“When three men set out on a quest to build a real-life Buck Rogers-style flying machine, their obsession with the Rocketbelt 2000 shattered their friendship and set in motion an astonishing chain of events involving theft, deception, assault, a bizarre kidnapping, a ten million dollar lawsuit and a horrifically brutal murder. From sci-fi to reality, this is the incredible true story of the amazing rocketbelt.” – Description at Feedbooks, where this gripping history from the annals of aviation tech is free.
New Form Carolina Academic Press: Teaching Law by Design
Professors Michael Hunter Schwartz, Sophie Sparrow and Gerry Hess, three leaders in the teaching and learning movement in legal education, have collaborated to offer a new book designed to synthesize the latest research on teaching and learning for new and experienced law teachers. The book begins with basic principles of teaching and learning theory, provides insights into how law students experience traditional law teaching, and then guides law teachers through the entire process of teaching a course. The topics addressed include: how to plan a course; how to design a syllabus and select a text; how to plan individual class sessions; how to engage and motivate students, even those tough-to-crack second- and third-year students; how to use a wide variety of teaching techniques; how to evaluate student learning, both for the purposes of assigning grades and of improving student learning; and how to be a lifelong learner as a teacher.
via Carolina Academic Press: Teaching Law by Design.
Form the introductory materials online it looks like a pretty good book.
Video, Audio Tags Scrapped From HTML5, Evil Prevails
The latest rewrite of the Web’s mother tongue won’t recommend the use of specific audio and video encoding formats that could make it cheaper and easier for people to distribute multimedia content.
The major browser makers have been unable to agree on an encoding format they will support in their products, wrote Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML 5 specification for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
via Browser vendor squabbles cause W3C to scrap codec requirement | Developer World – InfoWorld.
Just in case anyone needed reminding about whose side the browser makers are really on (that would be their own). Thing is this wasn’t some sort of complicated technical thing, just a matter of a bit of compromise that would benefit all users. Seems there’ll be none of that. Every vendor seems to have dug in until it just became too troublesome to resolve. We all lose. Sad.
Kaplan Expands in Atlanta
Education and career services company, Kaplan Inc., signed a lease Wednesday for a nearly 100,000-square-foot building in Alpharetta, which the company said would accommodate its growing back office functions and bring 75 new jobs to the northern metro area.
New York City-based Kaplan has occupied a 34,000-square-foot facility at 3750 Brookside Parkway in Atlanta since 2005. Its 344 current employees and will move to Alpharetta in September.
via Kaplan to move operations to Alpharetta – Atlanta Business Chronicle: .
LOC Hits iTunes U
Blog. Twitter. YouTube. iTunes. Yeah, we speak Web 2.0.
You nation’s Library has millions of stories to tell, so we’re trying to tell them as many places and to as many people as possible–whether on our own website or elsewhere. And now you can add another biggie to the list: iTunes U.
via Hey U, Tune In: The Library Is Now on iTunes U « Library of Congress Blog.
Importantly, everything available on the LOC iTunes U area is also on the regular old web at www.loc.gov, so we are not required to sign-up for an iTunes account to get at Library of Congress material. Putting stuff into iTunes U is just another point of access. Some major universities would do well to follow this example instead of locking their materials into Apples silo.
BTW, since iTunes U is now directly available on the iPhone/iTouch you can d/l a lot of cool stuff from anywhere.
FreeCourtDockets Offers, well, Free Court Dockets
FreeCourtDockets is a new, free service which allows anyone to retrieve federal civil, criminal, and bankruptcy court dockets, as well as dockets from the US Supreme Court, Court of Claims, and Court of International Trade. The site is the product of Courtport LLC.
No PACER account is required to view the dockets, but if you wish to view the filings for a case, a PACER account is needed. FreeCourtDockets provides direct links to the filings in PACER.
via WisBlawg – From the UW Law Library: New Source for Free Federal Court Dockets – No PACER Required.
Good review of this new free service. In this case it looks like “free” means “no charge but we are going to bombard you with ads to try and generate some revenue”. I’d be a bit happier if the site was a bit more forthcoming about who is behind and where the data is coming from, but I’ve always been a fan of a good “About” page.
Kodachrome, a Sad Farewell
We are firmly in the era of digital imagery now, and most of us are operating with much, much lower resolution than the estimated 20 megapixels to make images of the quality of those old Kodachrome images. I’m glad we all have cameras, glad that our Nedas are borne witness. But I will miss Kodachrome, which connected us simultaneously to the ugliness in this world and, in the same frame, its comprehensive, insistent beauty.
via Kodachrome, the wicked world, and the sunny day | Tech Gear News – Betanews.
Good piece on the demise of Kodachrome. I had the pleasure of shooting many rolls of Kodachrome years ago, and still am amazed at the depth and fidelity of the photos shot on those slides. Like hi-fidelity sound, hi-fidelity images are becoming a thing of the past. As the pace of technology has quickened we have traded quality for speed and ease of use. True stereo hi-fi lost to mediocre MP3 compression. Life-like photography lost to the grainy soft focus phone camera. Have we drifted into a low-res culture?
Windows 7 RC D/Ls End August 15th, Get ’em While They’re Hot
Still on the Windows 7 Beta,? You need to move to the RC and fast. Starting July 1st, the Beta will start to reboot every 2 hrs and expire Aug 1st.
Want to download the RC? The RC download program closes August 15. After that, you won’t be able to get the download, but you can still install the RC and get a key if you need one. (To get a key, just go to the Downloads page and follow the instructions.)
All teknoids everywhere need to grab a copy of this and get it running because you’re going to see it sooner rather than later and you need to get away from XP.
Free Chick-fil-A meal on July 10, Just Dress As a Cow!
Chick-fil-A Inc. will give a free meal to customers who come to any of its restaurants on July 10 dressed as a cow.
The giveaway is part of the Atlanta-based chain’s fifth-annual Cow Appreciation Day, which honors its “Eat Mor Chikin” Cows.
In a related promotion, parents can enter photos of their cow-clad children as part of a “Show Us the Cow” online photo contest, for a chance to win a $1,000 U.S. Savings Bond. Between now and Aug. 31, children ages 10 and younger are encouraged to work with an adult to submit creative photos of themselves dressed as cows. The contest Web site, www.CowAppreciationDay.com, has details about uploading photos for the contest.
via Free Chick-fil-A meal on July 10 – Atlanta Business Chronicle: .
Finally a contest I can actually win 🙂 I’ll be putting together that cow suit and getting the free meal.
Google Books Updated
Google has made a number of improvements to the functionality of Google Books that should make it easier for users to search for and share information. Users can now embed pages to books found in the online book repository on their own websites, link friends directly to specific pages, and have an easier time searching and browsing for content within the books.
via Google Books updated, gets new embedding, browsing features – Ars Technica.
Need to take a closer look at the availability of historical legal materials both primary and secondary with an eye toward integration in the CALI website.