YEARS AGO, a logic professor beat it into my bony head that Sherlock Holmes had it all wrong when he consistently claimed to use deduction in solving his cases. It turns out he (or better, Arthur Conan Doyle) was using induction, which is, according to Webster’s, “the act or process of reasoning from a part…

When discussing the semantic web, it is important to get one thing clear from the start: this is not a new version of the internet. Casual web users will probably not even notice semantic web technologies running behind their browsers. But they might notice a vast improvement in the relevance of the data returned to…

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I’ve been spending a lot time looking at stuff online lately that is “new” to me both in terms of how it is delivered (blogs, wikis, other social software) and the topics it is covering (bots, online communities, innovative educational uses of technology). The experience has been exciting. It has also been scary. What’s scary…

The Christian Science Monitor ran this article yesterday on a new German study that suggests “too much exposure to computers might spell trouble for the developing mind.” Among the conclusions discussed in the article is that performance in math and reading among students who have access to more than one computer at home is significantly…

If you’re looking for some good, new reading, check out the nominees for the 2004 Weblog Awards.

Not to turn this blog into a Google love-fest, but their latest acquisition is pretty darn cool. Over the weekend, an annoucement showed up on the Google homepage that they’ve acquired Keyhole, a “3D digital earth pioneer.” From Keyhole’s Web site: Keyhole’s groundbreaking EarthStream™ technology combines advanced 3D graphics and network streaming innovations to produce…

Just read an article at The New York Times about a new Google search: http://scholar.google.com/ From the Times article: Google Scholar, which was scheduled to go online Wednesday evening at scholar.google.com, is a result of the company’s collaboration with a number of scientific and academic publishers and is intended as a first stop for researchers…

Check out blogdigger. This service allows you to aggregate several RSS/Atom feeds into a single Web page from which you can then generate a new, compiled RSS feed (to be consumed anyway you choose). I found this service while working on our DTLT community Web site where I had been consuming a feed for each…

One thing that I really wanted to experience before leaving Missoula was the Northern Lights. For two summers, I hoped that I would catch a glimpse of this amazing phenomenon. I know that it is possible to see them as far south as Virginia, but the occurences are rare and not nearly as dramatic as…