Julie's cutting edge blog

24% of rural users have broadband

2007-02-21T13:14:00.000-08:00

Of those, many are gaining access via wireless and satellite because DSL or cable are not available.

Making a call 1000 feet under

2007-02-08T15:28:00.000-08:00

VOIP cell phones that can be used underground are being developed to make it possible to communicate with miners that might get trapped due to a cave in. The first successful tests were completed last month in a former mine in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.

What is Web 2.0? (video)

2007-02-08T12:30:00.000-08:00

Enjoy this poetic interpretation created by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University.

Top 50 careers of the next 10 years

2007-02-04T12:34:00.000-08:00

Top 10 includes Computer Software Engineers - Applications, Computer Software Engineers - Systems Software, Computer Systems Analysts, and Computer and Information Systems Managers.

British Library and US DOE to partner on science portal

2007-01-29T13:38:00.000-08:00

To be called "Science.world", the website will be available to scientists in all nations as well as anyone interested in science.

Video game sales up 19% (library password required)

2007-01-18T15:04:00.000-08:00

Of the $12.5 billion in sales last year, $4.6 billion was hardware, $6.5 billion was software, and $451 million was accessories. (Need help with password?)

Azusa man first to be convicted for phishing (library password required)

2007-01-18T14:52:00.000-08:00

Jeffrey Goodin sent emails to Time Warner/AOL customers requesting personal information and was convicted under the 2003 Can-Spam Act. (Need help with password?)

What do we learn from video games?

2007-01-18T13:24:00.000-08:00

True or false: "There is a fundamental order to the universe, and it works. If you play by its rules and defer to its requirements, you will lead a pretty fantastic life."

Nth reason to use Google Scholar

2007-01-18T10:28:00.000-08:00

A new report comparing Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. The latter comes out looking pretty good ("strong on computer science") for a free product.

Get paid to write open source software!

2007-01-16T14:26:00.000-08:00

From today's Campus Technology newsletter.

Researchers set record for network data transfers

2007-01-09T14:12:00.000-08:00

An international research team's demonstration of "High Speed Data Gathering, Distribution and Analysis for Physics Discoveries at the Large Hadron Collider" achieved a peak throughput of 17.77 gigabits per second (via Campus Technology).

Search for the people, by the people

2007-01-04T11:26:00.000-08:00

Jimmy Wales, the creator of Wikipedia, is planning to create a search engine that determines relevancy based on input from users rather than algorithms that can be outsmarted by webpage owners. This sounds like the Librarians' Internet Index, except bigger.

New CS/CIS books

2007-01-03T13:19:00.000-08:00

I've updated my new books for 2006-07. Check out all the new CS/CIS titles.

Need a book? Go to the "ATM"

2006-12-21T11:00:00.000-08:00

Imagine a machine that can print and bind a 550-page book in any language, even right-to-left languages, in less than 7 minutes, on demand. The Espresso, made by On Demand Books, will debut in 25 libraries and bookstores around the country in 2007.

A Library on a Disc

2006-12-18T11:55:00.000-08:00

A research team at University of Central Florida has developed a new technology that stores massive amounts of data -- the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's entire collection, for example -- onto a single disc or cube. See Two-Photon 3D Optical Data Storage via Fluorescence Modulation of an Efficient Fluorene Dye by a Photochromic Diarylethene in Advanced Materials, Volume 18, Issue 21, Date: November, 2006, Pages: 2910-2914, by C. C. Corredor, Z.-L. Huang, K. D. Belfield. (Off campus? Login with your library password.) A patent is pending.

Computer science students help with election

2006-11-27T16:50:00.000-08:00

Yolo County hired graduate students in the computer science program at UC Davis to work on election day. They set up, troubleshooted, and took down electronic polling machines, dubbed "black monster[s]" by some elderly volunteers who found them intimidating to use.

Having had the opportunity to tinker with the machines as part of research into computer security, one student commented, "It's scary to me to have votes tallied on a machine that isn't open to public scrutiny and that the code isn't open for everyone to see,"

Experts say U.S. must move on Internet Protocol version 6

2006-11-06T08:24:00.000-08:00

Under IPv6, web addresses will be made up of 128 bits of information unlike the 32 bits used today. Of 1000 surveyed, 62% believed the head start of other countries would hurt U.S. national security, and 58% believed it would hurt the stability of the Internet in the U.S.