Craig Venter is a biologist and one of the leading figures in unlocking of the sequence the human genome. The video above is on his latest work to change the world for the better.
Archive for the ‘technology’ Category
Craig Venter @ TED
Friday, March 7th, 2008David Pogue Turns the Tables on Tech Support
Friday, March 7th, 2008David Pogue has a blog entry about some of the funny things that come up during a tech support call. Tech support is one of those tough-jobs-but-someone-has-to-do-it positions. The PoguePost above gives us an idea of how the job has a lighter side. Is your voice being passed around on a disk? 
PayPal: “Safari not safe” Huh?
Friday, February 29th, 2008MacWorld is reporting PayPal’s claim that Safari is not a “safe” browser. Sorry PayPal, the problem lies in how people deal with email, not with the browser. Anyone clicking on any link in an email message is asking for trouble. If you need that link, copy it, paste it, and then read the URL carefully. If you don’t recognize the domain or the directories after it, don’t use it. You can get to the site using your bookmarks to be safe.
I wrote an entry on identifying phishing last year (sorry, it looks like the quiz is gone; you may have to look elsewhere for more information). Be careful out there…
Get the Moodle “Buzz”
Friday, February 29th, 2008I have been using the LMS moodle since late 2003. The moodle.org site has a wealth of information and help forums at free support (free registration required). To tell you the truth, the forums and the download area (free, as in beer) are the two places I use most often. Recently I have been exploring the moodle database module for helping my students to keep track of their reading (that will have to be another post).
In that exploration, I discovered the moodle “buzz” area, which uses moodle’s database module. Go check it out. If you know of some new information or research on moodle, you can add it to the database. In that way, you can keep us up to date with the latest and get a feel for this quite useful module.
NeoOffice (OpenOffice.org for Macs)
Monday, February 25th, 2008For most of the past 10 months or so I have been doing my best to use NeoOffice for my word processing and spreadsheet needs. I have to say that, with only one notable exception (a bug in an earlier version caused some characters to display strangely; that was cleared up quickly), it is both solid in its stability and robust in features.
NeoOffice is an Open Source package for Mac designed to work with the same (and possible more) kinds of documents as Microsoft Office. NeoOffice’s origins come from OpenOffice.org (if you’re a Windows or Linux user, that’s the place to go). Here’s the blurb from the NeoOffice site:
NeoOffice is a full-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database programs) for Mac OS X. Based on the OpenOffice.org office suite, NeoOffice has integrated dozens of native Mac features and can import, edit, and exchange files with other popular office programs such as Microsoft Office.
Released as free, open source software under the GNU General Public License (GPL), NeoOffice is fully functional and stable enough for everyday use. The software is actively developed, so improvements and small updates are made available on a regular basis.
I’ll write up some more on this great package. In the meantime, check it out…
ACM and the Communications of the ACM (for FREE!)
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) made the inaugural online version of its popular Communications of the ACM a freebie. As a member for the past few years, I have to say that I enjoy the publication quite a bit. Check it out. If you like what you read, why not join? The issue linked here is the only free one, I’m afraid.
Library of Congress Photos on flickr
Thursday, January 24th, 2008The U.S. Library of Congress has decided to begin making available thousands of its photos through the photo site flickr. For the time being, the ownership of these photos are being designated as having “no known copyright restrictions.” There is a more complete description of this designation, the photos, etc. here. This is a new classification, so we’ll have to watch how it plays out. In the meantime, they are asking that the online community view the photos and add comments and tags, so that they can be further classified. That seems to be a reasonable request, and it could be a lot of fun for those of you with lots of time on your hands.
So you think you can spot a phishing attempt?
Thursday, July 26th, 2007Phishing, or using a seemingly-real web site or email message to gather personal information, appears to be causing people quite a bit of trouble. The folks at McAfee have put together a quiz to test your skills at distinguishing the real from the fake. Take the test yourself and see how you do. I scored a 9 out of 10. No hints on the one I missed… 
Kwansei Gakuin University
Tuesday, June 26th, 2007
This weekend I had a chance to visit my good friend Paul Hays up in the Sanda area of Kansai (think Kobe-north); he teaches media and policy studies at Kwansei Gakuin University. I got a chance to visit and participate in his seminar on Ambient Findabilty (a book that coincidentally has a reference to one of my confluences). One student was in charge of one of the chapters and led the discussion which was held in Japanese and English.
The campus is beautiful. The relatively new buildings have that Mediterranean feel and the well-manicured lawns have, how can I describe them?, “Stay off the grass!” signs. Built during the bubble years, the campus is a little out of the way and a bit hard to get to. The train line stops about 6 km. away and one needs to catch a bus the rest of the way. I understand that, for some, it can be quite a commute, but then I have at least one student commuting from Fukuoka. I guess it’s all relative.
Announcement: El Viajero splits in two: now scholar @ jklmelton
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008After finishing Dispatches from Blogistan, I have decided to split El Viajero into two blogs. Clearly, the eclectic choices of topics in the original blog were more than distracting.
El Viajero will stay focused as a sort of online diary of daily life; living, working, and playing well; and other topics in that broad area.
This spin-off blog, tentatively named scholar @ jklmelton, will stick to the more academic, productivity, and technology topics that I find interesting.
I spent most of last night creating scholar and moving relevant posts here. I have left all the original dates and titles of El Viajero for historical (some might say hysterical) reference. However, that relocated content can no longer be read at El Viajero; I spent this morning adding updated links to each post. I hope this does not cause many problems. Rather, I hope this move will allow both of my fans to enjoy more focused content.
This should be the only post I need to make on the move. I will post a similar message at El Viajero; please excuse the redundancy. A la obra…
Tags: blog, blogging, metacomment, Research
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