Coursera’s Huge Online Classes Roar Into Brazil, India and China
We already discussed on these pages of Coursera, the free online course offering that seem to be about to change the cards in play for online education. At the moment you don't get any academic equivalent grade for completing the courses, but you can still learn a lot for free! Just flagging up the latest update, described in Forbes's article on Coursera classes , that they are set to offer courses in India, Brazil and China!
I have followed the Machine Learning course and I have to say that this initiative has a lot of potential! Give it a go...
Free online courses – Coursera
Are you looking to integrate / refresh your university studies but you don't have either the funds of the time required to subscribe and attend to university courses? Then you may as well have a look at Coursera and see if you are interested in any of their free courses. Let's have a look at their mission statement first:
We are a social entrepeneurship company that partners with the top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, free. We envision a future where the top universities are educating not only thousands of students, but millions. Our technology enables the best professors to teach tens or hundreds of thousands of students.
And yeah, is that simple. You subscribe, you add a specific course to your list and then you wait for it to begin! I have subscribed to a couple, but the start date is still to be confirmed, so I've found one which is interesting (Machine Learning), although I already did some of this in my MsC. Well, thought it was a good choice to get the student cap back onto my head and give it a go! So far (the course started on Monday, and yes you can still join) the format seems to be quite good, with plenty of video lectures / forums and studying materials (all free, of course). I'll tell you more when I've delved a bit deeper in it. There are plenty of subjects to choose from, and not limited to Computer Science. The courses are organized by well knows university (Stamford and Princeton, just to throw a couple of names in) and yeah, you won't get a degree this way! But if you have one already then it may be just a good way to keep your brain in shape and your knowledges up to date. Have you tried it?
500px vs Flickr – Online Photo Sharing services
After being a loyal Flickr fan for years (and pro subscriber), I have to say that I am on the verge of betraying them and move to 500px. A quick comparison of the two follows. Please note I am not comparing the Free service, I want unlimited uploads and storage and both services are offering it only on the paid subscription.
Flickr
- Price: 24.95 $ (or ~ 15.5 £ ) a year
- Unlimited Load / Storage: Yes
- Unlimited Sets: Yes
- Original file storage: Yes
- Other: Ad free browsing / Stats / HD video upload
- Pros: good privacy & licensing options for each picture. Well established website with a large user base.
- Cons: pricier than 500px , so-so interface and UI, has not changed much lately
- Price: Plus 19.95 $ (or ~ 12.3 £ ) (*)
- Unlimited Load / Storage: Yes
- Unlimited Sets: Yes
- Original file storage: ???
- Other: Stats / Sets / Stories
- Pros: Slick'n Sexy interface. Very good content quality, Cheaper than Flickr with the "Plus" option
- Cons:Less flexible in Privacy and licensing options
Both services do offer a Developer API to integrate with them, I have not used them so far so I can't really feedback on that. In general I think it's going to be difficult to move away from Flickr at least for me, as up there I have pretty much every picture I took since I own a digital camera on their servers (that's around ~7K images). However recently when I want to showcase a particular picture and get some feedback from other photographers, I've found that this is much easier to be done on 500px . I used to invest a lot of time in Flickr years ago, and back then it was easier to get feedback, but today it seems much more difficult to simply upload a pic and get some instant feedback. As soon as I created the 500px account instead, and put some photos up there, I got an instant reaction from other photographers and felt that it was quite easy to reciprocate by visiting their stream and have a look!
In short, not sure if I am going to migrate, mainly because it will be a painful process if I decide to do it...but I am very tempted!
(*) They also offer an "Awesome" package at 49.95 $ ( or ~ 31 £ ) a year which includes a personalised portfolio with Google Analytics integration. Don't need it, not considering it in my comparison!
Thames estuary – Maunsell Sea Forts
Mainly known due to the Principality of Sealand "wannabe" micronation, the Maunsell Sea Forts are a relic of the Second World War. I wouldn't mind going there for a photographic trip! But in the meantime check out some of the pictures from flickr:
The forts were build during the last world war and housed anti aircraft guns emplacements which protected London and the surrounding sea lanes for incoming raids. In the '60s they hosted a number of pirate radio stations, and eventually one of them ("HM Fort Roughs" just off the Suffolk coast) was occupied and declared an "indipendent nation" (The Principality of Sealand), which apparently will host an Online Casino pretty soon! Nowadays they are rusty and gloomy abandoned structures in the middle of the sea! Up for a boat trip anyone? You can find more information and pictures by following this link.
Zdaemon – Multiplayer Doom
Lo ammetto ... ogni tanto la mia passione primigenia per gli FPS online riaffiora in superficie. Il tempo però è quello che è, e non ho certo voglia di spendere n-mila euro per aggiornare il PC per uno dei gioconi nuovi. E così ho installato ZDaemon, nient'altro che un client per il celeberrimo gioco che ha ormai compiuto più di 15 anni (gulp ... se questa non è la tua reazione alla notizia vai qui). C'è anche un client per sistemi unix. Ammettiamolo: grafica ormai merdosa, ma il gameplay è semplice e immediato, e la doppietta ha sempre il suo fascino. C'hanno messo pure il railgun.
Nessun coniglio è stato maltrattato durante la stesura di questa news.
AuctionAds : pubblicizza aste eBay online
Questo sito, come potete vedere anche voi, utilizza un discreto numero di programmi pubblicitari per ricavare qualche guadagno dalle cazzate che quotidianamente scrivo. Oltre a Google Adsense, mi servo di Text-Link-Ads, di AlternateURL e di Tradedoubler. Per carità, non pensate di potervi pagare le escort russe con questi metodi (a meno che non facciate di questa attività la vostra principale ragione di vita ... e non sto parlando delle escort), però sono sempre soldini che fanno comodo e che come minimo vi ripagheranno delle spese che sostenete per l'hosting. Tra le altre cose, ho deciso di provare (come KromeBoy) un nuovo programma, Auction Ads (gestito dagli stessi di Text-Link-Ads quindi sicuramente serio dato che con loro non ho mai avuto problemi di sorta e si sono dimostrati molto disponibili come supporto tecnico)
Age of Conan – DragonCon Videos
Siccome è un po'che seguo le vicissitudini di Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (l'MMORPG della Funcom di prossima uscita), vi linko questi nuovi filmati presi al DragonCon (una riunione mondiale di cannaioli scoppiati appassionati di fantasy & similia) direttamente presi dal gameplay in esibizione alla mostra. I video sono tre: in uno si vede il sistema di combattimento, in un altro le battaglie PvE, nell'ultimo c'è la parte di creazione del personaggio (e lascio a voi immaginare come hanno dimostrato la possibilità di modificare selettivamente certe parti del corpo secondo i propri luridi desideri). Peccato che questa meraviglia uscirà non prima della prossima primavera! Ma non potevano inventarlo quando andavo al liceo e non facevo nulla dalla mattina alla sera? :D
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