The Open Source MTA!
Check it out – Looks like the MTA is using open source software to implement bus tracking for consumers. Neat.
Footenotes
building CUNY Communities since 2009
Category: News!
July 19, 2010
The Round-Up Where I Realized Summer is Almost Over – 6/12-6/18
Sorry, I guess that was a bummer of a headline. Think of it as a wake-up call, the beach will never be warmer. Seriously.
Things started off this week with some big news from Anthony Picciano’s @apicciano blog about education media giant Blackboard acquiring Elluminate. If Elluminate sounds familiar to you that’s because our very own Adam Wandt @awandt blogged about using it quite a bit last semester. While Adam had a pretty positive experience with the platform, I’ll be curious to see what Blackboard decides to do with it. My hope is that they leave it alone and let the Elluminate team continue to develop it, but I suspect it’s something they want to integrate into the Blackboard portal itself. I can see where it’s clearly a smart move for both companies; Elluminate gets a bunch of cash and Blackboard gets a better feature in their suite, but you know…*cough*…there have been some problems with BB’s stability and I wonder how well it’ll take to something like Elluminate if the two concepts are put together. And that’s not even touching on some of Tony’s greater concerns about centralization that should probably have all of our eyebrows perked a little more.
Michael Smith @MSmith posted some more of his work, this week reflecting on art in the age of catastrophe. I hate to play armchair critic, and wince a little when I go back and look at times when I’ve tried to publicly have an opinion on art, so I’ll just say that I really like what you did there. As someone who came of age in the late 90s rest assured that the insulation of padded foam on everything lingered well past the ‘everything is going to kill you’ 80’s. To that end I can’t help but feel like my generation of artists lack a certain appreciation for danger.
After a too long hiatus Helldriver @helldriver returns. It’s hard to write about music, especially in way that does it any justice, but this blog always delivers. Often it’s the insight drawn from writing on music that resonates the most, such as:
But in a broader sense, what’s happened to the 55 is indicative of what’s happened to New York City as a whole, which for the last couple of decades has been busy draining itself of all its wonderfully garish “local” color, and repackaging itself as one more franchise in a global urban chain store, drawing liberally on its own myths to manufacture a brand identity.
I couldn’t have said it better. To be fair, that’s not the moral of the story so do read on, but New York and I are in a fight this week.
That being said, run – don’t walk – and catch up on what’s going on at York College’s ‘Boot Camp’. This project is awesome and I hope to see more about on the Commons. It’s a great idea and I hope as our community here grows we’ll see more projects similar to this appear across CUNY.
And finally, from the Community Team come two posts you should definitely check out. Sarah Morgano @Sarah_Morgano posted to Commons Connections and gave us a handy guide to adding users to your blogs. Scott Voth @scottvoth posted to Wiki Wrangler about the Apture plug-in that allows readers to stay on your site while browsing links from your blog instead of being directed away.
There’s the week that was on the blogs. I mean it people, go out and play. It’ll be back in the classroom before you know it.
June 16, 2010
Oh Snaps!
While we’ve all had our ears to the ground as the University of California battles Nature Publications, there’s been another development this week as universities and academic publishers start to push each other around more in the courtroom. Apparently Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Sage Press are suing librarians at Georgia State University for making portions of articles available on-line as e-reserves. I can’t even begin to wager on where the Georgia Supreme Court is going to fall on this but is it too early to take a guess on who’s going to be the first to drop titles from those publishers? Thoughts?
May 23, 2010
The Round-Up I Wrote While You Were Watching ‘Lost’
I knew I wouldn’t get home till halfway through ‘Lost’. Tomorrow I get to sequester myself from all media and phone calls until it finally downloads and I can catch up with the rest of society. So while I suffer let me comb through the blogs this week and see what’s going on around the Commons.
First up, Tamar @tamarzilkha over at blogging politics took some time to consider whether the immigration laws in Arizona we’re really all that bad. I’m going to go with yes. Always a fan of acronyms, I tried to the crack the title code. Stop the BS Department of Homeland Security was my first guess. With a little influence from all the poetry going on over at Carl James Grindley @Grindley and Tim Wilson’s @twilson blogs I felt I should try a little harder though and decided on ‘Sundry Things Have a Dozen Hearts Severed’. Don’t blame the art.
Speaking of Carl James Grindley, this week’s poems we’re particularly nice. Coffee Shop is my favorite so far. I thought the poem a day madness from April was a breakneck pace, but it looks like he’s going to come close to keeping up the pace in May.
Appalachian Anthropology had another post up this week. I really love blogs like this that annotate a larger work in process. Although I might not ever get to read the final work that comes out of the process, it’s such a pleasure to watch someone have really personal experience with their research and share that over the course of project. I feel like this is the best way to use a blog in some sense, not so much as a public journal, but at as instrument to record the ways in which the self becomes integrated into the fabric of their own efforts.
Linda Wadas @lindawadas over at For the benefit of all sentient beings brought us some ducklings! More than cute ducks was a reminder that spring is here, which I need to remember because it was a long, long winter.
Michael Oman-Reagan @omanreagan reposted a Pogue’s Post from the Times about IT security overkill that kicked up some conversation in the comments. The Pogue piece was funny but made an excellent point about overkill. That being said it was especially well timed on the heels of news this week that Todd Davis of Lifelock, you know the guy who posts his social security number on his TV commercials talking about how his service keeps your identity safe…has had own identity stolen 14 times since. (Thanks Metafilter!)
To wrap things up I just want to say – Get better soon Tony Picciano!
and…
Congrats to the Commons – we passed 1,000 members sometime this weekend!!!
May 16, 2010
That One Round-Up Where I Agreed With Sarah Palin 5/10 – 5/16
Ah Sunday, that last battle of the week before it all starts over.
So yeah, Sarah Palin has declared “We are all Arizonans” and I couldn’t agree more. I promise though, I won’t have another freak-out about Arizona and all of the crazy going on there.
Naaaaaaaaaaaaaw – just playin’. Did you see this? Turns out that demanding papers from anyone not wearing Crocs and Dockers just isn’t enough. Governor Brewer decided on Wednesday that it was time to outlaw any public high school ethnic-studies class that teaches that one race is persecuted by another. Now I don’t know, but it seems like passing a law that forces police officers to harass any person of Hispanic descent might just invite some conversation on race relations and persecution in Arizona. You know, the kind of thing you would want to discuss in a class dedicated to the history and present of a particular ethnicity. The mind reels.
It’s not just me, I promise! Tamar Zilkha @tamarzilkha posted some thoughts on the matter as well. Watching Eric Holder dance around the issues inherent in the Arizona law by saying “terrorist” over and over reminded me of the good ol’ days of the aughts. Are we still at level orange?
But hark! We are in New York and not the desert! And we’re at CUNY, so enough of my soapbox and let’s talk about the week.
All the regulars popped up this week but there was a new blog in town. Daisy Dominguez @Daisilla at the Salalm Newsletter posted a handful of blogs this week. Of particular interest was a requiem for the subject guide. Maybe not a requiem exactly, but a close look at what it would take to bring subject guides back to life for libraries. The ideas she bounced around we’re interesting and I know there more than a few librarians are hanging out here. Did Web 2.0 kill the subject guide? Are wikis a better format? Paging Scott Voth!
Speaking of – Scott @Scottvoth posted this week with some more news about changes to the Commons. The Wiki section of the Commons is due for a little upgrading. I have to say though, I’m going to miss the mountains from the old blog. That’s life.
Helldriver @helldriver made a brief cameo blogging about an unexpected unicyclist set to the music of Masada. The whole thing kicked up a little discussion in the comments about serendipity in New York. I love New York for that. Maybe it’s the 8 (9, 10, 12) million people who live here, or maybe it’s the magic. Either way I saw Tibetan monks warding off spirits at St. John the Divine’s this weekend with big horns, that’s enough for me. I guess that doesn’t really qualify as serendipity but you should still go check it out.
Jeremy Rafal @jrafal had his vacation jacked up by an ad by Americans for Prosperity urging voters to call congress and tell the government to stop trying to “fix” the internet. I have to say it’s a head scratcher. The ad wants to imply that the government is out there buying banks, car manufacturers and is now rubbing it’s greedy little mitts together scheming to take over the whole system of tubes we love so dearly. Personally I kind of like that the government has fixed that whole free speech problem for me. I also really like the way they fixed civil rights with that anti-freedom American-hating Constitution thing. Clever no?
Finally, Anthony Picciano @apicciano posted this week about an article in the Times regarding too much education. I don’t want to say too much about the article before you read it but it’s largely concerned with how we decide when to steer people to vocational education. On the one hand vocational schools are an excellent way to get into fields that require specialized training and often secure great salaries for those who go that route. The old standby argument in the other direction is that a liberal arts education isn’t meant to be a one way ticket to the middle class. At it’s best a degree takes a person’s life and gives it a depth and richness that it would have been otherwise unrealized. The character and thinking skills developed at college are supposed to be skills that often run parallel to what comes to material success. It’s hard to start a dialogue about the subject because it requires such a broad scope. You have to take a deep breath before every paragraph. But then again, we’ve got the smartest people in the room right here so why aren’t we talking about it?
Ok, I can’t wrap up just yet because I have this nagging feeling…
I’m sorry about what happened up there at the top. I lost my cool talking about Arizona…
I know Crocs are comfortable, I know.
May 1, 2010
Finally – April’s Over!
Good Lord what a long month.
The blogs were in bloom this week on the Commons. Maybe it was the never-ending rain that forced everyone to sit home and write poetry, or maybe we all just felt like chumps for letting Carl James Grindley do all of the heavy lifting this month over at Poems in Progress. Whatever the motivation there was poetry in spades here. Timothy Wilson was feeling prolific towards the end and broke out some Spanish on us. Good thing we’re not in Arizona or…you know…he’d probably accused of being a Mex’can terrorist commie illegal or something. Ok, alright, Footenotes isn’t exactly a bully pulpit, but come on Arizona. COME ON!
Shhhh…just relax, it’s ok, they’re far away from here and it’s not like I’m in dire need of turquoise or anything.
Anyways, poetry. All of our favorites threw in. Michael Oman-Reagan posted perennial favorite Lawrence Ferlinghetti via Religion Scholars and Linda Wadas at For the Benefit of All Sentient Beings offered some photography as poetry. I was holding out for Scott Voth to write a little ode to wikis but, alas, it was not to be.
But it wasn’t all sonnets and stanzas around here. Tamar Zilkha made a return to the Commons this week thoroughly annoyed with the Census Bureau. It was an interesting post about what constitutes race to the government and good ole Uncle Sam might be a little out of his league when trying to define race. Honestly at this point I wish I hadn’t turned in my Census form yet because I’d love to make a few changes to my own answers. Especially in light of this stupid friggin law that Arizona passed.
It’s basically like a bunch of people in Arizona realized that they’re referred to as the “South-West” and decided it was time to invest a little more in the “Southern” part of South-West. Like, maybe Arizona just got lonely because the only other states that would hang out with it were Utah and New Mexico. I’d be pretty lonely too, but making eyes at Alabama just because you’re tired of the dry heat…I don’t even know what I’m saying. As a southern refugee I always looked towards the desert peoples as wise sages of the brush. Now you don’t need a license to carry a concealed gun and it’s ok to stop anyone (Latino) and demand papers. Because the wild west was so much fun you know, just like at Six Flags.
No seriously, it’s ok, I’m done.
Tony Picciano pulled up Maureen Dowd’s op-ed in the Times this week about the Goldman Sachs hearing over on Tony’s Thoughts. As much as I’d love for something to come out of the criminal charges headed towards Goldman I just don’t see it amounting to much. What I suspect is that Lloyd Blankfein is just going to erect a giant wall of gold bricks around Goldman Sachs downtown and throw big diamonds at SEC investigators till they give up from all of the bruises.
While Scott Voth did not deliver on a wiki poem, he made a post over at Wiki Wrangler giving us a sneak peak at his masters thesis work. The post cards are lovely and it’s a great project suited to the scope of Omeka. Takes some time to visit the Omeka site and learn about what they’re doing.
Speaking of technology and academia, Adam Wandt had a really touching post on the increasing use of technology by the elderly. He set up his grandmother with a computer and got her to explore the internet and technology with some really great benefits on the side. The links towards the end are a nice touch if you’re looking for some further reading on the mental benefits of technology. Congrats Adam!
Finally, Helldriver made it in just under the wire for this week’s round up. It’s a post about spring and music. That, of course, is an understatement, but were I to try and explain what a great post it is I’d just ruin it. To be frank, I think the best thing I can say about Helldriver’s post today is that it’s enough to make me wrap up this week’s round up and get the hell out of my apartment.
See ya next week folks!
April 24, 2010
Things I Learned About Myself on the Commons…Round Up!
Well, first I learned that I can’t remember if ‘About’ would be capitalized in a title for a blog. I’d go grab my copy of Strunk & White but…you know.
More importantly I learned:
Mary Carroll is my new hero.
Apparently I’m buying an Android.
I am a Twitter moron.
And…
I don’t go to enough Black Metal shows.
Let me explain.
So I started to read all of the blogs for this week’s round-up and things got off to a great start with Mark Carroll’s Always a Bridesmaid. I was basically stopped cold in my tracks when I got just one meager sentence into the post and read:
“I decided I would Nora Ephron them with my morning coffee.”
Never in my life have I seen Nora Ephron turned into a verb. Genius. So genius I didn’t get it at first. Was Mary Carroll going to reveal the identity of Deep Throat or was she trying to land a gig at Huffington Post? Nobody cares about Mark Felt anymore (Nixon who?) but the writing was great. Tender when it needed to be, acerbic for the rest. I have to say though, couldn’t you just Modge-Podge some of your old acting posters all over your husband’s sculptures?
The rest of the post brings up a good point about online and blended courses, and what we lose as educators when the classroom turns to pixels. In our rush to meld the internet and its endless features into a measured instrument for education we often let our enthusiasm overrun an appreciation for face time. Not to get all Martin Buber, but those breakthrough moments are hard to see on a Facebook update.
Speaking of Facebook updates, I mean Twitter, I finally caved and signed up. I was reading Sarah Morgano’s post at Commons Connections and started to feel a little left behind. I’m following four people and they’re all co-workers. Epic. I’ll be sure to blog about my life with Twitter as I get the hang of it. Fortunately there are a lot of great resources around the Commons for getting up to speed. So what is this number sign # thing supposed to do?
Foolishly I thought I was inciting violence last week when I ragged on Apple products to Michael Oman-Reagan, resident Mac guru at the Grad Center. Turns out he’s just as unhappy as I am. He made a post this week about Steve Jobs’ touchy feelings on porn. Apparently King Steve doesn’t want smut on his products. No surprise there, that’s long been the standard at Apple, but it does raise some interesting questions about who gets to shape morality in this age of open source. Is market ubiquity the same thing as censorship? Are Apple products so good looking and seductive that we’re not even tempted by anything else? That being said…we all remember what happened to Betamax.
Anthony Picciano from Tony’s Thoughts is away at a blended learning conference so no links this week. Hopefully on his way back we’ll get a post about what was going on there. Maybe they addressed some of the issues brought up at Always a Bridesmaid.
Helldriver was back this week blogging about the Immortal show at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple. First off, any black metal show at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple sounds rad. That place must be charged with like 150 years worth of super secret Masonic ritual stuff. We’re lucky the Earth didn’t split open and unleash a thousand winged Dan Browns all over Brooklyn. More importantly, this:
“They absolutely exploded when the lights went down, and the shadow of the drummer appeared behind the kit, and then the other two members of the trio sprang from the wings in a miasma of noise and smoke. They banged their heads and made devil-horns. They knew all the words, and “sang” them, too, as surely as if the lead singer had said, “Now, boys and girls, aspirate along with me …”
Seriously, whatever you were doing that night wasn’t half as fun.
Finally – Carl James Grindley is just about done with Poetry Month. I’m not exactly sure why this makes me happy, but it works on the same level as when I watch the marathon run right through my neighborhood each year. For no real reason other than the thrill of it I just stand there waving my stupid inflatable TMobile balloon as the athletes slug through. You’re almost there!
April 10, 2010
It’s Blog Pandemonium!
I mean, ok, that’s hyperbole – but did you see the sidebar this week? It’s full of blog posts!
The week kicked off with our very own Sarah Morgano over at ‘Random Interweb Findings‘ more than a little annoyed with the governor of Virginia, Robert McDonnell. Turns out April in Virginia is Confederate History Month! Why so glum Sarah, sounds fabulous…Civil War reenactments, spirited and reasonable debates about the inherent dignity of an entire ethnicity, and solemn reflection on those lost comrades…er…brothers…er…patriots who died to make this country…er…what would have been this country great. Just the thought of it is enough to make me want to put on some boots and drive down to Dixie.
But that wasn’t all. A little further down the week Sarah discovered that the only way for her to get a phone signal was to buy a phone tower for her apartment. By time you buy the phone and the tower you might as well plug a cord into the wall and re-learn how to use a rotary. Having all that gear in your house means you’re just a drum machine and some speaker cable away from being a Radioshack. I talk a big game but honestly I really want a Sprint MiFi because my wi-fi service is terrible. Good ole lead paint and asbestos walls.
Joseph Ugoretz from ‘Prestidigitation‘ dropped in twice this week to give us his thoughts on the iPad and some thoughts on his trip to Googleplex for the Google Apps for Education Summit. Basically the iPad is mega-awesome and either you already own one or you’re at your front door now pacing back and forth till the UPS guy shows up.
*ahem*
At the risk of setting off Michael Oman-Reagan of ‘My God, it’s full of Macs‘ I gotta say – I hate Macs. I know, I know…I was seduced by the touch screen. My heart melted at the beer drinking app on the iPhone. Everyone loves Shazam because it really is annoying when you’re at a bar and some great song comes on and you get home and can’t remember a snippet of the lyrics to Google.
But there’s something so……..judge-y……about Macs. Something kinda Sarah Palin-y about how they know everything and have this utter lack of shame and humility.
“I’m an iPad, ain’t I cutesy patatoosie?”
I just think of a murder of iPads out together taking stupid pictures of themselves in front of landmarks.
Ok, I’m done. Googleplex sounds awesome though and I’m looking forward to seeing what Google will do to education as technology advances further into the classroom.
While we’re talking about technology and education, Adam Wandt at ‘Academic Technology in Higher Education‘ checked in with us to go over the relative merits of various online classrooms. His insights are indispensable for anyone who wants to know what their options are for online meeting tools and we learned that if you’re super-lucky the ‘Goddess of Communications’ for Elluminate will visit your blog and comment. We didn’t even have to sacrifice an iPad.
Anthony Picciano and his blog ‘Tony’s Thoughts‘ return to the blog roll this week. This week Tony pulled out a great NY Times article about cyberbullying and the rarely considered longevity of all things left to float out in cyberspace by today’s capricious young people. Yes, I just wrote cyberspace. It fit in with my mention of ‘floating’. I know, I know – I don’t even deserve a Mac. Tony pulls out the best from the Times so take a bit and go have a read.
Finally on the week that was, the Commons own Scott Voth at ‘Wiki Wrangler‘ put up a piece about WiliLeaks, a Swiss run wiki that gives people of all stripes a safe space to leak documents and information. It’s funny that Scott put this up because I just learned about it a couple of days ago from a colleague of mine who shared some video footage Scott also mentions in his post. the footeage incriminates some US soldiers in violating rules of engagement and beyond that I’m not sure what to tell you. Part of me wants to say don’t watch it because it’s awful, and the other part of me feels like we’re all obligated to make ourselves sit down and watch it because it’s irresponsible not to. No jokes here, do what you think is right.
See ya next week!
April 3, 2010
Weekly Round-Up! 3/28-4/3
Earlier in the week there was this moment where ‘Footenotes’ was lingering on the sidebar, floating along as the most ‘Recent Blog Post’ and as I sipped my coffee and chewed my granola I carelessly muttered, “Lord, somebody has got to post something…”
and behold:
I had no idea that my careless prayer would be received by Baphomet and bring the CUNY Commons its first music blog. In fact at first I literally didn’t believe. Had someone sneaked in under the wire? The vague profile, the sordid drug tales, everything reeked of mystery and betrayal. As I made my way to the end of this inaugural post I realized that no, this was not some malevolent prank, but the threat of a music blog right here on the Commons! Helldriver makes no promises, but I do hope to see more from the space in the weeks to come.
Faith now restored, I saw that we also got a post from our very own Scott Voth, the CUNY Commons Wiki-Wrangler. In a move that might be so meta Web2.0y it’ll blow you mind- we got blog post about a new wiki page about the Commons Wiki! Scott was pointing the way to this awesome introduction to wiki’s he wrote and if you didn’t catch it on the first go round now’s your chance. If you haven’t made a wiki or contributed to the existing ones you’re missing out on a great feature of the CUNY Academic Commons so get over there.
See, things were looking up. We had music, we had wikis, it was looking like smooth sailing until Heather Heim over at ‘Thoughts on Jury Duty‘…
Ok, I have to stop for a second and stand up to clap. ‘Thoughts on Jury Duty’ might be the best name for a blog ever. You see it and you think;
“Do I really want to read a blog about jury duty? Naw, but who would so it can’t be about jury duty. That’s got to be funny or ironic right? I’m gonna click it.”
Then you click it and it is a blog about jury duty, but by this point you’ve already clicked the damn thing so you start to read it and you’re sucked in…
“I mean the guy was 80, do you really think sticking a tube in his small intestine killed him? No, being 80 killed him, but I mean, if the doctor was aiming for the stomach and missed he couldn’t have been much of a doctor. And what’s up with all the rules for a civil malpractice suit jury, between the questions and the voting process you’d think they were picking a pope or something…”
Anyways, I’ve digressed, but I feel you on jury duty Heather, it’s been years since the last time I was on a jury and still don’t know if we made the right decision about the defendant.
What I was going to say…eventually…after that detour…was that ‘Thoughts on Jury Duty‘ had an excellent link to this article in the Times about new technology that allows companies to keep a close eye on what their employees are doing on facebook/twitter/the usual suspects. While I find it a little loathsome that this service is on the rise, if you don’t know by now how to keep dirt off your face(book) you probably are a liability to your company…by being an idiot.
Finally, Carl James Grindley over at ‘Poems in Progress‘ has two new works up and would like to remind everybody that April is Poetry Month. In the spirit of April I’ll give it my best:
A Haiku:
The CUNY Commons;
I had things to do today,
but read blogs instead.
March 4, 2010
Empire State of Mind
So I had juuuuuust about managed to get that Alicia Key’s hook out of my head when I started digging around this week’s blogs for highlights and clicked on ‘Print is Dead…Now What?’ Looks like the folks over at York College Comm Tech just gave you a way to earn $1,000 and get out of the house. C’mon – print is dead and you could use the cash so make the ad already.
Meanwhile over at blogging politics Tamar wants to know whether state intervention is ever justified and goes on to say:
“I am unconvinced that the American, or any Western European states’ populations, are so benevolent and selfless that we can objectively evaluate the quality and necessity for intervention in areas we are completely unfamiliar with.
It is not necessary to apply a judgment to the leadership, population, and cultures that breed what we consider to be reprehensible behaviors. Humanitarianism is a vague concept; I just cannot logically separate it from any other moral crusade in history in which a state transported humanity to areas that it considered uncivilized…”
Oh snap.
That kicked off some debate in the comments that I’m going to leave alone, but I am excited to see the Politics folks get set up at the Commons and I hope we see a lot more of these conversations!
On an only-slightly-less touchy topic, Anthony Picciano over at Tony’s Thoughts pulled out this interesting article from the New York Times on Diane Ravitch’s seeming about face on education reform in America. She maintains her long-standing faith in the public school system as a pillar of social mobility (Go CUNY!) but seems to have gone tepid on standardized tests and charter schools. Has she grown softer or wiser?
Our week of contentious issues wraps up with Michael over at My God, it’s Full of Macs portending the end of Flash because a bunch of iPhone junkies apparently now dictate taste and technology to the rest of us. Don’t mind me, I’m just jealous.
On a final note, even if you don’t speak French you should check out Le Hub for the artwork on the sidebar. Earlier today I found this:
Dude has a sphinx climbing up his leg…
do we intervene?
