Twitter Mosaic and TwitterSheep: See Who is Following You

Twitter is filled with ways to visualize your TwitterWorld.

Here is a mozaic of my twitter followers that I made through Twitter Mozaic:

Get your twitter mosaic here.


If you want to know something about the profiles of those who follow me, you can look at this cloud created by TwitterSheep. (Hmmmm . . . Look at all of those teachers and educators with technology)

Kind of fun to see the ingenuity that has been used to make Twitter more useful and fun to use.

I found these references along with a number of other ideas at the 10,000 words blog.

So do you use a mozaic or word cloud to see who is following you?

If not, what DO you use?

Follow Dr. Z on Twitter by clicking here.

Z

Are Screen Captures Copyrighted?

Image via Wikipedia

One of my students asked me a copyright question about screen captures recently that I couldn't answer.

After teaching them about how to make a screen capture and suggesting that this would be a great thing to use when creating tutorials. An educator could take screen shots of software while progressing through the software and then write accompanying instructions.

Here's the question "Aren't those screen captures copyrighted?" I didn't know the answer.

I would imagine that under fair-use guidelines, an educator could include screen captures that are used in the classroom.

The question lies in whether or not such a tutorial could be posted on the web for free distribution. At another level, what about selling the tutorial to others? Do you need to pay a copyright royalty to Microsoft if you use screen captures of Microsoft Word in a tutorial book?

What do you think?

A Taste of the Future: SixthSense Computing from MIT

I was just watching a TED Talks video of Patti Maes describing her SixthSense project at MIT. It is a "wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information." This computerized device is something that hangs around your neck like a pendant. It is comprised of a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera. The mobile computing device is in the user's pocket.

This is a mobile computing device that can what you see and what you know about your surroundings. This is definitely Augmented Reality where what you see is made more meaningful with additional information. The camera reads the environment and the projector projects images upon whatever is in front of you to provide additional information. When you pick up a book, the computer can look at the AISN number and then beam reviews onto a blank page in the book. If you want to make a phone call, the projector will project a key pad onto your hand and you can just press on the projected numbers to dial. My favorite is that you can just create a box using the thumb and forefinger on each hand and the system will take a photo of what you see through the box (you have to see this one to understand it.)

It is difficult to describe how this system works so you should watch the TED Talk and the additional WUW/SixthSense video (this video has some of the footage used in the TED talk, but it goes beyond that.)




What do you think? How would this device change your life?

Z

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• Sixth Sense Wearable, "Gestural" Interface. Cool. (marklogic.blogspot.com)
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• Mash Your Future with Augmented Reality (myventurepad.com)