The Polyphonic Box

5.03.2011

The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats - Online Exhibition

Presented by The National Library of Ireland.

Here.

5.02.2011

Chrome OS File Management Improvements and more

Here are some screenshots of improvements made in the last Chrome (ok, Chromium.. :D) OS build:

File Manager open as a new tab (you should use CTRL+O to open files)

New folder name pop up

Folder "Test" created

You have to hit DEL if you want to delete the file

Folder "external storage" (note the curious date...)

Folders inside "external storage"

EFI boot files

The screensaver

Chrome OS is building up to be an amazing OS! I'm very convinced that Chrome OS will mark the begining of a new phase in operating systems.

And it's only Chrome OS v1.0. The party is just starting!

A Person in the World of People: Self and Other, Part I and II

Part 1

Watch it on Academic Earth

Part 2

Watch it on Academic Earth

Pensamento simples para ti, Portugal

É muito difícil teres o estado social da Suécia e a economia das Seychelles. A economia sueca é forte, a população é educada e os políticos são competentes e responsáveis.

Dizem que devemos lutar pelo teu Estado Social. Concordo. Mas concordo ainda mais com a premissa de que devemos lutar por um melhor Estado e por uma economia dinâmica e pujante.

Tu bem sabes que precisas de energia para sobreviver. Diz lá, não achas que estás muito gordo? Não achas que abafas a economia com o teu peso desmesurado? Precisas de ganhar mais músculo e resistência.

Sabes, não conheço nenhum Estado que não seja iminentemente social. Os EUA, esses neoliberais loucos (opinião de alguns..), gastam 16% do PIB com saúde. Será que não têm Estado Social? Pois é, isto é uma grande confusão! O assunto não é tão simples como querem fazer parecer.

Deves ser melhor e adequado à economia que te alimenta. Melhor.

Chrome OS File Management Improvements

Looks like the Chrome team has given some love to the file management feature in Chrome OS. Now, if you hit the Print Screen key, you'll get a screenshot with detailed information inside a Screenshot folder that in turn is in the File Shelf.

You can also create a new folder.

Hit CTRL + O to see these improvements.

Things are putting up quite nicely for Google's I/O.

5.01.2011

President Obama mocks Trump at the Annual White House Correspondents Dinner

This is very funny material! President Obama has a pretty good sense of humor!

4.30.2011

Ubuntu 11.04 rocks

I started using Ubuntu back in 2007. At that time I was already starting to realize that Microsoft's OS was too slow, unreliable and too demanding. You know, all that anti virus scans, defragmentation, optimization, registry erros check up, were and ARE, even with Windows 7, too time consuming and frustrating.

But, as many others, I had to rely on specific Microsoft Windows compatible software. But now, with emergence of webapps like Google Docs and the refinement of Ubuntu OS, it's alot easier to use Ubuntu exclusively. Unfortunately, I'm not yet on that point because I have some vocational tests software that are only compatible with Windows.

But now, with Ubuntu 11.04 and the Unity desktop, the user experience reached a new level. A positive one. In terms of functionality, design and hardware requirements, Ubuntu rocks when compared to Windows 7 or Apple's OSX Lion. Yes, I truly think that it is alot better than its competitors!

Some aspects of Ubuntu 11.04:

it's very FAST and secure;
it has an App Store with LOTS of applications ;
it's reliable;
it gets better with time;
it's BEAUTIFUL (lovely fonts, backgrounds, and themes);
has a new and awesome interface - Unity;
it's free, zero euros or dollars.

Want to know more about Unity and Ubuntu 11.04? Visit Ubuntu's website of reference, the holy grail of Ubuntu fans, OMG!Ubuntu!

What are you waiting for?

Enjoy!

A billionaire bachelor's playground by 60 minutes

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen gives "60 Minutes" a tour of his estate, yacht, space rocket, and, yes - his very own submarine.

Via CBSNews

Oh! the pure flavor of Google!

This was something that I've been eagerly waiting for! I wanted to get the new Google blue bar (black bar in Gmail) and all I got was the old classic homepage and bar.

But there's workaround. Try google.com/ncr (ncr=no country redirect) and you'll get "the pure flavor of Google that has all the new features and it's not biased towards the pages from a certain country". (here)

Now, I get the black bar in Gmail

and the blue bar in G Docs, for example

You can also use http://www.google.com/ncr as your homepage. Works great!

Talk with Google Chrome

Android is not the only piece of software that you can talk to. Try talking to Google Translate in Chrome. It only works when translating words or phrases from English.

All you need is a microphone.

If you don't have Google Chrome, click here.

Samsung Galaxy S II Voice Talk

It works great with the English language but not as well with Portuguese. To be more precise, Brazilian Portuguese. Portuguese isn't available yet for Voice Talk.

Google Mountain View

List of acquisitions by Google

It all started in 2011 and it never stopped. There are now 95 acquisitions listed.

The first was Deja in February 12, 2001 and the last was TalkBin in April 26, 2011.

Most of the acquisitions were made to use as a Google product or to integrated in one or several.

Take the example of Google Docs:

April 17, 2007 Tonic Systems - Presentation program

June 19, 2007 Zenter - Presentation program

December 4, 2009 AppJet (EtherPad) - Collaborative real-time editor

March 5, 2010 DocVerse - Microsoft Office files sharing site

Full list of acquisitions here.

Slideshow feature shows up in Chrome OS File Management

File management in Chrome OS has seen some improvements in the past weeks. As of this moment, it has, for example, a File Shelf and File Previews. Today I noticed something that I haven't seen before. All happened after saving picture from the web.

So, after saving a picture to the File Shelf, I double clicked it in the notification panel and...a Slideshow screen showed up in a new tab! Uouu! This is new! At least for me!

It seems that users will be able to use the Chrome Browser and the Slideshow tab to see their locally saved pictures (saved in a ssd hard disk and maybe in external drives as well).

To try this Slideshow feature, all you have to do is type "chrome://slideshow". It doesn't work in Chrome, just in Chrome OS. I used Hexxeh's ChromiumOS Vanilla Nightly Builds of April 28.

We will probably have more information on this and all the other features of Chrome OS in Google I/O 2011 on May 10-11.

4.28.2011

Decentralization in Public Education

Decentralization is not created by passing a law. Rather it must be built by overcoming a series of challenges at the center and the periphery by, for example, changing long established behaviours and attitudes, developing new skills, convincing people in the center who enjoy exercising power to give it up, permitting and sometimes encouraging people to take creative risks, promoting and rewarding local initiatives, and maintaining continuity with the decentralization reform even as governments change.

Hanson (1997)

No, I know it looks like the author was writing about portuguese public education but no. It's just plain wisdom.

Compared brain activation in non impared and dyslexic readers

Relative increase in activation during phonologic compared with orthographic coding in different brain regions in NI and DYS readers.

Significant differences in brain activation patterns between DYS and NI readers were found. Those differences emerge during tasks that make progressive demands on phonologic analysis. These findings relate the cognitive/behavioral deficit characterizing DYS readers to anomalous activation patterns in both posterior and anterior brain regions.

From Functional disruption in the organization of the brain for reading in dyslexia

Finalmente um Governador do Banco de Portugal

Felizmente e finalmente: temos um bom Governador do Banco de Portugal. Não é preciso dizer mais nada.

Video.