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To search this blog, try the Search Box on the right, or click on the Labels following each post entry
04 November, 2013
Why Tough Teachers Get Good Results. Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson gained fame for his research showing that true expertise requires about 10,000 hours of practice, a notion popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Outliers." But an often-overlooked finding from the same study is equally important: True expertise requires teachers who give "constructive, even painful, feedback," as Dr. Ericsson put it in a 2007 Harvard Business Review article. He assessed research on top performers in fields ranging from violin performance to surgery to computer programming to chess. And he found that all of them "deliberately picked unsentimental coaches who would challenge them and drive them to higher levels of performance."
SCREEN Australia will fund to the tune of $200,000 new online content for YouTube in Google's first move into local content. The announcement today of the Skip Ahead program to support local online content creators comes days after two television network bosses accused Google of gaming the tax system. The co-funding of the $400,000 You-Tube program by the federal agency is sure to spark controversy because Google pays minimal tax in Australia and is not bound by any of the media regulation or local content requirements covering broadcast and print media companies.
02 November, 2013
Snowden said he would like to testify before the US Congress about National Security Agency surveillance, and may be willing to help German officials investigate alleged US spying in Germany too, Hans-Christian Stroebele, a politician with Germany's opposition Greens, told a press conference.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
Privacy
01 November, 2013
By year-end, most airline passengers will be able to use their tablets, e-readers and other gadgets during all stages of flight, the culmination of a decadeslong process that brings the flying experience further into the digital age. The Federal Aviation Administration's decision, its first big shift on electronic devices since it restricted their use in flight in 1966, caps years of debate over whether electronic emissions from devices can interfere with cockpit instruments.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Cybersafety,
History,
research
31 October, 2013
With the change of Federal government, NBN Co has been forced to rethink its plans after the Coalition vowed to scale back the national fibre rollout. Details of the one and three-year construction areas have now been stripped from the official NBN rollout map, only leaving areas where the service is already available or building has commenced. Further coverage details are available via the unofficial myNBN.info website.
Labels:
Ethical,
Sustainability
30 October, 2013
The biggest barrier, though, is likely to be commercial adoption. It’s impossible to ignore the market’s direction towards thinner, lighter, cheaper, and thus more-integrated devices. Apple’s latest Retina MacBook Pros are probably the least-upgradeable PCs ever devised, and yet they seem to be doing just fine commercially.
Labels:
Sustainability
Under the proposal from the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, consumer internet speeds would be tested to provide a snapshot on the present state of Australia's broadband services. The ACCC says the monitoring system would allow customers to better gauge the quality of broadband services before moving into an area or joining an internet service provider.
26 October, 2013
24 October, 2013
23 October, 2013
20 October, 2013
Vancouver’s Gary Fung built isoHunt.com 10 years ago, when he was still an engineering student. It soon became one of the top places to find links to torrent files on the Internet. Not long after that, the lawsuits came. The Motion Picture Association of America and the Canadian Recording Industry Association filed copyright violation suits against Fung, and he spent the next seven years fighting them in court. His argument was predicated on the fact that he was not distributing copyrighted material, merely providing a search tool where people could find links to torrents of all kinds, illicit and legitimate (but mostly illicit). If that makes him guilty, argued Fung, then so is Google, since you can use their engine to find torrent files as well. The MPAA argued “inducement”: though isoHunt wasn’t providing bootlegged files directly, it was encouraging and enabling others to do so, which, they argued, counts as infringement. The U.S.Courts agreed, and Fung’s fight is now over. He has agreed to pay the Hollywood studios $110 million, and isoHunt is to be shut down.
If you're reading this from a MacBook Air sold between June 2012 and June 2013, with 64 or 128 GB of storage, you might want to back up your data quick. Apple has found that a number of these notebooks suffer from faulty flash storage
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/your-macbook-air-may-have-critical-flash-flaw-heres-how-8C11422533
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking
17 October, 2013
16 October, 2013
Amy Jollymore explores the life of the worlds first programmer: 'When I heard that Ada Lovelace Day was coming, I questioned myself, "What do I actually know about Ada Lovelace?" The sum total of my knowledge: Ada was the first woman programmer and the Department of Defense honored her contributions to computation in 1979 by naming its common programming language Ada.
Labels:
History,
ICT Career,
Women in IT
12 October, 2013
11 October, 2013
10 October, 2013
James Forshaw, who heads vulnerability research at UK consulting firm Context Information Security, won Microsoft's first $US100,000 ($106,000) bounty for identifying a new "exploitation technique" in Windows, which will allow it to develop defences against an entire class of attacks, the company said.
08 October, 2013
Nearly 600 jobs at ANZ Bank in Melbourne have been saved following a campaign by staff to stop call centres' work from moving off shore. ANZ met with the Finance Sector Union on Tuesday to confirm that no jobs would be sent offshore.
07 October, 2013
06 October, 2013
And until now, her identity has remained a mystery. But the voice behind the American Siri, Apple's first voice-activated "virtual assistant", has finally been revealed, reports CNN. Her name is Susan Bennett. She's a voiceover artist from suburban Atlanta who's been working in the industry since the 1970s.
Labels:
Women in IT
05 October, 2013
02 October, 2013
01 October, 2013
Students Find Ways To Hack School-Issued iPads Within A Week. "They were bound to fail," says Renee Hobbs, who runs the Media Education Lab at the University of Rhode Island. She's been a skeptic of the iPad program from the start. "Children are growing up today [with] the iPad used as a device for entertainment. So when the iPad comes into the classroom, then there's a shift in everybody's thinking." Hobbs says this isn't the first time educators have tried to co-opt things that lots of people use for fun. "Back in the 1930s, there was a big initiative to use radio in education," says Hobbs. "It was the original distance education." But, Hobbs says, that all fizzled out.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Education,
History
A Liberal Party source confirmed the software might not be installed on handsets purchased separately from telcos, such as from online discount stores; however, they said parents usually bought their children's phones and could opt for handsets with the filtering software. A lack of knowledge and information by parents and teachers about the measures available to protect children was a key factor to overcome
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Education,
Social
30 September, 2013
GUMALA Aboriginal Corporation's systems had limited reporting capabilities and restricted functionality in its member-facing applications. Gumala is one of Australia's largest indigenous corporations. Case Study: Gumala PROBLEM: Rapid growth saw technology requirements outstrip the capacity of existing systems. PROCESS: Microsoft Dynamics CRM ``out-of-the-box'' software was teamed with NEC's business analysis and integration services. RESULT: Streamlined business processes and full transaction and system activity auditing.
Labels:
ICT Capability,
Indigenous
In Australia, which has recently moved to have a single nationwide public school curriculum, educators from Sydney to Perth have digital access to the same lesson plans, tests, and all other classroom materials. Thousands of the country’s teachers have been given early access to a private network built by Declara called the Scootle Community. It’s a social network that will eventually link all 280,000 teachers in Australia and allow them to form groups around topics. (Declara Co-Founder Ramona Pierson's Comeback Odyssey)
29 September, 2013
It is now 30 years since I launched the campaign for freedom in computing, that is, for software to be free or “libre” (we use that word to emphasize that we’re talking about freedom, not price). Some proprietary programs, such as Photoshop, are very expensive; others, such as Flash Player, are available gratis — either way, they subject their users to someone else’s power.
28 September, 2013
26 September, 2013
23 September, 2013
Outgoing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says his biggest regret is missing the boat on smartphones — but he says the software giant should not admit defeat just yet. "I regret that there was a period in the early 2000s when we were so focused on what we had to do around Windows that we weren't able to redeploy talent to the new device called the phone," Ballmer said in a conference with analysts.
Labels:
History
22 September, 2013
Yamauchi made an astute early assessment of the video games market. This was that, despite ever more powerful games consoles, sales would be principally driven not by high-quality graphics or complexity, but by the quality of the gameplay on offer. Hiroshi Yamauchi, who has died aged 85, transformed his family's Japanese playing-card company into a powerful global force in the video game market, enthralling players over several decades with devices such as the Game Boy and characters including Super Mario and Donkey Kong.
Labels:
3D,
Asia Connection,
Game,
History
21 September, 2013
"Grand Theft Auto V" has crossed the $1 billion sales mark after three days in stores, a rate faster than any other video game, film or other entertainment product has ever managed. The latest installment of GTA, a cultural phenomenon that has sparked a national debate on adult content and violence.
19 September, 2013
World’s Biggest Programming Contests Get Bigger. TopCoder, the company that runs the world’s most popular computer programming contests, has been acquired. The decade-old company is now part of Appirio, an outfit that helps businesses use and build technology, with a particular focus on cloud computing.
Labels:
ICT Career,
Social
18 September, 2013
GAME developers left out of work after some of Australia's biggest studios closed their doors have poured into the growing independent scene. The unrelentingly high Australian dollar spelt the end of many developers over recent years including Team Bondi, which made the critically acclaimed L.A. Noire, THQ Australia, Pandemic Studios and more recently SEGA Studios Australia. Sydney-based Leigh Harris - who started Flat Earth Games with his brother Rohan after leaving Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar Games - said the big developers in Australia had all but vanished, prompting some talented folk to seek work overseas.
Labels:
3D,
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Game,
ICT Capability,
ICT Career
17 September, 2013
15 September, 2013
14 September, 2013
The nerd factor blamed for drop in IT hopefuls. Last year, 3334 year 12 students studied information processes and technology, which is just a third of the cohort of 10 years earlier. Over the same period, the number of students taking software design and development dropped from 3730 to 1829. the latest GradStats report, which found the median starting salary for ICT graduates last year was $52,500, putting it above professions like accounting and vet science and alongside law.
Labels:
Education,
ICT Capability,
ICT Career,
Women in IT
13 September, 2013
Optus will roll out a second type of 4G network across four capital cities on Friday that it claims can deliver faster video streams and more consistent data download speeds. The new "4G Plus" network is the only mobile broadband network in Australia to use "time division" technology - known as TD-LTE - and follows a Canberra-based trial that started in May. The 4G networks currently operated by Telstra, Vodafone and Optus all use "frequency division" (FD-LTE) technology.
Labels:
ICT Capability,
research
12 September, 2013
10 September, 2013
Lawyers next for tech-driven outsourcing. In Australia this week as the keynote speaker at the annual LawTech Summit in Noosa, Queensland, Mr Kowalski says computers themselves will take over much of the brain work that keeps lawyers in jobs. The information and communications technologies sector has experienced a similar phenomenon over the past 10 years. Companies have sent programming and support work to developing countries, a move Australians ICT professionals say has destroyed career opportunities for local graduates and mid-career workers.
09 September, 2013
The United States' National Security Agency intelligence-gathering operation is capable of accessing user data from smart phones from all leading manufacturers. Top secret NSA documents that SPIEGEL has seen explicitly note that the NSA can tap into such information on Apple iPhones, BlackBerry devices and Google's Android mobile operating system.
05 September, 2013
Vehicle-to-Pedestrian (V2P) Technology Honda R&D has successfully demonstrated the ability of a car equipped with Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) technology to detect a pedestrian with a DSRC enabled smartphone. This vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P) technology uses cooperative communication between an individual's smartphone and nearby vehicles and provides auditory and visual warnings to both the pedestrian and drivers. The system is designed to mitigate the potential for a collision between the vehicle and pedestrian.
Samsung Galaxy Gear: Android-powered smartwatch arrives later this month. The Gear is a smartwatch, a wrist-worn touch-screen timepiece that talks to your phone, so you don't have to be forever fetching your phone from purse or pocket. It sits on your wrist and happily controls your music, tracks your exercise, installs your favourite apps -- it even makes phone calls.
04 September, 2013
Rotich explained that her nonprofit tech company, Ushahidi [Swahili for "testimony"], wanted to tackle the problem of connectivity in Africa and created a rugged portable device with a battery that could work for up to eight hours between charges, and switch between ethernet, WiFi, 3G and, if lucky, 4G.
03 September, 2013
02 September, 2013
30 August, 2013
Two human brains have been connected via the internet in an experiment which researchers compared to a Vulcan ''mind meld'' from Star Trek. From his laboratory at the University of Washington, Rajesh Rao said he was able to control the hand movements of a colleague on the other side of campus using his thoughts. A cap filled with electrodes picked up signals from Professor Rao's brain and transmitted them via the internet to a magnetic coil on Andrea Stocco's head.
29 August, 2013
BitTorrent Sync For iPhone Now Available To Download. BitTorrent Sync is specifically designed to handle large files. File transfers are encrypted. Your information is never stored on a server in the cloud and your data is protected by private keys.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Cybersafety,
Privacy
New Zealand bans software patents. "The patents system doesn't work for software, because it is almost impossible for genuine technology companies to create new software without breaching some of the hundreds of thousands of software patents that exist, often for very obvious work," Matthews said. "Today's historic legislation will support our innovative technology industry, and sends a clear message to the rest of the world that New Zealand won't tolerate the vexatious practice of 'patent trolls'."
28 August, 2013
Hill himself explained that he believes there are five different types of jailbreak users; average users, fanboys/girls, developers, security researchers and jailbreak creators. OpenJailbreak.org is aimed at the last three, as well as anyone who wants to learn more about how jailbreaks are created from the ground up.
27 August, 2013
A Brisbane-based print publisher has developed an app that has the potential to transform an industry already revolutionised by Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Liquid State is a design application that converts print-ready content to mobile and tablet layouts with just five clicks, avoiding lengthy production processes that can be costly to multi-platform publishers.
APPLE has released a free office suite for the cloud that will revolutionise the use of iPads for writing, spread sheet work and presentations on the go. In a response to offerings already in market by Apple and Google, Apple has included Beta cloud versions of its Pages, Numbers and Keynote app as part of its iCloud.com website cloud service.
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