Just got back to my office after a lunch meeting and thought I’d do a little RSS before my 1:30 … tried to hit Google Reader and I see the following:
The rest of the Internets is fine, just Google … no calendar either. Never thought I’d see that one.
I was supposed to be in Atlanta this week for ELI, but alas I am still sick after nearly 10 full days. Ear infection, sinus infection, and now the worst sore throat I think I’ve ever had. The bummer with missing ELI is that I actually really like their take on things — they pay attention to the little guy and innovation seems to matter to them. It is so less formal than the big Educause annual event … it is just a nice place to spend a few days. The other bummer was that I was going to get to hang out with three great high school friends who moved to Atlanta years ago. Oh well … always next year.
Speaking of real life, I came across perhaps one of the best sites I have seen in quite some time — Get a First Life. I have a Second Life account and I even play (is that what you do in SL?) it every now and then. At ETS we are offering an Engagement Award for faculty who want to something interesting with it and a colleague of mine, Brett Bixler maintains a blog for us related to it. At any rate the hype and almost ironic utilization of SL has always made me feel a little less than impressed with it as a real life simulator. I guess I’m not the only one … Darren Barefoot has built one of the best things I’ve seen in a long time. It has to be worth a peek.
My friend Brad beat me to this one … last night we took Madeline to get her picture taken with Santa at the Nittany Mall. Let’s just say it was an interesting experience. Not only was the big guy 45 minutes late coming back from the “feeding the reindeer” break, but the whole thing was a bit unsettling.
As we were standing in line, Madeline asked “do I really need to sit on that guy’s lap” Let me remind you that she is turning 5 in a couple of days, so she could see right through this “Santa’s” makeup. The thing that blew my mind was the poster shown below that offered not only the picture of the photo shoot, but the ability to purchase the copyright of said photo for a mere $22.00 dollars. As my friend Brad asked today during the latest ETS Talk Podcast, “do we all need personal IP attorneys walking around with us?” Something tells me that we are on the verge of a major societal collapse when Santa wants to own the images of children all over the World.
Yes, it does appear as though I get all my news from the Daily Show. That would be ridiculous … the “real” news is on sometimes when I am out to dinner and I can read the crawl from across the room. At any rate, here is yet another wonderful piece about Net Neutrality on the Daily Show. Wonderful explanation, actually.
I wrote a little bit about Net Neutrality the other day … last night on the Daily Show, John Stewart did a piece on it. All I can say is WTF! “The Internet is a series of tubes.” Wow.
