ashNOLOGY

The Zune in Education: :::::::::::::::::: This is awesome. A teacher by the name of Eric Langhorst did something very "cool". He started a blog, and put up "StudyCasts" for his students to download. The cool thing here is that these digital study materials are formated to be used by the Zune , Microsoft's portable media player. I love the fact that teachers are starting to think outside the box, and use untraditional methods to get material to their students, this is a great idea. Not only is it engaging the student at their level, but the material will always be on the blog for the students to re-download, and they don't have to carry their notes, books, or laptops..unless they need to check their emails =) Looks like Microsoft is 1Uping their game! =) check out the full article [ here ] The Zune in Gaming: ::::::::::::::::::: This is also awesome. With the release of XNA 3.0, you can now play games on your Zune. Which means for those savvy XNA /C# programm

This article really jumped at me, I've always heard of Open Source Software, but Hardware? What does that mean? Well VIA OpenBook did something revolutionary in my opinion, they provided the CAD files for their laptop designs for people to download. What they are trying to accomplish is encourage those of us who are designers in heart, to start, well, designing laptops. So pretty soon their will be a plethora of new companies, having ultra thin "cool" designed laptops. Who knows? maybe even a company that allows you to send them the design you want for your laptop, not just the specs, but how it actually "looks". This takes customizing to a whole new level. You can check the full article [ here ].

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have created an avatar called Edd, Edd is not controlled by another player, but by a computer. What this research did is basically gave this avatar Artificial Intelligence, Edd currently "understands only English that has previously been translated into mathematical logic." The full article by Michael Hill can be read [ here ] This story is very near to my heart, a couple of semesters back I was in Simulation class, and every other week we would all meet online in Second Life. So to find another school utilizing virtual reality in such a way just makes me smile with joy. Second Life being used as a Testing Ground for A.I.? Brilliant!