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“If You Liked This, You’ll Like That…”

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Google Analytics search engine reportIf you got to my blog via a Google, Yahoo, or (Microsoft) Live search, then you’re actually in the minority, but these days that’s how zillions of people find absolutely everything when they’re online. It’s what I call the I-forgot-the-name-of-that-site-but-I‘ll-just-bring-up-Google-and-search strategy. Over the past couple of years, specialized search engines that are focused solely on blogs have risen in prominence — and the one I pay most attention to is Technorati. Google also “knows about” blogs and your blog “places higher” in Google searches if it has lots of connections from other blogs. But, there are other such blog-search nexuses as well.

Here’s what I want to point out. The conventional wisdom from 1995 to maybe 2003, was that a web site had to keep its visitors “on the site” and never give them a chance to leave. A visitor who went off to another site was equivalent to a lost sale. So web sites jealously guarded their links and seldom contained “offsite” links (those whose targets are outside the web site). The sites that did contain “links pages” (meaning pages of reciprocal links with other web sites) were primarily those of individuals — and search engines like Yahoo.

Now today, in the blogosphere, it’s become an accepted belief that people who search for information about “X” would be interested in reading about “X” no matter whose blog it’s in. So if you’ve searched for “Dalai Lama” and gotten to my blog, the assumption is that you’d like to read other blogs that mention the “Dalai Lama.” How is that accomplished? And is it even good for me, as a blog-writer, to facilitate your going off to read other blogs?

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Microsoft’s counter-offer to “free software”

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Microsoft is countering the free software movement with “nearly free” software (announced by Bill Gates in April 2007). This in addition to their many other efforts to stymie the free software providers. The New York Times has a good article “Software by Microsoft Is Nearly Free for the Needy.” The writer suggests, and fairly, as you might suspect, that once a young user gets used to Microsoft software, they’ll become a lifetime user. So at $3 per installation, that’s a tiny “marketing” expense to Microsoft, which will eventually reap much more from these potential MS customers.

It’s called the Microsoft Student Innovation Suite.

C|Net news also reports on Bill Gates’ speech in Beijing, entitled “Microsoft aims to reach next billion PC users.” The software bundle includes Windows (XP Starter Edition), Office Home and Student 2007, Windows Live Mail Desktop and several educational products. To be eligible, a government must pay for at least 50% of the cost of the PC involved.

BBC News reported (19 April 2007) “Microsoft aims to double PC base.” They report “Governments will be required to provide free computers to schools, capable of running Windows, to be eligible for the discounted software.”

You know that these efforts were given additional impetus by (or according to some were direct ripoffs of) the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program. Nick Negroponte talked about OLPC at TED (video) in February 2006.

AMD 50x15 programAMD and Intel have been aggressively-competitive for years, and both companies have announced initiatives to put inexpensive computers in the hands of students in developing nations. Intel’s Classmate is their entry (at $400) and AMD has announced its 50×15 program (50% of schools by 2015).

Now, the trick is to get the cost of the computer itself down with reach. At $50, a reconditioned computer might be affordable many places, if reconditioned computers can be made available. At $400 the Intel Classmate is pricier, but can run Windows and its associates gizmos.

Learning for the 21st Century – the New Technology Foundation

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Along with the Project Happiness team consisting of its founder Randy Taran, Maria Linegar, Marsha Clark, and teacher Ward Mailliard, I recently spoke with Paul Curtis, who is Chief Academic and Innovation Officer for the New Technology Foundation in Napa, California. This may be interesting to you if you’re an educator or someone involved with students today. Project-based learning isn’t exactly new, but making it the model for an entire curriculum is certainly not a widespread practice.

New Technology Foundation’s mission is to “Support, refine and build on New Technology High School – a national model of project based learning in a technology rich environment. Disseminate the model – methodology, tools and resources – through replication, subscription and other means. Create and support a network of schools based on the Napa NTHS model that continues to innovate, identify and share best practices.”

Learning for the 21st century includes speaking and writing well – communicating. Critical thinking. And collaboration. They’re modeled more on what the workplace looks like and less on what traditional educational institutions look like. The Foundation disseminates the work – they don’t actually run schools – but they have seeded dozens of schools! And the number is growing rapidly.

In my opinion, “preparing for a career” (in the classical sense) is an almost impossible task today. Years ago, one might prepare for a career as a doctor, or a musician. But today it’s hard to imagine that a career, if viewed as a profession, would even exist longer than 10 or 20 years – let alone for an individual’s productive lifetime. The information learned by engineers graduating from universities today, for instance, has a half-life of 3 years. During an average individual’s lifetime, he or she will have to “retread” several times!

Play the interview:

Adaptive music (huh, what’s that?)

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I track the game-developer world to a limited extent (because I work on real-world pervasive games), and today I ran across an article by Andrew Clark in Gamasutra describing what he calls adaptive music. Very few online articles keep me reading from start to finish – and a four-part article is even less likely to do so.
Why did this article intrigue me so much? Well, first, I have been a musician (to some degree) since I was five years old; and second, I’ve been writing educational (computer-based) games and programs since 1978. And I’ve always wanted to incorporate sound and music when it was possible. At the age of 18 I was faced with a flip-the-coin decision between engineering and music. My piano teacher told me that I could embark on a life of music and perhaps if I worked really hard I could make it – but that it was more likely that I’d be a “talented amateur” rather than a successful professional musician. So I went with engineering, and ended up in computer science.
But when personal computers came along, I tried to incorporate music wherever I could. When I started a company (in 1980 – DesignWare) to create educational titles for kids and we started working on the new Apple-II, we had little musical themes that popped out of nowhere when the game started up.

Index Clark LgWhat Andrew calls adaptive music is the kind of music that appears in today’s video games that “tracks” in some ways the action and stages of the game itself.

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The Missing Peace opens in New York – and is still in Virtual Space online!

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The Missing Peace: Artists Consider the Dalai Lama has opened in New York (March 2007), after successful runs in Los Angeles and Chicago, but for you newcomers to my blog, I wanted to remind you of the great online virtual tour of the exhibit, that I first described in August 2006. The tour will continue to be online until, well until long after the physical exhibit no longer exists. The idea behind having a virtual tour was twofold: first, to provide a way that people could see the artworks who otherwise will not be able to get to a real-world showing, and; second, to provide a preview the would be of value to those attending the exhibit.

In fact, it’s probably also a great “reminder” or those who’ve visited the show and forgotten the details of what they’ve seen.

Here’s a part of Darlene Markovich’s description of the opening in New York – The event began at 6:30. As we approached the museum just before 6:00, we were amazed to see a long line of people waiting in the cold and rain outside the doors to get in! The museum stopped counting at over 1,000 people so we don’t have the exact count of attendees. It was a big hit!

The event was very well organized and beautifully arranged – the food was excellent. Just for a moment, I wondered if their events always had such a draw, but museum staff told me that this crowd even exceeded their very large and well-attended anniversary event!

To us, since just over 50% of the exhibition was shown (4th and 5th floors and lower level) , it appeared to be a much smaller show; however, the installation is absolutely beautiful and the juxtaposition of ancient Himalayan art with TMP art is outstanding. To a person unfamiliar with the full exhibition, it was a major (sized) show. Most people commented that it was wonderful to see contemporary art at the RMA. The energy level was Himalayan-high. So much so, strangers would comment about the artworks to each other.

Sixteen TMP artists attended, and, as well, art critic and advisory board member Lilly Wei and art critic Kay Larson. It was a lot of fun to receive Christo and Jeanne-Claude as they raised quite a bit of excitement in the crowd.
What lies behind this online tour?

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