Finally, a Way to Teach Coding to the Touchscreen Generation

 

First came Generation X. Then the Millennials. And if you have kids under 10, you already know what they’re going to be called: the Touchscreen Generation.

For these kids, who learned to walk and talk as smartphones and tablets were saturating the cultural landscape, a computer with a physical keyboard is archaic and distant, a clattering tool their parents use. The Touchscreen Generation experiences computing as something immediate, direct, intuitive—not as an interaction that happens in a slightly removed way, where the screen and what happens on it are mediated by keys, mice, or trackpads.

And yet there’s a different kind of distance that touchscreens create. Seamless interactions with touchscreens depend on the seamless packaging of apps into self-contained experiences. What kids gain in directness, they lose in an appreciation for how the software on the screen really works, how it was built, how they too could build it.

When I was a kid, I had to know some DOS commands to launch a program, or navigate a file tree, or insert a floppy disk, all of which served to remind me that this computer was a machine, not a magic portal. Interacting with touchscreens, on the other hand, feels so natural that it’s easy to forget that these devices, these apps, are things that someone built. The natural posture for relating to touchscreens is as a consumer, not a creator. That kind of one-way dynamic isn’t a good start to the way the next generation relates to technology.

‘This is a tool that they can use to get their voice out in the world, not just to consume what other people are doing.’

But a new app might be able to break through that passivity by meeting the Touchscreen generation where their fingers live. ScratchJr is a new iPad variation of the Scratch programming language, a tool created at MIT to help teach kids to code. The premise for both is the same: instead of text, Scratch uses interlocking colored blocks to mimic the logical structures and functions of a typical grown-up programming language. Scratch scripts allow their creators to direct and interact with “sprites”—cartoonish characters on the screen. By introducing kids to coding without the hurdles of arcane syntax and bug-prevention, the hope is that they’ll become engaged enough with the process that their sensibilities will shift.

The difference with ScratchJr is that it aims to bring this dynamic to an even younger audience, the kids who have known only tablets and smartphones. “We wanted to make sure young people aren’t just using tablet for browsing and consuming,” says Professor Mitchel Resnick, head of the MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten group, which developed ScratchJr along with researchers at Tufts University and the Montreal-based Playful Invention Company. “This is a tool that they can use to get their voice out in the world, not just to consume what other people are doing.”

 

Core Concepts

ScratchJr isn’t as sophisticated as Scratch itself, which works as either a standalone app or a web app on PCs. But that relative lack of complexity turns out to be ScratchJr’s strongest selling point. While Scratch is aimed at eight-year-olds and up, ScratchJr is targeted at kids five to seven. It’s almost purely graphic-driven, which makes it accessible to an age group for whom reading is sometimes still a lot of work. And the only time the iPad keyboard ever comes into play is when young coders want to change the text in the word-bubble coming from a character’s mouth. Otherwise, they’re creating rudimentary but fun programs by tapping and dragging on the touchscreen interface, which is as native to many of them as turning on a light switch.

Resnick is also quick to emphasize that although stripped down, ScratchJr retains the essential computational concepts taught by its older sibling, such as events, sequencing, and iteration. These core ideas are key to the aim of the Scratch project to teach coding as a new kind of literacy. “Just as with traditional literacy, it’s important to learn to read, but it’s also important to learn to write,” Resnick says.

Not Just on the Receiving End

But as with reading and writing for earlier generations when those skills were less commonplace, parental anxiety around learning to code is economic, not just idealistic. Skilled programmers these days have their pick of high-paying jobs. As the outlook even for such venerable professions as law and medicine become murkier, the mythology of the Zuckerbergian coder-tycoon becomes all the more seductive.

But it would be a shame to view creations like ScratchJr mainly as entry points through which helicopter parents can guide their children onto the joyless path toward a college-ready kid-CV. Teaching kids to code isn’t about giving them a better chance in 20 years of fighting off the robots who will otherwise take their jobs. It’s about teaching them now that the robot isn’t running the show.

Interactive digital technologies are now unavoidably a part of growing up, which makes it all the more important to start early in trying to shape how the Touchscreen Generation relates to that technology. They need to know that they can take the robot apart and put it back together again; that if they don’t like the app, they can make their own; that if they want new kinds of creatures, tools, and materials in Minecraft, they can learn Java and mod it themselves. Tinkering is a way to make technology your own, and tinkering is what a project like ScratchJr makes possible, on a device kids are already using. The most important thing kids can learn when they learn to code is that, when it comes to technology, they’re not just on the receiving end.

Internet Providers Gird for Battle in Austin, Texas

 With Google Fiber months away from its launch in Austin, competitors are ramping up their Internet speeds and services in preparation for a titan-sized fight over customers.

 

When it comes to Internet service, Austin is about to become one of the most competitive markets in the nation.

Google Inc. is still months away from launching its superfast Google Fiber Internet service in Austin, but Google’s competitors are already gearing up for a titan-sized fight over customers by ramping up their own Internet speeds and services.

As the battle heats up, the beneficiaries could be Austin consumers, who will have more options when it comes to Internet and subscription TV services.

“That’s great for the people of Austin,” said Austin City Council Member Laura Morrison, who played a key role in luring Google Fiber to the region. “I think it’s bonus and a benefit for the people of Austin to have choice.”

Google began the Internet arms race in April 2013, when it announced that Austin would be the second U.S. city — after Kansas City— to get its Google Fiber 1 gigabit Internet broadband network. Google Fiber is more than 100 times faster than today’s typical broadband Internet access. At 1 gigabit, a user could download 25 songs in 1 second, a TV show in 3 seconds and a high-definition movie in less than 36 seconds, according to data from AT&T.

Local leaders said landing the service would accelerate the development of new tech companies and help with new broadband services for schools and hospitals and other parts of the city. Google is currently working on the infrastructure for the Google Fiber service. Last week, an American-Statesman review of hundreds of city-issued permits found that the search-engine giant is in the midst of installing thousands of feet of cable conduit along 176 city streets – mostly in South Austin and East Austin.

After Google’s announcement that Google Fiber was coming to Austin, the city’s two big established broadband Internet providers, Time Warner Cable and AT&T Inc., said they were ready to make additional investments in their networks as they prepare to compete with the arrival of Google Fiber — and they have done so.

Late last year, AT&T rolled out its fast-growing U-Verse service with its “GigaPower” feature, which offers speeds of up to 300 megabits per second. This year, the San Antonio-based telecom giant said, it plans to up those speeds to 1 gigabit per second.

AT&T said it would double the reach of its Austin area fiber network — already available to thousands of homes — after the “incredible response” to a December rollout of their faster U-Verse product, said Tracy King, AT&T’s vice president of public affairs.

“Sales continue to exceed our expectations and it’s clear that residents want our fastest speeds,” King said. “We can’t wait to get our faster broadband speeds into their hands and homes.”

Already, the two companies have faced off in Kansas City, where Google Fiber first launched last year and has taken market share from AT&T, the company said in federal filings.

The filings, which are tied to AT&T’s ongoing efforts to buy DirectTV, say early performance in Kansas City has led experts to predict that Google Fiber will capture the business of at least half of the covered households in three to four years. In Kansas City, the basic price for 1-gigabit Internet access is $70 a month. Internet plus cable TV costs $120 a month. The company also offers a slower basic broadband package free for seven years after a $300 network construction fee is paid.

“Google Fiber is the most ambitious and potentially disruptive BSP,” or fiber-based broadband service provider, the filings said.

“The potential of gigabit Internet has provoked competitive responses from AT&T and other MVPDs (multichannel video programming distributors.) In Austin, four MVPDs now provide broadband Internet speeds of at least 300 mbps,” the filings said.

AT&T has “responded to Google’s planned entry into Austin with competitive offers and advertisements,” the filings said.

Time Warner, meanwhile, also continues to ramp up its fight for customers. The provider began rolling out faster Internet speeds this summer with close to 40 percent of its Austin-area customers — about 100,000 customers — already receiving the new speeds, said Melissa Sorola, director of public relations at Time Warner Cable.

Customers with all six of Time Warner’s Internet service plans are seeing an increase in speeds. For example, Time Warner customers who subscribe to their standard plan are going from to 15 Mbps to 50 Mbps. The move, Sorola said, comes “at no extra charge.”

The first round of boosted speeds were launched in downtown Austin, West Campus and Hyde Park, among other communities.

This month, another 20 percent of Time Warner customers will see new speeds, including Central Texas residents in far South Austin, Lago Vista, Round Rock, Marble Falls and the Bastrop County community of Smithville. In August, another 20 percent will see the new speeds in areas that include San Marcos, Bastrop, Lakeway, and Duval.

By the end of fall, all of Time Warner’s customers will have access to faster Internet speeds, Sorola said.

“Feedback has been positive,” she said. “We’re seeing a steady flow of customers coming in for a new modem (required to get the new service) and …excitement about being able to experience the faster speeds.”

Another local competitor, Grande Communications — a smaller, San Marcos-based service provider — has also boosted speeds, services and plans in recent months.

In February, Grande Communications jumped ahead of Google and AT&T by launching super-fast Internet in West Austin with speeds of up to 1 gigabit.

Grande has said its new Internet service will cost $65 per month with no contract required and the price decreases when the service is bundled with cable TV and home phone service. The Grande service was initially available to about a quarter of the 75,000 homes and businesses in the Austin area that are wired for their service, including the Belmont, Rosedale, Bryker Woods, Pemberton Heights, Tarrytown, Oakmont Heights and Old Enfield neighborhoods.

At the time of the announcement, president Matt Murphy said the bump in speed is, in part, an effort to fend off AT&T and Google.

“There’s a certain sizzle to 1 gigabit that people are excited about, ” he said. “We’re nimble and able to do things faster. We’re consciously doing this to beat Google.”

Roads Could One Day Be Paved With Solar Panels

Scott and Julie Brusaw have launched an initiative that they call solar roadways, a plan to refurbish American roads using bumpy, hexagonal solar panels that light up and respond to what crosses them. Sam Cornett

Imagine a road that melts snow, has movable markings, and its own renewable energy source. Then add one more component—solar panels, the unsightly metallic paneling lofted on rooftops and space stations alike. 

An ambitious couple from rural Idaho want to put solar panels on roads. 

Scott and Julie Brusaw have launched an initiative that they call solar roadways, a plan to refurbish American roads using bumpy, hexagonal solar panels that light up and respond to what crosses them.

Traffic controllers can alter traffic patterns by moving the lit-up lane markings, decreasing traffic jams and by extension greenhouse gas emissions. Those lights are also designed to improve late-night visibility on dark roads. 

Panels are also equipped with heat sensors that can melt snow and ice, avoiding roadway collisions and potentially cutting the millions in taxes that the U.S. spends on snow removal and lost productivity every year.

The roads also include pressure sensors, designed to light up when heavy debris falls on them or animals cross them. 

The roads also include pressure sensors, designed to light up when heavy debris falls on them or animals cross them. 

Some panels include buried cables that could one day replace telephone poles. 

The panels are attractive proposals, the stuff of science fiction (the promotional video includes several references to “Tron”—yikes), and solar roadways have already generated their fair share of buzz. 

Its YouTube video—catchily (although rather aggressively) named solar FREAKIN’ roadways—went viral last month and has now reached over 17 million views. 

“Not just lifeless, boring solar panels,” the video says when describing the product. “Smart microprocessing, interlocking, hexagonal solar units. No more useless asphalt and concrete just sitting there baking in the sun.”

The popularity of the video may have helped the Brusaws generate funds for the project, which, although still in its nascent stages, would be fiendishly expensive to carry out on a large scale. 

Solar roadways has generated $2 million in donations from all 50 states and other areas of the world. The sum exceeds any previous amount raised by the crowdsourcing website Indiegogo, according to The Washington Post.

 

Despite the enthusiastic donations, widespread solar roadway installations may be somewhat unattainable for the moment. The cost of installing them nationwide would be astronomical. According to Vox, it might total $56 trillion—around 20 times the annual federal budget. 

As solar technology advances, however, costs may fall, making the prospect of solar roadways reachable. 

Massachusetts, for example, which now ranks second on lists of the most solar conscious states, has offered generous subsidies for companies who cut costs to install solar panels. Even former mayor Tom Menino has outfitted his abode with the green technology, a move that was reported to cost only $500 for $8,000 in savings over the next 20 years. 

For now, small projects are already underway. The small town of Sandpoint, Idaho, intends to install the roadways on a parking lot and sidewalks. And the Brusaws have already created a solar parking lot outside their work studio perched in the rolling hills of Idaho.

"3d printing continues to please as it brings small business a little closer to home markets"

How 3D Printing Is Speeding Up Small Businesses

Since David Friedfeld took over ClearVision Optical from his father in 1985, he’s seen most eyewear manufacturing move overseas. The 120-employee company, based in Hauppauge, N.Y., is bringing a small piece of it back. Last year, Friedfeld purchased an entry-level 3D printer for just under $3,000. He still does the bulk of his manufacturing abroad, but he can now print eyeglass prototypes in-house.

The device “has taken three months off our production cycle [and] allowed us to stay closer to the market,” he says. “We are able to get far more creative.” He’s so bullish on 3D printing that he’s planning a design-it-yourself website that will allow customers to build their own frames, try them on with facial recognition software, and then click to have ClearVision print and ship them a few trial pairs.

That kind of enthusiasm seems contagious among small business owners who are trying out 3D printing technology, says Daniel Levine, a consumer trends expert and director of the Avant-Guide Institute. He’s been following 3D printing closely for several years, though he says the technology only jumped into mainstream consciousness about two years ago, when the first affordable printers became available.

“The jury is still out as far as exactly how helpful it’s going to be and in what ways,” Levine says. “Everybody who’s looking at it feels pretty certain it’s going to have a large impact, but exactly what that will be is still uncertain.”

For now, early-adopting small business owners tend to use 3D printing for prototyping, creating replacement and intricate parts, and for making customized gifts, he says. The barrier to more widespread use of the printers is not cost—Levine anticipates that the cheapest 3D printers will drop from $1,000 to $100 within the next two years—but technical know-how.

“For now, it’s engineers, jewelry makers, and architects” who are the primary small business users, Levine says. That’s because they are familiar with the computer design and scanning processes that 3D printers use to churn out items.

The engineering staff at Grid Connect, an 18-employee manufacturing company in suburban Chicago, is using its 3D printer to help develop a second version of its line of wireless home sensors. Vice President Adam Justice says it has shortened production times “in an industry that is moving very fast.”

Before the company got the printer, his engineers sent specs for prototypes to a 3D printing company that charged $600 to $700 per piece. When the pieces arrived a week or two later, “the engineers would look at it for 10 minutes and find errors and have to send it back. We’d lose a month or two finalizing a design,” Justice says. With the 3D printer he bought last year, the team can turn around designs in three or four days, and the savings has more than covered the $3,000 investment in the machine.

But most small business owners and entrepreneurs don’t have engineering teams. So why are pilot 3D printing programs being offered this year at office supply stores like Staples, the UPS Store, and PostNet?

Those companies are targeting self-employed inventors, designers, and college students who need to build things but can’t afford to buy their own printers, says Dave Thorsen, an architect who is piloting a 3D printer at his PostNet franchise in Minneapolis. Thorsen brought the idea for the pilot project to PostNet after he saw community college students working with a 3D printer. He even purchased a franchise in order to test the idea.

He is leasing a $22,000 3D printer for $400 a month during the six-month trial that started in April, he says. His first customer was a small, industrial designer making parts for Herman Miller chairs. “He walked in at 3:30 on a Wednesday with a jump drive and asked when he could have the part. I said, ‘I don’t think I can have it done by the end of the day, but I’ll have it for you at 8 tomorrow morning,’” Thorsen says.

With the machine printing overnight, the part was ready by 7:15 the next morning. The designer rushed over, incredulous, to see it. “He said it was perfect. Normally he had a two-week turnaround time sending out to a printing service in Atlanta that threw him to the back of the line because it handled huge automobile and aviation clients,” Thorsen says. “He came back the very next week with six more designs.”

CDR-Data Corporation Allied with Township of Franklin

For Immediate Release

2014

Pasadena, CA/Township of Franklin, NJ

CDR-Data Corporation Allied with Township of Franklin

CDR-Data has partnered with Township of Franklin to help manage their Call Detail records information as they collect data from Franklin’s powerful Cisco telecommunications system.

Using CDR-Data’s eCDRs® solution to review call data information Franklin can now pull at hoc report of potential problems like personnel issues, fraud attack and cost center dollars summaries.

Kevin Young CEO of CDR-Data said “This adds another satisfied CDR-Data client that is working in the Public Vector. We are working hard to provide products and services to cities, counties and state organizations”. “We take our GMIS Diamond award very seriously and we are always looking at enhancing our features for the cities and counties arena.”

About Township of Franklin NJ

Voted number 5 as the best city to live in the USA by Money Market Magazine in 2008, Township of Franklin has kept the quaint township but manage the new technology needed to manage and provide the needed services for over 62,000 citizens and including government employees.

Franklin Township was very much a part of the Revolutionary War History and the scene of many raiding parties along Route 27, then known as the King's Highway. Washington's farewell address was delivered to his army in Little Rocky Hill in 1783.

One of the most important developments for Franklin was the building of the Delaware-Raritan Canal in 1834. Twenty-two miles of this continuous water route from New York to Philadelphia runs through the Township. During the Civil War, up to 200,000 tons of freight was hauled by mule and horse-drawn barges, a great economic boon for the area. Today the canal is the source of drinking water and provides recreation for area residents and visitors to the Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park.

About CDR-Data Corporation

CDR-Data Corporation, based in Pasadena CA, www.cdrdata.com, consists of a group of professionals with decades of experience in the telemanagement, call accounting and IT industry. By using an ASP environment, this team has consistently delivered proven products and services that provide answers to management's questions of telecommunications usage and billing. CDR-Data has gained its market share by consistently delivering high quality and flexible solutions to each and every CDR-Data client.

  

For More information:

CDR-Data Corporation                                 Kevin Young                          626-791-7900

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President Obama signs bill to turn all federal expenditures into open data. Implementation will be phased into a year-by-year approach.

 

 

On May 9, President Barack Obama signed into law the first federal open data bill that requires all federal agencies to publish expenditures publicly online and in a standardized machine-readable format.

 On May 9, President Barack Obama signed into law the first federal open data bill that requires all federal agencies to publish expenditures publicly online and in a standardized machine-readable format.

His signature represents a historic milestone for the open data movement and is a feat that’s required years of advocacy from bipartisan proponents. Titled the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014, the bill is the most aggressive open data legislation ever enacted. Its wide scope and narrow guidelines will compel agencies to report spending to USASpending.gov, a federal open data portal, so expenditures can be compared across jurisdictions — a service previously unheard of digitally or otherwise at the federal level.

Implementation will be phased into a year-by-year approach. In the first year, the White House Office of Management and Budget will draft expenditure reporting guidelines while organizing a pilot program for testing. Three years from the bill’s passage, all agencies must comply with the new open data standards.

Advocates of the DATA Act, including Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) — who introduced the initial version of the DATA Act in June 2011 — celebrated when the White House confirmed the president would sign the bill at the end of April.

Hudson Hollister, the executive director at the Data Transparency Coalition (DTC), was overjoyed with the passage, as it was one of his coalition’s primary objectives since the coalition was founded in 2012.
“The DATA Act is the first open data act the country has ever seen — which is awesome,” Hollister said. “It requires the government to transform its spending from disconnected documents into open data.”
For transparency advocates, Hollister said he saw the president’s signature as the most significant action taken since the Freedom of Information Act was passed in 1966 — a law ensuring public access to all government non-classified information.

“For the open data industry, which our coalition represents, and for supporters of government transparency, President Obama’s signature is going to be his enduring legacy,” Hollister said.
However, he noted that the bill's passage has not been equally endorsed by all of the White House administration’s staff. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), tasked to oversee much of the bill’s implementation, has been hesitant to embrace the bill since it was first proposed, Hollister said. While the OMB sees value in the act, reluctance formed when considering tasks related to implementation.

Hollister said he observed that the OMB’s reluctance stems from fears the act will be either too complicated to execute or be too labor intensive. Both concerns he empathized with, but dismissed them as unwarranted in light of the gains that can be achieved and the fact that processes will remain fairly unchanged.
“The DATA Act to many exterior observers might look like [it's too complicated to institute]," Hollister said. "But I think it’s not that. It doesn’t require new reporting requirements. Instead, it just requires some kind of electronic structure for the reporting requirements that already exist."

As the DATA Act goes forward, here are three takeaways about what the bill means for transparency, as well as an interactive timeline of the act's introduction through signing and beyond.

1. The DATA Act Requires Understandable, Comparable Budgets

Assuming all goes to plan, the most apparent benefit of the DATA Act will be its requirement to funnel federal government spending reports into a single repository, USASpending.gov, and within a single reporting standard. Before, no entity in the government had the authority to impose government-wide data standards. Now, the Treasury Department and the White House Office of Management and Budget have been tasked to do this at the national level. For agencies, this may include quite a bit of work to start, but will allow them to communicate financial data in an easy and interoperable way.

2. The DATA Act Cuts Waste, Fraud and Abuse

Tracking can be difficult when thousands of pieces of financial data are moving in many different ways and formats. Proponents argue that this complexity can lead to confusion, and confusion can breed fraudulent or wasteful spending. With the DATA Act’s common data format, automation and analytics can be used to quickly audit for accuracy, waste, fraud and abuse.

3. The DATA Act Gives Public Access and Accountability

The DATA Act will clarify government spending with sharper details on the following: congressional appropriations; to Treasury accounts, where appropriations are held; and for actual expenditures the money pays for. This information was previously obscured in summarized texts or could be reached only by special request.

Samsung Simband aims to take a big step in wearable health

James Martin/CNET

Today, there's the Samsung Gear Fit. But it seems that if you listened to Samsung president Young Sohn, that's merely a temporary patch for what the future of wearable health tech will really bring.
Samsung's health event, called "Voice of the Body," happened today. And at it, Sohn, discussed a three phase evolution of health tech, starting with phones, then moving to wearable devices, and finally ending up at wearable sensors. We're currently in the middle phase.

The next step, unveiled by VP Ram Fish, is Simband, another health band, but not a smartwatch: its focus is entirely on health tracking, collecting lots of data to share with medical researchers, doctors, and for personal health use. Simband is designed to be open and modular, and comes studded with a ton of medical sensors.
The Simband is designed to work with a variety of medical needs and with many sensor technologies, and to eventually work with SAMI, Samsung's cloud-based solution for collecting and analyzing sensor-based health data.

James Martin/CNET

Unlike something comparatively primitive like the current Samsung Gear 2 and Gear Fit heart-rate watches, the Simband has multiple sensors. It uses optical, electrical, and physical methods of collecting heart rate, blood flow, temperature, CO2 and oxygen levels, and even simulated blood pressure, all to display real-time electrocardiograph information of it all. Even the optical sensors on the Simband seem improved, with multiple wavelength LEDs at once. Samsung admits its measurement technology needs to be more accurate. We at CNET agree.

The design looks a bit like most recent Gear watches. There are differences: the battery's hot-swappable for easy night charging while wearing to enable 24/7 tracking. Inside, an ARM-based processor handles processing of the various sensors. The Simband has both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, so it can share data to local devices or directly to Samsung's cloud.

The goal of Simband is to offer open APIs for medical use, and to test the Simband at hospitals and medical institutions. The University of California, San Francisco is already working with Samsung and the Simband. Right now, Simband is a concept device, a reference for future wearable health sensor-laden tech, but it could be a leaping-off point for future Samsung wearables, too.

James Martin/CNET

So who is Simband for? You, the consumer, don't need to worry yet. The Simband seems squarely focused on Big Health and medical institutions for now, as new ways are discovered to make the best use of different arrays of sensors. The idea seems to be to use it to help prevent disease and deliver better health profiles: one app, called TicTrac and demonstrated on-stage at Samsung's event, used the Simband's multiple sensors to quickly gather a health rating.

Maybe the Simband could help predict illnesses before they strike, or get people to fix their bad habits early. That could be great for anyone. Of course, preventative medical tech could save hospitals and health insurance companies a ton of money, too.

The bigger question is how these sensors will evolve, how Samsung's cloud will use the data, and how other researchers and companies will be able to develop tools for Simband. The medical industry is a large beast, and Samsung's desire to create a new open platform is an ambitious one, to say the least. And, odds are Samsung won't be the only company to try to lay claim to an open health platform.

Simband looks a first step toward acknowledging how big a hill wearable health tech still has left to climb.