Neil Young Expands Pono Digital-to-Analogue Music Service
"Beginning next year [2013], Pono will release a line of portable players, a music-download service and digital-to-analog conversion technology intended to present songs as they first sound during studio recording sessions. In his book out this week, Waging Heavy Peace, Young writes that Pono will help unite record companies with cloud storage 'to save the sound of music.' As Flea raves to Rolling Stone, 'It's not like some vague thing that you need dogs' ears to hear. It's a drastic difference.'
Pono's preservation of the fuller, analog sound already has the ear of the Big Three record labels: Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony Music. WMG - home to artists including Muse, the Black Keys, Common and Jill Scott - has converted its library of 8,000 album titles to high-resolution, 192kHz/24-bit sound. It was a process completed prior to the company's partnership with Young's Pono project last year, said Craig Kallman, chairman and chief executive of Atlantic Records.'"
(Patrick Flanary, 27 September 2012, Rolling Stone)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
What is a PLE?
"For students and lifelong adult learners, we can think of such a permanent home domain as a personal learning environment (PLE). It is not one particular cloud app, rather it is the 'pure web' with a toolset enabling the person/owner of that domain to constantly adapt it to new developments. It grows with the person over time and constantly reflects new 'interior designs' and 'remodeling' as needed. A PLE allows the owner of it to be a true author, contributor, and social interactor with the wider web ecology while still maintaining the stability of a personal home base on the web which is not dependent on the evolving marketing strategies of free portal services...
Unlike the 'exhibition model' digital portfolios, a PLE is much more naturally attuned to the authentic personal and professional needs of the owner. Of course, as in a digital portfolio, we all like to naturally exhibit/display new features. However the passive role of an 'exhibit' is only one of many features of a fluid PLE site. Along with exhibiting this or that project, a PLE might just as likely be hosting a discussion on a particular topic, asking visitors to complete a quick survey, providing a quick 'breaking news' report about storm damage in one neighborhood, contributing a 'how to' screencast video on a recently learned technique…the possibilities are endless!"
(W3PLE, 2011)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Cloud-based facial recognition services rely on finding publicly available pictures of you online
"With Carnegie Mellon's cloud-centric new mobile app, the process of matching a casual snapshot with a person's online identity takes less than a minute. Tools like PittPatt and other cloud-based facial recognition services rely on finding publicly available pictures of you online, whether it's a profile image for social networks like Facebook and Google Plus or from something more official from a company website or a college athletic portrait. In their most recent round of facial recognition studies, researchers at Carnegie Mellon were able to not only match unidentified profile photos from a dating website (where the vast majority of users operate pseudonymously) with positively identified Facebook photos, but also match pedestrians on a North American college campus with their online identities.
The repercussions of these studies go far beyond putting a name with a face; researchers Alessandro Acquisti, Ralph Gross, and Fred Stutzman anticipate that such technology represents a leap forward in the convergence of offline and online data and an advancement of the 'augmented reality' of complementary lives. With the use of publicly available Web 2.0 data, the researchers can potentially go from a snapshot to a Social Security number in a matter of minutes."
(Jared Keller, 29 September 2011, The Atlantic Magazine)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Pearson launches their OpenClass learning environment
"Pearson today made a major move to increase access and collaboration in higher education by launching OpenClass. A key component of Pearson's vision to increase access, achievement and affordability, OpenClass offers institutions and instructors the ability to engage and interact with their students using the collaborative technologies that students are embracing - at no cost.
OpenClass is a new kind of self-service learning management system (LMS) delivered from the Cloud. It is easy to use and completely free. There are no hardware, licensing or hosting costs, thus enabling widespread adoption of new learning approaches that encourage interaction within the classroom and around the world.
'Now, educators and students are able to communicate and collaborate in new ways across institutions and around the globe - providing a richer, more personal and more connected learning experience. At no cost,' said Matt Leavy, CEO of Pearson eCollege.
OpenClass integrates seamlessly with Google Apps for Education™ and will be available starting this week in the Google Apps Marketplace™, Google's online storefront for Google Apps™ products and services. With single sign-on and a unified navigation bar, instructors and students can launch OpenClass from within Google Apps or access their Google applications from OpenClass. Launching OpenClass in the Google Apps Marketplace™ provides institutions with the easiest path to adoption and an avenue to reach institutions already familiar with the benefits of cloud-based solutions.
'We're excited to have OpenClass in the Google Apps Marketplace,' said Obadiah Greenberg, Google's Business Development Manager for Education. 'OpenClass is tightly integrated with Google Apps for Education, our free suite of communication and collaboration applications. Through the Google Apps Marketplace, schools will have access to OpenClass. We are happy to offer this complementary learning management system to the millions of students, faculty and staff already using Google Apps.'
'OpenClass has huge potential for higher education,' said Adrian Sannier, Senior Vice President of Learning Technologies at Pearson. 'OpenClass accelerates what technology will do for learning with a free, open and innovative platform that easily scales and lets students work via social media, with an intense focus on learning that elevates achievement.'
Pearson, working closely with its design partners, will rapidly advance the capabilities of OpenClass to leverage the rich data and social foundations of the platform and the ability to release new functionality frequently. Design partners include Abilene Christian University, Arizona State University, Central Piedmont Community College, West Virginia University at Parkersburg, Monash University, Kentucky Community & Technical College System, Rice University, the University of Wisconsin Extension and Columbia University. Many of these institutions are already teaching courses on OpenClass this fall.
'We truly believe that OpenClass is a disruptive technology for education,' said Kevin Roberts, Chief Planning and Information Officer at Abilene Christian University. 'Pearson's commitment to providing an open and free platform is monumental. The days of 'business as usual' in higher education are gone. OpenClass is a powerful tool to help us move forward into the connected, mobile and open world that we live in.'"
(Susan Aspey, Pearson press release 13 October 2011)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Mixcloud: joining the dots between radio shows, Podcasts and DJ mixes
"Quite simply, Mixcloud helps connect radio content to listeners more effectively. Mixcloud is re-thinking radio by joining the dots between radio shows, Podcasts and DJ mixes. We refer to them as Cloudcasts - audio shows that are stored in the 'cloud' and available to be streamed on-demand.
A Cloudcast is an extended audio show that is hosted in the 'cloud', in other words hosted somewhere centrally on the Internet rather than on your local hard-drive. Therefore, unlike Podcasts, Cloudcasts can be enjoyed via on-demand streaming without any waiting required. ...
Mixcloud is a legal platform for on-demand radio shows, Podcasts and DJ mixes which contain copyrighted music. The only licensing option available at present is a streaming format, and Mixcloud is committed to providing a legal option which supports artists and ensures they receive royalties for the shows and mixes which contain music. In addition, the site can keep track of what you (and your friends) listen to, so we can make better recommendations and provide a more personalised site tuned to exactly what you like to hear."
(Mixcloud)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
