As Miguel pointed out today, Google has released a Linux version of the Picasa photo organizer/editing application they bought a while back. This is not, in the final analysis, a huge deal. I’ve never heard of anyone actually using Picasa, and my quick observation is that F-Spot offers much better performance on Linux.What is notable is that it doesn’t seem…

One thing today’s fine article in eSchool News on Connexions fails to mention is that the underlying software for the system is all free. Connexions is built on the open source Zope application server. The Connexions-specific code, known as Rhaptos, is freely available available, along with sundry extensions, accessories and tools.To be sure, Connexions and Rhaptos are significant pieces of…

OLPC & Fedora developer Christopher Blizzard follows up my post from earlier today with a few more details about Sugar. Most interestingly:Sadly, Tom is alone in the world so other people on the network don’t show up. So he’s missing the most important aspect of the interface. We want this interface to be social. This means that kids can communicate…

Well, my link to pictures of a bare OLPC circuit board running yesterday have been quickly outstripped by pictures of a complete running prototype.  So to regain whatever One Laptop Per Child street cred I’ve got, I got Sugar, the basic OLPC user interface shell, running last night.  It was rather a pain; I set up a Fedora Linux virtual…

Wanna see a picture of an test board from the One Laptop Per Child project in action, including an early version of its user interface?  Head over to Christopher Blizzard’s blog.  He’s a member of the team at Red Hat working on a custom version of Linux for the stripped down laptop.  There is more info on the Fedora Project…

My good friend Ben Harris just published the results of his survey of 6th/7th grade students he teaches. Fundamentally, he wanted to survey some of his students to get a sense as to whether or not they actually use MySpace. And, if so, how often, etc. Some of the basic results are as follows: * 57% of 6th and 7th…

As you know probably know, you can now set up an Intel based Macintosh computer so that it will start up in either Mac OS X or Windows XP. Now when you are wondering if you should purchase a Dell, Gateway, HP or other computer to run Windows XP, you can add Intel based Macintosh computers to that list. Last…

Recently there was yet another televised expose on the sorry state of education in the U.S. As has been done in the past, the writers of this program tried to drive their point home by quizzing people on the street. The question asked this time was, “Who were the first five presidents of the United States?” Of course, none of…

L Dopa: I got a sickness sweet as a love note I got a headache like a pillow Called me Daisy, called me Daisy, called me Daisy, that one Called me Daisy I am a sweetheart I am a prom queen I am some puppies What, Daisy? What, Daisy? Are we here now? I am a horror This is an…

Hot on the heels of Feedburner’s new subscription service, Techcrunch reported on Zookoda. I’ve just begun to start testing the features and functionality but so far it seems to be leaps and bounds ahead of any newsletter creator and subscription management tool that grabs content from a blog or CMS and broadcasts it out. Tools like this (especially as they…

David seems to still be having problems with his Son of Citation Engine. Since he doesn’t want to open source his code, I can’t directly help, but I can offer some advice. Basically, the Citation Machine is a perfect candidate to use Ajax, arguably the key technical advance underlying Web 2.0, a subject on which David is purportedly an authority….

Editor’s Note: Eric F. Luce, an associate professor of curriculum, instruction and special education at the University of Southern Mississippi in Long Beach, Miss., worked as an eSchool News Conference Correspondent at the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) last June.Two months after returning from the big conference in Philadelphia, Dr. Luce found himself in the path of Hurricane Katrina and…

When I read things like Steve mentioning schools that block Google Maps, I realize that not only don’t I understand the scope of what’s going on, but that the discussion on the web isn’t fully capturing it either. I mean, agree or disagree with blocking MySpace, but at least you have to agree that there is a coherent argument for…