AquaMinds Weblog

It's Tuesday,  December 9th and I thought it would be a good time to cover a number of items of interest to our user community, readers and partners.

Collaboration, sharing and information processing continue to be the central themes of our software development work.  As we prepare for the new year, we expect more users will be sharing and working with their notebooks on more platforms than ever before.  The energy and creativity of the AquaMinds community continues to grow in new and exciting ways.  If you've got a NoteTaker or NoteShare resource, success story or an application workflow you would like to share with us, write to us at this email address.    We enjoy hearing from you and appreciate your support and suggestions.

And now, the news...

It was forty years ago today, Dr. Engelbart taught the band how to play

Engelbart's computing DNA is everywhere.  Visionary extraordinaire, Doug Engelbart has been thinking the big thoughts for a very long time and we salute him and his team of pioneering scientists that showed the way.  We've put together a web notebook of site links you can browse to learn more about the amazing history of Doug Engelbart and his colleagues that kicked off many a revolution; more than just the mouse device we use today.  And if you're looking for a fascinating book to read about the halcyon days of Engelbart's generation before there was a commercial "Silicon Valley" (pre-Apple, pre-Atari, pre-Osborne),  check out What the Dormouse Said by John Markoff (New York Times technology reporter).  NOTE: Our local NPR station KQED, home to Michael Krasny's popular Forum program, also had a special today to celebrate and reflect upon Engelbart's contributions.  You can listen to it here.

Terrific new NoteShare screencasts for educators and students

Middle school teacher Ann Marie Hutton of Maine has put together her own site of NoteShare and NoteShare Server screencasts to share with educators who are using NoteShare in the classroom and on their campuses.  The series of screencasts show NoteShare being used to organize grade-level notebooks for organizing lessons, homework and course notes.    She also features the use of RSS and web notebooks for anytime access by both students and parents.  For schools using Etech's Studywiz Spark, check out the screencast on embedding live notebooks and RSS feeds within Studywiz pages.

Teachers on teaching in a digital world using NoteShare and other social tools

I have written here before that the state of Maine is one of the most innovative laboratories for studying and understanding the impact of 1:1 personal computing in the classroom and on campuses.  This past year I sat down with Freeport Middle School teacher Betsy Sky-McIlvain to talk about her teaching style, her literacy blog and her insights about teaching students today in a digital world.  The complete interview transcript is published here on our education site.


Notebook sharing and collaboration with Windows PC and Linux users

We are shipping NoteShare Express this month which is our exciting new web-based application for live editing of shared notebooks.  That's correct.  Mac users working on their shared notebooks with Windows PC and Linux users, anytime, anywhere.    You can preview the new user documentation via NoteShare Express from your browser (requires latest version of Java).


Netbooks, iPhones, iPod Touch and Pervasive Computing
And in looking ahead to 2009, we predict (like others) that personal, social computing gets even more mobile and more pervasive as users connect daily through their smartphones, netbooks, iPhones and other mobile Web devices.  And to address this pervasive computing trend, we'll continue to enhance our web notebook technology even for the most basic application scenarios like browsing notebook information.

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