic truth. The fourth stage is pure simulation, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is only of the order of other such claims. This is a regime of total equivalency, where cultural products need no longer even pretend to be real in a naïve sense, because the experiences of consumers' lives are so predominantly artificial that even claims to reality are expected to be phrased in artificial, "hyperreal" terms. Any naïve pretension to reality as such is perceived as bereft of critical self-awareness, and thus as oversentimental.
  •  
    This is a short passage from a very interesting book about Symbols in modern culture.
2More

Age of Distraction: Why It's Crucial for Students to Learn to Focus | MindShift - 1 views

  • “The circuitry for paying attention is identical for the circuits for managing distressing emotion,” Goleman said. The area of the brain that governs focus and executive functioning is known as the pre-frontal cortex. This is also the part of the brain that allows people to control themselves, to keep emotions in check and to feel empathy for other people.
  • “It’s about using the devices smartly but having the capacity to concentrate as you need to, when you want to.”
2More

DARPA's Robot Olympics » Cyborgology - 0 views

  • Schraube’s materialized action approach combines Actor Network Theory with Critical Psychology. From the latter, Schraube uses the idea of objectification which argues that technology is always imbued with human intention. From the former, he takes the idea that technologies always act back upon humans. In short, the materialized action approach says that technologies and humans have a mutually constitutive relationship, but this relationship is lopsided. Although both humans and technologies each act upon the other, humans take the primary position. Humans construct technologies in response to human problems. They build into these technologies cultural values and intentions. Technology is the material form of human action, but one without definitive consequences.
  •  
    See article link to Schraube's technology as materialized action approach and comments about automation of physical tasks vs automation of mental tasks.
1More

Supersizing the Mind - Hardcover - Andy Clark - Oxford University Press - 0 views

  • Drawing upon recent work in psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics, human-computer systems, and beyond, Supersizing the Mind offers both a tour of the emerging cognitive landscape and a sustained argument in favor of a conception of mind that is extended rather than "brain-bound." The importance of this new perspective is profound. If our minds themselves can include aspects of our social and physical environments, then the kinds of social and physical environments we create can reconfigure our minds and our capacity for thought and reason.
2More

Embodied Cognition (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) - 0 views

  • Consider four evocative examples of phenomena that have motivated embodied cognitive science. We typically gesture when we speak to one another, and gesturing facilitates not just communication but language processing itself (McNeill 1992). Vision is often action-guiding, and bodily movement and the feedback it generates are more tightly integrated into at least some visual processing than has been anticipated by traditional models of vision (O'Regan and Noë 2001). There are neurons, mirror neurons, that fire not only when we undertake an action, but do so when we observe others undertaking the same actions (Rizolatti and Craighero 2004). We are often able to perform cognitive tasks, such as remembering, more effectively by using our bodies and even parts of our surrounding environments to off-load storage and simplify the nature of the cognitive processing (Donald 1991).
  •  
    Thinking about embodied cognition in young children's dramatic play with robotic teachers and augmented reality.
11More

"Spotify Was Designed from the Ground Up to Combat Piracy" | TorrentFreak - 0 views

  • “Spotify was designed from the ground up to combat piracy,” the company confirms. “Founded in Sweden, the home of The Pirate Bay, we believed that if we could build a service which was better
  • than piracy, then we could convince people to stop illegal file-sharing, and start
  • consuming music legally again.”
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Right from the beginning Spotify founder Daniel Ek held a solid belief that if his service offered a better experience and superior convenience than that being offered by The Pirate Bay, people would jump on board.
  • And they have. Earlier this year the service confirmed it had amassed a total of 24 million users worldwide, 18 million on their ad-supported service and 6 million paying a subscription.
  • The notion, that “it’s impossible to compete with free”, sat well with lawmakers and governments, who looked at offerings coming out of The Pirate Bay and thousands of other similar sites and widely agreed that no-one will pay for something if they can get it for nothing.
  • “A key part of this [success] has been in ensuring that Spotify has a free [ad supported] tier. By offering this free tier, Spotify is able to compete with piracy on cost and bring music consumers into the legal framework,” the company notes.
  • In Sweden, a market that should be the most difficult to turn around if file-sharing traditions are any barometer, Spotify says that the number of people who pirated music fell by 25 percent between 2009 and 2011.
  • In Denmark the IFPI reports that 48% of users using streaming services had previously been illegal downloaders. An impressive 8 out of 10 of those have now stopped completely.
  • Norway, a success story documented earlier this year, has seen its piracy rates drop to just one-fifth of their levels four years earlier, with streaming services taking most of the credit.
  • There can be little doubt that torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay will always have a following, but when services such as Spotify offer their basic services for free, one has to question why people wouldn’t at least try them
2More

Technology's Toll - Impatience and Forgetfulness - NYTimes.com - 3 views

  • “We’re paying a price in terms of our cognitive life because of this virtual lifestyle.”
    • majeeds
       
      It's easy to think that all this cool advanced technology around us is here to help - but it's also hurting the most important organ in our bodies.
17More

Pinterest, Tumblr and the Trouble With 'Curation' - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • evoke in the viewer a certain feeling, atmosphere or mood
  • Not just on Pinterest, but also in the form of dopamine-boosting street-fashion blogs and cryptically named Tumblr blogs devoted to the wordless and explanation-free juxtaposition of, say, cupcakes and teapots and shoes with shots of starched shirts and J.F.K.
  • artfully arranged pictures of other people’s stuff?
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • “curation,”
  • rarefied and highly specialized skill, would all of a sudden go viral
  • Not because I don’t like magazines. In many ways, I like them better. But they’re too grounded in space and time, too organized and linear, too collaborative and professional to deliver the synaptic frisson available from the stream-of-consciousness image blog.
  • A friend of a friend calls his addiction to sites like these “avenues for procrastination,” but I think there’s something else involved. Like other forms of pastiche — the mix tape, the playlist, the mash-up — these sites force you to engage and derive meaning or at least significance or at the very least pleasure from a random grouping of pictures. Why not dive into an alternative world full of beauty and novelty and emotion and the hard-to-put-your-finger-on feeling that there’s something more, somewhere, where you’re not chained to your laptop, half dead from monotony, frustration and boredom
  • the sudden rise of the mood board as mood regulator, a kind of low-dose visual lithium
  • So maybe we are like the rats, and what we’re seeking while idly yet compulsively cruising Pinterest is really just the reliably unpredictable jumble of emotions that their wistful, quirky juxtapositions evoke. Maybe that is our rectangularity.
  • This is, I think, what these sites evoke: the feeling of being addicted to longing for something; specifically being addicted to the feeling that something is missing or incomplete. The point is not the thing that is being longed for, but the feeling of longing for the thing.
  • In other words, your average Pinterest board or inspiration Tumblr basically functions as a longing machine.
  • They target aspects of our lives that “are incomplete or imperfect”; involve “overly positive, idealized, utopian imaginations of these missing aspects”; focus on “incompleteness on the one hand and fantasies about ideal, alternative realities on the other hand”
  • frivolous and feminine
  • People don’t post stuff because they wish they owned it, but because they think they are it, and they long to be understood, which is different.
  • In fact, the company discourages people from posting images they have created themselves, preferring that they venture out into the wilds of the Internet looking for beautiful things to bring back to the cave.
  • “Curation” does imply something far more deliberate than these inspiration blogs, whose very point is to put the viewer into an aesthetic reverie unencumbered by thought or analysis. These sites are not meant (as curation is) to make us more conscious, but less so.
  • But products are no longer the point. The feeling is the point. And now we can create that feeling for ourselves, then pass it around like a photo album of the life we think we were meant to have but don’t, the people we think we should be but aren’t.
7More

Social Networking's Good and Bad Impacts on Kids - 1 views

  • Teens who use Facebook more often show more narcissistic tendencies while young adults who have a strong Facebook presence show more signs of other psychological disorders, including antisocial behaviors, mania and aggressive tendencies.
  • Daily overuse of media and technology has a negative effect on the health of all children, preteens and teenagers by making them more prone to anxiety, depression, and other psychological disorders, as well as by making them more susceptible to future health problems
  • Facebook can be distracting and can negatively impact learning. Studies found that middle school, hig
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • school and college students who checked Facebook at least once during a 15-minute study period achieved lower grades
  • Young adults who spend more time on Facebook are better at showing “virtual empathy” to their online friends. 
  • Online social networking can help introverted adolescents learn how to socialize behind the safety of various screens, ranging from a two-inch smartphone to a 17-inch laptop.
  • Social networking can provide tools for teaching in compelling ways that engage young students.
3More

Surgeons reconstruct baby's skull with 3D printing technology | Fox News - 0 views

  • They sent us cutting templates, which were pieces of 3D modeling that we were able to place on the child’s skull during surgery
  • Both Egnor and Duboys said the 3D modeling technology helped to cut down on the length of the procedure, which meant Gabriel spent far less time under anesthesia than during traditional surgery
  •  
    Increasing the speed of 3-D printing they were able to just send the templates to 3-D printing machine.
2More

Dad Uses 3D Printer To Make His Son A Prosthetic Hand (VIDEO) - 0 views

  •  
    Making prothetics affordable and easy to make.
  •  
    The possibilities are endless for this family. Now that they have mastered the basics I'm sure his dad will be able to improve his "hand" as the years go by.
19More

The Netflix effect: how binge watching is changing television | News | TechRadar - 0 views

  • The bold new era of content distribution and technological efficiency has served up entire, original award-winning series series like Netflix' House of Cards and Orange is the New Black for consumption in one sitting, if the viewer desires.
  • Quite frankly, we've never had it so good.
  • empowered the consumer.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • We spoke to television scholars and media psychologists on whether marathon viewing is really enhancing our experience, beyond the buffet. If we can have everything, does everything mean anything?
  • "Even a single episode has so many highs and lows that by the end of it you're so beaten up, you're less receptive to the emotional and intellectual ideas being put forth. Yet still we click and watch another one."
  • Netflix says it's more organic that way – it also means that if you don't do anything the episodes will just keep on coming.
  • With more traditional distribution models there is arguably more of an opportunity to let the experience sink in, find an appreciation and look forward to the next part of the journey.
  • "Breaking Bad has become the greatest example of the perfect show for binge viewing, he tells us. "Not only is it okay to binge view a series like that, but it is a better way to watch it.
  • you can understand the inner workings of these stories if you view them in more concentrated chunks
  • binge watching is the antithesis to how TV traditionally works.
  • Now, thanks to the advent of high-speed internet and the connected services they've enabled, technology has surpassed the content.
  • Ironically enough, the week-to-week format we enjoyed/endured during our last hours with Jesse and Walt proved to be an anomaly for millions who latched on to the growing buzz and raced through the previous five-and-half-seasons during the 12-month pre-climax hiatus – the binge before the episodic storm.
  • "I think Breaking Bad is probably as close as we're going to come to such a universal, cultural televisual event again," said film and television historian and associate professor at UCLA Jonathan Kuntz.
  • Breaking Bad, as it turned out, bridged the two eras perfectly, offering a stunning paradox of each distribution model's merits.
  • "The generation coming up now, all they're going to know is on demand. What pleasure they derive from anything will come from that,"
  • Another factor to consider in the great binge debate is that feeling of withdrawal when we run out of new episodes.
  • "The [binge viewing] experience is so good that you feel physically sad that it's over. That sense you had is more attached to it being a great artistic experience,"
  • The strength of our desire for gratification plays into a debate the psychologists call Connoisseur vs Addict. The former loves to be present in the moment, can savour the engagement and sees how everything ties into a beautiful package. The latter just needs a fix.
  • "An addict is working on a two-pronged schema, which is aspiration and completion. Aspiration is thedopamine-fuelled desire to recapture a feeling," he told TechRadar."When you get the completion, it's not about the rush, but ultimately about achieving the aspiration of the completion. When things are that accessible, what happens to the value of the product?"
« First ‹ Previous 141 - 160 of 167 Next ›
Showing 20 items per page