Stephen's Untold Stories

Peter Gordon’s famous painting.

Click images for a larger versions.

Sorry I’m a day late. Too much school work!

• Skypephone Set To Disrupt Wireless Market
• AT&T scales back St. Louis Wi-Fi plan
• The Race for China: Google Outlines its Mobile Strategy
• Cisco Investing In WiMax To Bring Broadband To Developing Areas
• RIM rolls out Facebook for BlackBerry
• Wireless program aims to cover Silicon Valley
• Microsoft plans to pass wireless auction
• Truphone adds global WiFi access
• Napster to Offer Wireless Downloads on AT&T

Very cool!

The online visualisation system of the highest definition photograph ever in the world (16 billion pixels) will in fact let viewers enlarge and observe any portion of the painting, giving them a clear view of sections down to as little as one millimetre square.

The project started at the beginning of 2007, as a result of the meeting between the Ministry of Cultural Assets and Activities – Milan Landscape and Architectural Assets Office, De Agostini and HAL9000, a worldwide leader in the high-definition photography sector. This photographic technique has two benefits: on one hand, it is a unique instrument of its kind for “monitoring” the state of the painting and, on the other hand, it allows anyone on the Internet, from any part of the world, to observe all the parts and details of the work. Thanks to this technology, HAL9000 can also create large high-quality fine art prints of The Last Supper which offer an overall and detailed visual perception never possible before.

The photograph of The Last Supper, one of the most delicate and protected works in the world, is the result of many months of work and research, during which specific lighting and photography techniques were developed. The protection of the painting was, right from the start, the main concern of the HAL9000 technicians and the Architectural Assets Office; the photography system designed and implemented by HAL9000 was subject to technical inspection at the Environmental Control and Physics Laboratory at the Central Restoration Institute in Rome, which decided the system was totally suitable in accordance with current standards for the safeguarding of artistic works.

Link to site

Click image for larger version

In case you’ve missed it, Apple just released a new operating system called Leopard. Here is a good comparison of Leopard and Windows Vista.

Georgia’s most famous river is experiencing high demand for water as always, but the drought is really making things difficult.

Just wow.

Link to story and more photos

Thanks to Vicki Davis for pointing this one out. This is truly a terrifying time for our friends out there, and we all hope that the winds will die down so they can fight these awful fires.

Nice article showing how broadband is reaching out into the rural areas.

From her remote farm in southern Kentucky, Lajuana Wilcher checks an online database for local ranchers demanding alfalfa. She can specify at what price she is willing to sell, which counties to search and whether her hay is square-baled or rolled. Without her high-speed Internet connection, Ms Wilcher insists, it would take far too long to find the most generous alfalfa prices, order spare tractor parts and locate the best breeding stock for her small cattle operation.

Largely rural, Kentucky is best known for its bourbon and horse racing; it rarely ranks in the top tier of states on any measure of 21st-century success. According to Brian Mefford, president of ConnectKentucky, a public-private partnership, a few years ago the state had among the lowest rates of broadband availability in the country. Internet service providers could not be sure that there were enough Lajuana Wilchers in the Kentucky countryside to justify new investment in cabling or wireless transmitters.

But by the end of this year, Mr Mefford boasts, 98% of residents will have access to inexpensive broadband services. This is primarily because of ConnectKentucky’s effort to map broadband demand in communities that didn’t have access, he says, which indicated that enough people in Kentucky farm country would sign up if providers entered the market. At the same time, the organization also talked up high-speed Internet services to skeptical residents, creating demand where it was slack. Once isolated Kentuckians can now consult with doctors in faraway cities or telecommute.

ConnectKentucky is just one effort among many programs in different states and within the federal government to wire up the American countryside. Backers compare them to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal push to bring electricity to the hinterland. Supporters also hope expanded rural broadband access will stop the steady loss of population to cities and suburbs. But not all have been as successful as Kentucky’s.

Link to article

The red countries don’t. Everybody else does.

We’re enjoying the cooler weather, but we’re still in desperate need of rain. We got a little this past week, but not nearly enough to make a dent in the drought. Oh well, here is the news on the wireless front.

• In Search of Wireless Wiggle Room
• WiMax gets nod as wireless standard
• On Google’s Mobile Strategy
• Nokia Launches ‘Context-Aware’ Internet Tablet
• Clearwire Unveils A WiMax PC Card For Laptops
• Agito Networks Announces RoamAnywhere Mobility Router for FMC
• Equipping the WiFi tool belt
• AT&T to Pay $2.5 Billion for Wireless Spectrum

I’m not so sure I like this idea, but we’ll see what happens.

New York City’s plan, which is contingent on the State Legislature’s expected acceptance of the pension agreement, is a twist on the traditional concept of merit pay. Pots of money would not be distributed teacher-by-teacher but are to be given to schools that have school wide gains in student test scores. It will be up to “compensation committees” at each school, made up of two teachers, the principal and a principal’s appointee, to distribute the money. They could choose to distribute it evenly among union members or single out exceptional teachers. They cannot distribute the money by seniority.

This school year, about 200 of the city’s high-needs schools — identified by factors like poverty — would be eligible for about $20 million in bonuses. They would initially be paid for with private money. Next year the plan is likely to expand to 400 schools and to be financed by the city.

Link to article

Surf’s up!

When professor Don Herzog sat at the back of a University of Michigan classroom during a presentation by a visiting faculty member, he was surprised by what he saw. In a class where many of the students had laptops, about 90 percent were using them to go online for purposes unrelated to the course.

“They were shopping for clothes at Eddie Bauer. They were looking for an apartment to rent in San Francisco, reading the New York Times and doing a lot of e-mail,” said Herzog, a U-M law professor who teaches First Amendment and tort law.

Wireless networks are available in a portion of at least 70 percent of campus buildings, and that coverage is increasing. The College of Literature, Science and the Arts is spending about $1.5 million to expand wireless access to all of its classrooms, laboratories and offices.

U-M is in step with or even a bit ahead of the national trend. Across the country, wireless networks now reach half of all university classrooms, up from one-third in 2004, according to a national survey released last October by the Campus Computing Project.

Link to article

I took these on Highway 136 up in Gordon County earlier today. Click each image for a larger version.

Funny story from New Jersey.

ABERDEEN, N.J. —  The buck didn’t stop when it crashed through a window at an elementary school here Tuesday morning; it ran into the school cafeteria before being let out the back door, police said.

No one was injured in the incident, which took place shortly before 10 a.m. at the Lloyd Road School, the Asbury Park Press reported on its Web site.

Twenty fifth graders and several teachers were startled when the deer crashed through a classroom window, then ran out into the hallway and into the cafeteria, Deputy Police Chief Rick Derechailo told the newspaper.

Police officers and school staff were able to corral the deer using lunch tables and coax him out the back door.

Once outside, the deer unsuccessfully tried to jump through a second classroom window before running off into the woods, said Derechailo.

It was unclear if the deer suffered any injuries.

I certainly hope the deer will be okay. At least he didn’t have to take a standardized test.

A Vision of Students Today. If this doesn’t give you something to think about, I don’t know what to tell you.

The Information Revolution. I could watch these all day.

We still need rain down here, but at least it’s cooled off.

• FCC Delays 700-MHz Spectrum Auction
• Italy launches auction for WiMAX licenses
• AT&T to Pay $2.5 Billion for Wireless Spectrum
• Alltel Offers Wi-Fi Service To Cell Phone Users
• Webwag Partners with SFR for Free Mobile Access
• Motorola Wins Major Taiwanese WiMax Contract

I haven’t put any of these on the main blog for a while, but these are some really good ones!

The iPod skeptics are upset to see this kind of article. I’d love to work with a school on an implementation of these.

A ban on iPods is so strictly enforced at José Martí Middle School that as many as three a week are confiscated from students — and returned only to their parents.

But even as students have been told to leave their iPods at home, the school here in Hudson County has been handing out the portable digital players to help bilingual students with limited English ability sharpen their vocabulary and grammar by singing along to popular songs.

Next month, the Union City district will give out 300 iPods at its schools as part of a $130,000 experiment in one of New Jersey’s poorest urban school systems. The effort has spurred a handful of other districts in the state, including the ones in Perth Amboy and South Brunswick, to start their own iPod programs in the last year, and the project has drawn the attention of educators from Westchester County to Monrovia, Calif.

The spread of iPods into classrooms comes at a time when many school districts across the country have outlawed the portable players from their buildings — along with cellphones and DVD players — because they pose a distraction, or worse, to students. In some cases, students have been caught cheating on tests by loading answers, mathematical formulas and notes onto their iPods.

But some schools are rethinking the iPod bans as they try to co-opt the devices for educational purposes. Last month, the Perth Amboy district bought 40 iPods for students to use in bilingual classes that are modeled after those in Union City. In South Brunswick, 20 iPods were used last spring in French and Spanish classes. And in North Plainfield, N.J., the district has supplied iPods to science teachers to illustrate chemistry concepts, and it is considering allowing students in those classes to use iPods that they have brought from home.

Link to article