Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

I came across an interesting opinion by David Cole regarding the use of Internet connected laptops in the classrooms, during lectures.

study found that laptop use was significantly and negatively related to class performance

While I was reading the article, I kept nodding my head a lot.  Yes, if I was back in college and I could have an Internet connected laptop on my desk, I’d be even worse of a student than I was.  YouTube, forums, emails, Twitter, and a whole lot of other attention grabbers would not leave much for plain old college education.  At least in my case.  I know.

But then, I started thinking if that was true for other people I know.  And I couldn’t be so sure anymore.  A few guys I know literally can’t stay for too much long wihtout a computer and some sort of Internet connection.  It’s like food or oxygen - they just have to have it.  And when they have access to a computer, it’s often amazing to see them use it.  Lots of interesting, topic related stuff coming up.  Fact checking.  Exploring the topic deeper and wider.  With quotes and all.

And that got me into this idea of a new generation.   Younger people, who grew up online.  Web is in their blood.  A desktop computer as an ugly concept, and an offline computer as a useless box.  This kind of people.  I don’t think they would be much distracted.  In fact, quite the opposite - I think their grades would go up with better Internet connection and laptop-friendlier environment.

And that’s where I started worrying a little bit about the studies that were mentioned in the article.  These studies may be very accurate now.  And they are performed by bigger universities and colleges.  The results of these studies will take a few years of propagating into smaller colleges and universities.  And that’s where the problem will arise.  By that time, most new students will of the web native generation, but their alma maters will be choosing to disconnect them and ban their laptops.  Even though it probably won’t be too relative by then.

But then again, isn’t it like this most of the time?  I think it is.

The Next Web Boris has a thought provoking blog post titled “Achieving (and living with) Perfect Knowledge“.

One day, we will have Perfect Knowledge. Although we won’t know everything there is to know, our knowledge of the world will approach a perfect state. It will be ‘lacking nothing essential to the whole’

Recommended reading.

For the last few days, the biggest thing in the technical news is Google Chrome browser (check the comics book, introducing the browser, download beta).  Sure, we had our share of browser wars, and we still do, but this is something completely different.  Most of today’s browsers started back in the days when the Web was totally different.  Since then, some browsers changed more than others.  Some new ones appeared.  But there was no a big break through.  It was mostly an evolutionary approach.

I’m glad to see these big news from Google, that they decided to create a new browser from scratch.  They built it with solutions to many of the today’s problems.  They’ve put some flexbility for the future.  And it seems like they’ve thought a lot about it.

I absolutely support their choice of open source in this matter.  Nobody, not even Google can build a browser that will satisfy everyone and everything, and then keep developing and maintaining it.  That’s not possible with the current state of the Web affairs.  The only way to pull it off is to open source it, so that the Web itself could help them with this mega task.  Also, it’s nice to see that they don’t want to reinvent the wheel either - taking both WebKit (open source web rendering engine) and V8 (open source JavaScript implementation) is smart decision.

It’s nice to see some real competition in the browser world.  Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has changed a lot in the last few years, and the biggest reason for those changes was Mozilla’s Firefox.  Firefox changed a lot too, but it sure could use a push from another open source product.  Google’s Chrome could be exactly that product.

Also, for once it would be nice to see a browser built by someone who knows the Web, and not how to build software.  Yes, browser is a software, but it’s not on its own.  You need to know more and have access to a lot more data to build a good browser.  In particular, what, who, and how uses the Web.  Neither Microsoft, nor Mozilla, nor Opera Software have these information.  Or at least not on the scale that Google has.

And, of course, there always will be downsides to any good initiative.  In the case with Google Chrome, my biggest concern is the situation with themes and extensions.  Firefox has an excellent community in this regard.  This community has built all possible and impossible thems and extensions for practically anyone anywhere.  And it still continues to do so.  Google Chrome starts from scratch, so there won’t be anything for some time.  And since the whole browser thing is new, it’ll need to start with a new set of developers, testers, users, and so on.  And so it will take them some time build that all up.

As with anything, there are a billion of other ways to look at Google Chrome, the way the Web is going, the way Google is going, the way software development in general and IT as a whole is going.  But I’ll leave that up to you.  Here are, however, a few links to get you started.

• Slashdot : Google Chrome, the Google Browser
• Slashdot : Mozilla’s Thoughts on Google’s Chrome
• Linux Weekly News : The Google Chrome comic book
• PCWorld : Official Google Chrome Screenshots
• Google Blogs Search results for “Google Chrome“

Imagine my surprise when I looked at “Top Recommendations” area of my Google Reader today and found … my own blog over there.

Yes, I know that these recommendations are based on the feeds that I read.  But still!  Is it the time to celebrate the recommendations technology, which recommended me to me over a gadzillion of other blogs?  Or maybe this is a day of Ultimate Technological Silliness, when Google, a search company that forgets nothing, somehow arrived to the conclusion that I might not be reading my own blog?  These questions remind me of a “half-empty or half-full glass of water“.  I guess a lot depends on the personal perspective…

Scobleizer has a really nice blog post on the importance of early adopters.  Go and read it.

Early adopters DO matter. Anyone who says that they don’t needs to go back to business school.