There are numerous sources of knowledge on the Internet. Among the eLearning resources, specialized reading, focus groups, portals, etc., you can find the topic that is of interest to you and spend a lot of hours reading and watching videos on the subject.
I am also very keen on learning new things and gathering knowledge in various spheres of life. So, I was very excited, when several years ago, one of the most prominent universities in the IT sphere – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), decided to start an innovative project – to make the courses, taught to MIT students, available online. Since then, many universities have made this step, and as a result, you can now “attend” top universities’ courses from the comfort of your own home, to mix and match content according to your own interests and needs, and to design unique curricula for yourselves.
So here is (hopefully, an ever growing) list of links to the publicly available university courses:
Feel free to propose other valuable resources, that belong to the list. Also, be sure to revisit this article, as it is my intention to keep the list updated as I find other valuable resources.
Today is going to be a big day for technology. Two major technology events are going to happen at the same day – January 27th, 2010:
Sun + Oracle merger: At 9:00 AM PST (17:00 GMT) There will be an Oracle + Sun Strategy Update Webcast. It is entitled “Transforming the Way You Buy, Run, and Manage Your Business Systems”. The Sun acquisition by Oracle is by far one of the most significant transformations in the Enterprise segment, making Oracle an even bigger giant.
And then comes the most awaited event by the general public:
Apple: The long awaited announcement of a “major new product”, as dubbed by Steve Jobs, is going to happen at 10:00 AM PST (18:00 GMT). All rumors in the tech circles point it’s going to be the public presentation of the mystical Apple tablet, called iTablet, iSlate or iPod Tablet Edition. There is no live feed from the event, but rumor has it there is going to be a video on Apple’s website as soon as it’s finished.
A friend asked me today: “Do you have a Facebook?”
My quick answer was: “Of course not, I am a geek!”
Then it made me think, what is it that makes geeks hate the new social networks hype? It’s not like we are unfamiliar or feel uncomfortable, come on, we create these things for breakfast! And there definitely is an issue with geeks and social networks – all my geek friends avoid them, at least the fashion ones. It does not matter where everybody is, I just don’t care if I get a thousand invitations to Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, etc. And it is not like we don’t have social contacts also. It’s more like “you go into that fancy place and mingle with the fancy people. If you want to contact me, come where I am”.
So far so good. But then again, where am I? And most importantly, what makes it different from the other places where people communicate on the Internet?
I am on Twitter, I even have 2 accounts – one personal and one for the blog. I am on LinkedIn. I am on Jamendo. I may even be on some, or even most of the other social networks, but I am not really on them.
What is common between all of these places – they are not commercial. Even though Twitter is so popular, it is somehow clean. No marketing, no spam, no SEO bullshit. It got out of nowhere, some people were just having fun, others thought it is fun too. Another thing common is privacy – you are not bugged 20 times a day with invitations for mindless activities, fake causes and not embarrassed by someone, who thought it is very funny to share a picture of you when you had a bad day. Without asking you do you mind, or giving you any choice. And it is more personal too. You are not part of the crowd, it is like going out with friends.
What do you think about it? How is it for you? And don’t forget to share this within your social network!
Each year, the last Friday of July is a special day for a certain category of people. These are the (mostly) invisible people, that make sure our digital day is as flawless as possible. The people that support your computer, the people at the internet company that make sure you are online, the ones that support the servers, running your favorite websites. Pretty much all people, that make sure your bills are calculated correctly, your ticket is reserved online, your cell phone has service – the system administrators, or sysadmins for short.
Ten years ago, a special day was chosen to be the day of appreciation for these people – The SysAdmin Day. If you are happy with the geek that fixed your computer, or the internet connection of that new ISP – some congratulations are due.
To all tech people, who make our lives better by taming the technology beasts for us – Cheers, mates! May you never have to wake up early, or stay at work overnight! May all your data be safe, the rest is a matter of money :->
A technology that promises to become the next revolution in Internet. From Google.
Google Wave has been presented at the Google I/O 2009. I was amazed when I watched the demo presentation, the features and functionality combined in such a simple and convenient way! And what is amazing for me is the fact, that the technology is as equally appealing for the teenager as it is for the corporate manager! And bearing so much potential for future uses, that it will change the way people communicate, just like Skype did. Have a look:
A new video from Samsung circles the internet for several days. It presents the new I8910 HD phone from Samsung, the first mobile capable of taking video clips in HD resolution. The clip was presented as a challenge on YouTube, gaining more than 800,000 views and 1,800 comments so far. Brilliant viral marketing campaign, interesting and visually appealing:
The times have changed. The information is everywhere. The only way to survive is to ignore it. But then, how will you find out about the news, the hot gossip or gadgets? The answer is RSS. It stands for Really Simple Syndication – a standard, that enables you to follow the news from several sources in real time without even visiting their sites. You subscribe to updates, the way you subscribed for your paper in the past. The thing you have to look for – the ‘RSS’ abbreviation and the orange RSS icon.
There are several ways to access news via RSS. One is to read an aggregator website, into which somebody has pre-selected sources based on a common criteria – all technology news or all blogs from a certain country. The other is to select the sources yourself and display the new items in some sort of an application – either web-based or a program, installed locally on your computer. Most common web-based applications include Google Reader, Bloglines, Netvibes, Technorati and My Yahoo! to name just a few. The local application approach relies on an installed program, most commonly the very browser you are reading this site with – Mozilla Firefox’s Live Bookmarks or Internet Explorer’s Feeds, a mail client (Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple Mac OS X Mail) or a standalone RSS-reader.
After having tried a lot of different approaches and solutions, my personal favorite is now the Thunderbird application. And you can start by subscribing to the Digital Day’s RSS Feed.
There are numerous sources of knowledge on the Internet. Among the eLearning resources, specialized reading, focus groups, portals, etc., you can find the topic that is of interest to you and spend a lot of hours reading and watching videos on the subject.
A friend asked me today: “Do you have a Facebook?”
And there definitely is an issue with geeks and social networks – all my geek friends avoid them, at least the fashion ones. It does not matter where everybody is, I just don’t care if I get a thousand invitations to Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, etc. And it is not like we don’t have social contacts also. It’s more like “you go into that fancy place and mingle with the fancy people. If you want to contact me, come where I am”.
