VMWare Update: David vs. Goliath

A quick update on last week's VMWare IPO. The stock has settled in the mid-60s - closing yesterday (8/21/2007) at $65 [UPDATE: $72 8/22 11:30 AM]. I firmly believe the market reception is due to the quality of VMWare's virtualization products. How does a company develop great products? They hire great people. Not just great, but the best people. In Silicon Valley, that puts you squarely against Internet giant Google. According to Bloomberg News VMware Chases Google in Race for Programming Talent:

VMware is paying $130,000 to $160,000, plus stock options -- compensation that only Google can match.

Wouldn't it be great if we had stock options and these sort of salaries to attract and keep talented people into the teaching profession?

Tom Friedman on Charlie Rose

Here's Tom Friedman on Charlie Rose from Thursday August 16th. The paperback of The World is Flat is out now with two-and-a-half new chapters that Tom discusses.

Best Quote:

The Iron Rule of Doing Business in the Flat World:
When the world is flat, whatever can be done will be done. The only question is will it be done by you or to you.

Web 2.0: Office 2.0 Heats Up

It's cold today on the east coast - 60 degrees, but things are heating up online. Zoho today announced the integration of Google Gears into their Zoho Writer. This is the latest move by one of the three leaders (Zoho, Thinkfree and Google) in the battle for the online office suite - Office 2.0. Offline functionality is one of the three primary criterion we can use to evaluate these products; the others being: completeness or number of applications included, and formatting/translation issues. In spite of nearly ubiquitous connectivity, offline functionality remains important - I would say a near deal-breaker or deal-maker for most users. Thinkfree has an offline version ($49.95) that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux; Google has no offline functionality but has introduced the open source project Google Gears, which has the potential to eventually take their web apps offline. Ironically, Zoho has used Google's project to begin to offer offline functionality. I say begin, because this update only includes Zoho Writer and is limited to read-only access offline - at least for now. Both Thinkfree and Zoho have all of the core office apps (word, excel, powerpoint); Zoho adds a number of additional applications - too many to enumerate here, but include project management, and web-conferencing; Google is missing the presentation component, but is expected to announce a presentation application for their suite sometime later this month.

It's great to see so much competition in this space!

Here's a two-minute video that details the update to ZohoWriter.

Cell Phones - The Future of Education?

Here's a great interview Robert Scoble has recorded with Dr. Elliot Soloway. Who's he? Soloway teaches Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan - his most famous student is Google co-founder Larry Page. Most of the discussion focuses on the state of education and how to improve it. According to Soloway, the opportunities for transforming education are at the K-12 level not colleges - college faculty are unwilling to give up control in the classroom. The technology that he thinks will be most critical to re-shaping education and bridging the digital divide - not laptops or desktops, but the cell phone!

Cloudprint -print anything, anywhere, anytime

The New York Times has a story detailing Hewlett-Packard's new Cloudprint application. Cloudprint is a free service that allows mobile phone users and business travelers to print documents on any printer almost anywhere in the world.

How it Works

First “print” or send your document to an HP server somewhere in the cloud. Cloudprint assigns a document code, and sends it to your cellphone as an SMS message. With the code and your mobile number, you can retrieve a PDF version of the document from the Cloudprint Web site and print it virtually anywhere.

According to the story:

The service will include a directory service that will show the location of publicly available printers on Google Maps. The system currently works with any Windows-connected printer. A Macintosh version is also planned.

To support Cloudprint, HP has partnered with a major retailer to establish hundreds of Internet-connected printing locations around the country.

See you in the cloud!

Wireless Power - Update

In a June 24 posting - Wireless Power - Time to Cut the Cord! I discussed a team at MIT developing wireless power - something they're calling WiTricity. A reader posted a link to WitricityNet a site with more information about the MIT project.

Here's a sampling of some video from the site.

First a great 14-minute video on the life and contributions of Nikola Tesla. Although a bit over-dramatized, the video provides some great information on Tesla and would benefit students and faculty in electronics, communications and networking. His work provides the foundation upon which many modern technologies are built.

And finally two examples of wireless power in action.

There's more on the site. It's not quite ready for prime time, but the prospect of eventually being able to cut the power cord is pretty exciting.

Don't Know Much About History ...

Unfortunately, that statement could be used to describe many of our students - particularly technology students. Although I teach technology, I love history, especially the history of technology and I am always looking for ways to teach history to my students. I think history enriches a student's understanding and helps to contextualize the content. While the benefits of teaching history are clear, it's a challenge to do so - mainly because our technology programs and courses are already so jammed with content there is very little room for anything new or different.

I've been successful at using audio and video to supplement what I do in the classroom, but I am always looking for new ways to bring history into the classroom. There's an interesting new tool called Xtimeline that could help. Xtimeline allows you and your students to create, share and explore interactive timelines. I think you'll enjoy exploring the timelines - here are a few examples - just click on the images below to open the interactive timeline.

The first is a history of the internet, from 1958 (Who was President kids?) to the present. There a number of events - at least according to me - missing. But what a great opportunity to have your students fill in the holes and fact check the timeline.
The second example is a history of video games. Looks pretty thorough, but admittedly not my area of expertise.
Finally, the last example is actually from Karl Kapp's blog - Karl, a professor of instructional technology and an expert in gaming, might be able to help us evaluate the completeness and accuracy of the Gaming timeline . There a couple different ways to create your own timelines. The first is to create an excel spreadsheet (or even better Goggle Docs spreadsheet) and upload to the Xtimeline site. The template - shown below - is pretty straight forward. Students could spend the whole semester gather new events - as they learn/discover them - and populate the spreadsheet. Imagine students working on this individually, in groups, as an entire class or even working collaboratively with other students/classes anywhere in the world - a sort of "The World is Flat" project! Another way to create a timeline is to use an RSS feed. That's how I made the Karl Kapp timeline.