Learn. Build. Create. SimCityEDU

Sim_High_School

Between SimCity for Schools, 3D printing and LEGO Robots, education today is pretty awesome!

Educators will be able to create and share digital SimCity-based lesson plans that will encourage students to think critically about the challenges facing modern cities. In the classroom, SimCity will be more than a game – it will be a way for the next generation of leaders to hone their skills through urban planning, environmental management and socio-economic development.

“For decades, SimCity has been embraced by the educational community as an engaging videogame that also provides a powerful learning experience, teaching problem solving skills through imaginative civic gameplay,” said Lucy Bradshaw, Senior Vice President and General Manager of EA’s Maxis Label. “We want to up the ante of SimCity’s educational influence. Through our partnership with GlassLab, SimCity will become the foundation of a program to re-imagine learning in a way that will inspire today’s youth to get excited about STEM education and become the problem solvers of tomorrow.”

EA and GlassLab Announce SimCityEDU – Inspiring the Next Generation Through Play | Business Wire

via The Verge

Moving from Outlook to Mail / iCal

Yesterday I decided to move away from Outlook on something of a whim.  It’s been fine, as Mail is really a nice feeling app and after a day+ of usage I’m feeling really good about the decision.  Search, sorting and conversation threads are much better in Mail vs Outlook.  Search is quite poor actually in Outlook so any change is good there …

There are a few small details I’d love to resolve though in my new system:

  • There’s no way in iCal to NOT send a response when replying to a request.  Outlook gives you the option for staying semi-stealth if you like.
  • Mail seems to add colored backgrounds to text pasted in from certain sites … something I do rather frequently and there’s no obvious way to remove this formatting.  In Outlook, I could just change the background color to white and it would go away.
  • Some structured formats are a bit strange … Today I pasted in a bullet list from Word and it wrapped way left which made it a bit of a challenge to read.  I chose to compose this particular note back in Outlook so it would send properly as it was a client email.

Aside from these somewhat minor issues, I’m likely to stay with the new combo vs Outlook.    I’d still welcome solutions if anyone has thoughts …

 

Google Maps now with Google Earth

I’m not certain when this change went through but it’s pretty cool to see Google Earth inside Maps itself.  Now if you hover over the Satellite option over in the top right corner, a new square floats out to let you choose Earth.  You can see it here:

Google Maps with Google Earth

You do have to download and install the Google Earth plugin for this to work but given how infrequently I think to use Earth vs Maps, I could see starting to get a lot of use out of the additional detail available.  Google Earth is actually very cool yet I always think to go to Maps first.

Tapping the more link under webcams gives you more options for things like bicycle routes etc.

 

Content Shifting

I’ve had this post from Fred Wilson bookmarked since this morning and I’m finally getting back around to formalizing a few thoughts.  First the notion of content shifting is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.  As someone who works on multiple devices (sometimes concurrently) keeping things (and myself actually) in sync is not so simple.  Beyond just the basics, the actual content consuption bits from my digital adventures are really the parts I’m interested in connecting as I move between locations and contexts.

While I don’t have everything sorted just yet, one thing I’ve been really keen on lately is Pinboard.  I discovered Pinboard during the del.icio.us is closing chaos and am really pleased I did because it is an incredibly powerful, yet also very simple tool.  It’s not perfect in replacing delicious sharing for me, but it’s making up for things with some new features considerably.  The best thing Pinboard does is capture all my shared links from Twitter, Google Reader, and Instapaper in addition to backing up my delicious bookmarks and of course saving any new ones.  This auto-collection process makes it dead simple for me to manage my reading and really has been awesome for making sure I know where all my links have gone.  I can call stuff up or save more from within Chrome via extension, on iPhone with Delibar or bookmarklet and on Android with PinDroid.  This is far more around my collection rather than consumption of content, though one additional feature Pindroid and instapaper manage is what’s been read vs unread.  I can’t say I use that much as I’m just happy to have a simple point of capture, but it’s worth noting …

On the media consumption side of things, Netflix is really the only service I’ve seen that enables stopping and resuming between devices on your account and this has been great for my family and our small army of iDevices.

I’ve yet to find a good music solution for resume … Rdio comes close with the browser player, but as best as I can tell, you can’t pick an album or playlist up where you left it.  Pandora definitely doesn’t work that way at all …

Kindle is pretty bulletproof for books and something I love, but there’s still a lot of room to improve across other content types.

It’s time for socially linked purchase accounts

Apples new approach to social is welcome but also shows just how lightly the social impact was thought to have in the broader ecosystem of iTunes.

In our home, my wife and I share an iTunes account so that our purchases can be easily distributed between systems.  Both of us have an @mac address though mine is the primary for purchases.  With the launch of Ping, the social stream presents itself within the Apple framework, yet is locked to a single user view.  In our personal world, it is impossible for both my wife and I to take advantage of the system without sharing a profile.  With Apple’s current focus on purchase forward activity, this might make some sense for how your actions represent you, but this is ridiculous if you participate within the social system.  We don’t share a facebook account and have different friends, Ping should respect that we well.

Prior to Ping, these issues existed around recommendations and in fairness, are not unique to Apple. We also share an Amazon account primarily for Prime, but also now as we both utilize the Kindle service making it easy to share books.  I’m used to seeing purchase recommendations for things my wife has bought on Amazon and while we don’t read the same things, I can file that info away for potential future gifting opportunities.  I’m certain that the Prime sharing is not unique nor is the sharing of purchase accounts … courtesy of DRM.

In today’s highly social world, we need a way to uniquely identify ourselves, yet also a way to properly (legally) purchase together as a household.  We have three children and already one with an iPod, yet at almost 7yrs old she’s not making purchases herself just yet.  As my kids get older, they’ll want to connect with their own friends and see recommendations based on their tastes – not those of their parents.  Thus far, there is no way to do that without creating individual purchase accounts, which means we can’t easily share the content between ourselves – which of course has always been possible with physical media.

If there was a method to link our accounts to a master purchase record, we should be able to purchase and share uniquely, yet maintain a single household record for DRM.  This would be ideal and frankly doesn’t even seem that hard to do.  I’m sure people would cheat something like this much in the same way people break DRM.  There’s no stopping the hacker types, but for those of us just looking for an easy and fair way to utilize the content we are legally purchasing … there’s got to be a better way.

Twitter locations are being shared

buzz with twitter locations

I guess I’ve missed this previously, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that tweets posted with locations are fully shared to Buzz.  This is how things should absolutely work, but often times (like with foursquare) you have to click through to see the place rather than simply marking the post.

This tweet was posted via Tweetie 2 with location sharing on … in case you were wondering.

Outlook stuck offline?

I’ve had this problem intermittently for a while now and it’s driving me crazy.  Of course it only happens when I’m out of the office on VPN.  Here are the steps to reproduce it:

  1. Initiate VPN
  2. Launch Outlook

Standard procedure right?  Sure except my Outlook seems to enjoy getting stuck in Offline mode with absolutely no way to get it back.  Before you suggest selecting Go Online from the file menu, have a looksee …

outlook offline no workie

Notice anything missing?  Exactly.

Google Latitude Goes iPhone via Web App … sigh

So Google Latitude finally arrives on the iPhone and it comes through as a web app?! One one hand you have to admire the skill in which it was programmed by the Google team. Speed is nice and quick, features are rich including pinch zoom and it generally looks like a native app. But it’s not.

Native applications get different access … If this had been part of the actual Maps application – like it is on every Google Maps app that runs on every other platform, you’d have access to your favorites and it might even potentially run in the background – but not.

Instead apparently Apple demanded that it live as a web app over the native app Google had already written.  Apparently the reason is to avoid confusion between Maps and Latitude, yet on every other platform Latitude is a layer that simply loads on top of the map… This decision simply defies all logic for me.  The evolution of the platform goes to native apps from web apps as and back again?  NO!

Sync Difficulties – Oh the Irony!

There’s no doubt that syncing your data between devices and services is a great big pain in the ass … So I was naturally curious in the latest at GigaOm on the topic though note the complete fail (now on my second machine) from xmarks that decided to say hello while reading.

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24 hours without GMail

GMail started acting flaky last night but today I have not been able to log in a single time. I’ve gotten timeouts from the web UI, been unable to connect via mobile and even received a report from Nokia Messaging that they were unable to connect to push my mail. A quick post on Twitter and Facebook and it seems I’m the only one with an issue … not cool.

Gmail 503

Gmail Fail

Google seems to be taking lessons from Microsoft on Error Message Details .. here’s as much as I can glean from the failed login attempts:

Detailed Technical Info
Numeric Code: 17

Windows 7 needs to get cleaned up before going out

I’ve been using the Windows 7 beta since it was released and I’ve updated through a few builds as well though admittedly not as an official MSDN partner.  I’ve acquired he build in the wild and have been using Windows 7 daily on my netbook.  The experience has been most good, but a few frustrating issues have remained through each update and these are going to frustrate people to no end.

The main bug I’ve encountered is that my network connection simply times out.  Sometimes I get hours, sometims minutes and sometimes it refuses to work at all after waking from sleep.  The repair utility has about a 40% chance of getting me back online, but generally I need to reboot the system.  The only upside here is that Windows 7 boots pretty quickly, but the average person is going to hate this.  This is a basic requirement for a computer and I expect networking to just work.

About 20% of the time after waking from sleep I lose the ability to control both volume and screen brightness from my function keys.  I can still handle volume from the taskbar, but there is no way to adjust screen brightness.  Brightness is locked down at the first level which is quite low.  I tend to run on the 3rd step up which is a nice balance of brightness and power utilization.  A restart fixes things.

I’ve mentioned these issues before and doing a general search around I can see I’m not alone though there’s no actual resolution from Microsoft yet.  The problems seem to actually be a part of Windows 7.  It took 2 restarts just to publish this post today … not cool at all.

Let me .tel you how to reach me

Telnic | .tel for Individuals

This week marked the opening of the .Tel TLD and I decided to go for a few after being seduced by the potential. I had initially seen the .Tel team at DEMO last September, but could not really wrap my head around why I’d want a new domain until now.

Telnic has decided that the .tel domain will be a new directory for finding people and businesses. There are no web sites in the traditional sense, instead there is a standard record view and then you choose what info you want to share. The cool part of this is that the data is stored within the DNS so it’s very quick to load and most importantly just works on every device! I’ve tested things on multiple computers, phones and even on my Kindle. What’s particularly cool about device access is each detail in your record is ready for click to contact access.

Your record is like a business card, though instead of an out of date paper card, it can be adjusted and views can be altered based on who you are showing your information to through a groups setting. You can also create a subdomain, which in .tel terms are called folders. Folders let you define sets of information you might want to cluster though unlike your main record all the info there is publicly viewable.

So enough with the background … You can see it in action for me at jonathangreene.tel and a folder view through social.jonathangreene.tel I also registered a .tel for this domain though I think I will mainly use my real name here as the whole idea is to be found.

Networking issues with Windows 7 7057 – RESOLVED!

Given how smoothly Windows 7 had been running on the NC10, I really did not think twice about updating to the (unofficially released) latest version 7057. Windows 7 is still peppy and I’m running the Ultimate version on the netbook rather than the more limited version which is likely to come pre-installed on most future netbooks. I have not had a chance to test whether power management has been improved in this build but plan to do do shortly.

I did my update last Sunday and then Monday flew to London.  I noticed a network problem immediately on Sunday evening but thought it was my usually very reliable cable connection rather than my computer.   I did not have time to really test things out and instead rebooted the cable modem and went to bed.  The next day I was completely unable to connect to Boingo at JFK and only after a reboot did things work.  My time was limited so I checked a few messages and boarded the plan.  At my hotel in London is where I finally realized the problem was consistently related to the new Windows 7 build.  Both my wireless and wired connection options were dropping after about 30 minutes and given the hassle of frequent reboots I chose to just leave the NC10 in the safe and use my work machine instead.  This morning however back at home, I’ve had time and the patience to try and few things and it seems I’ve solved the matter for real …

Windows comes with it’s own generic drivers and I had them running alongside my Atheros Driver from Samsung though the Atheros was the preferred choice. I guessed there was a conflict between the two and decided to remove the Atheros via the Setup utility (in the installer download).  When the Windows 7 generic driver also failed to stay connected I removed that as well and then re-installed the Atheros driver – leaving just that as my only wireless connection option.

I’m happy to report that after over an hour of connectivity I am still connected and there are no detectable issues.  Previously I would see the Yellow Caution Triangle appear on my wireless signal meter within 15-30 minutes killing the connection.  Clearly beta is beta though with a bit of troubleshooting Windows 7 is back online reliably.

Last.fm Boffin

Last.fm Boffin importing

Last.fm is my usual streaming source when I’m at work and even when I am at home where I have access to my pretty extensive digital music library. I use the desktop application for Mac and Windows which lets you access your library, friends and loved tracks directly for streaming. If you use Last.fm and have not checked it out, I would highly recommend it …

Last.fm released a new beta application called Boffin today which looks at your local collection and then creates a tag cloud of what it finds. It took about 20 minutes to run against my library of about 30K tracks and when i was done I found this:

Last.fm Boffin

Some of the tags are inconsistent which I hope gets cleaned up in future releases, but I love that I can create a “stream” of my library with a couple of tags. Depending on how you arrange your music in iTunes, you might be able to do something similar with a smart playlist, but this was dead simple and is definitely re-presenting my own music to me in a new way. Speaking of iTunes, it would be ideal if you could just point to your iTunes library rather than a folder but perhaps that will come soon as well.

Nokia and Skype – With an Open Phone it Won’t Matter

It was only a matter of time for carriers to make stink about the inclusion of Skype on the N97.  I had first read about the issue via Simon Judge and was surprised it had even take this long to be a public complaint.

Carriers will always hate things that compete with their bread and butter and when you look at the possibility of Skype operating as a voice over data service the carrier is reduced to a mere pipe.  From my perspective as an end user, I’m always looking at more opportunities for just this situation.  I don’t use any operator services currently other than the connection on on either my home broadband or mobile connections.  I have not purchased a phone from a carrier outside of the original iphone since that was released and before that it was years earlier.  When I moved to Cingular (now ATT) I only requested the SIM since I knew I knew I’d be bringing my own devices.

One might argue that Skype delivered pre-loaded on a device would greatly impact the conversion to use numbers and I can’t argue that, though I would suggest that the Skype base is strong and enthusiastic enough that installing it yourself – with or without the Ovi Store – is going to happen anyway.  As it happens there are already no shortage of VOIP options for mobile devices … Skype just happens to be BIG!

I hope Nokia does not back down on the potential for the partnership here.  If it’s really a mobile computer they are looking to sell, I should be able to use any compatible application I want to make the most of my purchase.  That is after all how computers work.

Safari blocks Chrome from being your default browser

You’ll note, Chrome is not an option and Safari is actually seizing the default browser option away from Chrome where I’ve also set it. I have no idea why there is more than one way to set a default application or why Apple is allowed to do this on Windows, but it’s damn sneaky.

2009-02-26_1214 - Safari defeats Chrome as default

Yes We Know it’s tooootally lame

During Gmail’s outage today your inbox was probably still receiving mail even if you were enable to send new messages. I was trying to mail a picture to twitpic while on the train and saw this:

2009-02-24_0807 - Gmail Yes We Know it's tooootally lame

Apparently when using the offline feature you can’t queue any new attachments … yet.

Safari 4 Quick Take

2009-02-24_0954 Safari Top Sites

I just downloaded and installed Safari 4 on two machines – my work laptop (XP) and my netbook (Win7) which are both PC’s. It’s immediately noticeable how quickly pages render and that’s courtesy of Safari’s new javascript engine. Safari also brings HTML 5 and CSS 3 support which is great news for web app developers and Web 2 enthusiasts.

  • There are definitely some bugs though as you should expect in a beta. In Gmail, if you click a link within a message you get a new window instead of a tab which is how my preference is set. This is the same BS that exists in the current release of Safari.
  • Clicking the title on a Digg post opens the page in the current view rather than opening a tab as you see in Firefox and Chrome.  Interesting that this is the exact opposite of the way links are handled in the first point.
  • On both my systems (XP and 7) even with the preference set from within Safari, I am unable to get it to be the default browser.
  • I tried to install Gears which appeared to install, but on restart of Safari, I found the browser had reset – no saved bookmarks, passwords etc.  I’d only been using it for about 30 minutes so the loss was not severe, though annoying to have to re-enter things.
  • I can’t add a new bookmark (only a folder) in the bookmark manager.
  • It’s impossible to add a link to a post  using WordPress’ graphical editor as seen here:

link Fail in Safari 4 I’ve also noticed some striking similarities between Chrome and Safari … The Top Sites view (first image of the post) is very similar to the Most Visted view in Chrome though it seems to load a live view of sites when possible which is a nice touch. Safari has also moved the tabs to the top of the window panel and added two icons over on the right side of the upper chrome which are very similar to Chrome’s … On the left is Safari 4 and on the right is Chrome:

safari is like chrome 2009-02-24_0956 Chrome Corner

Sure the changed the wrench to the gear, but the options in both menus are very similar.

There’s a cover view option in bookmarks which will also look to show you a live view.  I don’t tend to use local bookmarks much aside from bookmarklets so this is not of much interest to me though I suppose would appeal to a more mainstream consumer.

I’ll probably play around some more but until I can get around the tab issues and the default browser setting, using Safari is annoying – even though it is seriously fast!