Wondering what you were searching for online a few years ago? You now have a (relatively) easy way to find out. Google has quietly trotted out an option to download your entire search history. So long as you searched using your Google account, you’ll have a permanent record.
via Google wants you to download your web search history | Engadget
There aren’t any express objectives or any real way to win in Minecraft. It’s a “sandbox,” in gaming speak—offering free play without a specific goal and currently used by more than 18.5 million players, with some 20,000 more signing up every day. Users may choose between Creative Mode, in which they can build using unlimited resources by themselves or with friends, with no real danger or enemies, and Survival Mode, where they fend off enemies and other players and fight for resources and space. They can trade items and communicate using a chat bar. Modifications (or mods) can add complexity by creating things like economic systems that let players buy and sell resources from in-game characters using an in-game currency system. These downloadable mods can also add computer science concepts and thousands of additional features.
MINECRAFTEDU
Minecraft’s worlds and possibilities are truly endless—and increasingly, so are its educational adaptations for school use. Available on multiple platforms (Apple, Windows, Linux, PlayStation, Xbox, Raspberry Pi, iOS, Android, Windows Phone), the game’s flexibility and collaborative possibilities make it a favorite among devotees of gamification.
“Minecraft is like LEGOs on steroids,” says Eric Sheninger, a senior fellow at the International Center for Leadership in Education. “Learners of all ages work together to ultimately create a product that has value to them,” he adds. “The simple interface provides students in the classroom with endless possibilities to demonstrate creativity, think critically, communicate, collaborate, and solve problems.” A Swedish student research study also showed that collaboration in Minecraft provided a more immersive problem-solving experience than group LEGO building.
via MinecraftEdu Takes Hold in Schools | School Library Journal.
Reading this article, it struck me that the website Jonathan Basile has created would be a great premise for an MLIS student’s research paper on multimedia literacies. Or at least continue to inspire others to create online and/or virtual worlds based on ideas and settings as described in fiction.
“When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books, the first impression was one of extravagant happiness,” wrote Jorge Luis Borges in his classic of philosophical fiction, “The Library of Babel.” One of the most revered stories-as-thought-experiments ever committed to print, Borges’ fiction posits the Universe as a library (“composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries”) that contains every possible text. This intellectual vision, at once playful and poised, has stirred authors (like Umberto Eco and Terry Pratchett) and philosophers (W.V.O. Quine and Daniel Dennett) alike for more than 75 years.
And now it exists! Recently, Jonathan Basile, a Brooklyn author and Borgesian Man of the Book, taught himself programming so that he could recreate Borges’ Universal Library as a website. The results are confounding.
READ MORE: Brooklyn Author Recreates Borges’ Library of Babel as Infinite Website | Flavorwire.
From April 9, 2015.
Microsoft and Dropbox are expanding their already close partnership with the reveal of a new integration that will now allow consumers to edit their Microsoft Office files, including Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents, in Dropbox using Office Online via the web.
Previously, many of these edits would have taken place using Microsoft Office’s desktop applications – which also meant that you would have to be at a computer where the software was installed. The online option makes the service more flexible, as you can edit your files from any computer, including a borrowed machine or a shared computer, like a business center’s kiosk PC, for example.
To use the new feature, you’ll click the “Open” button when you’re previewing the file on the web, Dropbox explains, and then you’ll have the option to edit the file from your web browser using Office Online. The option is available to Dropbox for Business customers who have an Office 365 license as well as Dropbox Basic and Pro users, and those who are on the free tier of Office Online. The only requirement for using the free tier of Office Online is creating a free Microsoft account, the company says.
READ MORE: Dropbox Teams With Microsoft To Allow Anyone To Edit Documents Online | TechCrunch
CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap Theatrical Trailer from Finish Line Features, LLC on Vimeo.
[P]erhaps it’s no surprise that just 0.5% of the college degrees awarded each year in the United States go to women majoring in computer science. After they graduate and enter the workforce, women’s representation in technology declines even further.
That dismal state of affairs was news to documentary film director Robin Hauser Reynolds. She started her career in finance, a firsthand witness to harassment and grabby hands on the floor of the London stock exchange. Reynolds knew little about the gender imbalances in Silicon Valley. But as she began to interview women technologists, starting in February of last year, their stories resonated with her. The result is captured in her new film, CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap.
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Chris Milk uses cutting edge technology to produce astonishing films that delight and enchant. But for Milk, the human story is the driving force behind everything he does. In this short, charming talk, he shows some of his collaborations with musicians including Kanye West and Arcade Fire, and describes his latest, mind-bending experiments with virtual reality.
via Chris Milk: How virtual reality can create the ultimate empathy machine | Talk Video | TED.com
Vapor Communications, the Cambridge-based tech startup that debuted a technology last year allowing users to add scents to text messages, has come up with a way to add smells to e-books. The startup debuted “oMedia,” described as a way to integrate scent messages into a range of consumer products including e-books, songs and clothing that uses oNotes technology.
SOCIAL NETWORKS ASPIRE to connect people, which is a noble but naive goal. When we uncritically accept connection as a good thing, we overlook difficult, important questions: Are some forms of virtual communication more nourishing than others? Might some in fact be harmful? Is it possible that Facebook, for instance, leaves some people feeling more lonely? No one knows for sure. We tend to build things first and worry about the effects they have on us later.
Robert Morris is taking the opposite approach. Starting with the desired effect of helping people deal with depression, he developed Panoply, a crowdsourced website for improving mental health. The site, which was the focus of his doctoral thesis at MIT Media Lab, trained users to reframe and reassess negative thoughts, embedding an established technique called cognitive behavioral therapy in an engaging, unthreatening interface. After a study confirmed the site’s effectiveness, Morris formed a company and is now working on turning the idea into a polished consumer app.
Like other social networks, Panoply will take up that noble goal of connection, but in a more specific, structured way. As software goes, it’s something of a novelty—a product that aims to enrich lives through precise, clinically-proven means, rather than merely assuming enrichment as a byproduct of its existence. READ MORE: A Social Network Designed to Combat Depression | WIRED
Note: This promotion may only be available to residents of the United States.
The ebook distribution platform BookShout partners with Cheerios to serve select Simon & Schuster titles to breakfasting children across the U.S.
The publisher’s “Cheer on Reading” literacy program has placed free Simon & Schuster children’s books inside Cheerios boxes since 2003. Now, instead of stuffing print titles into cereal boxes, they’ll come printed with BookShout-provided codes offering free access to one of nine popular children’s ebooks. Each one can be downloaded and read online or through BookShout’s iOS, Android, Kindle or Nook apps.
READ MORE: BookShout Serves Simon & Schuster Ebooks with Cheerios | Digital Book World.
Note: Amazon owns Audible and GoodReads.
If you like listening to audiobooks then I have some good news for you. Goodreads is in the process of adding audiobook excerpts to its website. Soon GR members will find free audio samples for 180,000 Audible titles on the book listing pages. Along with the option of reading a sample from the book, GR members can now also listen to an excerpt from the audiobook. The excerpt will (should) play in a pop up window the web browser, and if you like what you hear you can the title to your “want to read” list, or you can head over to Audible and acquire the audiobook directly.
Obviously this feature is not available for all titles listed on Goodreads, but when it is available you’ll find the listen button below the cover image on the left side of the page. Goodreads told me that the new feature is only available on the desktop site, but not GR’s mobile site or its Android and iDevice apps.
READ MORE: Audiobook Samples Now Available on Goodreads | Ink, Bits, & Pixels | The Digital Reader
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