Yee.  Haw.

As hard as I am on Arizona I’m tempted to lay into the land I hail from because there’s no shortage of material…but it’s hard people.  I’ve spent everyday at the pool and walking around whole houses that cost a third of my rent.  Did you know you buy a house?  Crazy.

Meanwhile on the Commons it looks like everyone’s been keeping busy.  Anthony Picciano @apicciano posted a new Pew study on cloud computing and where they think that’s headed.   Seems that cloud computing has been on lots of peoples’ minds.  Microsoft clearly took note and has since decided to release a basic version of their Office Suite for free online to stay up with Google Documents.  The kids over at Diaspora seem to be thinking in the other direction.  Concerned about all the privacy fuss that Facebook managed to kick up massaging the idea of privacy a little while floating up on that cloud, Diaspora wants to connect a social network that would let users host their own servers and let small communities keep their info back here on earth.  In either case, it’s clear that cloud computing is here to stay and going to play a larger role in the future of the internet.  Anyone uploaded a document to their group lately?

Scott Voth posted on the Omeka blog this week about a new feature for managing media archives called Exhibit Builder.  Developing open source tools for this kind of work allows communities of all sizes to have access to quick and cost effective ways to control unruly collections of data that can often get buried.  Tools like Omeka play an enormous role in good scholarship and open source models are clearly going to continue to gain popularity as universities look for ways to trim the fat…er…shave more of the muscle off of already lean budgets.

While I’m on the subject, Sarah Morgano @Sarah_Morgano over at Common Connections had a post up on Open Access and what she took from April’s Digital University Conference.   I don’t think it’s any coincidence that open source technology and questions of publishing research have started to crop up.  More to the point, the University of California’s decision to boycott Nature Publishing and the ongoing lawsuit against some Georgia State University librarians that I posted about earlier in the week are signs of a new culture war inside of academia.  The potential for research and the construction of new knowledge has never been more acute with developments in the last 10 years in technology.  Old models of publishing are clearly being challenged by faculty who want to use this technology to do what they dedicated their lives to, learn and teach.  The question still remains as to who will foot the bill.  Thoughts?

On to lighter fair (or heavier, depending on your acid reflux) – the CUNY Pie blog resurfaced this week.  Apparently there was some pizza and people ate it.  Where, Matt, where was the eloquent description of the tobacco colored crust and sauce tinged with just a dash of paprika?  The people demand answers!

Helldriver was back this week too.  I felt a little bad about knocking Rush last week in the round up, but it passed.   This week we got a look at Jacky Terrasson’s trio and some insight on the sartorial responsibilities of a band leader.  Helldriver’s blogs make me feel like I’m missing out some huge part of New York that I’m either  too busy (uh…yeah that’s it)  or too lazy (ok that’s the truth)  to go find.  I have to get off of my cloud I guess.

And there you have it, the week that was on the blogs.  Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go outside and look at all of the stars before I fly back home.  Read it and weep.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QltlctqfY4E[/youtube]