Tim Abbott

MacBook sleuth

When a woman in Santa Cruz had her Macbook stolen she enlisted the help of a friend who had a .mac account and a user account on her computer. Using Mac OS X Leopard’s “Back to My Mac” screen sharing feature he has been able to track and identify the thief including taking photos of him using the built in Photo Booth camera. The Police are now on the trail of the thief with a warrant...

You can follow the story on this blog

Links for today - 080312

Here are some links to useful stuff and fun stuff...

First the fun stuff;

Stuff White People Like  Wryly observed commentary on our middle class western lifestyle.
[Thanks Joel]

Useful stuff;

Free Mac Software does exactly what it says. Simon Elliott is a teacher in Cornwall and the brains behind thefreemac

And dafont is a site with nearly 8000 free or nearly free fonts all neatly organised and regularly updated.
[Thanks Tom]

Software advice to schools

Some IT related bits and pieces today.

Thanks to an article on the Becta web site (see below) I discovered a link to OpenDisc, a site that collates links to (and distributes on CD) high quality open source software for Windows users (some apps are also available in OSX and Linux).

Becta, the UK education technology agency, published a report on Microsoft Vista and Office 2007 at the beginning of January looking at document interoperability and analysing the suitability of both software packages for adoption by schools and colleges. It's main recommendations are:

• avoid installing Vista for interoperability reasons, except where they are doing new institution wide installations.
• there should be no widespread deployment of Office 2007 until schools and colleges are sure that they have in place mechanisms to deal with interoperability and potential digital divide issues over Microsoft's new .docx (OOXML) format and that where there are users of Office 2007 they should not save in the .docx format. It also highlights Microsoft's limited implementation of the ODF document standard.
• pupils, parents and teachers should be made aware of 'free to use' products currently available and the ICT industry should do more to highlight these products.

Becta also has a complaint pending with the Office of Fair Trading over Microsoft's educational licensing programme.

Information

The information we can access, and the way we access it, has changed out of all recognition in the last 10 years. This amazingly creative video tells that story.

Bitmap to vector conversion

Thanks to EasyRew for this link to Vector Magic, an online tool for converting images from bitmap to vector. If you've ever struggled with undersized fuzzy bitmaps you'll appreciate this big-time.

FotoFlexer

FotoFlexer, the online photo editing application has just added some more amazing features. There are demos on the website which show you the sort of things that are possible.
This may not be one for the photography purists, but there are some neat tricks in there!

In rainbows - a tiping point?

Everybody's talking about it, Radiohead's new album In Rainbows being released on the internet on a 'pay what you think it's worth' basis.

Over the last five years or so it's become more and more obvious that the traditional distribution model for getting music from the artist to the fans is under strain. CD sales have fallen, downloading and file swapping (most of it illegal) has risen exponentially. Somewhere in the middle old style fixed price distribution has formed an uneasy marriage with new style music downloads in the form of DRM restricted online music stores, though in reality this has become just another market segment rather than the new dominant model. The obvious and uber-simple concept of just letting your fans download your tunes has been at odds with the question, where does the money come from to pay for music production in the first place?

Enter Radiohead who, whilst not the first to offer their music this way, appear, thanks to their huge popularity and devoted fan base, to have marked a tipping point in a new model of distribution that embraces the new of downloading with the old of fan loyalty. This is no longer the market economy, but the gift economy. The band 'gifts' their work to the world and the world 'gifts' their money in return.

Of course, the gift economy only works so far - Radiohead can afford to do this because they are already well established and have a fan base loyal enough to cough up a bit of money. The average seems to be about £4 according to research into 3000 downloaders by music industry newsletter Record of the Day, though about a third didn't pay anything at all. Already other big names, including David Bowie, Jamiroquai and The Charlatans are considering distributing their music in a similar way with others looking on in  interest. These bands make money from gigs, so there's always the possibility that getting their tunes into more people's lives could mean more people at gigs. And no matter how generous you feel, musicians, producers and studios still need to be paid somehow, so there's little sign that gigs will soon be on a gift basis too.

In an interesting parallel, Gerd Leonhard, author of The Future of Music has recently started publishing his next book for free on this blog, one chapter at a time. His blog-book, End of Control  explores "how technology is shifting control over media to the people formerly known as consumers".  Chapters one and two are already out.

FreeMind

This looks like a handy app. FreeMind is a mind mapping tool that works in Java. It's free to download and use, and there are versions for Windows, OSX and Linux.
More information and a download link here

Thanks to Ben and Tom, missional leadership buddies, for the heads up on this.

The Holocaust and the History curriculum

I may be late on this one, but since it dropped into my inbox yesterday I thought I'd mention it.

There's an alarmist email doing the rounds about the Holocaust being dropped from the uk history curriculum because it offends Muslims. With a subject line:
EVERY DAY - THE MORONS ARE CHANGING THE HISTORY BOOKS...
you'd be right to be suspicious. Here's what it said;

Recently this week, UK removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it "offended" the Moslem population which claims it never occurred.
This is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.
It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended.
This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six millionJews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated with the German and Russian peoples looking the other way!
Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to be"a myth," it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets. This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people worldwide!
Join us and be a link in the memorial chain and help us distribute it around the world.

Please send this e-mail to 10 people you know and ask them to continue the memorial chain.
Please don't just delete it. It will only take you a minute to pass this along -

Thanks!

Yes, you've guessed it - it's absolutely wrong.

The rumour started following a government report on the teaching of history which showed that at KS4 GCSE some teachers were avoiding historical events which would be emotive or controversial in their area. The report cited one history department in a northern city which decided not to teach the Holocaust as a topic for GCSE coursework.

The report was picked up at the beginning of April by The Daily Mail, The Telegraph and The Guardian all of which identified the difficulty of teaching some aspects of the history curriculum where there are strongly held views among the local community about these events.

On the specific issue of the Holocaust, it remains a coursework topic at GCSE and is compulsory at KS3 (11's - 14's). It will remain a part of the history curiculum at KS3 in the new syllabus which comes into force in September 2008.

The original report is here.
Here's how the BBC reported the issue.
There is a balanced and informative response from the Holocaust Education Trust

Whilst on the subject of email hoaxes, if you haven't already done so you should check out TruthOrFiction.com which keeps tabs on all of these eRumours and checks them out to see if they are true or not.

South Park character generator

Today's coffee break entertainment - Create your own South Park character.
This is doing the rounds here like wildfire - we love it!! Thanks to Kristian for spotting it.
This is me.