Google Talkabout: Merry Christmas, God Jul and 圣诞快乐
Get instant translation or interpreter while chatting.

Google Knol - Google's Play To Aggregate Knowledge Pages
Interesting App. It seems like a bit of Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers, and Mahola. Although you cannot access it at the moment, there is a screenshot. Also, post on Google Blog.

The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard
Must-see viral video. The principles from Made to Stick are very apparent.

What the Google Intranet Looks Like
Ideas for other intranet sites

Microsoft Live Labs: Photosynth
A nice innovative feature out of Microsoft in a while

Blogger in Draft: New feature: OpenID commenting
First step by Google towards open single sign-on identity

Google Experimental Search
Beginning of a Google social search or customized search?

Google LatLong: Think globally, mark locally
You can now move markers in Google Maps to more exact locations by yourself. And, of course, you can continue to see the original mark if you want to. Many who know me realize that I mostly favor Google products/services over others. The new features like this are the reasons I find Google admiring.

Top 12 Areas for Technology Innovation through 2025
ChangeWaves - Observations on the Future from Social Technologies
A nice summary - hope to see more specifics over next few weeks.

23andMe
The personal genetics service is now open to the public at $999. Interestingly, deCode just came out with its deCODEme service, while both companies use Illumina technology.

one learning child. one connected child. one laptop at a time
Until Nov. 26, for $400, you can donate a XO laptop to a child in a developing country AND receive one for yourself (AND one free year of t-mobile wi-fi access in the U.S.). I'm hoping to donate one and is anyone interested in joining me or contributing to mine?

FreeRice
Find out and improve your vocab level while donating rice to the poor for free - thanks to ads. A simple website with a simple idea, making a difference.

Virtual video cutter
cool that it creates small chunks of content from longer streaming audio or video files.

New Century Learning Consortium
It "will assist with the implementation of high quality, large-scale online and blended learning programs at a limited number of small and mid-sized colleges and universities." Should Alliant be joining the consortium?

Livescribe Blog
You may remember Livescribe, smart pen and paper based technology, from June and Sept posts. Its blog just came out today. Hopefully, it will come out as early as possible in Q1 2008.

Corruption Lecture - alpha version (Lessig Blog)
Although I already mentioned it under shared readings, I wanted to emphasize the lecture again in this post. It's Lessig's first presentation (alpha version) on 'corruption.' If you are an educator, scholar, tech evangelist, or someone who cares about influence/effects of money on reason/decision-making/society/politics, it is a worthwhile piece to explore and ponder.

And, you may already be familiar with his simple presentation style. As he moves into a new research area, note the change in font - nice font. Note the use of html code format.

Management guru Gary Hamel: Break free! - Sep. 27, 2007
Achieving innovation and discipline at the same time!

Visualizing Economics
A cool site about economics info, bringing data into life

Marc Lesser: Accomplishing More By Doing Less

Common Craft - In Plain English
Explaining products/services in plain English.

TechCrunch40 Conference 2007
40 hottest startups showing their products/demos

Google presentation software already out tonight
Eventually, it is here! Let's see how good it is for collaboration. Of course, it isn't intended to compete with MS PowerPoint features to features (at least for the time being).

If you're new to Google Docs, watch this video to learn more about creating and collaborating on documents (and now presentations!).

Is Technology-Enhanced Learning Effective? Recent Research and the "No Significant Difference" Hypothesis - Digital Media Center - University of Minnesota

Novel Resizing of Images
Software developed by Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir. It changes the whole concept of limited image resizing that we become used to. Wondering when the product may be available.

Participatory Media Literacy
Howard Rheingold - Resources for educators and students

My Library feature on Google Book Search
I haven't really tried it out in details. Useful tool for students.
Link on Google Blog.

KnowledgeWorks - Map of Future Forces Affecting Education
Must-see site

OpenID: an actually distributed identity system
Open source alternative for authentication. When will Google support it?

Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath
Worthwhile reading if you need to communicate ideas!

LiveScribe Smartpen: The Entire D5 Demo With Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher | BoomTown | Kara Swisher | AllThingsD
You can now see the whole demo online! Too bad, we'll have to wait until 1st quarter next year.

Introducing Sky in Google Earth - Press Release
Expansion of Google Earth to include views to the sky/space - better 3D.

Top 100 Tools for Learning
important to note that many are not necessarily specific educational tools and that most popular ones are free (9 out of 10, and 16 out of 20). And, web 2.0 dominates the list, though it certainly has bias of technologists and early adopters.

Technology Review: Handwritten Passwords
A step in the right direction re: authentication.

UC Berkeley CIO: Shelton Waggener
CIO Sessions Vision Series on ZDNet.com
Covers many aspects including Sakai.

Physics for future Presidents
Must-see physics course materials for non-physics majors
See web/podcasts
See UC Berkeley article about the class
Teaching methods are exemplary as well.

What the history of the electric dynamo teaches about the future of the computer
from Slate. How technology affects organizations and processes over time for productivity.

Livescribe :: Sneak Peek
Smart pen and paper-based technology, previewed at D: All Things Digital in Carlsbad last week by Jim Marggraff who also invented FLY Pentop. With recommendation from head of MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. Around $200 by end of year, targeting college students. Could have tremendous ramifications on education - hope that mostly positive.

Open Culture
Blog on podcasts by Daniel Colman of Stanford

Best Business Blogs
according to Fast Company

Authentic Learning for the 21st Century from ELI
including what it is, why it is important and effective, examples such as inquiry-based learning, IT support for it, etc.

A Fair(y) Use Tale
a 10-minute short video on copyright by Eric Faden of Bucknell U. Also, link from Slashdot

A new generation of office tools
at the Under the Radar conference
fr. CNET News.com

Meraki
- cool and cheap wireless mesh networks
- Google as an investor
- too bad that WPA is not yet included
- "Internet for the next billion"