Monday, March 31, 2003
- "Bridging Global, Cultural, and Economic Divides"
- The Constance F. and Arnold C. Pohs Symposium
- Held May 2, 2003 in Ann Arbor, MI
- Panels:
- Economic Possibilities of Wireless
- Social Interactions Through Wireless
- Political Interactions Through Wireless
- Regulation and the Innovation
Thursday, March 27, 2003
If you are among the growing crowd of people who just about had it with spam, you'll be pleased to know that a new, ingenious tool may give you an upper hand, at least temporarily, in the seemingly hopeless battle with spammers. The tool is called Mailblocks. It is a subscription-based e-mail service that places a nearly impenetrable barrier between an automated mailing program and your inbox: if someone, whose e-mail address does not appear in your addressbook, sends you an e-mail, Mailblocks sends backs a response containing automatically generated, random password. Only after the password has been entered by the sender, the message is placed in your Inbox. This simple trick is so effective in weeding out fake e-mail addresses as well as automated mailers, that the company behind Mailblocks can claim that it will lower the percentage of spam in your e-mail from 50 percent (or more) to... zero. At least until the spammers find a workaround, which is all but inevitable. Thankfully, the designers of this service thought about the many cases where you don't want automated e-mail deflected and returned to sender: newsletters you've subscribed to, order confirmations, receipts from online purchases, etc. For these situations, Mailblocks offers you up to 5 aliases that will keep this sort of mail coming while keeping your Inbox folder clean. In fact, you can even keep your existing account and simply route the messages through Mailblocks. Read more about this promising tool in News.com's article from March 24.
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
- "The User and the Future of Information and Communication Technologies"
- Transdisciplinary, proactive, and collaborative knowledge-building conference
- Held September 3-5, 2003 in Helsinki, Finland
- Through the four themes: 1. The extended human — 2. Users as innovators — 3. Dealing with diversity — 3. The reconfiguration of society, the organisers of this conference want to focus the attention of an interdisciplinary community on some of the key arenas where the future relationship of people and new digital technology and its applications are being negotiated
- Who should attend: technology and product developers, designers, social scientists, policy makers, community representatives and others who are interested in the conference topics.
- "Connecting People, Ideas, and Resources across Communities"
- 7th International Conference
- Held June 10-13, 2003 in Monterrey, Mexico
- The main objective of this series of international conferences is to bring together leading representatives of academic, business, and government sectors worldwide to present and discuss current and future issues of critical importance for using science and technology to foster regional economic development and shared prosperity at home and abroad. Multidisciplinary perspectives are encouraged to provide state-of-the-art and useful knowledge to decision makers in both the private and public sectors - including informed and effective education, business, and government policies and strategies for the global, knowledge economy.
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
I'm starting to worry that I'm devoting a bit too much space in this blog
to Macromedia 
,
but what is one to do when faced with a company that appears to innovate
relentlessly or, at least, to acquire innovators and keeps adding new, interesting
products to its already impressive line almost every month? The latest addition
is Macromedia
Breeze, a tool for adding voice narration and quizzes/polls
to PowerPoint slideshows and exporting the resulting multimedia into a single
Flash file for on-demand, clientless playback. Developed by Presedia and
known previously as Presedia Express, the software is not very exciting
on its own merits. In fact, it will compete against a growing number of
PowerPoint "enhancers", some of which may be better or less expensive, such
as the impressive Microsoft
Producer 1.1 (reviewed in ACT
Spotlight no. 48) However, it is worth noting, if only because it does
add an important, new element to Macromedia's arsenal of increasingly user-friendly
and versatile tools. Like it or not, this dynamic company has become one
of the forces shaping the Web of the (near) future.
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
The Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX is only a few months old, but it already started to move beyond the circle of early-adopters and enthusiasts (including yours truly) and attract commercial developers, who will now try to figure out the if there is a market for ready-made applications built on this platform. One of the first adventurers in these untested waters is Userplane with its two applications now available for licensing and one nearing a final release: Audio/Video Message Recorder, Audio/Video Instant Communicator, and Multi-User Audio/Video Chat Room. (The demos of the two can be played with at the Userplane's site.)
Unfortunately, the site has no pricing information, requiring getting in
touch with a salesperson, but "a well placed source"
tells me that the A/V Instant Communicator is available
in both hosted and in-house modes. The hosted will cost $150/month (for
up to 50 concurrent participants) with one-time setup fee of $500, while
the in-house option will run approx. $12,000 (one time, before any discounts).
Is this a good deal? Hard to say - the applications seem to be fairly simple
ones, not too difficult to develop from scratch, and it probably would not
cost much more. It may be prudent to wait for a bit more capable apps -
a multi-user, virtual conference room with slides, text chat, and audio
would be quite exciting, and can certainly be built with existing Flashcom
components. Nevertheless, these first efforts are very encouraging and are
a sign of the attractiveness of the new platform (see my praises of it in
ACT
Spotlight No.46)
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
- "Electronic Cities"
- Held March 26-29, 2003 in Toronto, Canada
- Digifest is a four-day celebration featuring the best in interactive digital media from across Canada and around the world. The festival begins with the one-day Electronic Cities Conference on March 26th. The following two days are devoted to the New Voices Competition, which celebrates leading digital innovations in the realms of 3D Web design, computer gaming design, immersive spaces and film. The festival concludes with the Fluid Youth digital culture fair in Toronto's historic Distillery District. Programming also includes the unveiling of four original commissioned real time works, keynote speakers, a series of roundtables, demonstrations and workshops, as well as exhibitions and additional off-site activities.
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