Apple updates iLife

Apple announced an update to it’s iLife suite of software at MacWorld Expo today. This update was expected, but iLife 09 has some significant enhancements. The biggest enhancements are in iPhoto, but there were also some good size bumps in the iMovie, and Garage Band applications. Unfortunately, iWeb only received minor upgrades. iWeb had a lot of potential to be a great app for the classroom, but I do not believe that it stepped up to the plate like it could have. I will be downloading the trials and provide further reviews to determine whether it will be worth the upgrade for teachers.

Don’t let tech get in the way of good teaching.

Often we who love technology spend a great deal of time and effort implementing technology in our classrooms. In most cases it is a bennificial endevor, but there are times when we get to focused on the tech that learning suffers. The biggest trap is time. Often we will spend inordinate ammounts of time on a project with limited learning potential in order to implement a technology aspect to it. Other traps we fall into is testing a technology with the class and finding we need to use time to trouble shoot instead of teach. Upgrading to the most rexoent versions of software can also present problems. One example of this is that I have upgraded to the most recient version of office on my teacher computer but the student lab is still on the previous version. When I show students how to do something it does not match what they will see when they try it. Technology can be a great enhancement to our teaching but we must be aware of it’s use to make surebit does not get in the way.

Windows 7 can wait!

I have been very impressed by the rave reviews I’ve been hearing for the Beta of Windows 7. Unfortunately, reviews and reality are two seperate things. I was quick to join the beta program when it became publicly availible because I was excited to try out the “Vista that works”. After trying a few times, with some aggrivation I got it installed. It was late so I let the install finnish while I went home to bed. The next morning I launched the beautifull new Windows 7. After clicking through several nags for not having an antivirus, and permission for my Amazon Unbox app (I had to do this every time I boot about 6 times before it quits popping up) I finally lauch my first application. I use a Promethean Digital Whiteboard and I started up the software for the first lesson. It started great! I opened the slide show for the Mornings lesson and it came write up. I clicked on the X to get rid of the splash screen, and my screen went black. This does not look good, then I notice that my machine is rebooting. I have had a few crashes in my day. Sometimes when a machine gets a virus attack it will get overloaded and crash. Sometimes there are hardware malfunctions or the processor overheats and it will immediately shut down. This is the first time I’ve been running a program where it is perfectly reproducable every time. I must have this application as part of what I do, so I realized that I needed to downgrade back to Vista. I decided to do somthing productive on 7 before I bailed ship, so I launched IE 8 to make this post on Ed Tech Review. When I tried to log into the admin, IE 8 Beta also crashed. To be fair both applications are Beta and as such you can expect problems, but, I personally don’t have the time to play when two of the applications I use most consistantly crash my machine. I put Vista on the machine about two weeks before I tried the upgrade and it seemed to be working fine, but it looks like I will be waiting for Version 7 sp1 before my other XP machines will see an upgrade.

Finding a Mac Blogging Application

In a recent post I talked about Microsoft Live Writer on a PC. Needless to say I was pretty impressed. Prior to using Live Writer I always took the time to go to the admin and type it on the website. Because my primary computer is a Mac so after using Live Writer I started my search for a Mac Blogging client. I must say first that although I settled on a winner, it was settling. The Mac Clients don’t even come close to design, functionality, and ease of use to Live Writer. Although, there are a few outliers the two applications that stand out from the crowd are MarsEdit and Ecto. While my first inclination was to go with MarsEdit, and that is what I’m typing this on, Ecto has a little but more capability when it comes to formatting and adding things to the entry like keywords or ads. The media management however is not as strong. It’s not that MarsEdit doesn’t have some of the formatting features but they are buried and difficult to use.
Ecto is not as pretty as the rest, but it does what you need it to do. I would like to see a single window interface, and easier media management, but it is very easy to format your articles and text like you want. One feature that is either not there or difficult to find is the ability to add columns. It is not important for this blog, but it is a feature I use all the time on my classroom blog for spelling and vocabulary lists. Inserting ads, and links is very easy, and it is possible to create your own scripts to make repetitive tasks a breeze.
It’s not often that Mac software is blown out of the water by PC apps, but in the case of Blogging clients Mac software doesn’t even come close. But if you are on a Mac, your best option is Ecto.

Taking the "Long View" on the Fourth Amendment: Stored Records and the Sanctity of the Home

In the wake of the California energy crisis of 2000-2001, the California Energy Commission (CEC) and California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) are aggressively pursuing “demand response” (DR) energy programs aimed at reducing peak energy demand. Demand response systems convey information about market conditions through pricing or reliability signals to customers, who in turn, hopefully, alter their electricity consumption choices. In particular DR programs are aimed at shifting the time at which customers use energy through the implementation of time-varying tariffs. Armed with information about the time-varying cost of electricity residential and commercial customers are expected to reduce energy usage and/or shift their usage to non-peak, less costly, hours. Such shifts, even absent reductions in overall consumption, will reduce the likelihood of energy brown and black outs and provide direct savings to consumers. Technologies to enable the demand response system, including advanced metering research and development [OpenAMI] and sensor and control technologies development [DRETD], are under development. These technologies will be coupled with a communication and network infrastructure that supports the multicast of real-time pricing information, and the aggregation of energy usage and billing information.

Historic Perspectives on Law and Science

Law has had a long and troubled relationship with science. The misuse of science within the legal realm, as well as our failed attempts to make law more scientific, are well documented. The cause of these problems, however, is less clear.
I would like to suggest that the unsatisfying relationship of law and science can be attributed, at least in part, to law’s inadequate understanding of what constitutes science and law’s inflated view of the potential benefits of science for law. It is our failure to understand what science knows about its own enterprise, as well as our fervent hope that law could be something other than it is, that leads us astray.

A Free Speech Theory of Copyright

Copyright is a system of federal regulation that empowers private actors to silence others, yet no one seriously doubts that copyright is consistent in principle with the First Amendment freedom of speech. Scholars and courts have tried to resolve the tension between exclusive rights in expression and free speech in one of two ways: some appeal to copyright’s built-in accommodations to suppress any independent First Amendment analysis, while others apply standard First Amendment tests to evaluate whether and where copyright becomes an unconstitutional burden on speech. Neither of these approaches properly appreciates the constitutional balance struck at the Framing between the Copyright Clause and the First Amendment. This Article develops a free speech theory of copyright informed by this balance. I advocate thinking of the Copyright Clause’s limits as free speech limits, giving them the force of an individual right.