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compares Lucene, zettair, sphinx, Xapian, SQLite
VLC 1.0.0 Hits the Streets, Now Play Anything With 1 Player
VideoLAN’s VLC media player, arguably the world’s best media player, hit version 0.9.9 in early April. Three months and more than 78 million downloads later, VideoLAN has announced VLC 1.0.0, or “Goldeneye.”
Your media will never be the same.
via VideoLAN releases VLC 1.0.0: Your media will never be the same | The Open Road – CNET News.
The download is here. I’ve been a fan of VLC for years and use it on Windows, Mac and Linux. This is a must for media fans.
J. Saltalamachia on Using Classcaster and Podcasting In Her Torts Class
The written student evaluations from each class have been overwhelmingly positive regarding all technology, but the podcasting was a particular favorite. Students revealed that they listened to the podcasts on iPods as well as work computers. They could listen during their commutes, which in our urban environment frequently took several hours each day. One student told me that she was planning to listen to the entire set of podcasts while she was running the New York Marathon. I once even overheard several of my students bragging to students in other sections about how their podcasts were available after each class. Classcaster statistics revealed that my 2006 Torts pages received 4657 hits, while the 2007 page had 7662 hits. On occasion my page has been one of the most frequently used in the entire Classcaster system. Because I did not require a password, students at other schools were also able download the lessons. The lesson I recorded on “exam writing tips” before the 2006 mid-term exam was one of the most popular of all time.
Podcasts, PowerPoint, and Pedagogy: Using Technology to Teach the Part-Time Student
Be sure to take a look at the results of the survey on page 898, showing that 97.7% of her students listened to the podcasts, while 67.4% ran the CALI Lessons she recommended.
Prof. Saltalamachia makes use of Classcaster’s relatively unique telephone podcasting system to record her class summaries so that “[w]ith a cell phone and a laptop, I could do this anywhere without needing any help from the school’s IT Department.”
The blogs, with podcasts, mentioned in the article are here and here. The podcasts are part of an archive of nearly 20,000 (yes that is twenty thousand) hours of recorded lectures and summaries that are housed in Classcaster. The Classcaster podcasting and blogging system is available to faculty, librarians, and staff of CALI member law schools free of charge.
The Rocketbelt Caper: Free eBook, Print Too
“When three men set out on a quest to build a real-life Buck Rogers-style flying machine, their obsession with the Rocketbelt 2000 shattered their friendship and set in motion an astonishing chain of events involving theft, deception, assault, a bizarre kidnapping, a ten million dollar lawsuit and a horrifically brutal murder. From sci-fi to reality, this is the incredible true story of the amazing rocketbelt.” – Description at Feedbooks, where this gripping history from the annals of aviation tech is free.