PLAY
PLAY
PLAY
PLAY
PLAY
PLAY
PLAY
PLAY
PLAY
PLAY
PLAY
PLAY
PLAY
Interview With Lawrence Goldstone, Author Of The Anatomy of Deception
PLAY
PLAY
The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Obsession, Commerce, and Adventure
PLAY
Interview With Joseph Boyden, Author of Through Black Spruce
PLAY
PLAY
Interview with Nino Ricci, Governor-General Award-Winning Author
So we’re in a recession, and people keep losing their jobs. However it’s likely these people weren’t in any of these career categories. Check out a list of recession-proof careers:
Boston College will no longer be giving their students school e-mail addresses when they join the student body. The thinking is that everyone already has an established online identity by the time they’re in college, and therefore all they will be offering are forwarding services. Read more…
Not that it’s a popular practice, but if you’re applying to college and you have a Facebook, MySpace, or some other kind of public profile, be careful - your school-to-be could check to make sure you’re the kind of person they want representing their school. For the most part, these schools don’t have time to be checking every student’s profile, but if they receive a tip about something questionable, they might check it out. Of course, you can easily prevent this by A) changing your settings to private, where only your friends can access your profile, or B) not putting anything stupid on there in the first place. But where’s the fun in that? Read more…
As students return to school and people return to work after summer break they are already up in arms against a new security database in France that is designed to store personal information on people as young as 13.
The information that can be collected includes addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, physical appearance, behavioral traits, fiscal and financial records, and details about people who have personal ties with the subject.
The aim is “to centralize and analyze data on people aged 13 or above who are active in politics or labor unions, who play a significant institutional, economic, social or religious role, or who are likely to breach public order. ”
The decree creating the “Edvige” electronic database appeared in the official gazette on July 1, when the country was winding down for the summer, but news of its content has been gradually filtering out and is now stirring fierce criticism.
“There is nothing in the decree that sets limits or a framework. Whether the database is used with or without moderation depends only on orders from up high. The electronic Bastille is upon us,” wrote Michel Pezet, a lawyer and former member of a body charged with protecting French citizens from electronic prying.
By Bastille, he means the notorious Paris fortress in which French kings could arbitrarily imprison opponents until it was stormed on July 14, 1789, at the start of the French Revolution.
Continue reading to find out more.
ARMONK, NY–(Marketwire - February 14, 2008) - IBM today announced it is teaming with University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and North Carolina State University (NC State) in Raleigh to deliver new courses on programming languages that have become the foundation of the emerging web-based economy. These skills are critical for young people entering the global workforce today.
Businesses today are looking to the next generation of IT experts who understand the dynamics of the globally-integrated enterprise; who can work across geographically distributed teams; and easily utilize different open-standards technology assets to quickly develop enterprise mashups, plug-ins and other Web 2.0 resources.
As part of today’s announcement, IBM is working with UCLA and NC State to expose students to Web 2.0 technologies using languages such as Java and Groovy, in addition to programming platforms such as Eclipse and Ruby on Rails.
At UCLA, students in computer science class CS130 can opt to work with IBM mentors on Web 2.0 and Eclipse plug-in projects they themselves design. Meanwhile, graduate students at NC State in Raleigh have the first-ever opportunity to get their hands on Project Zero, a new IBM-created Web 2.0 development environment for creating enterprise mashups and rich web applications for a variety of business needs.
Later this year, IBM will release Lotus Mashups both commercially and at no charge to the academic community. Lotus Mashups includes an easy-to-use tool that helps individuals with no IT skills create and share any type of situational application on the fly. Using Lotus Mashups, business users can quickly assemble together components from across the Web and in the enterprise, including functionality built using Project Zero.
According to Connecticut-based labor demand research company Skillproof, the number of job openings for IT professionals in the United States increased by 45.2% from 2004 to end of year 2007, with open-standards and Web 2.0 development skills topping the list of job openings. Even as the number of IT jobs has declined from mid-2007 through early 2008, open-computing skills remain proportionately hot.
Choose Your Own Technology Adventure at UCLA
To help prepare students for the ongoing demand for open computing skills is a class project IBM pioneered for UCLA’s CS130 Computer Science class. “Choose your own (technology) adventure” operates on a simple principle — harnesses students’ interest-areas to shape the coursework rather than on standard textbooks and syllabi.
Selecting from open technology areas, students propose their own course projects, ranging from a mobile phone mashup that alerts users about local events — to an iTunes-like personal music player that lets users play music trivia games, share playlists and build communities. From start to completion, IBM experts provide hands on mentoring to students to boost their software engineering skills, improve team collaboration and gain exposure to best-case practices from IBM’s own development groups.
“Choose your own (technology) adventure is giving UCLA students a truly unique opportunity to learn software engineering skills from the best and brightest at IBM such as working in a team environment while learning collaboration, networking, rapid decision making,” said Professor Paul Eggert, who teaches the CS130 class in UCLA. “Throughout the project, they are researching and evaluating technologies and connecting with open source developers and industry experts. This method is helping us attract more students to learning about these key technology areas by making things like Java and Eclipse extremely relevant to their areas of interest. ”
With the help of IBM mentors Jeff Tan and his fellow students created an event planning application called “Bounce” as a part of their CS130 class last spring — a learning experience that has inspired Jeff to attempt other projects — such as a Web 2.0 gaming portal. “Web 2.0 — I barely knew what it was until that quarter, and now I see no way back,” he said.
Added teammate Gabe Nataneli: “From a software engineering perspective, coming up with a well-defined project is one of the biggest challenges. IBM’s course method helps us learn these crucial skills by putting a huge emphasis on project development and definition,” he said. “Students in our class liked working with IBM because of the freedom ‘Choose your own (technology) adventure’ offered. The result is a project we can show to prospective employers.”
Now on its fourth quarter at UCLA, over 50 students and 27 IBM mentors have been working together on mashups, Ruby on Rails and Eclipse plug-in projects.
Project Zero at North Carolina State University
At NC State, an IBM incubator project called Project Zero is being used to teach students to develop business applications by taking advantage of simplified programming methods, rich web interfaces, and enterprise mashups.
In this spring’s graduate level computer science class, students will be among the first group of developers to work with this new development environment. They will learn to use Project Zero with Groovy and Java to develop a time-slot signup system — a common type of situational business application — without the need for in-depth architecting.
The Project Zero incubator is being hosted at projectzero.org.
Bringing open computing skills to the enterprise
IBM’s latest efforts expand on its university programs — emphasizing both IT and business skills to meet the needs of a competitive, global workforce at over 2400 universities world-wide for over 2 million students. These initiatives include a series of mainframe programming skills for Linux taught at the University of Arkansas to a program designed for the University of Arizona to help students build, run and manage blogs, wikis and mashups.
This year, IBM’s Academic Initiative plans to dedicate resources world-wide to drive double digit growth of students reached over 2007. It also plans to increase the number of world-wide events to host local customers, software companies and universities on skills such as around large systems such as IBM System z — and associated open-standards based middleware.
“By collaborating with universities on new methodologies, the resources available through its Academic Initiative, IBM is poised to help faculty and students get an edge on the needs of the marketplace,” said Jim Corgel, general manager of IBM’s ISV & Developer Relations group. “The efforts now taking place at UCLA and NC State are just part of how IBM is helping universities adapt to the quickly changing world of technology. We accomplish this by exposing students to tomorrow’s technologies today and sharing best practices from IBM’s global development teams.”
For more information on the IBM Academic Initiative, visit: www.ibm.com/university
More information about the Project Zero community can be found at the community website: www.projectzero.org
Oxford UK and Rotterdam NL (PRWEB) January 25, 2008 — A new survey of the ‘Digital Generation’ has been launched today by workplace experts Career Innovation in partnership with AIESEC, the world’s largest student-run organisation. The research will track people’s use of new technology, analyse their motivation and enable students to find out about careers that match their profile. It is based on young people’s increasing expectation that work should be fun as well as well-paid.
“This survey will help us to see the technologies our members are using, and will show us how we need to evolve as an organization to keep up with the digital generation,” says Emanuel Gavert, Global Networks Manager from AIESEC International. “The results will also give us insight in attracting more technical students into AIESEC.”
Developed by research and technology firm Career Innovation, the Digital Generation Survey will assess people’s use of technology for learning, working and leisure. This will allow universities, employers and technology companies to monitor trends in technology and make predictions about the future world of work.
“It is hard to judge how social networking, interactive games and the increasing portability of technology will affect the way we work” commented Jonathan Winter, Founder of Career Innovation, “But we can be sure of one thing – wherever young people set the pace on technology issues, employers will have to follow. So it is vital that employers and technology providers watch these trends closely.”
The survey analyses motivation by using models from the computer gaming industry. As a result, every respondent receives a personalised “fun profile” revealing where they get their energy, in work and leisure. It then provides example matches to specific jobs that might interest them, based on this profile.
By taking part participants will also be supporting two charities that help young people. Leading hotel group Marriott International has kindly agreed to donate $2 for every completed survey (up to the first 5,000 responses). Two IBLF charities will benefit equally: Youth Career Initiative and Digital Partnership.
The survey will be run amongst 25,000 AIESEC members across 100 countries during January and February 2008. The results are expected to be announced in Sao Paulo at the AIESEC International Congress, August 2008.
The Global Sponsors of the 2008 Digital Generation Survey are: Marriott International, UBS and Unilever.
About AIESEC – www.aiesec.org
ARMONK, NY–(Marketwire - November 6, 2007) - IBM today introduced a new video game designed to help university students and young professionals develop a combination of business and information technology (IT) skills. Thousands of universities around the world now have access to Innov8, IBM’s new “serious game,” available at no charge.
Serious games are computer and video games used as educational and training tools. Just as airline pilots initially learn using flight simulators, many corporations and universities see serious games as an effective way of teaching new skills to a generation that has been brought up in the video game era. In fact, according to The Apply Group, by 2012, between 100 and 135 of the Global Fortune 500 will have adopted gaming for learning, with the U.S., United Kingdom and Germany leading the way.
More than thirty colleges and universities have already incorporated the game into their program plans. Starting today, over 2,000 universities around the world can download the game from IBM’s website and begin using it in their classrooms.
“The best kept secret in the world of computer and video games is the rise of a movement — now in the thousands — of gamers, universities and corporations dedicated to applying games to serious challenges such as education, training, medical treatment, or better government,” said David Rejeski, director of the Serious Games Initiative which is housed at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. “IBM has established itself as a pioneer in serious gaming by enabling universities to educate students using the gaming medium they understand, enjoy and embrace.”
Games in the classroom
IBM has created Innov8 as a new way to teach business students and young IT professionals — many whom have grown up playing video games — about competing successfully in business.
Innov8 is an interactive, 3-D educational game designed to bridge the gap in understanding between IT teams and business leaders in an organization. This type of serious gaming — simulations which have the look and feel of a game but correspond to non-game events or processes such as business operations — has emerged as a successful method to train employees or develop new skills.
Most MBA programs are already heavily based on projects that reflect how individuals and teams need to interact in the real world. Innov8 takes that a step further by actually allowing students to step into a real, dynamic business environment. The game is based on advanced commercial gaming technologies and allows players to visualize how technology and related business strategies affect an organization’s performance. Together, users can visualize business processes, identify bottlenecks, and explore ‘what if’ scenarios before the technology is deployed.
Innov8 was designed to be delivered in a one hour learning lab to supplement courses like Business Process Management, Corporate Strategy, and Operations and IT Management. The idea for the game resulted from an annual IBM-sponsored competition among graduate business students at Duke University and the University of North Carolina.
Addressing a Skills Shortage
75 percent of CEOs surveyed by IBM cited education and the lack of qualified candidates as the issues that will have the greatest impact on their business over the next three years. With a growing number of jobs and professions requiring a combination of technology and business skills, Innov8 can be an effective way of developing this new, hybrid skill set.
A recent study also found that 56 percent of IBM customers cited lack of skills, mainly individuals with a blending of IT technical understanding and business process acumen, as the leading inhibitor to service oriented architecture (SOA), a $65 billion market opportunity. Innov8 will help students and young professionals develop these crucial skills.
“IBM views serious gaming as a new and exciting way to develop the skills that are required as business and IT become more closely aligned,” said Sandy Carter, vice president, IBM SOA and WebSphere strategy, channels and marketing. “Innov8 was designed to address this specific skills shortage while also helping universities realize the benefits of using serious games as a powerful tool for teaching today’s students.”
Innov8 is now available through IBM’s Academic Initiative, a program offering a wide range of technology education benefits to meet the goals of colleges and universities. As a member of this initiative, participating schools receive free access to IBM software, discounted hardware, course materials, training and curriculum development. Nearly 2,000 universities and 11,000 faculty members worldwide have joined IBM’s Academic Initiative.
For further information about IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/soa
THUWAL, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Oct. 22 /PRNewswire/ — King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, today hosted a gathering of more than 1,500 dignitaries from around the world to officially break ground for a new world-class, graduate-level science and technology university on Saudi soil.
With one of the largest university endowments in the world, a program to recruit top-flight faculty and students from across the globe and collaborations already underway with prestigious research institutions across several continents, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is positioned to become a leading center of scientific discovery and human advancement within the Kingdom, across the region and around the globe. Construction of the facility on the shores of the Red Sea has begun, and the University is expected to open for operation in September 2009.
KAUST was the brainchild of King Abdullah, who has inspired and overseen a heightened investment in education and the economy in recent years in the Kingdom. King Abdullah selected His Excellency Minister Ali Ibrahim Al-Naimi to lead the development of KAUST.
“KAUST is the decades-long vision of His Majesty King Abdullah to build a world-class University in Saudi Arabia dedicated to convening the best minds for the purpose of unlocking the great mysteries of science and technology for the progress of all humanity,” His Excellency the Oil Minister said. “And indeed, that vision is now becoming a reality.”
KAUST Interim President Nadhmi Al-Nasr further emphasized that while the University will be physically grounded in Saudi Arabia and serve the Saudi people, it will be an international institution as well.
“KAUST will collaborate with the best institutions and convene the most talented scientists from around the globe to enable discovery that will help all humanity,” Al-Nasr, said. “It will also deepen and diversify Saudi Arabia’s knowledge-based economy.”
Underlining the groundbreaking celebration, KAUST will also host a special academic symposium on October 22 titled “The Role of the Research University in the 21st Century,” which will draw on many of the most influential scholars and academic administrators from around the world.
Among those participating in the conference will be:
-- His Excellency Khalid Al-Sultan, Rector of King Fahd University of
Petroleum and Minerals*
-- His Excellency Mohammed Al-Suwaiyel, President, King Abdulaziz City for
Science And Technology
-- Olivier Appert, Chairman and CEO, Institute Francais du Petrole*
-- Robert Brown, President, Boston University
-- Paul Ching-Wu Chu, President, Hong Kong University of Science &
Technology
-- Marye Anne Fox, Chancellor, University of California San Diego
-- John Hegarty, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin
-- Wolfgang A. Herrmann, President of Technische Universitat Munchen
-- Karen Holbrook, President Emeritus, Ohio State University*
-- Frank H. T. Rhodes, President Emeritus, Cornell University - Moderator
-- Fawwaz T. Ulaby, Williams Professor, Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science, University of Michigan - Moderator
-- Dr. Charles M. Vest, President of the National Academy of Engineering
and President Emeritus of MIT, who will offer the keynote address
*denotes member of KAUST International Advisory Committee
For more information about KAUST, visit http://www.kaust.edu.sa.
“This symposium will be an example of how KAUST will play a critical role of convening the best minds from around the world and of collaborating with other leading institutions to uncover new innovations and discoveries,” noted Ahmad Al-Khowaiter, interim provost of KAUST.
KAUST’s academic model is structured around four research institutes, each including research centers devoted to a particular set of issues or challenges that could benefit from concentrated scientific and technological study.
In the 12 months since the University has been under development, KAUST has formed partnerships with some of the world’s leading research institutions. These include formal agreements with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the U.S.; Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, India; Institut Francais du Petrole in France, the National University of Singapore and the American University in Cairo. These relationships were established to help foster innovation and convene some of the world’s leading minds in science and technology.
No, that’s not a typo.
It’s called the Ultimate Steal, and indeed, it is.
SAN DIEGO, July 31 /PRNewswire/ — Sony Electronics recently introduced Sony Style Campus, a new program designed to provide college students with personal computer product bundles and support services. Whether just starting their college years or looking for a personal computer upgrade in preparation for fall semester, Sony Style Campus offers a variety of product packages, including VAIO notebook computers bundled with an extended service plan, mouse and carrying case.”Technology is a fundamental part of campus life, and it’s important that students have the products and customer support they can count on,” said Scott Strother, a Sony Style vice president. “Sony Style Campus does just that — arming students with top-notch personal computer products and protection packages needed to enhance their educational experience.”
The program is available now at sonystyle.com and Sony Style retail stores nationwide and offers a variety of competitively priced products, resources and promotions, including:
-- VAIO Bundles: Students can enjoy the high performance and sleek design
of new models such as the VAIO N and CR series notebooks at great
prices. When bundled with a three-year Extended Service Plan with
Accidental Damage from Handling -- which can help protect against
unexpected, costly accidents -- mouse and carrying case, students will
save up to $300.
-- Notebook Personalization: With the option to engrave their new VAIO,
students can be assured that their personal computer is one-of-a kind.
-- Financing: Customers may be able to take advantage of special
financing offers at Sony Style. Check with your Sony Style retail
associate or visit sonystyle.com to find out about current financing
offers.
-- In-Store Support: Several Sony Style retail locations have recently
expanded in-store support with Backstage, a VAIO PC support service.
From computer usage advice to hands-on technical support and service,
Backstage offers a convenient in-store resource staffed by specifically
trained and dedicated service consultants.
-- Notebook Trade-In Program: Trade in your old notebook PC for credit
towards a new one. Determine the value of your old notebook with our
trade in calculator on sonystyle.com, bring your notebook to one of our
retail locations and receive a discount off of your new PC or a gift
card to use at Sony Style.
Sony Electronics plans to launch additional student-oriented promotional packages throughout the year at sonystyle.com and Sony Style retail stores.
