The 6th incarnation of Elmer's blog
freshmeat.net: Project details for Feather Linux
“Feather Linux is a Linux distribution based on Knoppix 3.4 that can fit on a Mini-CD or on a 128 MB USB pen drive. It aims to have a wide range of applications for desktop, rescue, and administration uses.“
The boys may want to take a look at this as they prepare CALIoppix 2.
excited utterances
“Welcome to the blogosphere Dan Hunter’s Open Access Law Reviews, which continues Dan’s mission of extending open access norms to legal scholarhip.“
I remember Dan from way back. I think it is worth noting that he continues his crusade for open access to legal information from Wharton, a business school.
SCIFI.COM | Battlestar Galactica
“Copy-and-paste the following URL into your Podcast application:
http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/downloads/podcast/podcast.xml
When you synch your MP3 device, you’ll automatically receive any new commentary that’s been posted. Start playing each episode’s file when the words “The Cylons Were Created By Man” appear on your TV screen. Beeps will indicate when to pause for commercial breaks.“
This is beyond cool. Of course I’ll need something to mix it with the audio of the show. Podcasting is going to bbe big in ways no one has yet imagined.
JURIST – Paper Chase: California judge says journalist shield laws don’t apply to bloggers
“Judge James Kleinberg of the Superior Court of California, Santa Clara County [official website] issued a preliminary ruling Thursday holding that three computer industry blogs – PowerPage, Apple Insider, and Think Secret – could not claim the same First Amendment {Cornell LII backgrounder] and California Shield Law [First Amendment Project overview] protections that allow journalists to refuse to reveal their sources. The weblogs had published alleged trade secrets about upcoming product releases from Apple Computer [corporate website].“
Well, this oughta get ’em riled up…
From typoGenerator.
Mindmeld at Sourceforge
“Mindmeld is an enterprise-capable knowledge-sharing system. It is an effective tool for any web community that needs to capture and share information, and is unique in that the knowledgebase grows smarter every time it’s used. It only knows what you teach it, but it’s very easy to teach.Mindmeld’s core search technology, the self-organizing neural mapper, allows Mindmeld to incorporate terms used in each search into a contextual map of the answer itself, continually improving Mindmeld’s ability to derive contextual information from a given search. The system learns how people typically search for a given answer by identifying which search terms are most valuable in any specific context.“
The description makes it sound like a wiki with really good search capabilites. I’ll need to take a closer look.
Library Stuff
“We’ve seen professors have students participate in classroom blogs or have them start their own as part of a semester long project. Feedback from the students is important. Take a look this paper titled, Blogging In An Online Course: A Report on Student Satisfaction Among First-time Bloggers [PDF], which does exactly that:“
ONLamp.com: Rolling with Ruby on Rails
“Maybe you’ve heard about Ruby on Rails, the super productive new way to develop web applications, and you’d like to give it a try, but you don’t know anything about Ruby or Rails. This article steps through the development of a web application using Rails. It won’t teach you how to program in Ruby, but if you already know another object-oriented programming language, you should have no problem following along (and at the end you can find links on learning Ruby).“
Thanks to TRB, a new Ruby fan, for pointing this out.