Moldy Oldies show returns!

After a four-week hiatus, I’ve decided to return today for a “first day of summer” edition of the Moldy Oldies show on WCUR. It will be from 4 to 6 p.m. this afternoon (although I may decide to start a bit earlier). My focus today will be on “songs of summer,” although I will be happy to play requests as well.

If you are unfamiliar with the Moldy Oldies show, this is a program I’ve been doing for many years on WCUR. As faculty adviser to our campus radio station, I feel that it is important for me to spend some time every week “in the trenches” doing a show on the air. Besides, I enjoy playing music from an earlier generation. So on most Thursday afternoons during the school year, I’m on the air from 4 to 6 p.m. I typically play mostly classic pop music from the 1960s and 1970s, with occasional tunes from before or after these decades. I often have a guest or two each week, and regularly feature an interview segment at 5 p.m. (coordinated by my former student and now “Associate Producer” Kathy Schlegel).

I don’t know how many more shows I’ll do this summer, but I’ll try to keep things going for at least some of the time. Since I’m on sabbatical leave this fall, I hope to have guest hosts fill in for me, as I won’t be able to be on campus. Doug “Mush” Carrol has said he would do a few, and I believe Kathy will also pitch in to keep things going with the interview segment.

So if you want to enjoy some tunes from the past, listen to WCUR-FM 91.7, or online at www.wcur.fm, Thursday afternoons from 4 to 6 p.m. To call in requests, dial 610-436-2478, or send an instant message to AIM screen name wcur919.

Mossberg calls centralized campus IT a “poisonous force”

Many writers in the blogosphere have commented on The Wall Street Journal‘s Walt Mossberg revealing of his pre-release iPhone to leaders of higher education at a recent forum hosted by The Chronicle of Higher Education. But while any iPhone news is big news nowadays, another aspect of his presentation may have even more significance to those who have an interest in educational technology, especially as implemented at colleges and universities.

During a speech at The Chronicle’s President’s Forum, Mossberg used harsh but pointed words to express a sentiment shared by many academics (but rarely expressed so publicly). In typical Mossberg fashion, he described centralized information technology departments, such as those often found in larger colleges and universities, to be “the most regressive and poisonous force in technology today.”

That may be overstating the case a bit, but not by much. I have worked with numerous campus IT departments over the past thirty years, and I know that most people who work in these departments try hard to provide a valuable service. But the problem Mossberg touched upon typically isn’t the fault of those who work in campus IT departments. Rather, it’s mostly because the primary rationale for centralizing technology efforts is rarely to support eduction, but to save money.

Unfortunately, centralizing technology doesn’t always save money, at least not at the micro level. I don’t know how often I have found that the contract price negotiated with vendors for technology exceeds the price a consumer could get at retail. To give a simple example, one of the secretaries in our Dean’s office recently asked where she could get a USB “thumb drive.”  I was able to pick up a 1 GB drive for her the next day for under $20.  Another secretary in the same office ordered a 512 MB drive from central purchasing for $50, which arrived a week later. I can think of many similar examples of price and delivery disparities, from printers to hard drives to software to computers.

Because IT departments usually negotiate contracts well in advance of the time of purchase, vendors can give the appearance of a deep discount at the point of negotiation. But a few months later, when purchases are actually made, what once seemed to be a bargain becomes a bloated price. “Locking in” a price for technology may help with budget forecasts, but it can also preclude taking advantage of rapidly falling prices in the marketplace.

This problem is particularly acute in academia, where internal purchasing decisions can be very cumbersome. It’s not unusual at our institution for weeks, even months to pass between purchase requisition and product delivery. That’s why our department has gradually moved away from our centralized IT purchasing department to buy much of what we need to support faculty and staff. We can get precisely what we need in much less time, and often for less money. Doing so typically results in an ominous warning from our IT folks that we are buying products that “aren’t officially supported” by them. But that usually isn’t much of a problem, since such support is often only a little better than what can be received from the vendors directly (and sometimes not as good).

True, there are some faculty who need a lot of hand-holding with technology, and they can potentially benefit from the support provided by centralized IT departments. More often than not, however, most faculty would prefer to have today’s technology today without official support, rather than yesterday’s technology the day after tomorrow with the promise of ongoing support. And unfortunately, such support can be motivated as much by the desire to control costs than to improve technology utilization.

So Mossberg may have hit the nail on the head with his comment. Centralized IT by its very nature can be very regressive, since it needs to regularly “freeze” adoption points in order to systematically support technology. And in an academic environment, with the constant pressure to push forward the boundaries of public knowledge, such a regressive force could also be a poisonous one.

Perhaps one antidote for this “poison” could be the adoption of a more distributed model of technology implementation, where faculty, administration and students all play a part in “pushing the envelope” of educational technology. And that’s something that academic librarians have a lot of experience with, a point I have been trying to get people to listen to for years. Until we move from seeing computers as “bricks and mortar” to seeing them as “books and journals,” higher education will continue to struggle with technology adoption. We need to encourage campus IT leaders to see beyond the bottom line, by helping raise the status of technology in the educational enterprise from a physical expense to an intellectual asset.

A furry web on the iPhone?

Now this one’s rather strange, but some might enjoy it. If you’ve seen the latest ads for Apple’s iPhone, you may appreciate this oddly humorous version, compliments of the folks at This Just In. It’s just incredible how much hype the iPhone is getting, both positive and negative…and in this case satirical.

And just think, in less than two weeks, you’ll be able to watch this video on your iPhone (if you’re lucky enough to get one).

iPhone gets an upgrade

Today Apple did something it rarely does: announce a major upgrade to a product before it is even released. In this press release, Apple stated that the iPhone will have better battery life and a more durable screen than was previously specified.

As I noted in a previous blog post, the iPhone’s battery life has been criticized since it was announced during Steve Jobs’ MacWorld keynote address in January. Saturday Night Live joked that battery life expectancy was only 20 minutes (although the original specifications stated the iPhone’s battery would last about 5 hours). Apple is now saying that when the iPhone is released to the public next Friday, June 29, it “will deliver significantly longer battery life,” with “up to 8 hours of talk time, 6 hours of internet use, 7 hours of video playback or 24 hours of audio playback.”

Perhaps an even more significant upgrade is the switch from a plastic touch screen to one made of “optical-quality glass.” Supposedly this will make the iPhone more resistant to scratches, a problem that I have seen with many of the iPods I have owned over the years.

What Apple did not state in the press release is whether these changes will make the iPod any heavier. The switch to glass from plastic could potentially add a bit of heft, but the iPhone’s specification page still lists the weight as 4.8 ounces (135 grams), as originally announced. One would think that the move to glass would at least add a gram or two, but apparently Apple has found a way to keep the iPhone’s weight constant. Amazing, if true.

What is also amazing is the ability of Apple to announce these changes less than two weeks before the product ships. Surely there must be some units already in the manufacturing pipeline. I have to wonder whether any of the iPhones that have already been created, such as the ones on display at MacWorld and those that have been given to elite technology reviewers (like the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg) will be retrofitted with glass screens. Perhaps the few iPhones that have plastic screens will become collector’s items…if they don’t get too many scratches on them.

ScribeFire Blog Editor

I’ve been exploring different Blog Editors lately, trying to find the best combination of features, speed and flexibility.  I have been using MacJournal, which has some nice features, including a very cool full screen mode.  Unfortunately, I have found that there are some issues with formatting and aligning images that required manual adjustment in the WordPress web interface.  Most of these issues are probably related to the new version of WordPress, but nevertheless they have prompted me to look for alternatives.

I have tried Qumana in the past, and decided to try the latest version.  It seemed promising at first, and the Q-Ads monetizing feature was intriguing.  But like previous versions, I found Qumana to be far from perfect, at least on the Mac platform.  Perhaps I didn’t give it a long enough test drive, but I soon found myself frustrated with entries not refreshing and  quirks with embedded images.  Ecto has a lot of features, but isn’t free.  At $17.95, it’s quite reasonably priced, but I’m not convinced it offers much more than what is available in freeware applications.  WBloggar is free, but is only available on Windows, and hasn’t been updated for quite awhile. 

Then I discovered ScribeFire, a Firefox add-on that used to be called Performancing for Firefox.  So far I like it a lot.  What is great about ScribeFire is the ability to blog with an editor while in the browser.  You can split the browser window in half, blog in one half while surfing in the other. ScribeFire has built-in support for Technorati tags and del.icio.us bookmarks, the ability to save drafts and notes, and three different editing views (WYSIWYG, code and preview).  I’m currently testing it out, but so far it seems to provide a very useful environment for blogging. One disadvantage is that it only works in Firefox, and I’ve been mainly using the new version of Safari lately.  I’d love to see a ScribeFire plug-in for Safari (or something like it).

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A visit to Newlin Grist Mill

This morning my wife, sister-in-law and I paid a visit to the Newlin Grist Mill, a restoration of a water-powered mill that was originally established in 1704. I didn’t know quite what to expect at first, as I’m not a huge history buff, and hardly a “mill enthusiast.” But it turned out to be a very interesting and enjoyable visit.

We began at the visitor’s center, a small building that houses a few exhibits, a small video theater, and a gift shop. After looking at some of the exhibits, we watched a brief video about the mill, with a somewhat corny but cute story about a young boy who found himself “transported back in time” by a visit to the mill. We were then asked if we would like to take the guided tour ($5 a person). My sister-in-law offered to pay, so we took her up on the offer, and spent the next hour or so listening to an informative tour guide describe in detail the intricacies of water power, wooden gears and spinning grind stones. The most impressive part of the tour was when the tour guide turned the water on, and we were able to watch the huge water wheel being set in motion. It was loud and impressive, and we got to see the mill mechanism “in action,” not once, but twice, from two different rooms of the mill.

After the tour of the mill, we looked at some of the other buildings on the property, including the neighboring miller’s house, which housed quite a few antiques. We also enjoyed just walking the grounds. The mill is surrounded by a beautiful park, featuring a trout pond, picnic tables, an idyllic creek and numerous walking trails. It was a beautiful morning for a walk, and taking lots of pictures, of course.

The Newlin Grist Mill is located in Concord Township in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, just off of Route 1 and Cheyney Road. Both my wife and I have passed by the Mill many times while driving down Route 1, but neither of us had stopped to visit. We’re glad we did…the Newlin Grist Mill is well worth turning off of busy Route 1 to step back to a simpler, slower time.

I’ve posted more pictures from our visit to this Picasa Web Album.