Well, I just purchased another USB cable (Type A to Mini 5 pin, 60″ length) at Dollar Tree for… $1 + tax. In one of my early posts, “Dollar Tree, Subway, and the Cheap Tekkie” , I told of having bought a couple of these USB cables to use with my Canon Digital Camera, to transfer images from the camera to my PC.

Just about a year later, as I was playing with an HTC Hero (Android) phone, I found that this same cable could be used when syncing files, email, and or just charging the phone from a PC. *How many times does this happen? Well, not very many. Usually what would seem a practical matter is hindered, intentionally, and there is an extra protuberance in the connector, or a pin missing or wires need to be crossed in a certain configuration (that requires an additional adaptor, or connector).

But, in this case, I just happened to try the camera cable in the smartphone, and it fit. I then found that the phone had the Sync Program in one of its folders. I downloaded it to the PC, and ran the install program. The Sync Program installed successfully, but then appeared to not work. Later I found that there were some “Connect to PC” options under the phone’s Settings, that needed to be set to determine whether the connection was for “Charge Only”, syncing data, or transferring files from the SD card.

Okay, the HTC Hero has a short battery life, when you are running various programs, like GPS Navigation, or pushing live video via USTREAM, or taking photos and sending them to your Flickr account. It’s probably less than 4 hours before the phone, on it’s last “battery” legs, starts beeping at you to connect it to a charging source.

I like the female voice of the GPS talking to me, telling me to take a left turn in a quarter mile, or stay on Garnett Street for 3 miles. I’m not really thrilled with the quality of the live video that the phone produces via USTREAM, but that it can produce any live video at all is exciting. And, I do want to be able to take pictures, on the road, record mp3 audio and then post both to a blog/podcast via email or the WordPress Android app.

So, I googled for phone adaptors, and car chargers and found that there was a simple USB car charger which had 4 USB ports for about $12 (plus shipping). *Should get that next week. I also purchased a window/dash mounting kit for an EVO phone (which I also hope will work with the Hero).

Will tell you about the portable, Bluetooth keyboard I’ve purchased ($29 + S&H) to use with an iPad or Android phone. Hopefully it will work with both (or at least one). There is another, Bluetooth keyboard, which is foldable and has a detachable phone stand that I would like to try… if FSU will fund the $189 price tag.  [iGo Stowaway Ultra-Slim Bluetooth Keyboard for PDAs and Handhelds from Amazon.com]

 

I have seen this same ad run on the WRAL web site and now I see it on the News and Observer site. However, I see that the company now “hard codes” the city/state into the ad on the server side. When I was looking at it on the WRAL site, you could view the javascript coding that would make the city/state change depending upon where the web viewer was located.

I was on the N&O site and recognized this false ad:

http://www.channel6reports.com/finance/?n=205&k=McClatchy

So, if you were in Fayetteville, NC, “Kelly Richards” was from Fayetteville, NC. However, if you were viewing from Stark, Florida, then Kelly Richards was from Stark, Florida… and since I was playing with a smartphone that was registered, apparently in Stark, Florida, I could see that Kelly Richards was a mom from two drastically distant areas at the same time.

Here is a photo from my web browser in Fayetteville,

 

and also from my HTC Hero phone at the same time.

2010 Horizon Report

KEY TRENDS

Four trends have been identified as key drivers of technology adoptions for the period 2010 through 2015:

 

• The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the Internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators in sense-making, coaching, and credentialing.
• People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want to.
• The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based, and our notions of IT support are decentralized.
• The work of students is increasingly seen as collaborative by nature, and there is more cross-campus collaboration between departments.

 

Critical Challenges

• The role of the academy — and the way we prepare students for their future lives — is changing.
• New scholarly forms of authoring, publishing, and researching continue to emerge but appropriate metrics for evaluating them increasingly and far too often lag behind.
• Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession.
• Institutions increasingly focus more narrowly on key goals, as a result of shrinking budgets in the present economic climate.

 

Technologies to Watch

The six technologies featured in each Horizon Report are placed along three adoption horizons that indicate likely time frames for their entrance into mainstream use for teaching, learning, or creative inquiry. The near-term horizon assumes the likelihood of entry into the mainstream for institutions within the next twelve months; the mid-term horizon, within two to three years; and the far-term, within four to five years.

On the near-term horizon — that is, within the next 12 months — are mobile computing and open content.

The mid-term adoption horizon is set two to three years out, where we will begin to see widespread adoptions of two well-established technologies that have taken off by making use of the global cellular networks — electronic books and simple augmented reality.

On the far-term horizon, set at four to five years away for widespread adoption, but clearly already in use in some quarters, are gesture-based computing and visual data analysis.