I’m indebted to Brady Forrest on O’Reilly Radar for the link to this cool video by Lee & Sachi LeFever that explains how Wiki works. There’s also a companion video RSS in Plain English that I haven’t embedded here, but which is just as good.
New feed: del.icio.us link blog
I now have a del.icio.us “[link blog](http://feeds.feedburner.com/Delicious/cpjobling)” feed like (Dion Almaer’s) courtesy of [feedburner.com](http://feedburner.com). Check it out!
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More on the RESTful web services book
Jon Udell has [blogged](http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/05/24/restful-web-services/) about the new [RESTful web services](http://www.crummy.com/writing/RESTful-Web-Services/) book by Richardson and Ruby (see [New book ordered](http://crispyj2.blogspot.com/2007/06/new-book-ordered.html)). In his post refers to an [interview](http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/08/25.html) he did last year with Roy Fielding and another with the authors that was then in post production but was [published](http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail1830.html) today. I’ve got a coffee in my hand and I’m off to listen to them both.
[p.s. I picked up the [link](http://intertwingly.net/blog/2007/05/23/Link-Bait) to Jon’s piece from Sam Ruby’s [blog](http://intertwingly.net/blog) to which I subscribe]
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FOSS in Education
Today, my colleague Dr John Mason and I interviewed one of my MEng students who has submitted a research dissertation on Free and Open Source Software in Engineering Education. Just prior to the interview, John showed me this site which he had picked up by Googling “open source education brazil“. It wasn’t picked up by my student in his literature review (which to be fair was directed to the more “professional” search engines on-line like IET Inspec and IEEE XPlore) but it looks like a great resource and I shall need to add it to my list of sites worthy of a longer look.
REAP Conference (almost) missed
After an announcement on the Learning Lab blog, I had signed up for the on-line REAP (Re-Engineering Assessment Practices) conference that took place between 29th and 31st May last week. And then with examination assessment and other distractions, promptly forgot all about it. Because I also neglecting my email, I also missed all the reminders that appeared in my in-box until Thursday lunchtime. So I was only able to catch part of the final on-line discussion session! Nonetheless, the sessions looked interesting and I will need to spend some time reviewing all of the materials.
I am also signed up for the JISC Innovating e-Learning 2007 online conference which starts next week. (I actually paid £50 for that, so maybe I’ll take it more seriously.) Unfortunately, it’s also another week of examination meetings! Anyway, I have caught the opening of “reading week” so I should be equipped to attend at least some of the sessions … and hopefully blog about some of the interesting things!
Eric Amstrong’s “Best of JavaOne”
Eric Amstrong has published a nice summary of some of the main topics that caught his attention at this year’s JavaOne. The topics are listed as:
- Scripting Languages on the JVM
- Improved JRE Insallations
- Java Quick Start Service
- Java Modules
- Java 7 Language
- Java 7 Tools
- User Interface Testing with FEST
- Sun ID System
- DITA Pod
- Writing DSLs in Ruby
and I have highlighted the ones of particular interest to me. Eric’s article is a good place to start on an exploration of the technical session video casts when they become available.
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Google Tech Talk Showcase
Dion Almaer has provided a nice new portal to the Google Tech Talk Showcase of tech videos that are hosted on Google Video. I’ve been picking these up from a search feed that looks for the engEdu tag on Google Videos and watching the videos for a couple of months now. Dion’s new showcase site now puts everything in one place. Of course, there’s also an RSS feed that in Google Reader shows you the videos right there in your feed.
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Google Developer Day 2007
Dion Almaer [blogs](http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2007/05/google-developer-day-fantastic.html) about the Google Developer Day which took place at several locations worldwide on 31st May. I stumbled upon the announcement of [Google Gears](http://youtube.com/watch?v=cQyha30nm6k) yesterday among the growing collection of [YouTube](http://youtube.com/profile_videos?user=GoogleDeveloperDay&p=r) videos recorded at the various events. Expect to see follow-ups and links to comments on this event and the technologies announced at Dion’s [Google Code Updates](http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com) blog and reviews of some of the key videos here.
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JRuby project releases final Release Candidate of Version 1
Charles Nutter has today [blogged](http://headius.blogspot.com/2007/06/jruby-100rc3-released-and-this-is-it.html) that JRuby 1.0.0RC3 has been released and that this is expected to be the final release candidate before the release of 1.0 which will follow later this week. Time to try it out I guess!
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New book ordered
![RESTful web services by Richardson and Ruby (O'Reilly) [cover from Amazon.co.uk]](http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/518TAgBUwKL._AA240_.jpg)
I’ve just ordered RESTful Web Services by Leonard Richardson and Sam Ruby (Published May 2007, O’Reilly Media Inc). I plan to have at least one lecture on REST (representational state transfer) and up to now the only definitive reference was Roy Fielding’s PhD thesis. I was going to buy this book anyway but an interview with the authors and a free chapter available was made available yesterday on InfoQ prompted me to take action. For more on REST see also the RESTWiki.
