Salman Khan: Let's use video to reinvent education

I've mentioned free online learning before, but here's a great TED talk with Salman Khan, about a brilliant method for integrating technology and learning.

VoIP != Secure

Cisco was concerned that Vomit was too difficult to run, so they made it a bit simpler to hack the phone system assuming that you deploy it with the out of the box configs. With IT shops known for liking their "IT Budget Tight and My Developers Stupid", this can only be a good thing!

Gaming...

Forget EA, how about Cat?

Caterpillar has a series of training games to help teach folks how to use their heavy equipment. It's not just he computer games (which seem cool enough), but it also includes these serious seating platforms. (few more monitors, and would be perfect for my new office!)

Check out the youtube video.. not sure about needing to ware a hardhat to play a video game..

Night Sky (photographed)

Nick Risinger is an astronomer who went nuts and decided to photograph ~all~ of the night's sky. (yea.. with no clouds) Well the end result is very cool, with a fantastic webpage that lets you pan and zoom of his huge mosaic photograph.

Notes from his website skysurvey.org:

The Photopic Sky Survey is a 5,000 megapixel photograph of the entire night sky stitched together from 37,440 exposures.

[...]

On a journey that covered 45,000 miles by air and 15,000 by land—the equivalent of nearly 2½ passes around the equator—I toured much of the American west and twice visited the western Cape of South Africa. Through it I was able to enjoy not only the wonders of the natural world but also the company of my retired father whom I was able to convince had nothing better to do