EDUCAUSE is running an interesting experiment — they’re holding a 5-day online event called the Mobile Computing 5-day Sprint.  It’s a collection of five days worth of webinars, including polls, interactive discussions and other features.  The live sessions are booked, but they promise to post recordings each day.

I’m especially interested in tomorrow’s theme: Teaching and Learning.

The full list of themes for each day, and details on the sprint format, are available.

For those of us who want a really fast snapshot of recent Internet activity and news on a topic, try Addictomatic.  You can simply type in a search term, and get a page highlighting the latest news from Twitter, Google Blog search, YouTube and more.  It’s kind of fun, so try it out — here’s my search on the Watson computer that won Jeopardy.

Image from thewildernessdowntown.com

Most of the time the difference between one web standard and another isn’t obvious in day-to-day use, but HTML5 is different.  It’s currently supported on many browsers, and will enable several features that will make (y)our Internet experience much, much better.   Via CurrentCites, here’s the beginning of an article in Technology Review that goes over the details and explains what’s what.  Drexel Libraries has access Technology Review if you want to read the whole thing, which I’d recommend.

One example of HTML5 in action is the experimental interactive video The Wilderness Downtown by Arcade Fire.  If you haven’t seen it yet, you should check it out.  It combines the video with information you provide, making it a custom video.

Some features pointed out in the Technology Review article:

You’ll be able to drag and drop images from web pages to email, and so on.  GMail allows this now, but this will be ubiquitous with HTML5.

Video and audio will be easily embedded into web pages, eliminating the need for Flash.

There will be increased browser storage. This means that interactions with web sites will be much faster because your browser will have less constant back-and-forth with the server.  This also means that more information will be stored in your browser, so even if you’re not connected to the internet, you’ll be able to send emails, or change your fantasy football roster and your browser will sync it up when you reconnect.

This data visualization diagram posted at Form & Function, via ReadWriteWeb.

Onto the side of a building!  Here’s the link.

MasterCard is planning to release an API in coming months, allowing certified developers to create applications that interact with MasterCard.  PayPal is already paired up with Bump Technologies and  allowing people to make payments to one another by bumping their iPhones together, and Visa with Visa payWave to just pass their card in front of a sensor to make payments.

Could this help libraries?  We could make it easier for patrons to pay fines, or even make donations?

An open demo of Microsoft Surface has been arranged to be held at the Drexel Libraries Hagerty Library 1st floor on Monday, May 17th from 10-3, with demos by Microsoft representatives on the hour.

Surface is a”revolutionary multi-touch computer that responds to natural hand gestures and real-world objects, helping people interact with digital content in a simple and intuitive way” (from the Surface website).

Here’s a still I grabbed from one of the application videos:

A few months ago I watched this TED Talk [thanks John!] on Sixth Sense technology from Pranav Mistry from MIT.  When I first heard about Surface, I immediately thought of this talk.

The possibilities!