Robocleaners, tweeting appliances in the home of tomorrow

From USATODAY.com

Image Source: jeffbots.com

"Ever wondered what your home might look like in 10 years' time? Will it be cleaned by robots and run by computers? Will your fridge go online to allow you to discuss dinner plans with your spouse or instruct it to do the shopping?"

"If the technology giants exhibiting their latest wares at the recent IFA trade fair in Berlin are to be believed, this is what life could be like. The technology exists, even if some of the products have so far only been launched in places like Korea, one of the world's leading consumer electronics markets."

10 years after 9/11, cyberattacks pose national threat

From Computerworld

"...catastrophic cyberattacks against U.S. critical infrastructure targets are not a mere theoretical threat."

"This is not science fiction," the NSPG said in its report. "It is possible to take down cyber systems and trigger cascading disruptions and damage. Defending the U.S. against such attacks must be an urgent priority."

Python Cloud IDE

Our incoming students might be interested in this - PythonFiddle.com is a cloud-based IDE that lets you write and run code in your browser. Both apps and data are migrating to the web, but apps have lagged. There are plenty of ways to store almost any data in the cloud, but there are still many kinds of apps that only run locally (and many apps that do have cloud-based versions are still far behind their local equivalent. Working with students on their code over the years, I've been desperate for a GOOD cloud-based IDE, so that wherever we are I can sit down with them and run their code in the same environment in which they've been running it (it gets old really fast to have them email me their code, often missing some files, then download them, import them into Eclipse, compile, run, debug, comment, and then reupload the files for them...

Let me know if you know of other cloud-based IDEs that you like, especially any for C++, Java, Prolog, or any of the Lisp variants.

Stanford offers free CS courses

From DeviceGuru

Last year at Educause, I heard Neil Gershenfeld (of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms) speak on a shift away from a scarcity-based model of education. A significant point was that technology has the potential to radically revolutionize the business of education. In the past, access to ideas was limited by access to physical resources: books, laboratories, faculty members. When resources are digitized, the nominal cost of reproducing them becomes insignificant.

In the latest of a series of similar examples, Stanford University has announced that it will be offering a series of 10 free online computer science courses, including their introduction to computer science, artificial intelligence, and robotics. As of a couple of days ago, more than 120,000 students had signed up for the courses.

Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom

Bits Blog - NYTimes.com: "A recent 93-page report on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education, has a starchy academic title, but a most intriguing conclusion: “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction."

"The report examined the comparative research on online versus traditional classroom teaching from 1996 to 2008. Some of it was in K-12 settings, but most of the comparative studies were done in colleges and adult continuing-education programs of various kinds, from medical training to the military.

"Over the 12-year span, the report found 99 studies in which there were quantitative comparisons of online and classroom performance for the same courses. The analysis for the Department of Education found that, on average, students doing some or all of the course online would rank in the 59th percentile in tested performance, compared with the average classroom student scoring in the 50th percentile. That is a modest but statistically meaningful difference.

The cloud bites back: Google bug shared private Google Docs data

Between the Lines | ZDNet.com | TwineThe cloud bites back: Google bug shared private Google Docs data: "Google has confirmed that a software bug in its Google Docs online applcation service exposed documents thought to be privately stored.

The problem was fixed by the weekend, and is believed to have affected only half a percent of the digital documents at a Google Docs service that provides text-handling programs as services on the Internet.

According to Google, the problem occurred in cases where people had chosen to collaborate on multiple documents and adjusted settings to allow access to others. Collaborators were unintentionally given permission to access documents aside from the ones intended."

Blog post on Study CS! describes new game

Here is a great blog post on the blog Study CS! about a 'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'

Hmmm, I have a new idea for a virtual online world in which people play characters who post blog posts on virtual virtual blogs.