YouTube- The Machine is Us/ing Us Final Version

YouTube - The Machine is Us/ing Us Final Version.

“We have to rethink Everything”

Zen Coding: A Speedy Way To Write HTML/CSS Code – Smashing Magazine

In this post we present a new speedy way of writing HTML code using CSS-like selector syntax — a handy set of tools for high-speed HTML and CSS coding. It was developed by our author Sergey Chikuyonok and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers.How much time do you spend writing HTML code: all of those tags, attributes, quotes, braces, etc. You have it easier if your editor of choice has code-completion capabilities, but you still do a lot of typing.We had the same problem in JavaScript world when we wanted to access a specific element on a Web page. We had to write a lot of code, which became really hard to support and reuse. And then JavaScript frameworks came along, which introduced CSS selector engines. Now, you can use simple CSS expressions to access DOM elements, which is pretty cool.

via Zen Coding: A Speedy Way To Write HTML/CSS Code – Smashing Magazine.

Official Google Blog: Automatic captions in YouTube

Since we first announced captions in Google Video and YouTube, weve introduced multiple caption tracks, improved search functionality and even automatic translation. Each of these features has had great personal significance to me, not only because I helped to design them, but also because Im deaf. Today, Im in Washington, D.C. to announce what I consider the most important and exciting milestone yet: machine-generated automatic captions.

via Official Google Blog: Automatic captions in YouTube.

Pearltrees: A Design Interface for Remapping the Web – ReadWriteStart

Pearltrees: A Design Interface for Remapping the Web – ReadWriteStart.

 

This is very interesting as a means of building a PLE from websites…

iPhone/Mobile Distribution

iPhone Distribution Build Cheatsheet just a simple PDF cheatsheet

http://johncmurphy.com/ This site has free programming howto videos, walk throughs on basic application to advanced Dashcode tips

http://www.iphonemicrosites.com/tutorials/ This site has some great tutorials for scripts that redirect an iPhone browser to a mobile version of a website, as well as some methods for making a mobile site version look very professional. There is even a template you can download to get a head start on your own mobile site.

 

I think it is interesting how micro-sites have become a necessity and a convenience for mobile browsers based on Webkit (safari). I would imagine that soon there will be a way to automate the creation of a micro-site from the data on a regular website. The trafficking of data as a service instead of the service of trafficking data is the big difference I see for web 1.0 versus 2.0. People expect to see independent data that can be collated to their whims instead of just being given a little snippet of data that some person deemed was enough. I truly appreciate micro-sites when Im on my iphone and need some information, it saves me a lot of time and reinforces my loyalty to a site as a source which I will happily pass on to my social circle.

“Learn how to parse and process the standard format for HTTP access logs”

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-apachelogs/index.html?ca=dgr-twtrSpiderRecipedth-WD&S_TACT=105AGY83&S_CMP=TWDW

 

here is an informative article from IBM on what goes on when someone goes to your website and how to understand whatall the machine is doing.

PLEs

Personal Learning Environment or PLE is a term that describes how people teach themselves today with access to the web.  There are so many tools at our disposal that help keep track of useful websites containing, PDFs, videos, powerpoint presentations, and plain text. http://www.microbiologybytes.com/tutorials/ple/index.html

Personally I like a program called “ANKI” it is cross platform and is at most basic flashcard program, but it packs a special feature. It uses an algorithm that puts cards in order of how well you remember them, sorting the least remembered to the front. It allows me to add audio, video, and diagrams to cards; then to add tags to each card to separate them out. I have been using it mostly for learning vocabulary in French, Japanese, Spanish, and obscure English words.

Then there is also iTunesU which is a subsection of the iTunes Music Store that aggregates podcasts and vidcasts from international universities from all fields of study, allowing anyone to take any class for free. With iTunesU its easy to download a few lectures to your iphone or ipod touch and learn about literature, programming, science, or whatever else you might find.

Another great tool that I have cabbaged onto is Evernote. I have it as an application on my computer, my iphone, and it has a web interface that I can access anywhere, any note I make in any place is instantly synced with the cloud so I never have to worry about losing my data. A cool feature is that you can take a picture or scan of a handwritten note and it will automatically run the image through OCR (Character recognition) software and index the text so that its easy to search for.

Also I found a great source for scientific data, Wolfram Alpha, its makers call it a “Computational Knowledge Engine” It is a frontend for science and math, and many other kinds of imposing datasets that would be a hassle to wade through on Google. Even better is that they just released an API so that we can plug in its power to our online applications to find populations of countries, average temperature in a national park, data from NASA probes.

Its great that you dont have to go all over the web to find quality information anymore. Its easy to file it away for immediate or later learning. You can move at your own pace and even conglomerate all your information into one place if you take just a few minutes to set up an interface where its simple to sit for a few minutes or a few hours and teach yourself a new skill or add to your knowledge of history. PLEs arent a new concept its just in the past few years the tools to supplement ourselves have become that much more powerful and user friendly. Now one persons library can be quickly molded for another person, which is great for training purposes, or to get two people on the same page of debate.