Wanted: Better Wikipedia

Interesting blog post on the state of Wikipedia Theoretical Computer Science. Should academics embrace the openness of the Internet and Wikipedia by updating and revising entries within Wikipedia? Or should they continue to allow anyone to write and entry and then bash it for not being correct?

I had a British Literature professor who was a regular contributor to Wikipedia. He felt that he could keep the entries correct then he could steer his students as a valuable resource to teach them about Literature. For me it worked, as a Full Time Worker and Full Time Student the Internet is easier and helps me manage my time a lot better. It is not the only source of information but used like an encyclopedia it can help me figure out what direction I want to take my research for an essay. If I can figure that out first then when it comes time to do the research I have a better idea of what I want my paper to include and not include.

But why are not academics embracing this. Read the post and the comments. It seems that people would rather dismiss Wikipedia then make it better. Is Google's Knoll going to be better or worse? Should students use the Internet and the tools that are becoming available?

What do you think about this?

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Obama seeks larger tax cuts than promised

From the New York Times I found this interesting, "President-elect Barack Obama has signaled that he will pursue a far more ambitious plan of spending and tax cuts than anything he outlined on the campaign trail — a plan "big enough to deal with the huge problem we face,” a top adviser said Sunday — setting the tone for a recovery effort that could absorb and define much of his term."

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America the Sharia State?

A blog post titled, The 'Elijah-Jezebel' Showdown," kind of shocked me. It was posted on Joe. My. God.  Basically, the blog post is about the recounting of a group being harassed by people in the Castro district in San Francisco. Now the group, which is part of another that is called Joel's Army, goes to the Castro to help Gays give up their evil ways and become straight again. I wasn't shocked so much about what the group was saying. It was cited from the Southern Poverty Law Center : 

Joel's Army believers are hard-core Christian dominionists, meaning they believe that America, along with the rest of the world, should be governed by conservative Christians and a conservative Christian interpretation of biblical law. There is no room in their doctrine for democracy or pluralism.

Dominionism's original branch is Christian Reconstructionism, a grim, Calvinist call to theocracy that, as Reconstructionist writer Gary North describes, wants to "get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God."

Notorious for endorsing the public execution by stoning of homosexuals and adulterers, the Christian Reconstructionist movement is far better known in secular America than Joel's Army. That's largely because Reconstructionists have made several serious forays into mainstream politics and received a fair amount of negative publicity as a result. Joel's Army followers eschew the political system, believing the path to world domination lies in taking over churches, not election to public office.

Another key difference between the two branches of dominionism, which maintain a testy, arms-length relationship with one another, is Christian Reconstructionism's buttoned-down image and heavy emphasis on Bible study, which contrasts sharply with Joel's Army anti-intellectual distrust of biblical scholars and its unruly style.

Isn't that what we went to war in Afghanistan? To fight the Taliban? Wasn't the Taliban a type of government that made Islamic law the law of the land? It's called Sharia. Now we fought against a group that basically used religious law to restrict people and take away basic civil right from the individual.

Now Joel's Army is advocating the same kind of state for America. It would not be an Islamic State like Afghanistan but a Christian State. No matter - this scares me just as much as an Islamic State. In fact, wouldn't that make America just like Iran, another Sharia State? It makes you wonder. I don't have any problems with anyones religion but in America we have the freedom of religion as a guarantee. I do feel that Christianity has become the unwritten National Religion of America but that doesn't mean we should just bite the bullet and use Biblical Laws as the rule of the land. In a democracy the people decide and so far we have decided not to make that happen. And we shouldn't.

Slash's Prop 8 Commerical

I have to admit that this surprised me. It's a YouTube  video for no on Proposition 8 from Slash and his wife Perla. It shocked and awed me! And I am so happy that so many celebrities chose the right side of this issue. It is stupid that Bear and I are denied equal rights just because we are not a man and a woman.

Here's the video and Kudos to both Slash and his lovely wife Perla!

Out of the Cloud

Well, I finished my experiment living in the cloud. For the most part it's my personal information that I'm no longer keeping in the cloud. I'm going back to my desktop solutions iCal for calendar, Apple Mail for email, Word for word processing, Excel for spreadsheet, etc. I think that Cloud Living is great, don't get me wrong, it can definitely allow people that can't afford those applications and a computer. Think about a child can go to the Library to have access to a computer and then go to Google for Document creation and storage, Gmail for communication, even Google Talk. But for me I need more control over my documents and I want to be able to search for items on my laptop even when I'm not connected to the Internet. I've decided to continue using Google Documents for Blog posting. I really do like Documents editing features, and combining that with my laptop's Spelling & Grammar checker I have a powerful Blog Editor. 

Now, I'm considering continuing to use Google Apps for School work via my school email account. But even for larger papers it might not be enough for me so I may have go back to Word for those as well. I'm still using Gmail, you can't do much better than their Spam controller, but accessing via the web maybe not be a good idea considering how information is sent over the web. Though I've been able to find an article  to refute those claims in the YouTube video. But for me I still want better offline access to my documents. And to be able to search for information myself within my system. 

So, good-bye to the Cloud but not entirely I still love using Google Reader as my feed reader. So there are some great apps that are created by Google so don't count them out. But there is something to what Richard Stallman said about vendor lock-in. Should we be locked in to a single vendor? That is the question.

New & Updated Apps

Google Mobile App  for iPhone has been updated. It now feature Voice Search, which is pretty cool, I click the Mobile App, select Search and put the phone up to my ear, when I hear the tone I can state what I want. PRESTO! When I look back at the phone it is actively searching for the information that I want. If I don't want to put the phone to my I ear I can click the Microphone Icon and just speak into the microphone. It does a pretty good job of translating my speech to the correct words. I've had about 2 mistakes out of 10 tries. My only thought is that 20% is not great but let me use it some more and see what the error rate truly is.

The only problem that I have with the Google Mobile app is that it spawns a new browser window instead of using the one already available and that can be irksome. I've found that by using the app it's spawned about 3 to 4 browsers. Now, you would think that is not such a big deal. Moving between the windows is simple enough but, and this could be a coincidence, I noticed that multiple windows seems to drain my battery on my iPhone. I have a browser window, it's usually set to Google so why no use it instead of spawning a whole new one? 

I've found a new an interesting app, I'm sure that most people have found this free app, it's called Pandora. They have a web app and a mobile app. I actually like both the music on the web app is pretty good quality. The same goes for the mobile app. Basically, you create a station by searching for an artist or song title. It'll play either one first and then all related music to that artist or song title. The only problem I have with the mobile app is, unlike the iPod within the iPhone, that you can't play music from Pandora and then go to and use another app. As soon as you hit the Home button on the phone to display all your apps the music stops. If you receive and decide to reply to an SMS, it will stop the music. I don't care for that. But I do like the idea of Pandora because it means I don't have sync as many songs to my phone if I don't want to. Overall, it can help me save space on my phone for other applications. I'm going back home to San Diego for Christmas and the prospect of renting and downloading a movie to watch on the long flight on my iPhone is just what I wanted. Since I could only afford the 8 Gb iPhone I have to conserve space as much as possible. Pandora really fits in with that aspect of my digital life.

More Cloud Living

I saw this article over at Digg. The full article was very interesting as to how Google is combining technologies to create something that is an interesting competitor to Flash. It's called Silverlite and the article suggested that there were some problems installing on a Mac, I'm assuming he might have meant the PPC version of Leopard, my Intel MacBookPro had no problems installing the plugin for video chat. 

Still, it is very informative and it seems that Google's push for a Cloud or Internet Operating System is slowly coming to fruition. I have to say that I'm still a bit skeptical but I've kind of forced myself to living in the cloud for most things and I haven't been let down too much just yet. I still find myself using Gmail more than Apple Mail. I love that I haven't used Microsoft Office very much. Though if I do school work at work I can only use Office. I still wish that Google Docs would operate better offline. I haven't really checked it out on the laptop, again it is an Intel laptop and some things seem to work better on it then the ole PowerMac G4 (PPC). 

Side-note: I've hijacked Bear's laptop. I've been having issues with either the monitor or the graphics card in my PowerMac G4. There is a fuzziness that comes over the monitor and I'm not sure if it's because the monitor is 8 years old or if the graphics card is 6 years old. Either way I've offloaded all of my data and I'm using it as a Guest machine. Hence my desire to live in the Cloud and test it out. At some point Bear is going to want to work on his Laptop at the same time that I will need to do some computer work. At that time I can log into my PowerMac G4, and deal with the fuzziness, as a Guest because most of the information I work with will be in the cloud. Either Google's or my college since I keep most of my school work at the college Cloud - which really is Google. I just can't wait till next year when we've paid off the Laptop bill and can use our credit to purchase me a brand new MacBookAir! I'm dying to work with that computer I love the fact that it is so thin and light compared to the MacBookPro or the MacBook. I really do prefer the Air. And I can share my CD/DVD on my PowerMac G4 with the Air if I need to so I'll still keep my PowerMac G4 for a long while. At least until the hard drive finally gives out — maybe longer because I will probably just replace it with some bigger in the Future. I know Richard Stallman  seems to be against Google and Cloud living calling it a trap. I even have my own doubts about Cloud Living but I can't criticize it without living in it but here's an article  that I wrote questioning this. And one more about someone being locked out of their data by Google. I still have a fear that this could happen to me.

Back to Google Silverlite - at this time I don't have any friends that use Gmail to play with Video chat but I already mentioned that earlier. Still it is very interesting how Google is seems to pushing more towards Open Source products. I'm wondering how HTML 5 is going to be embraced by most web masters when it's completed since some of the specks are including more media types like Video.

We will have to wait and see.

Useful Tool

I am always looking for a note taking product that I can use and that will sync with my laptop and my iPhone. That way I only need to write a single note and it will sync. Well, I discovered the iPhone App called Evernote. Evernote syncs to your own web page on their servers and includes a free application for your desktop or laptop. On top of that, they also have a Windows version of the desktop app so you effectively sync among multiple machines. But I think for work the web app is sufficient, actually for me I rarely surf the Internet on my work computer since they block so many websites that I want to go to I usually just use my iPhone for web surfing at work when I have down time.

Evernote is completely free but they do have a premium product which allows for 500 Mb worth of uploads to Evernote. The free product is limited in how much you can upload and sync but depending on your needs it may be all that is needed. In the first day of use though I uploaded about 50% of my free quota. So, I went ahead and purchased the Premium product, which by doing wiped my free quota and gave me the full 500 Mb. I paying $5.00 a month, only because I want to see how much usage I get, instead of the $45.00 a year plan if I end up using it as much as I think I am I'll switch. Also, with the premium product access is via ssl. I don't know why they don't do that for the free product for privacy issues but it's not my product.

What I really like is that I can use my iPhone to take a picture of something and store it on Evernote as a snapshot note. I can also store audio notes as well as create text notes. And I even can access the pictures on my iPhone Picture Gallery and create notes from the photo. This is the same as Snapshot Note difference is Snapshot the picture is the note. The Saved Photo Note, the picture is an attachment to a note and details can be added to give more info about the picture itself.

A final feature is that I can share my notebooks. By using the desktop application, I can designate if a notebook is private or public. Making notes public is great for sharing notes via the web with friends. I just don't know how much I'm going to use it. What I do think I'll end up using is the email a note feature. I prefer that method if I'm going to share information with someone. 

All in all this is not only a crazy way of taking notes but it's something that I've wanted to have that incorporates all different aspects my digital life. I'm just happy that I can access all the same data where ever I happen to be. I'm thinking that this is going to be an extremely useful tool.

Unbelievable

I was reading a favorite blog, Joe. My. God. Joe posted this story about a cure for AIDS via a Bone Marrow Transplant . Nothing is definite the original article states a couple of interesting things. First of all the Bone Marrow Donor seems to have a natural immunity to HIV. So it's not just anyone without HIV can donate the donor would have to have a natural immunity. The entire article  is on the Wall Street Journal. Read it!

New Stuff

Well, it turns out that Google now offers video chat! Unfortunately, I don't know or have any friends with Gmail account so even though I have this great iSight camera on Bear's MacBook Pro its pretty much useless for me.  Still, it is very awesome because I thought that Google would release this for Windows and Firefox first. As it turns out the plugin works for Safari as well so I went ahead an added it to my Gmail account nonetheless. I am sure that one day I will find a use for Video Chatting. I have to get my Mom a Gmail account and get her to use her Video link that way we can talk via the Internet and I save some of my wireless minutes. But she's not very good about checking her email.

I'm still out sick from work and I'm behind in Calculus. I probably won't pass Calculus so I went ahead and registered for the Spring Class. At least I can retake it to improve my grade. I'm a little behind in Anthropology and another class but it's not as bad as Calculus. I've worked nonstop at school with no stopping or rest other than two weeks between semesters for the last year. I'll survive at least I'm back in class and I will finish I just don't expect to pass with a decent grade because of this illness. Cé la Vié!