Technologies known collectively as Web 2.0 have spread widely among consumers over the past five years. Social-networking Web sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, now attract more than 100 million visitors a month. As the popularity of Web 2.0 has grown, companies have noted the intense consumer engagement and creativity surrounding these technologies. Many organizations, keen to harness Web 2.0 internally, are experimenting with the tools or deploying them on a trial basis.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

Modern Geographical Information Systems (GIS) [1] provide a service-oriented architecture for interacting with geographical data sets and related maps. Web-based GIS systems are architected around the same principles as more general Web service systems based on SOAP [2], WSDL [3], and REST. Mirroring the World Wide Web Consortium and OASIS Web service standards-making bodies, the Open Geospatial Consortium [5] defines open standards for messages, XML data formats, and access protocols that are specific to the GIS community. In addition to OGC-based services, there are many companies (such as ESRI and AutoDesk) that provide proprietary, commercial solutions. Services from these various providers are not normally interoperable.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

During the past decade, a gap has appeared between higher education and the rest of the digital world. While academia has moved a great deal of content and activity into course management systems, the World Wide Web has developed a new architecture, usually dubbed “Web 2.0.” Around this time computer gaming has grown into a vital, global industry. Course management system(s) (CMS) have supported a very different world of computer­mediated communication, and nearly a decade of institutional and individual practice has deepened the difference. We argue that CMS are going to make some efforts to cross that chasm in the near future, but the overall gap is likely to persist.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

Over the past three years, Internet web sites have been evolving into a series of platforms organizing content and communications among individuals and organizations for the purpose of social networking. Sites like MySpace, YouTube and Wikipedia have shifted online activities from “browsing” to collaborating, interacting and personalizing. MySpace boasts over 100 million accounts, YouTube serves an average of 100 million video streams per day and Wikipedia contains over 1.7 million articles in English edited by users from all over the world. As a result, web design and organizational thinking in this new era needs to be more focused on building event-driven experiences, rather than simply designing information silos ammended with numerous hyperlinks. But how do consumers and businesses keep up with these changes and more importantly how do they exploit the new technologies in ways that benefit customers, employees, and even their industry? This issue of Educational Update is designed for that very purpose.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

Whether you want to build an AJAX-based web application, or a Windows game, the Academic Resource Kit is a great place to start. A Microsoft Romania initiative aimed at driving technology access and adoption, ARK is designed as a comprehensive collection of tools and resources addressing both the development and design aspects of building software solutions. I had the chance to chat with Microsoft Romania’s Todi Pruteanu about the ARK initiative, and the interview below will provide you with a great insight into the Academic Resource Kit.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

Googling for information on the World Wide Web is such a common activity these days that it is hard to imagine that just a few years ago this verb did not even exist. Search engines are now an integral part of our lifestyle, but this was not always the case. Historically, systems for finding information were driven by data organization and classification performed by humans. Such systems are not entirely obsolete — libraries still keep their books ordered by categories, author names, and so forth. Yahoo! itself started as a manually maintained directory of web sites, organized into categories. Those were the good old days.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

Grand Theft Auto 3 was the biggest step forward Rockstar has taken in its existence. The possibility of free roaming in a huge 3D environment combined with the total lack of moral constraints made the game an instant hit. It sparked debates and lawsuits more than any other game in history and in the same time, started a genre of its own. Many of the recent titles have been deemed clones just because the developers chose to use the same principles. Even so, Grand Theft Auto 3 is a great experience six years later. Enter one of the following codes during game play to activate the corresponding cheat function.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed (or 2000 in some regions) is the black sheep of the NFS franchise but not in a bad way. For many fans, this was the best game released due to the unusual amount of physics involved in what was supposed to be an arcade game. There were some critics expressed toward the Porsche exclusivity feature but they’ve calm down over the years. Almost seven years later, it’s still the reference point for any NFS games released since then.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments