"Having access to textbooks and notes on the iPad facilitated productivity -- not only in the classroom, but also on subway and train commutes," said Crystal Kyaw, a student who participated in a study of the iPad's benefits for medical education. "Its sleek profile made it easy to carry and allowed me to access references in a nonobtrusive and convenient manner during meetings as well." The educational e-book market has grown fiercer in the last few years, raising the question of where the end game will leave educational institutions in their attempts to reduce student churn, increase productivity and radically reduce costs. As the battling e-textbook giants try to cut exclusive deals and limit competitors' supplies of e-content, educators from the kindergarten to university level ... Continue reading →
You know how when a plane crashes, they always talk about finding the "black box" (even though, in some cases, it's orange) to tell them what happened to the plane in the last few seconds before impact? There's a bill in process in Congress that would require those in cars -- which, although it would help diagnose what caused accidents, raises privacy concerns. This is not the Global Positioning System (GPS) case we've talked about before, but, as with airplanes, a device -- sometimes called an electronic data recorder or event data recorder -- that would record the last 30 seconds or so before a crash to help determine what caused it. Senate Bill 1813, which passed the Senate in March and is currently under ... Continue reading →
Businesses often need to get together to collaborate. That means you occasionally need to hold conference calls with clients, customers, and employees. Your existing phone service might have a “conference call” feature – but that probably only lets three people on the line at once. Every so often, you need more than that. But the “big names” can be expensive propositions, sometimes requiring a monthly up-front billing commitment. That’s more than most smaller businesses can afford, especially when the conference calling needs are erratic. That's where free conference calling offerings can help your company. Free services from a variety of vendors include a range of features. There are bare bones products that use long-distance phone numbers instead of toll-free numbers, and vendors that also provide ... Continue reading →
Like clouds, but don't trust cloud vendors? Roll your own with ownCloud. Big businesses use cloud services. You and I use cloud storage services like DropBox, Google Drive, and Amazon Cloud Drive every day. But, with each you have to trust your data on other people’s systems. With ownCloud, an open source file sync and share project, which began as a KDE project, you can keep your data on your servers and decide what other public cloud services you want to integrate into your personal cloud. OwnCloud is primarily as an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud service. With it you can store your files, folders, contacts, photo galleries, calendars and more on a server of your choosing. You can then access that storage from ... Continue reading →
By bringing together all types of information about species distributions, providing model-based integration, and providing a system for users to build upon our knowledge, the Map of Life project hopes to support our community in understanding and saving the world's biodiversity. more about MOL Continue reading →
Microsoft CEO says that he expected 500 million people to have Windows 8 by the end of 2013. But a look at Windows' sales history and PC growth shows that number is way off base. Ballmer says that Windows 8 means the "rebirth" of Windows, according to Agence France-Presss. The agency also reports that "Ballmer estimated up to 500 million users will have Windows 8 next year." Based on sales of Windows 7, and expected PC growth, that number appears to be wildly overinflated. Let's do the math. In April, 2011, Microsoft announced that in the 18 months after Windows 7 was released, more than 350 million licenses of it were sold. That comes out to a little more than 19,444,444 sold per month. Windows ... Continue reading →
