RasterWeb!
To suggest that Google is busy would be an understatement.
You might even suggest that if they have their fingers in a lot of different things, that they are some multi-armed, thousand-fingered monster, trying to take over and control the entire web…
But I’m sure that’s not the case…
Happy Browsing!
download the large one (consider it cc:by)
Years ago I worked with this crazy software developer who was always talking about these AI Bots he wanted to write that would battle each other with logic. Basically, the idea was (as I understood it) he would program one bot to have an opinion on something, and another bot to have a differing opinion, and then have them converse with each other to see who would win the argument. Of course in his early tests no one ever won the argument, as AI Bots are very good an arguing and one would never be defeated by the other.
Nowadays you don’t need to write any IA Bots to accomplish this… All you need is:
Now just post something on your wall, and hope that your friends see it, and start to argue with each other. You may need to make it controversial, but even this is not a requirement.
Once it’s posted, just wait for the replies… Hours of entertainment!
So far I’m not impressed with Infinite Campus…
I know, the school year hasn’t even started, and there probably isn’t much data in it yet, and the fact that they misplaced my daughter, and had someone completely unrelated to my family associated with my account (somehow living in my house, with my mobile phone number) is all probably the fault of some human rather than the system itself…
I’m interested to know how much Infinite Campus costs. From my preliminary research, it looks to be expensive. Really expensive. REALLY REALLY expensive. Aren’t there open source alternatives to these things? I mean, it’s not like there’s a need for software like this… it’s only the educational market, how big can that be? I probably wouldn’t mind having my tax dollars used for the development of open source software that pretty much every school district could have the option to use to manage things…
Obviously I’ve not seen the back end of this thing… If it makes life easier for the teachers and administration, that’s a good thing… My opinion is only that of a user. A user who has about 15 minutes of using it. So far… I’m not impressed, but I’ll keep an eye on it. It seems to work for other schools. Maybe it’ll just take time. Hopefully I won’t have to fix things myself like I did with WebGrader.
In the olden days (before Twitter or Facebook) we had blogs… and that was the “social network” as it were… Bloggers helped popularize the idea of self publishing updates, status, and what not… So here my friends, on this particular Friday, is a list of blogs I’ve read recently. Some I’ve read for years, some I’ve just read recently. Welcome to the new Follow Friday.
Bloggers, I salute you for your independence and willingness to publish under your own terms… keep up the good work! And if you’ve got a blog you think I’d be interested in, leave a comment!
Readers, consider checking in with some of these blogs, and if you like them, leave a comment, or drop the blogger a note… They’ll appreciate it.
Google’s got something new planned… it’s the Chrome Web Store! There’s a nice description at Mashable with a well-produced video. (Google seems to be working hard at creating well-produced videos, filled with people you really want to trust… are they actors? Real Google employees? Real Actors Google has hired as employees?)
So this new Chrome Web Store, or “App Store” as it were, seems to be a way for people to “sell” applications to Chrome users. To be fair, you can also make your app available for free. As for the paid part, well gosh, they aren’t that evil because they take a smaller cut than Apple does with their app store. Make no mistake, Apple’s App Store is evil, so even if you’re less evil than the guy who is more evil… you’re still evil!
Apple’s App Store is evil. I won’t deny that… Steve basically says that if you don’t like it, you can build your app as a web site, and use Mobile Safari to access it on your iPhone. That idea may be less evil than the Chrome Web Store, because while Apple suggests you do this, it doesn’t do anything to get into the revenue stream of it, and leave that’s totally up to you to figure out. I also don’t think they suggest you make it work only in Mobile Safari…
So here are some questions about the Chrome Web Store…
There is a battle going on… it’s for control of the web. I’m on the side of keeping the web free and open. I can see this fracturing the web, and I don’t like it.
It looks like the Chrome Web Store will also allow for the selling of browser extensions for Chrome. An interesting idea. While Mozilla popularized the idea of Browser extensions, Google wants to come along an monetize it. But don’t worry, they’ll only take a small cut…
Ultimately this makes sense for Google and their Chrome OS, which means to take over everything, because all you’ll need is The (Google) Cloud™ and the Chrome Web Store so you can buy your Google Approved Apps to run in your Google Chrome Browser and OS. But it’s OK, because Google doesn’t believe in lock-in.
This is just one more reason I really don’t care for the Google Chrome web browser… I prefer to stick with a browser created by a non-profit organization that has a similar mission to mine, to promote openness on the web.
P.S. I think Google is a great search engine. They also do other things quite well, but that doesn’t mean I want them to do everything, and I definitely don’t want them to control everything.
