Mobility as a characteristic of learning environments is something that has become increasingly relevant on a personal note with some research I am involved in and it is also proving to be a current focal point for innovation. The bounds for the kinds of interactions that handheld, or mobile devices offer is currently growing in new and exciting ways. I wanted to share a tool I found for the PSP a popular hand held game platform that is adapting to this trend to have additional potentials.

After working on online social learning system 'elgg' for several weeks, the wiki plug-ins almost finished! Now, users can add,edit and delete wiki for themselves. Besides, I also applied a text editor for wiki including changing styles and size of characters, changing alignment, inserting image, flash, and hypertext, copy and paste from and to other places, inserting buttons, tables and textareas, print and spell checks.The last thing is to demonstrate YouTube videos which I am working on!

It couldn't be more fun to join this online social learning system:P

Looking for a new approach to teaching scientific concepts? How about pets? Take a look at sixteen golden retrievers teaching about the atom.

A new group of those interested in encouraging the development of college and university programs in web science has created an online site with resources and opportunities for institutions and individuals to post information on new programs and courses.

For those of you who have been wondering about the business applications of Twitter, an incident at the Atlanta airport may provides some answers.

A woman Tweeted that her baby was removed from her sight for several minutes during a search at security and she went into an immediate panic. She gained a quick following of outraged users. A TSA employee caught wind of the story and promptly posted the original video showing that the incident never occurred. The employee re-Tweeted the link to all of the original outraged users. Even though the story is a little old, I found it interesting how a government agency not known for their effective use of social media so quickly responded to a potential PR nightmare. Re-tweeting rebuttals could be the next big thing in business. I can imagine a PR firm offering customized Tweet monitoring and response services.

I've been getting a lot of comments, both from people who like the authentic polaroid style as well as those who like the photoshopped version...If you get a chance, could you please vote on what you like most? Thanks!

Authentic Polaroid:

Photoshopped Polaroid:

Columbia alumnus Amol Sarva who is part of the founding
team of Virgin Mobile, founder of Wireless Founders Coalition for Innovation and the founder and CEO of Peek will be speaking about starting companies, raising money, building products and working in the mobile and Internet arena this evening. Adrienne and me will be attending. You're welcome to join!

When : Friday, November 20th, 2009
Where : CS Lounge, CS Department, Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (across the street), Columbia University
How : Contact me if you don't have access to the CS Dept

Jane Fitzpatrick, Engineering Director at Google's User Experience team, gives a great presentation on Google's philosophy of design- "Don't put things in people's way." (I'd skip the intro and start watching at 2.40 minutes).

The Science and Art of User Experience at Google

9:07 AM: two groups of web ebooks: targeted-vender websites and open websites

9:11 AM Cynthia Cleto from Springer: e-book development >> Rocket ebook & softbook (1998) >> MetLibrary eBrary (1999) >> Springer ebook program (2006) -- package model >> Kindle (2007) >> iPhone (2008)

9:15 AM Institutional model for academic field -- degree of freedom needs to be considered

9:23 AM: Jackie Zanghi-LaPlaca - Director of Library & Educational Relations IGI Global: library and publisher cooperation

9:26 AM early adoptions: expensive IT books, engineering books
In the past three years, universities moved further to business ebooks, together with other subject matters

9:28 AM Project Gutenberg, the first producer of free ebooks: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Ching-fu and I are attending the Understanding Fiscal Responsibility (UFR) Project Planning Meeting. So far we have discussed:

1) the purpose of the project
2) "objective" data sources the curriculum writers can draw from
3) economists' way of thinking

Some key concepts/terms:

- Economics is all about decision-making and trade-offs.
- Incentives
- Costs
- Benefits

Some key people who have advised on the curriculum:

Neil Schultz
Peter Bell