Add Instant Definitions, Explanations to Your Site

AnswerTipsTM are small information bubbles that define any word when double-clicked. An AnswerTips-enabled site or blog means visitors get fast facts on 4 million topics provided by Answers.com when they double-click on any word, without opening a new browser or following outbound links. AnswerTips deliver instant definitions, explanations and facts including biographies, tech terms, geography, pop culture and much more.

AnswerTips™: Information from Answers.com

This is pretty cool. It puts a javascript wrapper around a page and when a word is double clicked info is grabbed from answers.com and displayed in a little bubble. It works pretty well. For an example, check this out on my CALI dev site and double click on your favorite legal term for a bit of a definition. Pretty neat.

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Paragraph Level Embedded Comments for WordPress

CommentPress is an open source theme for the WordPress blogging engine that allows readers to comment paragraph by paragraph in the margins of a text.

CommentPress

This remarkable WordPress plugin is being developed by the Institute for the Future of the Book.  It adds a high level of interactivity and coinversation to WordPress blogs by allow for comments at the paragraph level with the comments displayed in a floating window.  I think the implications for this in education are astounding.  Imagine providing a text that be readily commented on, paragraph by paragraph by students and teachers.

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Do Students Actually Use Library Services?

If Libraries had shareholders – Article offers up some interesting graphics that seem to indicate that the actual use of library materials and services at major research libraries has been on the decline since before the Internet came along.  This decline continues, with libraries apparently used more as study and social space than for actual research. 

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iPhollow – Fun with Asterisk, Bluetooth and an iPhone

Nerd Vittles » Proximity Detection Perfection: Bluetooth + Asterisk + iPhone – What you get here is a blow by blow description on how to use the Asterisk Bluetooth proximity features to route phone calls.  If your in the office, near the Bluetooth connection with a Bluetooth phone, Asterisk senses this and rings the office phone.  When you go out of Bluetooth range, Asterisk forwards the call to your iPhone (or other BT-enabled phone).  Cool.

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links for 2007-07-18

iPhones KO WiFi At Duke

The built-in 802.11b/g adapters on several iPhones periodically flood sections of the Durham, N.C. school’s pervasive wireless LAN with MAC address requests, temporarily knocking out anywhere from a dozen to 30 wireless access points at a time. Campus network staff are talking with Cisco, the main WLAN provider, and have opened a help desk ticket with Apple. But so far, the precise cause of the problem remains unknown.

IPhones flooding wireless LAN at Duke University – Network World

Well, ain’t that something.  No one is sure why the iPhones are triggering ARP floods on the wireless LAN at Duke, but it sure is something that will need to fixed.  I wonder if this is happening elsewhere.

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