Google Chrome OS Netbook, Multi-Touch?

Okay, so I'm reading rumors about possible specs for a Google Chrome OS Netbook.  Not very much of it is particularly fascinating to me except one part:  The current rumors specify a multi-touch display.

Why do I feel this is significant?  If Google Chrome OS comes with built-in multi-touch support straight from the start, and is under $350 or so, it's a huge possible contender for the 1 to 1 computing movement in schools.  As I've been saying a lot recently, the potential for touch-screen oriented education just opens up a heck of a lot of possibilities.

So, for the sake of education, I hope the part of these rumors about multi-touch ends up being true.  I think that'd be a huge contribution to society (let's just hope Adobe has multi-touch support in it's first Flash Player for Chrome OS).

Thoughts on Blogs

I've been researching a bunch of topics over the past to weeks... I've been bookmarking topics until the Google search gives me the "all further results are similar" sort of error.

I'd say, probably, about 1 in 6 pages I hit was a blog. Initially, I didn't really like blog posts, but I grew to determine which type of blog posts I like.

The first one I like is the the blog post to a specific link, with personal commentary. I like when people add their thoughts, even if just a paragraph or two, to a specific link they enjoy.

The second is a resource-topic post... the author describes one topic and links to several links they enjoyed on that topic. I prefer 3 or more links, it gives a lot of direction to further the research on the topic.

The third type I like is the thoughtful, no link post by an author who is well at doing either of the first two types of posts. If they write a decent post, sometimes it's nice to have their general view on something random.

The one type of post I absolutely hate is the Copy-Paste post to one specific link. If a link is good, it's going to turn up in a search engine near the front, mindlessly copying the first paragraph and posting a link to it really doesn't benefit humanity.

I hope that some of you find this post to be in the class of the "third type" and that my other posts around this are useful to you in some way. :)

Free Online Courses, Books, and Textbooks

I'm a big fan of education, and I think low-cost (or free) education can be great if it's reliable. One of the problems with doing research online is you can spend nearly as much time guessing the validity of the information you're reading as you do actually doing research. We tend to trust courses from recognized institutions a little more than just random web sites, so I've collected some resources I personally believe useful to someone trying to educate themselves online.

First, I'd like to start with Project Gutenberg.

While Project Gutenberg isn't an educational site in itself, it's a collection of free books you can download legally. Have you seen books at the bookstore, perhaps some classics, that are just a few dollars? You might be able to find many of them through this project.

Next on my list is iTunes U, YouTube EDU, and OpenCourseWare.

iTunes U is a collection of free courses from major, recognized educational institutions. This is one of the largest collections I know of, and you could easily spend most of your free time educating yourself if that's one of your hobbies. YouTube EDU has plenty of education videos but I find the organization of iTunes must better and easier to access.

OpenCourseWare is a little different. You can usually get course materials along with the lectures and videos. One of the most popular OpenCourseWare sites is MIT OpenCourseWare, with 1900 courses at the time of this blog post.

The OpenCourseWare Consortium web site lists other institutions offering OpenCourseWare courses.

Three particular sites I found interesting in my searching into this topic were:

Purdue Online Writing Lab - Not just for students of Purdue, this sites has a collection of resources from middle school through adulthood. One of the areas particularly useful to me is the APA and MLA style guides for writing papers (a lot more fun than a printed handbook).

Stanford University's Entrepreneurship Corner - A collection of videos and podcasts for those interested in starting a business or enhancin their current business.

There's a great video on open-source learning I'd highly recommend you watch about Connexions, a site being developed for open-source, quality educational course content.

For those of you interested in the Wiki movements, you might find the Wikiversity and WikiEducator sites useful.

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Some resources for free or low-cost textbooks:

• Flat World Knowledge
• CourseSmart

Videos That make you Think:

• TED - Ideas Worth Spreading
• FORA.tv - Videos on the People, Issues, and Ideas Changing the Planet

More interesting course links:

• Academic Earth - Online Courses - Academic Video Lectures
• Open Yale Courses
• Webcast berkeley - UC Berkeley Video and Podcasts
• CMU Open Learning Initiative

Further Reading:

• University of the People - The world's first tuition-free, online university
• In the Future, the Cost of Education Will Be Zero
• Technophilia: Get a free college education online
• Take Any College Class for Free: 236 Open Courseware Collections, Podcasts, and Videos
• 100 Best Websites for Free Adult Education
• Universities with the Best Free Online Courses
• How to: Find Free College Video Lectures Online
• Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources
• LibrarySupportStaff - Online Learning Sites

ASUS T91MT Eee PC - Multi-Touch Netbook'ing

I've been doing a lot of research on multitouch technology (which is basically using two or more fingers on a screen or touch-sensitive device) and I came upon an announcement about ASUS's Eee PC T91MT. I read some reviews, which where slightly mixed but for the most part positive.

I ordered one, and I've been using it for about two days now. Honestly, my only bad experience was when I first turned it on... Windows 7 had to do some first-start customizations and I didn't realize the whole thing would probably go faster had I plugged in the AC adapter... (it took over 20 minutes to fully run set-up when I had it unplugged... so if you get one, plug it in until you are done with set up!)

The reason I bought this was really two-fold. This netbook has a hinged screen and converts into a tablet PC in a few seconds. And it's multi-touch (in this case up to two fingers) so it can use, among other things, most of the multitouch gestures I'm accustomed to on the iPhone. So the first reason I wanted it was to get a feel for what tablet computing might be like should Apple release a tablet.

The second reason was my main web stats application is Windows-only (sadly) but it has a really great visual-hyperlink system to help me understand my data. The application was great with a mouse, but it's completely terrific as a touch or stylus app.

As for how I feel about the T91MT in itself... as far as a touch tablet goes, it's a little thick and heavy... as far as a netbook goes, it's quite light and usable, although I'm not a fan of the smaller keyboard. I imagine if ASUS releases a larger model (this one is 8.9 inches) I would hope the keyboard is slightly larger. It's not that it's a bad keyboard, I just prefer having a little more room when I'm typing. If you're looking into this model, go test typing at a store on 8.9 inch netbooks and see if the keyboard suits your needs.

As far as technology goes, this device is pretty great. I hooked it to my 23-inch LCD (high-def 1920x1080) and it worked fine. I'm not planning to play 3D games in high-def so the ability to run high-def from this netbook for researching was more important to me than actual performance.

One of my favorite things about this device is battery. I keep putting it to sleep on the counter but it looks like I'll consistently get over 4.5 hours use with the proper power save setting.

Outside of the compressed physical keyboard, I'm very pleased with this netbook. I knew getting into it it'd be smaller so I won't say I'm disappointed. I will be using it pretty much every day from now on. You can check out some other reviews here at Amazon.com.

If Facebook shares were traded on the open stock market...

This is an article I came upon today while doing some other research:

Facebook Must Woo Investors Before Any IPO

An IPO is the first time a stock is offered on the stock market for trading. Before an IPO, the company is considered "private." You can't log on to E-Trade and just randomly trade a private company.

Is Facebook worth a lot of money? Yes, obviously, being the #2 site on the Internet (at writing).

Can Facebook pull a lot of profit like the #1 site, Google?... ehhhh....

Okay, let's be serious. Google helps people find stuff. If I walk into a store, and someone helps me find a TV, they might get a commission, and I end up with a great product.

Facebook doesn't help people find things. It helps keep people updated on things. You know what used to keep people updated on things? The newspaper in the bin outside the store at the shopping center.

Which is going to make more money, something that updates you or something that helps you find something you're going to spend money on?

Facebook -can- be profitable for investors, but I really think this is about changing the world, and not about profit. Honestly, I think that's the way Facebook should stay.

Just my 2 cents.

Running Windows on the Mac

So, there are three main options to running Windows on a Mac. Use Boot Camp from Apple to make your hard disk into two parts, one for Mac OS X and one for a Windows install (you have to buy a copy of Windows, btw.)

Then, you can use either Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion.

I used Parallels since it came out, up until version 4. Then I switched to VMWare Fusion 2, and upgraded to Fusion 3, but Fusion 3 had issues running my Windows 7 Install. Fusion also seemed to use too many resources.

So I downloaded the trial of Parallels Desktop 5, which claims to be a lot faster than 4, and it really is a lot faster. I've had a few issues so far, but I'm likely to purchase the full version.

I linked a review of the two for those who are considering the two applications.

A review of Parallels Desktop 5 vs VMWare Fusion 3.