News 01-16-2001
Syllabus 2001 Conference to Address Wireless Technologies
The Syllabus 2001 conference, to be held July 22-24 in Santa Clara,
Calif., will encompass five tracks: Wireless Technologies;
Interactive Communications, Conferencing, and Collaboration;
Infrastructure, IT Planning, and Strategic Issues; Web Technologies:
Portals, Resources, and Development; and Distance Learning:
Issues and Programs, as well as a featured track concerning Virtual
Teaching, Learning, and Technology Centers.
Track 1, focusing on Wireless Technologies, will consider a wide
range of questions of interest to tech-savvy educators at colleges
and universities everywhere. For instance, what is the present
reality of wireless technologies? What is usable right at this mo-
ment on our own campuses? What kinds of wireless technologies
specifically support the high-bandwidth and communicative inter-
activity needed for teaching and learning? What is the experience
on campuses that have already tried teaching and learning using
wireless connectivity?
Wireless seems to be a viable connectivity option for teaching and
learning on a campus. But how well d'es wireless work with a
whole class logging in at the same time? How is response time?
How reliable is wireless computing? What has been the human experience?
In the sessions in this track, participants will hear about
answers to these questions and many more. Samples of session
topics include:
- The current picture regarding wireless on campuses
- How wireless can create "clinic teaching"
- Updates on creating infrastructure to support wireless
- Insights on wireless security issues
- Stories about pushing the envelope on wireless mobility
Conversations during and between sessions with the coterie
of wireless track participants will be interesting as well. Few
academics have extensive experience with wireless, a larger
number are experimenting, but everyone seems to be interested.
This will be a lively track.
The Syllabus spring2001 conference will be held at the
Albert B. Sabin Convention Center in Cincinnati, Ohio
April 5-8. For registration information and detailed session
descriptions, visit www.syllabus.com. Also, be sure to
check out the conference brochure in the January issue of
Syllabus magazine.
Ucentric Systems Announces Home Networking
Ucentric Systems recently announced availability of a home
networking platform that allows consumers to access commu-
nications, entertainment, and information services from any screen
or speaker in the home. The Ucentric Home Networking Platform
creates a home area network that connects all existing computers,
TVs, stereos, and other appliances throughout the home to each
other and to the Internet without the need for additional wiring.
The platform includes an operating system, applications server,
home networking applications, and hardware reference design.
The system allows consumers to access blended services, such
as instant messaging over TV, displaying caller ID on a TV and
computer, playing Internet/MP3 files on any FM stereo, and
listening to voice-mails from any TV, phone, or computer.
Devices throughout the home will share a single broadband con-
nection to enable these new applications.
For more information, visit www.ucentric.com.
Evidence of Black Holes Found
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has provided possible evidence
for the existence of an event horizon, the defining feature of a
black hole. An event horizon is the theorized "one-way ticket"
boundary around a black hole from which nothing, not even light,
can escape. No object except for a black hole can have an event
horizon, so evidence for its existence offers resounding proof of
black holes in space.
Hubble's high-speed photometer sampled light at the rate of
100,000 measurements per second, during three separate Hubble
orbits, executed in June, July and August of 1992. Scientists using
the Hubble Space Telescope observed pulses of ultraviolet light
from clumps of hot gas fade and then disappear as they swirled
around a massive, compact object called Cygnus XR-1. Hubble,
measuring fluctuations in ultraviolet light from gas trapped in
orbit and around the black hole, found two examples of a so-called
"dying pulse train," the rapidly decaying, precisely sequential
flashes of light from a hot blob of gas spiraling into the black hole.
Without an event horizon, the blob of gas would have brightened
as it crashed onto the surface of the accreting body. One event
had six decaying pulses; the other had seven pulses. The results
appear to be consistent with what astronomers would expect
to see if matter were really falling into a black hole.
Program Donates Weather Graphics Equipment
WSI Corporation recently announced the "WSI on Campus,"
program that delivers state-of-the-art weather workstations for
producing broadcast-quality weather shows to qualifying U.S.
colleges and universities for use in training their students in
broadcast meteorology.
At no charge, WSI will provide eligible schools with two
WeatherProducer workstations and related application software,
including Showfx animation software and worldwide map-
creation software MapMaker Plus. WSI also will provide
free installation and training, as well as annual software up-
grades. Participating schools will also be able to purchase the
UniversitySuite weather data package and additional work-
station hardware at educational discounts, though some
minimum investment will be required.
Interested colleges and universities should contact Jim Brihan
at WSI Corporation at (978) 262-0673.
CU Accepts the Largest Gift Ever Given to a Public University
for Cognitively Disabled Research
University of Colorado president Elizabeth Hoffman, will today
accept the largest gift ever given to a public university. The gift
is from a prominent high-tech businessman and his wife. The
endowment will fund advanced research and development of new
technologies to enhance the lives of people with cognitive
disabilities. The donors offered the gift to fund continuing
research being done at CU in cognitive science, including the use
of computer-based technologies to support lifelong learning
and online community building.
A live audio Web cast of the press conference will be at
10:15 a.m. MST/12:15 p.m. EST at www.cu.edu/colemangift.
Bell & Howell Announces Historical Newspapers Project
Bell & Howell's Information and Learning unit recently announced
a product launch from the Midwinter meeting of the American
Library Association that will bring complete runs of newspapers
to the Web via the ProQuest online information service. The
ProQuest Historical Newspapers project will digitize news-
papers dating from the 19th century to the present, in most cases,
full runs of newspapers. The historical archives will digitally
reproduce every issue from cover to cover, and users will be able
to search the full file via keywords, dates, author's name, or
article type. A results list will supply bibliographic information,
including date, page number, and writer's name. To see the text,
the user chooses the article, and the article image is displayed.
Users will also be able to display the full-page image of any page
in any issue. The databases will be completely browseable by
issue, allowing searchers to browse through entire issues as
they would a printed paper.
The ProQuest Historical Newspapers project will encompass
newspapers with historical value for researchers in various
fields, including newspapers that may now be extant. The
project will be ongoing and will cover hundreds of news-
papers in the coming years, including national, regional,
and local newspapers, beginning with U.S. papers, and
will eventually include newspapers from around the world.
For more information, visit www.proquest.com.
1mage Software Captures Historical Library Collections
The Grandview Heights Public Library, Grandview, Ohio, has
selected the document imaging and management system from
1mage Software to bring online Internet access to several impor-
tant and rare collections at central Ohio public libraries. Grandview
Heights Public Library, GHPL, will initially utilize 1MAGE,
1SERVER and 1SUITE software for scanning, indexing, cross-
referencing, and bringing online over 10,000 historic photographs
taken by the Citizen Journal newspaper from between 1930 and
1985, when the publication closed its doors. The digitized images,
maintained on a server using the Linux operating system, will be
made available via the Internet worldwide and through the library's
online catalog.
For more information, visit www.1mage.com.
Survey: Inner-City Residents and the Internet
Sponsored by the FleetBoston Financial Foundation and conducted
by the University of Massachusetts Poll, a new study addressing
the digital divide reports that 56 percent of low-to-moderate
income inner-city adults from five Northeast cities said they knew
not much or nothing at all about the Internet. The respondents said
cost was the major obstacle to becoming computer literate and
accessing the Internet. Among those who have little or no
familiarity with the Internet, however, 80 percent said they would
be eager to participate in training.
The survey found that fewer than half (42 percent) of respondents
have computers in the home, and only 32 percent are connected
to the Internet. In contrast, more than three-quarters (77 percent)
of those with incomes over $40,000 use a computer in the home
and 61 percent are very comfortable using the Internet. The gap
in computer access and Internet usage is leaving members of
disadvantaged communities behind in the new economy, says
Fleet.