Stephen's Untold Stories

Add another city to the list of those who are making wireless Internet a part of their infrastructure.

The City of Akron is planning to build a 62-square-mile wireless network that will anticipate future technology advancements. The city is starting with a Wi-Fi rollout and will have the capability of adding WiMAX and additional advancements in the future.

In an interview Wednesday, Rick Leu, chief technology officer for the city of Akron, said that, although the initial rollout is still viewed as a pilot, the overall plan is for the network to be upgradeable. “We don’t want to get tied into Wi-Fi,” he said.

MobilePro Corp. said that its NeoReach Wireless Division has been chosen to design, deploy and operate the metro-wide network. The firm said wireless access will be available for both fixed and mobile uses.

The plan, which still needs approval from the Akron City Council, calls for the multi-spectrum Wi-Fi /WiMAX mesh network to offer a range of free and fee-based services with data, voice and video capability.

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This is something I had not considered, but I can see how this could be very annoying. Basically, the introduction of in-flight Internet access opens up the possibility of Voice over IP calls.

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Teachers and Media Specialists should really enjoy this. Heck, everybody should!

Our mission is simple. We want to promote the use of audio and video educational material for personal and professional development. What does this means? It means that we want to help you to see how you can turn ‘dead time’ (time spent commuting, exercising, doing chores, etc.) into ‘learning time.’ Most of us have at least a couple of hours each day where we could be learning a foreign language, deepening our spiritual or philosophical interests or learning about any of hundreds of different subjects. We want to help you find material that is both entertaining and educational.

We encourage you to join us in Learning Out Loud. Through our site we will help you discover new content and ways to incorporate audio learning into your daily life. We invite you to check out all of the areas of our site including our catalog (with over 7,000 audio and video titles), our articles and our publisher and author resource pages. We also invite you to participate in our community through our blog, forums, newsletter and podcast.

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This is very good news for a city that has been through so much.

Hurricane-ravaged New Orleans will deploy the nation’s first municipally owned wireless Internet system that will be free for all users, part of an effort to jump-start recovery by making living and doing business in the city as attractive as possible.

Much of the equipment to run the network was donated by firms, but New Orleans will own it and operate all its components at the outset. The system, which uses devices mounted on streetlights to beam out fast Internet connections for wireless-enabled computers, is scheduled to be operational today in the central business district and the French Quarter and to be expanded over time.

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Great idea!

Next time the paramedic comes rushing in, don’t be surprised to see a medical bag under one arm and a laptop under the other. Driven by the need for speed coupled with new regulatory pressure, ambulance-based Wi-Fi could be a thing of the not-too-distant future.

Ambulance service provider American Medical Response (AMR) recently unveiled a technologically advanced vehicle that includes, among other features, an In Motion Technology system that pairs a cellular Internet backhaul connection with the Wi-Fi-driven ability to take information beyond the vehicle.

With their PDAs and laptops hooked up to home base via Wi-Fi, paramedics “can take those devices and go outside of the vehicle,” says In Motion CTO Larry LeBlanc. “When they arrive on the site, they can take a laptop to the patient and fill in the care information that they are giving.”

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One of my most recent blog discoveries is the BLDG Blog. Take a look at this diamond mine.

This diamond mine in eastern Siberia (Mirny, to be exact) is so deep that the surrounding “air zone… is closed for helicopters” after “a few accidents when they were ‘sucked in’ by downward air flow…”

Link to Site

Here is another great drawing by Tom McMahon, one of my favorite bloggers from the great state of Wisconsin!

I’d never heard of this until now.

The Torino scale is a color-coded advisory system that enables near-Earth object (NEO) researchers to place objects within a potential threat range from zero — where there is virtually no chance of collision, to 10 — where global catastrophe is certain. It was first adopted in 1999 by a working group of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) at a meeting co-sponsored by The Planetary Society in Torino, Italy. In 2005, astronomers revised the Torino scale to make it easier for the public to understand.

Here is the scale

Blog information for students

Legal guide for bloggers

If you aren’t using it, you need to start!

When the three-person San Jose company Meebo launched in September, venture capitalists smothered it with requests to make an investment.

The company was hot — or at least venture capitalists thought so. Its technology lets people access their instant messaging programs from America Online, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google from the Meebo Web site without having to download each service’s software to their computers. Thousands of people were flocking to use it.

Meebo had become a “Web 2.0” company — a buzz-filled, admittedly vague moniker that many in Silicon Valley are using to describe companies that embody a second era of Web innovation — the first era being during the 1990s.

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I thought about getting one of the iTunes enabled phones, but I didn’t care for the design. This article tells me that I’m not alone in that sentiment.

Call it a case of great — and unmet — expectations. When Motorola announced a partnership with Apple to release a cell phone, many industry watchers hoped for a phone that would combine Apple’s subtle design acumen with Motorola’s engineering smarts to create a music phone to put all other mobile devices to shame. Instead they got the Motorola Rokr, which combines the iTunes client and a basic GSM handset. While Motorola and Apple executives hoped for record sales and the opportunity to dominate the nascent mobile music market, the Rokr has been a colossal disappointment. What’s missing? Though the Rokr is a capable phone, it lacks what has made all other Apple-related devices so special: great design.

But how much does design really matter? Consider this: Motorola sold about 250,000 Rokr phones in the third quarter of 2005. During the same period, its sleek cousin the Razr sold an impressive 6.5 million units. Why? Not because of the Razr’s ability to play tunes. The Razr became a must-have icon largely due to its looks; as with the iPod, consumers bought the $400 Razr because of its elegant design.

Call it the iPod effect. Apple, which has sold 25 million units of its popular music player so far, has had a huge impact on product design in the consumer electronics industry at large.

Over the next year, we should see even more fashionable phones, each one drawing on the lesson of the iPod: Create a device that consumers will gladly pay a premium for. Sure, there will always be a market for cheap phones, but I expect that even the cheapest of phones will become more focused on design. Of course, this may all change again when the rumored iPhone — a blend of phone and iPod crafted by Apple — hits the market.

Link to Article

Elementary school art teachers beware!

CHICAGO—The Occupational Safety And Health Administration released figures Monday indicating that record numbers of elementary-school art teachers are falling victim to pneumosparklyosis, commonly known as glitter lung.

Nearly 8,000 cases were reported in 2004, the most recent year for which statistics are available. This is the highest number since the arts-and-crafts industry was deregulated in 1988.

Characterized by a lack of creative energy and shortness of breath, and accompanied by sneezing or coughing up flakes of twinkly, reflective matter, glitter lung typically strikes teachers between the ages of 29 to 60 who spend 20 hours per week in an art-class setting during the school year.

Epidemiologists note that the increase in glitter-lung cases is occurring simultaneously with a general rise in other classroom-related diseases. Macaroni elbow, modeling clay palsy, crayon flu, and googly-eye are sidelining thousands of teachers each year.

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Here is yet another reason for reforms in the NCAA.

By the end of his junior year at Miami Killian High School, Demetrice Morley flashed the speed, size and talent of a top college football prospect. His classroom performance, however, failed to match his athletic skills.

He received three F’s that year and had a 2.09 grade point average in his core courses, giving him little hope of qualifying for a scholarship under National Collegiate Athletic Association guidelines.

In December of his senior year, Morley led Killian to the 2004 state title while taking a full course load. He also took seven courses at University High School, a local correspondence school, scoring all A’s and B’s. He graduated that December, not from Killian but from University High. His grade point average in his core courses was 2.75, precisely what he wound up needing to qualify for a scholarship.

Morley, now a freshman defensive back for the University of Tennessee, was one of at least 28 athletes who polished their grades at University High in the last two years.

The New York Times identified 14 who had signed with 11 Division I football programs: Auburn, Central Florida, Colorado State, Florida, Florida State, Florida International, Rutgers, South Carolina State, South Florida, Tennessee and Temple.

University High, which has no classes and no educational accreditation, appears to have offered the players little more than a speedy academic makeover.

The school’s program illustrates that even as the N.C.A.A. presses for academic reforms, its loopholes are quickly recognized and exploited.

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I will admit that I do read more online news now that I use Bloglines to read RSS feeds. It looks like I’m not alone.

NEW YORK – September 20, 2005 – Nielsen//NetRatings, a global leader in Internet media and market research, today reported that RSS users are significantly more engaged in online news than non-users, visiting an average of 10.6 news sites compared with 3.4 news sites for non-users.

“Convenience is the primary reason respondents gave for using RSS feeds,” said Jon Gibs, senior research manager, Nielsen//NetRatings. “Once the technology has been adopted, users can easily add new content. This allows news-hungry Web visitors to sample a wide variety of news sources,” he continued.

Not only do RSS users visit more news Web sites than non-users, they also visit those sites more frequently. RSS users visited the top 20 news Web sites nearly three times as often as non-users and all other news Web sites four times as often. This means that sites outside of the top 20 properties may be among the greatest beneficiaries of RSS.

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Great story involving a webcam.

A Web camera in a Norwegian artist’s living room in California allowed her sons in Norway and the Philippines to see that she had collapsed and call for help, one of the sons said last week.

Karin Jordal, 69, collapsed Thursday in her living room in Pinon Hills, California, and was motionless on a couch when her son Tore in the Philippines checked in through the Internet.

Ole Jordal said low blood sugar caused his mother’s collapse, and that she would be allowed to go home after a few days in the hospital. He said the family set up Web cameras in their homes because of the high cost of staying in touch by telephone when they live so far apart.

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I know I’ve posted about this on one of my previous blogs, but it deserves a repeat. Meebo is a site where you can chat using Yahoo Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, GTalk, ICQ, or MSN.

You don’t have to install anything!! Schools with computer labs should recommend this so that the students won’t keep trying to install these programs.

Check out Meebo!

This might be the coolest clock ever! And it’s only $50! Thanks to John Walkenbach for this one.

Get Yours Here!

A big thanks to Tom McMahon for this one.

The atomic cannon was a huge piece of ordnance built by the United States in the mid-1950s to hurl nuclear shells far enough that they wouldn’t kill the people who fired them. While far more sensible WWIII technology than, say, the atomic hand grenade, the atomic cannon did have its detractors and tactical limitations.

The first atomic cannon went into service in 1952, and was deactivated in 1963. A single test shot was fired seven miles at the Nevada Test site on May 25, 1953. Twenty were manufactured; seven appear to have survived the Cold War and are on public display today. The largest atomic cannon sits in a public park in Junction City, Kansas, on loan (permanent) from the Smithsonian.

Link to Site

I know I’m a day late for posting things I’m thankful for, but that’s just how things work out sometimes. Here is a great article by Maggie Haskins about college sports. She lists the Top 20 great things about college athletics. Here are a few:

Real live mascots like Georgia’s Uga VI and Yale’s Handsome Dan. We don’t need a person dressed in a gorilla suit with a Suns jersey on to entertain us. Heck, LSU even brings a live Tiger on the field.

The first two days of March Madness, during which we are transfixed for 12 hours by buzz-beaters and find ourselves rooting for Wisconsin-Milwaukee if only for the last five minutes of a game.

The SEC trying to ban cowbells at Mississippi State football games, giving college students yet another reason to shout, “More Cowbell.”

Link to Article

I have to give it an A+. The only thing was that it was very crowded and that made it tough to get in good spots to take pictures. There were tons of kids there, and they all looked like they were having a blast. I did take some photos, and I kept the ones that turned out okay. I’m glad I got an annual pass so I can go enough times to get to see everything on later trips.

Link to All Photos