Web 2.0

A Google Image Search for 'Atari Breakout' Will Give You a Surprise

2013-05-15T07:27:39Z

Google celebrated the 37th birthday of the classic Atari game Breakout by turning the Google Image Search into a version of the game itself.

To launch the Easter egg, you simply need to type "atari breakout" into Google Image Search, and hit enter. You will get a game that's very similar to Breakout requiring the player to demolish brick walls with a ball.

If you win this "Easter egg" version, Google searches something random (like "table tennis") and creates new bricks with those images.

This addictive game, which was originally created in 1976, by a team including Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, was influenced by the Atari classic Pong.

Breakout also inspired a series of versions including Arkanoid and Brick Breaker.

The first game consisted of eight rows of bricks which must be smashed with a ball and the players had three turns to clear two screens of bricks for a maximum score of 896.

In 2011, Atari released new features for mobile devices, with new power-ups and unique brick types.

Chris Hadfield Returns Creating a First Music Video In Space

2013-05-13T11:42:33Z

Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut Commander who become an online star, by capturing and sharing stunning photos and videos of the Earth from space during his five-month stay on the International Space Station made his return trip to Earth late Monday.

But Hadfield had one more treat for his fans down on earth: he played a cover version of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” showing how he's also a great singer.

He sings a "revised version" of the song the 1969 track (with modified lyrics such as, “Ground control to Major Tom, lock your Soyuz hatch and put your helmet on,” referencing how his spacecraft will land him in Kazakhstan) while floating inside the ship. He plays an acoustic guitar while gazing at the Earth 230 miles below.

The clip is believed to be the first music video filmed in space.

Hadfield also recently hosted a singalong from space with thousands of Canadian schoolchildren.

He’s handed over command of the station to Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov ahead of his return.

Kid President Salutes Moms With Style on Mother's Day

2013-05-12T03:32:08Z

The little powerhouse in a power suit whose given name is Robbie Novak, adorably spells out the ten things moms need to know The video message below is sent "on behalf of all the kids in the world.”

He asks mom not to worry so much about cleaning, "Our house isn't messy, it's awesome. It's awesome because we live in it."

The young star goes on to say with sincerity, "It's just hard to grow up. Sometimes we just need moms ... to tell us everything is OK."

"Thanks for believing in us, putting up with us, and straight-up loving us," he adds, in his usual authoritative tone.

You don’t need to be as gifted in conveying your lines as the precocious kid in the video above, or do dramatic things, just send up some gratitude to the mother in your life in whatever way you can and let her know why she is the best. Remember, mom upside down is "wow."

We love you, moms. You're beautiful. Thank you for everything.

Zach Braff Addresses the Kickstarter Criticism

2013-05-10T13:37:34Z

Zach Braff's been in the news quite a bit lately. Couple of weeks back, the former Scrubs star took the help of Kickstarter, a crowdsourcing site that entrepreneurs and artists use to try to fund projects, to fund his newest film project, Wish I Was Here – a "sequel in tone" to the 2004 indie hit Garden State. Braff in return is offering different acknowledgement rewards from "production diary", for $10, all the way up to the opportunity to be a cast member for $10,000. The project has already collected more than $2 million from 35,000 backers from across the world.

But the appearance of a successful Hollywood actor using Kickstarter has been criticisized.

Few critics, like Emmy Award-winning writer Ken Levine, have said that the crowdfunding platform should be left for smaller, lesser-known filmmakers trying to finance their projects:

"The idea – and it’s a great one – is that Kickstarter allows filmmakers who otherwise would have NO access to Hollywood and NO access to serious investors to scrounge up enough money to make their movies. Zach Braff has contacts. Zach Braff has a name. Zach Braff has a track record."

Braff addresses the criticism he's received and talks about the benefits — for both his team and fans — that the project has sparked in the below interview, shot by film group KickStarted,

"This isn't a money-making endeavor ... Making a tiny art film is not where people go to to make money. This is a passion project," he says. "I'm making this movie for you and, ostensibly, with you. You're coming along on the ride, you're going to be a little GoPro camera on my shoulder experiencing how an independent movie is made ... I owe [the fans] everything."

Braff says he's still contributing a lot — an "ass-ton," he says jokingly — of his own money to the film. Braff has also been extremely interactive with his fan base, through Facebook and Reddit AMAs, and he says Kickstarter has increased that discussion even more. Plus, he says, the engagement will only grow as the filming process begins.

"It's a sense of community; it's a club," he says, "and it's a club of like-minded people who are interested in the same thing."

Besides,in his defense, Braff points out that Kickstarter had its highest traffic day ever, the day that he released his project and that this seems to have at least given a small boost to other projects.

KickStarted, the upcoming documentary project is headed by filmmakers Jason Cooper and Jay Armitage and will focus on crowdfunding and the creators behind it. The group will launch its own Kickstarter campaign for the film on May 21.

Watch the full interview for now, below.

Google To Introduce Brand New Interface For Maps at I/O

2013-05-09T14:04:05Z

Google Maps would be boasting new interface. According to Google Operating System, the new design takes away sidebars and navigational buttons and places greater emphasis on the map itself.

Apparently, what is now displayed in the Google Maps sidebar will be shown on the top of a full-screen map and e site will also reflect new colors and icons.

The new feature also introduces tighter integration with its Google+ social network. The search results can supposedly be filtered for recommendations by users' Google+ circles.

Based on the screenshots published by the blog, the actual map won't change much, but the author pointed out that the update will create a more immersive interface that integrates well with mobile devices.

While the changes will likely appear first on the web-based version of Google Maps for desktops and laptops, it will also roll out to the company's Android app in due time. For tablets, the new design should work well - but for smartphones, it seems likely that the company will have to make sacrifices in order to get information readable on sub-4in screens.

Google is constantly tinkering with its maps, adding new features like details for certain countries, live transit information, and high-resolution imagery. Drivers, cyclists and walkers have been ditching dedicated sat-nav units for Google’s satellite navigation functionality which was introduced in 2010 and offers turn-by-turn directions in 2010.

But, it's been quite some time since the company has done a major interface redesign.

While Google Operating System didn’t reveal when the new interface will be launched, the site hinted that it could debut at Google I/O, the company's annual developers' conference, next week, possibly alongside a rumoured refresh to the Android 'Jelly Bean' operating system.

The Tech Revolution and the Future of Higher Education

2013-05-02T16:49:30Z

Introducing iPads and other tablets into the classroom definitely ignited a revolutionary tech movement in higher education, but e-books and interactive lesson plans are only the beginning. Experts predict a second revolutionary tech wave will occur within the next decade that will flip old methods of teaching and learning on its head.

While it’s too early to foresee all that is in store, industry leaders do forecast at least 12 emerging technologies that will impact higher education in a big way. Onlinedegrees.org has conveniently put these emerging technologies in a neatly-packaged infographic, but below is a dissection of technologies that will most likely make the biggest difference within the next three years.

Massive Open Online Courses

Massive Open Online Courses, better known as MOOCs, are online classes students can take for free. Courses range anywhere from quantum physics to the history of rock music. Although MOOCs are offered through several elite institutions, three platforms currently dominate university-level coursework: Coursera, Udacity, and edX. Students can not earn a degree from these free courses but that still doesn’t discourage thousands of students from enrolling in MOOCs worldwide. What makes MOOCs so attractive is that they shift the control to the student. Students can take courses at their own leisure and pace. MOOCs have really improved access of higher education to people around the world, but they still have their fair share of critics. Some worry it will give officials a reason to unnecessarily slash school budgets.

Game-Based Learning

Experts say game-based learning can improve a student’s assessment, especially for those who aren’t “natural scholars.” Although the New Media Consortium doesn’t predict widespread adoption of game-based learning until a few more years it’s already starting to make its mark. Take the University of Texas-Brownsville and Texas Southmost College in the U.S. for example. In the 2010-11 academic school year Professor Soumya Mohany gathered inspiration from the videogames Laura Croft: Tomb Raider and Little Big Planet to design a custom-made videogame used to teach the fundamentals of physics for the inaugural course, "Elementary Physics Through Video Games.

Learning Analytics

In a nutshell, learning analytics refers to the “analysis” of data collected by and for students. It’s specifically gathered so that administration can improve the overall functionality and performance of both traditional and online courses. There are various times when this data is collected, for example after a student completes an exam or participates in a group project, class discussion, or online forum. This data is then used to identify issues and make way for progress. While not all schools have jumped on the learning analytics bandwagon yet, some prestigious universities have already starting taking full advantage to improve performance.

That said, to learn more about the future of higher education checkout the infographic below created by Onlinedegrees.org

Netflix Loses Hundreds of Classic Titles

2013-05-02T13:40:15Z

Netflix lost about 2,000 movies when the clock struck midnight on April 30. Dubbed “Streamaggedon,” the Internet TV giant lost many of its classic titles including James Bond hit "Goldfinger,” Woody Allen's "Stardust Memories,” and 15 seasons of Comedy Central's South Park. But this isn't as bad as the Great Netflix Starzageddon of 2012. After Netflix and Starz were unable to renew their streaming agreements with one another, more than a 1,000 films — including many of the hits like "Scarface," "Young Frankenstein," "Toy Story 3," and "Gangs of New York." disappeared from the service. Loss of these titles came as a big blow to Netflix because Starz also owns the Internet rights to many movies from Disney and Sony Pictures.

So why is the purge of content? Licensing. It is due to the end of licensing agreement between Netflix and Epix, another premium channel and on-demand video service.

"The vast majority of the titles that expire on Wednesday are older features that were aggregated by Epix," Netflix spokesman Joris Evers stated.

Warner Bros. clarifies to Slate that the films being removed from Netflix’s streaming service do not belong to Warner Bros.

To further add to the loss, it was recently reported that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is considering not renewing a television deal with Viacom Networks lapse. That would mean that shows from Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1 and BET could all disappear from the service at the end of May.

Netflix was quick to boast new material that will appear in the place of what was lost. On Wednesday it tweeted that the films Pulp Fiction, Chinatown and Dirty Dancing will be added to its catalogue.

Evers, added, "Netflix is a dynamic service, we constantly update the TV shows and movies that are available to our members. We will add more than 500 titles May 1, but we also have titles expiring, this ebb and flow happens all the time."

"We are selective about what’s available to watch on Netflix. We often license TV shows and movies on an exclusive basis, so we can provide a unique experience. We’ll forego, or choose not renew, titles that aren’t watched enough. We always use our knowledge about what our members love to watch to decide what’s available on Netflix. Our goal is to be an expert programmer, offering a mix that delights our members, rather than trying to be a broad distributor.”

"We recently added many great, more recent titles such as ParaNorman (Universal), Hunger Games (Epix), Safe (Epix) and Bachelorette (Weinstein). Tomorrow we will also add MI:2, among many other titles.”

While Netflix may be now reeling in some of its classic titles, it's focusing exclusively on original content, like it's Web series "House of Cards" and "Hemlock Grove,” and creating new episodes of Arrested Development. Earlier this month, CEO Reed Hastings said that the company was completely focused on "moving toward more and more exclusive content."

The World's First Website Gets Its Original Address

2013-05-02T01:59:53Z

For a brief moment let’s go back into the world before Google, Facebook and Twitter and you won’t regret it. It is about a phenomenon lost to the world: The first website.

The researchers at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), the organization responsible for devising the fundamental web standards, today restored the first website to its original URL.

Although the first website was launched in 1991, it was on April 30, 1993 when CERN made the WWW technology available on a royalty-free basis.

The site’s reappearance is part of a project to preserve the history of the Web, and to celebrate 20 years of a “free, open Web.” "It's one of the biggest days in the history of the web," said CERN web manager Dan Noyes.

The world's first website was about the technology itself, according to CERN, allowing early browsers to learn about the new system and create their own web pages.

Created by British computer scientist and Web pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the web page outlined the basics of what would become the web we know today.

During 1989, the London-born physicist and computer scientist was working at (CERN) in Geneva when he first wrote and developed the web software to act as a way for CERN physicists and engineers to manage and share information as well as to meet the increasing demand for information-sharing between scientists in universities and research institutes around the world.

He developed the software – known as hypertext markup language (HTML), hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) and universal resource locators (URLs) – on a £5,000 computer called “the cube” because of its black case.

The Website itself isn’t much to look at — just a rundown of the product that includes a look at its development history, instructions of how to create your own pages and technical information about the World Wide Web — but it laid the groundwork for an estimated 630 million Web sites to come in the next 20 years, CERN said in a blog post.

The original address of the website was —http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html — but for many years that URL has been redirecting to http://info.cern.ch.

Now, CERN has found a 1992 copy of the site — the earliest it could find — and put it back online at its original address.

Mr James Gillies, Head of Communications at Cern believes that the document is "the single most valuable document in the history of the world wide web".

Interest in the first Web site was so high Tuesday that the site went offline briefly.

The group responsible for its restoration posted a Twitter message saying“We’re working on it, adding “Terrific to see so much interest!”

The page’s resurrection is part of a larger project to recreate the experience of using early Web browsers, preserving data on the first Web servers used by Berners-Lee and providing an archive of information on the earliest days of the Web.

CERN employees will keep trying to find an earlier copy; in the meantime, you can browse through it and see what the World Wide Web (all of it) was like in 1992.

The group is also trying to preserve the first hardware used to host early Web files, including a 1990s era, $6,500 computer built by NeXT — the company founded by Steve Jobs after he was ousted from Apple in 1985. The computer is still intact but does not work, the BBC reported.

Noble Foundation

The core principle underlying the project was that the content should be universally accessible.

It was one of the most generous gestures in computing history as the laboratory decided not to charge royalties on the software required to run the web, and in the process generated an explosive revolution in human communications.

There was a serious discussion at Cern in 1993 about whether the organisation should own the web or whether it should focus on its core mission of basic research in physics.

Sir Tim and his colleagues on the project argued that Cern should not claim ownership of the web.

Management agreed and signed a legal document that made the web publicly available without anyone being able to claim ownership of it and ensuring it was a free and open standard for everyone to use.

Calling it the World Wide Web hints at the fact that Berners-Lee and his team knew they had something special, something big.

The early WWW team, led by Tim at CERN, had such vision and belief that the early users would be able to publish their own content in spite of few people having access to browsers - or to web servers.

An inspiration for future inventors

The European Laboratory for Nuclear Physics in Geneva said that it hoped the project would inspire children to appreciate its momentous decision to give away the technology for free 20 years ago and its impact on modern life.

"We're going to put these things back in place, so that a web developer or someone who's interested 100 years from now can read the first documentation that came out from the world wide web team," said Noyes.

Besides,the principles of universality and universal access behind the original systems was an effort to make the world a fairer and more equal place.

The first browser, for example, allowed users to edit and write directly into the content, a feature not available on present-day browsers.

Hope that the restoration of the first web page and web site will serve as a reminder and inspiration of the web's fundamental values.

The Look of Water in Future Games Will Surprise You

2013-04-30T13:30:16Z

3D computer games have progressed to an extent that they offer real world experience but somehow the water in most of them does not look very real — especially when you see a couple of objects in it. The water effects almost always have very limited animations and interactions with the surrounding environment.

Now, a new technology called "Position Based Fluids" (PBD) which is fluid simulation algorithm, makes it look easy, with water flowing in a startlingly realistic fashion.

"In fluid simulation, enforcing incompressibility is crucial for realism; it is also computationally expensive. By formulating and solving a set of positional constraints that enforce constant density, our method allows similar incompressibility and convergence to modern smoothed particle hydrodynamic (SPH) solvers, but inherits the stability of the geometric, position based dynamics method, allowing large time steps suitable for real-time applications," explain NVIDIA's Miles Macklin and Matthias Müller-Fischer.

If you are interested in knowing more about this technology, you can refer the PDF, here. We'll just marvel at the water bouncing off that rabbit for a couple more minutes and hope to see this technology in games as soon as possible.

The end result is certainly one of the most realistic real time water effects we have ever seen and it's likely that future PC games and graphics applications will use a version of this technique.

Dixons Retail Case Study

2013-04-30T11:12:56Z

Background

Dixons Retail’s Director of IT, Phil Greenwood had a big problem with his project portfolio management system. First, with all his project managers producing their own data manually using a hotchpotch of their own tools, he could never be sure that he was getting accurate information from them.

Second, it would take an age for the project office to pull together all the project management reports and produce a consolidated version that made any sense. And by then, that final report was sometimes two or three weeks out of date.

With a portfolio of anywhere between 75 and a 100 projects, the reporting system was clearly unworkable.

“Even when we got the report, I had serious concerns about the accuracy of the data, my visibility across the portfolio and the level of risk management I was able to achieve,” said Phil. “It’s simply not the way I work.”

Working towards a solution

Phil and his team recognised that they needed a proper IT project portfolio reporting and management tool. They wanted something that was fast and easy for them and for the project managers (PMs) to use but was sophisticated enough to provide complete transparency, consistency and accuracy across the portfolio.

“My key driver was to have the best possible risk management across the piece,” said Phil. “So all these other factors, such as transparency and accuracy of data were prerequisites. I also needed the ability to drill down and focus on potential problems before they had a chance to develop.”

Another key factor for Phil was that whatever product and consultancy team he selected, solid, proven experience in retail project management was a must.

“Retail has its own unique set of operational dynamics and whoever we chose to work with us had to prove that their people knew what our business was all about,” said Phil. “That was also a very important factor in getting the buy-in from the project teams. We needed their full cooperation from the start. And they wanted to see retail experience in the DNA of anyone we used.”

The Solution

Phil and his team looked at several possible solutions before deciding on Bestoutcome. In the end it was an easy choice. Bestoutcome had a compelling combination of major change management and project portfolio management experience with a string of household name retailers, a methodology that had clearly evolved through years of engagement with the challenges of major projects, a product that fitted Phil’s needs precisely and a consultancy team to match.

“There was a lot to like about Bestoutcome,” said Phil. “And PM3, their portfolio management tool, was clearly built by practitioners for practitioners. They understood retail, they understood my needs for risk management and precisely how to deliver that through PM3 which structurally demands accuracy and consistency and produces fantastic visibility. At the same time it is extremely flexible.”

The portfolio management capability of PM3 proved especially useful to Phil and his team because it allows projects to be in many different groups at once. This means, for example, that reports can be generated on projects by department or by initiative.

The project managers liked the system, engaged with PM3 and the Bestoutcome team quickly and implementation and training took less than a month.

“I expected quite a few grumbles from the project managers about implementing a new system, but once they had seen PM3 there was surprisingly little resistance, which I think is largely down to the simplicity and elegance of the tool.”

Within three months of making the decision to go with Bestoutcome and PM3, Phil’s team were producing portfolio reports in less than 40 minutes, a job that had previously taken at least a day at Phil’s end and about the same for all PMs. The cost savings were immediate and there for all to see.

But the most important benefit for Phil was the quality of that data that PM3 generated and the way that it was presented. “You could tell that the people who built PM3 really understood my job and exactly what I need to be able to see to risk manage the portfolio properly,” said Phil. “For me, this is the benefit of working with people who can present a consultancy team, a methodology and a toolset that work seamlessly together, and better still, run by people who really understand retail. PM3 encapsulates retail project portfolio reporting best practice.”

The Outcome

Bestoutcome, using PM3, has transformed Dixons Retail’s project portfolio management and reporting system. They have cut costs, increased efficiency and probably produced an incredible one year return on investment. A job that took up to several weeks of management time across the portfolio has been reduced to just a few days. But much more importantly, PM3 and Bestoutcome have delivered a lasting legacy of massively improved accuracy of data, consistency and proper sponsor-level risk management right across Dixons Retail’s change project portfolio.

Coachella Goers Are Fans of Bands That Don't Exist

2013-04-29T14:07:26Z

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival surely offers enough music for every fan but the festival has become popular for people-watching. And this time it was the target of Jimmy Kimmel who did it again. Earlier he fooled individuals with iPhone. This time around he played a prank on Coachella music festival-goers. The late-night host thought about interviewing teens and 20-somethings who were going to attend the event.

“Music fans in general love knowing about bands that no one else has ever heard of,” Kimmel said as he introduced a Coachella edition of his "Lie Witness News," on ABC late-night show.

The interview was about up-and-coming bands that don't exist at all. Kimmel sent a camera crew to Indio to gauge festival goers' interest in those obscure bands, “so obscure that they do not exist.”

These interviewees not only fall for the prank but also enthusiastically go on to discuss how great the fictitious bands are.

Kimmel's reporter asked fans if they were excited to see bands like the Chelsea Clintons and the Obesity Epidemic on Coachella which don’t exist.

“I just like their whole style. Their whole genre is great,” said one guy about the Obesity Epidemic. “They are very innovative, and they're new.”

Take a look at the video below:

How to Implement a Successful Strategy for Shared IT Services in the Public Sector

2013-04-23T16:23:31Z

Written By: Ewen Anderson, CEO, Centralis.

The creation of a shared service offers large financial savings plus the opportunity to transform desktop delivery, enabling BYOD (bring your own device) and flexible working. Additionally, centralising IT and desktop delivery within the data centre means specialist resources are pooled at a single location, providing increased levels of performance, security, and resilience.

However, with a constantly changing set of virtualisation, cloud and hybrid solutions available it can be difficult to identify the right one. On top of that, with the responsibilities of Primary Care Trusts (PCT) being transferred to local authorities this year, PCT staff will need secure and reliable access to NHS systems. Any shared services infrastructure must therefore adhere to the code of connection compliance (CoCo) for access to the Government Connect Secure Extranet (GCSx).

While the National Audit Office has highlighted the potential savings from shared services, the Gershon Review cautioned the public sector’s poor track record. Many projects ultimately fail because of a mismatch with the organisation’s longer term strategic goals or the adoption of an inflexible technology that can’t adapt to the needs of an ever-changing world. So a vital first step for any shared service project is to clarify and capture both broader strategic goals as well as specific functional, technological, and user requirements.

This involves bringing together IT directors and heads of service delivery from several separate organisations, some of whom may feel personally threatened by the consequences of a shared service. It can be hard to achieve agreement and avoid harmful compromises in these situations but an independent outsider can play an invaluable role as facilitator, expert advisor, arbitrator and peace-keeper.

The shape of things to come

Although the shape of the shared service and the underlying technologies may vary, it is likely to involve some combination of desktop virtualisation and cloud technologies.

While there are a growing number of applications and services that can effectively be delivered from the cloud, a wholesale move to the cloud is not yet practical for sizeable organisations.

However, there is scope for developing on-premise, private cloud infrastructures that enable organisations to easily transition to becoming a service provider or service consumer in the future. This is likely to be a five-stage journey:

Implement a centralised infrastructure – with desktops delivered via the data centre and a standardisation policy for critical applications
Create a storefront for delivery of Windows applications, mobile applications, software as a service (SaaS) applications, and web applications (not forgetting data as well) – a storefront provides a single point of management and control, with single sign on, and automatic provisioning and de-provisioning of accounts
Adopt public cloud techniques around automation and orchestration – effectively building a private cloud infrastructure to automatically provision the infrastructure behind these services
Evaluate who is using the applications and services and calculate the cost of provisioning them – with this level of control and intelligence, organisations are in a position to decide the services it might want to deliver from the cloud, and those it might want to deliver internally
Assess benefits of becoming a provider of services to other organisations, with departmental billing to charge back customers on a usage basis

Any transformation requires organisational inclusion, clarity of objectives (short and long term), appropriate but not overly-detailed needs development and most importantly agreement. Chairing and managing this process is a key success factor for any shared service project. Only then can the plan, the results and the next steps be agreed.

Although driving cost efficiencies remain the primary focus, with the right technology infrastructure in place, public sector organisations can ensure they deliver on other important targets – namely improved service quality, value for money, and price certainty.

About Centralis

Centralis is one of the UK’s leading independent IT consultancies, specialising in delivering applications securely to their point of use. Backed by top-level partnership with industry leading vendors, including Citrix, Microsoft and VMware, Centralis provides consultancy, support, managed services and resale of selected products. Strong technical skills and commitment to delivering on time and to budget has led to long-term business partnerships with many customers across the private and public sectors, including Standard Life, Centrica, BUPA and many NHS Trusts and Universities. Centralis remains independent and wholly owned by employee shareholders.

Follow Centralis on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Centralis_UK

Earth Sings Back to Us

2013-04-23T12:27:01Z

If you heard the video below, it may sound like the call of an extraterrestrial bird species, but the recording featured in the video is actually made by earth. Scientists call this sequence of quavering whooping sounds "chorus" also well known as 'Earthsong'.

If you get fascinated about space talk, you would remember back in October, NASA discovered the Earth was "singing" to us.

In technical words, it is an electromagnetic phenomenon caused by plasma waves in Earth's radiation belts. The result of all those loose electrons whizzing around up there was called "Chorus," that turned out to sound like whale song mixed with crickets.

But that noise was given a special treatment by the inhabitants of our planet. The recording was turned into a remix along with some interpretive dance. Kerry Muzzey, a writer of TV and movie themes (including one from Glee) added the sound effects; the dance was choreographed by DS2DIO (pronounced D-studio), a popular YouTube lifestyle channel with nearly 10 million total views.

The whole video, a lovely dedication to our planet was directed by Emmy-nominated choreographer Christopher Scott.

Boston Crowd Shows its Unity in Emotional National Anthem

2013-04-19T12:51:35Z

As sirens continue to blare throughout Boston, tens of thousands of Boston residents came together in the city to show their support in a sporting event, for the first time since the Boston Marathon attack. On Wednesday night, the Boston Bruins and Buffalo Sabres played the first professional sporting event, the NHL in Boston since the tragic incident. And this Boston Bruins game was about more than hockey.

Revered Bruins anthem singer Rene Rancourt just like he always has at Bruins home games since 1976, began singing and let the capacity crowd of around 17,000 take over. Rancourt has never done that before, two stadium employees told CBC News.

It's a touching moment, and testament to the power of sports in uniting human beings during the toughest of times.

'Believe in Boston’

The crowd held up a sign reading: “Believe in Boston.” And chanted 'U.S.A., U.S.A.' at several points of the game, many waving the Stars and Stripes.

Runner Tom Cahill, who finished the marathon and was around, getting a drink of water when the bombs went off, stood proudly in his blue and yellow marathon jacket. “Yeah, I’m sending a message by being here,” said Cahill, who brought his daughter to the game.

The city receives high security

Heavily armed soldiers, local police and U.S. Homeland Security officers patrolled the Stadium from the outside. Inside the security checked bags for more than just concealed alcohol.

“I think there are nervous people here,” a spectator said. “But I feel honoured to be here.”

“We have to be here, or they win,” Beauchamp said, echoing a common line heard across Boston during the past few days.

Take a look at the tear-jerking video below:

Online Education Is Steadily Substituting Physical Colleges

2013-04-15T12:39:34Z

The point at which online higher education becomes mainstream is no longer in some fuzzy hypothetical future; It is here and has enveloped the physical classrooms already. In just 30 days, the largest school system in the U.S. started offering credit for online courses, a major university began awarding degrees without any class time required, and scores of public universities are moving their courses online. The Secretary of Education in the next president’s office will need an entire department dedicated to this phenomenon.

For over a decade, admissions-selective universities in the U.S. (e.g. not the University of Phoenix) resisted giving credit for their overwhelmingly popular online courses. But today, that belief is changing. As a proof-of-concept, MIT’s groundbreaking Open CourseWare project established with just 50 free online courses has quickly expanded to 1,700 courses through a worldwide consortium of universities in just three years. To date, MIT’s Open Courseware has a staggering 125 million lifetime visitors.

Recently, the California State University System which faced financial difficulties piloted a few online courses for credit, at the super-low cost of $150 per course.

Just three weeks after California’s announcement, The American Council on Education, a consortium of roughly 1,800 accredited universities, began offering cheap online science courses at three universities, including Duke and the University of Pennsylvania.

Perhaps most disruptive of all, the University of Wisconsin is offering a fully legitimate college degree without any class time required. So long as students pass some tests and pay the associated costs, they can learn from anywhere in the world.

Online education startup Coursera, which offers a combination of interactive video, homework, and peer learning communities to courses from top-tier universities, has amassed more than 2.5 million users in only twelve months since its debut in April 2012.

Offering her views on these new breed of sites, Alison Johnston, CEO of InstaEDU, an online tutoring site explains, “Sites like Coursera are the classroom and teacher; InstaEDU and other tutoring sites are the teacher's aide (TA); and sites like Piazza and OpenStudy act as virtual study groups.”

To give readers a sense of how abrupt this change is, online education pioneer and founder of the YouTube-based learning website Khan Academy, Sal Khan, opined about a test-based college degree at Aspen Institute’s big-think Ideas Festival two years ago. No one, even those on the cutting edge of digital education, considered that they were talking about the very near future.

Why online education is receiving a positive response?

The burgeoning online education scene is considered as a practical option to a traditional college education for a number of reasons — cost, convenience and efficiency.

"For the most part, online-based education is equivalent [to a traditional college education]. Students can learn in either setting," Cathy Sandeen, vice president for education attainment and innovation at the American Council on Education (ACE), tells Mashable.

Also most college students are not, in reality, how we picture the typical college student, explains Sandeen. Only 25% of university students are in their late teens to early twenties and entered college right after high school. The remainders participate at other times in their lives, making online courses convenient. And the online class model reflects today's work environment, she adds, with groups from around the country or world working together online.

"It doesn't have to be an either/or," she adds. "What we're seeing is a lot of traditional institutions incorporating online classes.”

While few teachers worry about the quality of online courses, the truth is that our education system, primarily designed to test rote memorization, is built to scale and be independent of teacher interaction. A review of research by the Department of Education in 2009 found that “students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.”

A pilot of MIT and Harvard’s joint online educational initiative, EdX, found that blending SJSU classes with world-class online lectures reduced the number of students who received a C or lower by 31%.

In other words, computers can–and have–successfully replaced teachers.

To increase retention, the National Science Foundation-funded project will offer a range of mentoring and monitoring services, including encouraging emails should students get stuck on a particular assignment.

Will the traditional classroom experience be missed?

These online education companies give aspiring students unprecedented access to higher learning. Students from anywhere in the world can get access to classes at Ivy League universities at a much more affordable rate.

But what's missing is the typical college experience, in which students, legal adults, get to have more independence outside their parents' homes and move into dorms or campus housing. With online classes, students could continue to live at home with their parents in order to save money on living expenses.

Dr. Katherine Cohen, CEO and founder of IvyWise, said, "there's certainly something to be said for the college experience. College is where students build their social and professional networks, ones they will rely upon throughout the rest of their lives. Students living on campus also tend to mature much more quickly, as they take on new responsibilities and maintain a new level of independence."

Earlier this year, Techcrunch attempted to predict how California’s partnership with online course provider ,Udacity, could succeed and radically replace most of the physical college experience.

It explains how the pilot will spell an end for community colleges, part-time teaching faculty and, eventually, graduate programs. It ends with suggesting that a smaller number of students would actually receive personal mentoring by professors in the near future.

The whole online education revolution thing is so far sending the right signals and taking the right steps. But it could also be that the colleges are acting quicker than they’re thinking. It can take years to assess a single course, let alone an entire restructuring of the education system. A review of research by the Department of Education shows pretty definitively that “students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.”

Still, educational experiments give great results but they struggle when pilots move beyond the highly dedicated walls of an experiment.

In short, we don’t have enough idea of how this will affect our educational system. What we do know is that while online courses are finding their ways into the traditional classroom setting, students are excited to take the opportunity of flexible learning.