After a year, Pixar sets Renderman software free (as in beer)

Rendering engine used for Hollywood films available for non-commercial use.

by Lee Hutchinson - Mar 24, 2015 7:47am PD Ars Technica


Do you want to build a snowman? Or render volumetrically? This beam diffused sub-surface scattering is just a sampling of the magic of 3D! You used to have to pay us, but now you don't because Renderman is freeeeee! Do you want to build a snowman (it doesn't have to be a snowman)? Download me!
Disney
Last year Pixar announced that it would be releasing a "free" (that is, available without cost) version ofRenderman, the in-house rendering engine that produces the visuals in all of Pixar’s animated films and many other Hollywood blockbusters. Though the actual release process ran into some delays, it has finally happened: Renderman is now free for non-commercial usage on Windows, OS X, and Linux.

FOSS advocates will take note that the software is free-as-in-beer, not free-as-in-speech—that is, while Renderman can be downloaded and used non-commercially without paying anything, it has not been open-sourced (and we bring the distinction up because that’s what more than half the story’s discussion thread on Slashdot has focused on).

To download Renderman, Pixar requires you to register for a forum account and provide a valid e-mail address. Once that’s done, you are given an installation package which in turn downloads the actual Renderman components appropriate for your operating system and 3D package.

And that’s an important caveat: would-be auteurs looking to make the next Toy Story can’t just grab Renderman and get their CGI on, because Renderman is only a rendering engine. In order to actuallydo anything with it, you need a 3D modeling and rendering application or application suite, likeAutodesk Maya, which can cost thousands of dollars. The most popular free 3D application, Blender, doesn’t yet work with Renderman.

Pixar has also setup a FAQ page with additional details on specifics of the Renderman noncommercial release. It appears that the company is keeping to a very strict definition of "noncommercial," since one answer on the page explicitly states that nonprofit entities which "generate revenue through entrance or member fees, service charges, subscriptions etc" (like churches or charities) are considered commercial users and are ineligible for the noncommercial free release.

Learning Google Script: 5 Best Sites & Tutorials to Bookmark

Matthew HughesOn 18th March, 2015
MakeUseOf

How often do you use Google services? If you’re like me, the answer is “all the time”. I use Google Drive to store files. Sometimes, I use Google Docs to write articles (although I prefer Apple’s Pages and iA Writer more). I use Google Forms for making surveys. I use Google Chat to talk to friends. Google even made the software that powers my laptop and cell phone.

It’s hard to think of an area in which Google hasn’t touched our digital lives, for better or for worse. But here’s the thing. It’s never been easy to integrate Google services with each other. For the most part, they’ve existed as detached and disparate entities. Until now, that is. Meet Google Apps Script.

What Is Google Apps Script
Google Apps Script is perhaps one of the most useful tools you can have in your technological toolbelt. It allows you to tie Google services together in a way that’s reminiscent of IFTTT. But it’s way more than that.

It’s an IDE (Integrated Development Environment), that runs in the browser. No installs necessary. Google Apps Script also offers a platform to run your code on, much like the ScraperWiki Platform, or Amazon Web Services, or Heroku does. The most obvious advantage of this is that it allows you to run your code from the cloud, and to be able to work from a variety of devices. It’s truly platform agnostic.



Google Apps Script is also a scripting language for Google Sheets, in the same way Visual Basic for Applications is a scripting language for Microsoft Excel. This gives you an incredibly high degree of control and customization, especially compared to simple formulas.

You can even use Google Apps Script to build web applications. Yes, you read that right. Web applications.

At this point, Google Apps Script has probably got you champing at the bit. But how do you learn it? Well, to get you started, here are five resources that will help you in your path to becoming a Google Apps scripting master.

CodeAcademy
Yes, you read that right. CodeAcademy. Google Apps Script is based upon the highly popular JavaScript programming language, which is a complicated beast with a very precise and elaborate set of syntax. To learn Google Apps Script, you’re going to need (at the very least) a basic understanding of JavaScript. For this, I recommend CodeAcademy.



CodeAcademy is often criticized as not encouraging the creativity required for becoming a developer. But for its shortfalls in this respect, it’s great at teaching the structure of a programming language. Best of all, it’s free.

Once you know how to code JavaScript, it’s probably a good idea to learn how to code JavaScript properly. With that in mind, I’d strongly encourage you to pick up a copy ofJavaScript: The Good Parts at your local bookstore. It’s a challenging read, but it will teach you how to write good, modern, and clean code.

Google Apps Script Documentation
There’s an impressive amount of documentation that is available online that promises to teach you the essentials of Google Apps Script. Some of it is better than others, and unsurprisingly the best example comes from Google themselves. They have published the most definitive guide to the Google Apps Script API, which covers all facets of its functionality.



Like all good documentation, it provides real-world examples of the API in practice, whilst explaining what it does. Typically for Google, it’s also really well written, and ultimately culminates in the reader having a strong grounding in how the system works.

Google Apps Script Samples
Some people learn best by reading a tutorial or a book, and absorbing as much information as possible. That’s fine. But some people have a learning style that is better suited to progress through trial and error. They require something a tad more practical. Does that sound like you? If so, you might find it helpful to look at the Google Apps Script Github, which has an amazingly rich supply of code examples.



Once you’ve gone through that, consider looking at ‘8 Surprisingly Useful Things You Can Do With Google Sheets and Google Apps Script‘ from How-To Geek. This has eight different ‘recipes’ that allow you to do anything from send a mail-merge email, to track Amazon price changes.

Googleappsscript.org
One of the more useful resources I’ve seen for budding Apps Script developers is found ongoogleappsscript.org. This site isn’t so much a set of structured tutorials, but rather a collection of programs that show you the flexibility and versatility of the platform.



Googleappsscript.org is a bit of a mouthful, but it’s one of the most helpful sites I’ve seen about Google Apps Script. The site comes with a number of really useful code examples. One allows you to download your Instagram photos to Google Drive, whilst another allows you to create your own Google Doodle for your Google Apps domain.

Google JavaScript Style Guide
Writing code is easy. Writing good code? Well, that’s something entirely different.

Different, but important. You never know when you might have to share your code with someone else. You never know when you might have to revisit a program in order to fix a bug, or add a new feature. You might have to show your code to someone else, in order to get their help. As a result, it’s crucial to get an understanding of how to write clean, readable code. For that, you need to check out Google’s JavaScript Style Guide.




This is a vital resource that teaches you how to write good, stylistically clean JavaScript. It’s what they use internally in Mountain View, so you know it’s solid advice. Best of all, it’s free. Although, it’s not especially easy to read. I’d recommend you check out Javascript: The Good Parts before attempting to this.

How to Unlock Your Phone

BY SASCHA SEGAN
FEBRUARY 11, 2015 05:45PM EST  PC Magazine

Do you need to know how to unlock your phone? We have details for all the major U.S. carriers right here.


Mobile phone carriers don't want you to leave, especially if they helped pay for your phone. Most of the phones sold in the U.S. (except for Verizon phones) are "locked," meaning they can't be taken to another carrier without being unlocked. From the carriers' perspective, it's a way to stop customers from leaving before they've paid out their contract or installment plan.

Because we're a country fragmented between the GSM and CDMA technologiesand several different frequency bands, unlocking a phone doesn't mean you can use it on any other U.S. carrier. But depending on the phone, you may be able to use it on a different U.S. carrier, or with foreign carriers for lower rates than you would pay roaming on your own provider.

It also helps to unlock a used phone before you sell it on a site like eBay. That will raise the price you get, because more people will be able to buy and use your phone.

In late 2013, the U.S. wireless carrier association (CTIA) agreed to adopt standardsthat would allow subscribers to unlock their paid-off phones by February 11, 2015. That's made things easier, but there are still a lot of requirements and caveats.

Why Unlock Your Phone?

The simplest reason to unlock your phone is to use it on another GSM network. That could be AT&T, T-Mobile, one of the virtual carriers that uses those networks, or a foreign GSM carrier. AT&T and T-Mobile now give service plan discounts for bringing your own phone.

The reason to use an unlocked phone while traveling abroad is because you can use either a global SIM card or a local carrier's SIM card, which would offer much lower rates than roaming with your U.S. carrier. You'd lose your standard U.S. phone number for the duration of the trip, though.

U.S. GSM virtual carriers compatible with unlocked phones include Cricket, MetroPCS, Simple Mobile, Straight Talk, H2O Wireless, Black Wireless, Ready SIM, and many others.

Large CDMA carriers, in general, do not accept unlocked phones. That means you can't move an unlocked phone over to Verizon, Sprint, Boost, or Virgin.

However, some small virtual carriers on Sprint's network will accept unlocked Sprint phones (and only Sprint phones) - carriers like Ting, Expo Mobile, EcoMobile, and Credo Wireless. The small virtual carrier Page Plus accepts unlocked Verizon phones.

There are third-party sites that purport to sell "unlock codes," but they're generally pretty shady. Avoid them.

How To Unlock an AT&T Phone

AT&T's unlocking policy depends on what kind of customer you are.

If you aren't an AT&T customer and you're trying to unlock an AT&T phone that you bought used, the phone must be fully paid off, not attached to a contract, and not reported lost or stolen.

If you're a postpaid customer, that all has to be true, and you also have to have had service for 60 days. If you're a prepaid customer, kick that up to six months.

If you fulfill these requirements, go to AT&T's Unlocking Page to submit a request. AT&T will send you instructions on how to unlock your phone within two days.

How to Unlock a T-Mobile Phone

T-Mobile's unlocking rules require you to use your phone for a certain amount of time and pay it off before unlocking. Also, you can only request two unlock codes a year.

Phones on monthly plans must have been active for 40 days and either completely paid off if they're on a no-contract plan, or at least 18 months into a 24-month contract. Prepaid smartphones must have been active for a year or have used $100 in refills.

If you fulfill those requirements, call 1-877-746-0909 or use the online chat on TMobile.com and ask to unlock your phone. They'll send you instructions within two days.

How to Unlock a Sprint, Boost or Virgin Phone

Sprint, Boost, and Virgin (which are all parts of Sprint) now all have the same unlocking policies. You only need to bother unlocking Sprint phones if they also contain a GSM radio (like the iPhone 6 does) or if you're moving them to a Sprint-based virtual carrier like Ting or Credo Wireless.

Sprint has a complex, confusing set of unlocking policies. You can read Sprint'smain unlocking policy, prepaid unlocking policy, and unlocking FAQ for details, but here are the basics.

If you just want to use a Sprint world phone (such as an iPhone 6) with a foreign SIM card when you travel abroad, it basically just needs to be a live device on an account that's been active for 90 days. This form of unlocking won't allow it to be used on non-Sprint U.S. networks. Go to sprint.com/sww to get this unlock.

To unlock a Sprint phone, the phone must be fully paid off or out of contract, and not reported as lost or stolen. If it's prepaid, such as a Virgin or Boost phone, the phone must have been used for 12 months.

But wait! Unless you bought your phone after February 19, 2015, only iPhone 5s, 5c, 6, and 6 Plus models are truly unlockable on Sprint, Virgin, or Boost. According to Sprint, phones bought before February 19 will require a code to move to another Sprint-compatible carrier, not a true SIM unlock.

Phones bought after February 19, 2015 may be fully SIM unlockable, but remember, because of that year-long active requirement, you probably won't be able to SIM-unlock most Virgin or Boost phones until 2016. You will be able to CDMA unlock them to use on another Sprint-based carrier, or international unlock them for internation SIM use, though.

Call 844-665-6327 to unlock your Sprint phone, 888-322-1122 to unlock a Virgin phone or 866-402-7366 to unlock a Boost phone.

This Reddit thread helps decode what Sprint is doing.

How to Unlock a U.S. Cellular Phone

U.S. Cellular's unlocking policy says that it will unlock any postpaid phone that is paid off or out of contract, and any prepaid phone that was activated more than 12 months ago. 3G devices can be unlocked by calling 888-944-9400, but for LTE devices, you must stop in at a U.S. Cellular store.

How to Unlock a Verizon Phone

Verizon 4G LTE phones are sold unlocked. You can use them on any supported carrier on demand.

If you have a Verizon 3G Global Ready device, most of them are unlocked; any locked devices can be unlocked by request by calling 888-294-6804. If your phone asks for an unlocking code, try "000000" or "123456" before calling for help.

Verizon's full phone unlocking policy is online.

How to Unlock Other Carriers' Phones
Cricket will unlock GSM phones that have been in use for 6 months (either current Cricket or former Aio phones). Stop into a store, call 800-274-2538, or chat online.

MetroPCS will unlock any GSM phone that's been active for 90 days; stop into a store or call 888-863-8768.

Phones from TracFone and Straight Talk that were put on the market after January 2014 can be unlocked after 12 months of use as per the company'sunlocking policy. Call your brand's customer service number to ask.

National CyberWatch Center Library

Interested in a Model for Establishing a Cybersecurity Center of Excellence?

Want to learn the details of the 2014 Community College Cyber Summit?

In need of a Cyberthreat Real-Time Map?

Then...




and CHECK our library OUT!

Have a resource to share? Click HERE

RHT: Debugging HTML With Microsoft Developer Tools

by Robert Half Technology
December 30, 2014


Older versions of IE were far harder to debug.

When building a website, the last thing you want to discover is that the site doesn’t download quickly or correctly, or has bad links. If you’re constructing in Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE), fixing coding is simply a matter of learning how to debug withMicrosoft Developer Tools.

The problem
For insight, we reached out to Ian Kellogg, aproduct design engineer at API Technologies Corp.’s Power Division. He says, “Older versions of IE were far harder to debug on. With really the only source viewer being notepad and a JavaScript console, it really limited what could be fixed without experimentation.”

The solution
Designer Nick Pettit points out in his debugging HTML and CSS post on the Treehouse blog that each problem is unique and will have its own debugging issue to solve. There are also what he calls basic “sanity checks” developers can turn to, such as checking for syntax errors and display problems, and searching for cross-browser issues.

The tools
As Rob Gravelle, designer and founder of Gravelle Web Designs, explains at HTMLGoodies.com, Microsoft Developer Tools for Internet Explorer are similar to Firefox’s tools. Their purpose is to help debug JScript code, the version of ECMAScript that runs on IE. He adds, “Code that runs perfectly in Firefox may or may not encounter problems in IE.” This is important, Gravelle says, because codes across different browsers don’t always match up. That’s why a website will look fine on one browser but not another.

If you’re using IE11 (which you should be for security reasons), accessing Microsoft Developer Tools is as easy as pushing the F12 button on your PC keyboard. (You can also go to IE’s menu bar and select “F12 Developer Tools” on the “Tools” menu.)

How the tools work
There are eight developer tools in IE11’s F12 menu, including the Document Object Model (DOM) Explorer tool, which shows the website’s structure; the console tool, which handles the interaction with running code; and the debugger tool, which is a deeper examination of what your code is doing.

“The debug console allows me to ‘inspect’ elements on the page for the calculated styles, which is useful for identifying why a website renders improperly,” says Kellogg. “Being able to see network responses makes some JavaScript functions easier to debug.”

Another reason to update to IE11 is more streamlined use of the developer tools. For example, as technology writer Tim Buschtöns wrote in eclipsesource.com, users now can see changes made in real time when in the DOM Explorer window of the toolbox. This is a definite improvement over IE10, where users had to refresh constantly or get outdated code. Buschtöns notes that to catch up to other browsers, IE still needs some improvements in its developer tools; however, the F12 menu is more intuitive than anything that has been available in the past.

Future outlook
IE12 is expected to arrive soon. Will Microsoft build on its IE11 developer enhancements? It’s likely that developers can expect to see new features such as deep linking and open-source programming opportunities. It also looks like IE12 may be even more developer-friendly than past versions of IE.

What are your favorite debugging tricks using Microsoft developer tools? Please share your tips in the comments section. Looking for some tips for debugging Microsoft.NET framework for mobile? See this post.



— Robert Half Technology

With more than 100 locations worldwide, Robert Half Technology is a leading provider of technology professionals for initiatives ranging from web development and multiplatform systems integration to network security and technical support. Visit our website at www.rht.com.

Google releases tool to test apps, devices for SSL/TLS weaknesses

Lucian Constantin
Nov 5, 2014 6:40 AM  PCWorld

Google released a tool that can be used to test whether the SSL/TLS encrypted connections opened by applications or devices are vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.

A man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack refers to a situation where an attacker is in a position to intercept and manipulate traffic between a client and a server. It is the kind of threat that the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocols are meant to protect against.

In practice, however, encrypted SSL/TLS connections can often be vulnerable to MitM attacks due to bad client configurations or unpatched vulnerabilities in libraries that are used by software developers to implement these protocols in their applications.

“Most platforms and devices have secure defaults, but some applications and libraries override the defaults for the worse, and in some instances we’ve seen platforms make mistakes as well,” said Chad Brubaker, an Android security engineer at Google, in ablog post. “As applications get more complex, connect to more services, and use more third party libraries, it becomes easier to introduce these types of mistakes.”

The tool created and released by Google is called nogotofail and has been used internally by the company’s engineers to find SSL/TLS implementation errors in applications for some time. It was released on GitHub Tuesday as an open source project.

Nogotofail can be deployed as a router, VPN server or proxy on a network to simulate MitM attacks against devices that establish SSL/TLS connections to the Internet. It uses deep packet inspection to discover all SSL/TLS traffic instead of just monitoring ports typically associated with the two protocols, such as port 443.

The tool includes a client component for Android and Linux systems that tells the MitM component what specific tests to run. The client is also important for tracking which applications that run on the tested systems opened certain SSL/TLS connections, something that can be hard to determine just from the MitM side.

Nogotofail can check for weaknesses like vulnerabilities in third-party SSL/TLS libraries, susceptibility to attacks that strip the SSL/TLS or STARTTLS encryption and improper certificate validation, a widespread problem in applications.

In 2012 researchers from Stanford University and the University of Texas at Austintested non-browser software and concluded that “SSL certificate validation is completely broken in many critical software applications and libraries.”

Later that year, researchers from the Leibniz University of Hannover and Philipps University of Marburg in Germany found that 1,074 out of 13,500 popular Android applications from Google Play contained SSL code that either accepted all certificates, including self-signed ones, or accepted certificates issued for domain names different than the ones the apps connected to.

More recently, researchers from security firm IOActive tested the iOS mobile banking apps of 60 financial institutions and found that 40 percent of them did not properly validate the authenticity of digital certificates received from servers.

The discovery of flaws in SSL/TLS libraries is not uncommon either. A critical vulnerability dubbed Heartbleed reported in April in the widely used OpenSSL library triggered an unprecedented patching effort and attracted a lot of media attention. However, other serious bugs were found in SSL libraries this year as well.

In February Apple patched a critical certificate validation vulnerability in its SSL libraryfor iOS and Mac OS X. The bug stemmed from an extra “goto fail” line in the library’s code and it’s what likely inspired the name for Google’s new tool.

RHT: Where to Find Your New Favorite Mobile App Development Tools

by Robert Half Technology
July 29, 2014


Learning new mobile app development tools can give you an edge in the job market.

In this fast-paced application age, even experienced mobile app developers can’t rest on their laurels. They need to continually refine their skills and quickly adopt new mobile app development tools that can give them an extra edge.
The following resources can help you find and learn how to use mobile app development tools that can take your projects — and programming abilities — to the next level:

Video tutorials: Video tutorials can connect you with quality instruction from experts willing to share their knowledge of mobile app development tools and tips and tricks for programming. Go to video2brain’s YouTube channel to take advantage of some iOS intelligence. To increase your Android acumen, view the offerings in Lynda’s video library.

Community forums: When faced with a sticky programming issue, tech forums can be a developer’s best friend. There’s no substitute for the insight offered by other talented professionals working in your field. For example, joining GitHub will allow you to collaborate with a large open source community of programmers with varying skill levels, while Stack Overflow offers a vast question-and-answer section to help you untangle complex issues.

Training: Taking part in a hands-on training course is another way to learn new mobile app development tools, or see an old process from a new perspective. You can also learn how to apply your mobile app development knowledge to enterprise processes, which could help you land a new project or position with a leading employer. Check out these Robert Half Technology IT training resources to learn more.

In a field like programming, the learning process never really stops. Mobile app development is one of the hottest fields right now, and it pays to keep expanding your set of mobile app development tools. Building up in-demand skills also can help you secure a developer job at a higher starting salary: According to the Robert Half Technology 2014 Salary Guide, a U.S. mobile application developer with the right experience and abilities can command a starting salary of up to $144,000.

The importance of adding new mobile app development tools to your arsenal will only increase as technological changes — such as wearables — shake things up. Read more about the wearables trend here. Want to champion some mobile app development tools? Let our readers know in the comments.



— Robert Half Technology

With more than 100 locations worldwide, Robert Half Technology is a leading provider of technology professionals for initiatives ranging from web development and multiplatform systems integration to network security and technical support. Visit our website at www.rht.com.

SharkFest tracewrangler Tool

At the recent SharkFest conf a TCP guru, Jasper Bongertz, released a free
utility, tracewrangler, to automate anonymising IP addresses and other
info in trace files so you can use them safely.

Select, run, done - works great, less filling.

www.tracewrangler.com

Add more trace files to your classes to illustrate app and network
operations without giving anything else away.

Unlike other UTs, this works with pcapng files. If you're not familiar
with the new gen pcapng format - this allows you to add comments to
packets. I now use it for assignments - students identify, comment on, the
important packets, export out /only/ those few packets, then send the very
short file to me.

Enjoy -

Best regards,
John Gonder
Las Positas College Cisco Networking Academy
Computer Networking Technologies

CCC Brainstorm Info

The average CCC Brainstorm user creates a Brainstorm meeting agenda within a week of getting an account, and makes 5 or more changes to the agenda in the first two weeks. Are you above average?

Let’s push you above the curve! Here are a few links you might find helpful:

Read the Quick Reference Guide. Conquer the simple tools by following the step-by-step instructions.

Watch the Webinar about using CCC Brainstorm. Watch as Blaine walks you through the tips and tricks of planning and running a Brainstorm session.

Watch one of these brief (2 minutes or less) quick videos:

· Overview: How to Use CCC Brainstorm to Run a Meeting

· Creating an Agenda

· Controlling Logins

· Editing Comments

· Sorting Ideas into Categories

· Prioritizing and Voting

· Printing and Reports

If you need any assistance or have a suggestion for us, we’d love to hear from you. Our delightful support team is always available at

clientservices@cccbrainstorm.org .

Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive

Benny Evangelista, San Francisco Chronicle

Updated 1:25 p.m., Monday, October 15, 2012

• 
  Brewster Kahle operates the Internet Archive in a former Christian Science church in San Francisco's Richmond District.

   Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle / SF.

Brewster Kahle was a 19-year-old computer science student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when a friend posed a simple, yet life-changing question: "What can you do with your life that is worthwhile?"

Kahle came up with two answers. The first, developing a microchip to ensure the privacy of telephone conversations, didn't pan out. But 32 years later, Kahle is still happily pursuing his second big idea - to create the digital-age version of the Great Library of Alexandria.

His Internet Archive - fittingly based in an old Richmond District church that architecturally harks back to the ancient Egyptian library - is building a rich repository of modern digital culture. It's best known for the online Wayback Machine, which provides a searchable online museum of the Internet, archiving more than 150 billion Web pages that have appeared since 1996. The nonprofit archive stretches beyond the Internet. It has recorded 350,000 television news broadcasts, including reports from around the world during the week of the 2001 terrorist attacks, and stores 200,000 digitized books.

The nearly 10 petabytes - equivalent to about 10 billion books - of material in the archive also has 900,000 audio files, including 9,000 fan-made recordings of Grateful Dead concerts. Volunteers are even converting old home movies and stock footage of post-World War II San Francisco into digital form.

It's a mind-boggling, and constantly growing, amount of digital data, and it's all available for free, as the site's welcome says, to "researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public." With 50 times as much data expected to be produced over the next decade, it will be an ever-increasing challenge to capture, catalog and store it.

But at a time when what's brand new can almost instantly become passe, Kahle believes it's more important than ever to remember our yesterdays.

"Let's not throw out the old, even though we're going headlong into trying to invent some new future," he said. "And, in fact, the older things inform what we do."

The archive's mission of creating "universal access to all knowledge" would appear to be a Sisyphean task at best, as well as a venture that's not going to bring the 51-year-old entrepreneur and Internet pioneer the kind of money that would make a Mark Zuckerberg envious.

But Kahle isn't motivated by the pursuit of money - he says he already has "plenty of that" from previous ventures, including Alexa Internet, a Web information company that Amazon.com bought for a reported $250 million in 1999.

He's also earned plenty of accolades - in April, he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame, an online-only hall established by the Internet Society of Reston, Va. He was part of an inaugural class that included tech luminaries Vint Cerf, Robert Kahn and Charles Herzfeld.

His real reward, he says, is creating a place for researchers - and anyone else with a curious mind and a thirst for knowledge - to have unfet-tered access to the fleeting cultural artifacts of the Internet age. The "optimist and utopian" in him believes his "Library of Alexandria, Version 2" ultimately will make the world a better place.

"It's really meant to be a resource where you can come up with your own ideas," he said. "We want people to think deeper and then create new things that are worthy of putting in the library."

Kahle, a tall, balding, slightly rumpled-looking fellow, has been married for 20 years. His wife, Mary Austin, is co-founder of the San Francisco Center for the Book, a strictly analog venture that teaches classic bookbinding and letterpress techniques. They live near the archive in the Presidio and have two sons, Caslon, 18, (named for the Caslon typeface) and Logan, 15.

As he talks about his work and his staff, Kahle comes across as a proud paternal figure. But as he begins a tour of the archive - the former Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist, a neoclassic building with Greek columns on Funston Avenue - he's more like a kid showing off a new toy. With wide eyes and a slight giggle, Kahle describes how, since locating there in 2009, archive workers outfitted old storage areas and other rooms with racks of ultramodern, custom-designed computer servers.

There are even servers installed in the back of the old church's main hall, their constant whir replacing the sounds of worship. Somehow, the servers still fit naturally with the old church pews, which these days are filled with rows of Kahle's own Terracotta Army - half-size clay statues that are a sort of archive themselves, representations of employees who have worked there for three years or more.

Kahle - who on most weekends can be found on the bay in his sailboat - said the archive's unique home, built in 1923, anchors his personal and professional life.

"All of this comes from a perspective, which is why we have a Greek place with pillars," he said. "It's all about trying to help people understand what it is we're trying to do, and have ourselves be reminded. ... It's because we're supposed to be doing the public good."

Kahle is a computer geek who can go "nerd-to-nerd with anybody," but he is still able to articulate his vision to a non-tech-savvy crowd, said Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Kahle is on the San Francisco digital rights advocacy organization's board of directors.

"That's what makes him so inspiring," Cohn said. "Brewster is one of the first people I've met in this area who had that whole package together. He's very serious about what he's doing, but he's kind of childlike in his enthusiasm, which is infectious."

Indeed, Kahle may have the perfect virtual pulpit for his efforts. "He has almost evangelistic zeal for promoting better access to information to take advantage of the opportunities that are out there," said Pamela Samuelson, a professor at UC Berkeley School of Law.

Samuelson, a renowned pioneer in digital copyright law, met Kahle about 20 years ago.

"If anything, he's become more of a visionary and more of an evangelist," she said. "He hasn't slowed down at all. I can imagine Brewster Kahle when he's 85, still out there saying, 'Oh, we can do this, we can do this.' "

He's also not been afraid to take on big companies or the federal government. Kahle, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union fought a 2007 attempt by the FBI to obtain personal information about an Internet Archive user, arguing that it was unconstitutional. The FBI later withdrew the request.

He also has opposed Google's controversial project to create its own collection of digital books. Although Google and the Association of American Publishers this month settled their 7-year-old copyright dispute over the project, which already includes 20 million scanned books, Kahle still objects to the restrictions Google places on access to many of the books it has digitized.

"I come from the Internet generation, and the things we've seen work have not been these closed, walled gardens," Kahle said. "And what we're really about is having no centralized points of control. We want lots of winners. We want lots of publishers to win. We want lots of libraries to win."

Kahle was born in New Jersey, grew up in New York and studied artificial intelligence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was challenged to think about what he really wanted to do. While still in school, he tried to develop a chip that could encrypt telephone conversations, but "couldn't figure out how to do it cheaply enough to help the everyday person," he said. After graduating in 1982, he helped start a company called Thinking Machines, designing chips for supercomputers that could "search everything," he said. His work led to the development in 1989 of the Wide Area Information Server, or WAIS, the first system that enabled connecting to and searching databases through the Internet.

In 1992, he co-founded WAIS Inc., which helped traditional print publishers get on the Internet. Kahle helped set up an early version of the Gate, which is now SFGate.com, The Chronicle's website.

America Online bought WAIS in 1995 for $13 million. In 1996, Kahle co-founded Alexa Internet, a Web research and information company still based in San Francisco's Presidio. The name is derived from the Library of Alexandria.

At the same time, Kahle co-founded the Internet Archive, and used Alexa Internet's Web-crawling technology to feed the catalog of sites in the Wayback Machine, a play on the name of a time machine used by the old TV cartoon character Mr. Peabody.

When Amazon bought Alexa Internet, Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos agreed to continue donating data to the Wayback Machine. Kahle stayed with Alexa for three years after the sale before moving full time to the Internet Archive.

Kahle calls TV news just as ephemeral as websites, yet it is just as "pervasive and persuasive" in its influence on modern life, from culture to politics. The archive's latest project, TV News Search & Borrow, attempts to preserve those shows for future generations.

The project began Sept. 17 with a collection of 350,000 news programs digitally recorded during the last three years from domestic TV networks and stations in San Francisco and Washington. It also includes a section devoted to news broadcasts about 9/11 from around the world. The free service can be searched online by keywords, so someone researching political debates, for example, can search for clips on "Obamacare" or "Big Bird." (If an entire program is needed, it's loaned out on DVD-ROM to observe copyright restrictions.)

The service is about fostering better "media literacy," Kahle said. "It's meant to make television news researchable, basically like newspapers have always been."

The big idea Kahle conceived more than 30 years ago has recently inspired another.

The Internet Archive Federal Credit Union is scheduled to start operating this year and fully open next year. Based in New Brunswick, N.J., the home of Rutgers University, it will serve about 135,000 mainly low-income residents. The credit union, which was granted a charter in August, is partially funded by the Kahle/Austin Foundation, a nonprofit organization formed by Kahle and his wife.

Kahle says he was moved to do something after talking to Internet Archive employees who scan books into digital form about how they struggle to meet high Bay Area rents every month. One of the credit union's aims will be to help develop housing that employees of nonprofits like his can afford.

"So how do we get around this? I don't know the answer completely, but we're going to try some things," he said. "The first thing we needed was a bank that would be up for trying to help people more than the banks are doing these days, so we thought, 'OK, let's start a credit union.' "

Kahle is confident that it, like the archive, will be a worthwhile venture. Maybe even life-changing for some. His ambition for it is simple, and familiar:

"We'll do as much good as we can with it."

2 million

Unique visitors per day.

250

Rank among most popular websites.

10

Petabytes of material archived (one petabyte equals 1 million gigabytes).

350,000

TV news broadcasts archived.

2 million to 2.5 million

Digital copies of books.

100,000

Music concerts archived.

150

Employees.

Source: Internet Archive

Benny Evangelista is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: bevangelista@sfchronicle.com

CCC Confer Webinar - 3 Things You Might Not Know About YouTube

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Broadening the Benefits of Dual Enrollment

July 26th 2012 - News Release

“The Concurrent Courses initiative has laid a foundation for strengthening the high school to college transition. In just three years, partnerships implemented and enhanced programs that provided college exploration and dual enrollment offerings to California students who had not previously had those opportunities.”

Broadening the Benefits of Dual EnrollmentReaching Underachieving and Underrepresented Students with Career-Focused Programs

A new study, Broadening the Benefits of Dual Enrollment: Reaching Underachieving and Underrepresented Students with Career-Focused Programs, by the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University examines outcomes for almost 3,000 high-school students who participated in dual enrollment, career-focused programs with community colleges in California.  The findings from the three-year study suggest that programs enrolling high-school students in college credit courses can have beneficial results for underachieving students and students underrepresented in higher education.  The students who participated in career-focused dual-enrollment programs were more likely than other students in their districts to graduate from high school, enroll in four-year colleges, persist in college and accumulate more credits and were less likely to enroll in remedial classes.


CCRC led the Concurrent Courses Initiative funded by James Irvine Foundation. The Career Ladders Project (CLP) provided technical assistance to the initiative, providing assistance to involved high school and community college partners with ongoing implementation, exchange of effective practices among the initiative’s partners, and identification of common challenges and emergent solutions in offering effective concurrent enrollment programs.


To download the report click here.

Related briefs for policymakers and practitioners and reports are all available for download at:
www.concurrentcourses.org/publications.html?utm_source=Irvine+final+report&utm_campaign=UA-2832117-7&utm_medium=email 

Getting a job in Social Media could start with a Certificate of Completion from this on-line Workshop

Thousand Oaks, CA – Demand for employees who can manage a company’s social media efforts continues to increase in California leaving those without the knowledge at a disadvantage for promotions or new jobs.  Training workers to manage social media, new media, interactive internet and mobile applications is the goal of the just released on-line Social Media Management workshop series developed by the California Community College Economic & Workforce Development Program and available FREE at www.web4biz.org. 

This cutting edge workshop is designed to help individuals understand how Internet technology affects business and how they can develop an effective plan to impact revenue growth and customer retention with interactive internet, social and mobile media.  From their desk at work or at home, on their computer or mobile device, participants waste no time in finding out what is most effective for their markets and their products and learn to apply solid proven successful traditional business practices in the ever changing landscape of current technology and consumer behavior. 

To earn a non-credit Certificate of Completion in the Social Media Management workshop users simply register on-line at www.web4biz.org and complete all the workshops in the program in short segments of 5-10 minute videos, total time two hours. The participants will be exposed to the fundamentals of technology, efficiency, implementation, marketing, reducing operating costs, customer service and disaster recovery.

Participants are asked to apply the strategic planning process to their own business as part of the workshop exercises.  Discussion boards, archive materials, worksheets and links further help in training and understanding the management of social media.

Kerry Rego and Steve Wright present a series of entertaining and engaging workshop videos teaching the fundamentals of Social Media Management.  Kerry's years of experience working closely with small businesses and approachable warmth provide a personal touch to the material.  Steve’s traditional management viewpoint answers the questions and concerns of business owners.

Employees are a fundamental element of small business; they often carry out multiple duties including new media, web site management, clerical, etc.  In order for California to develop economic prosperity and competitive resilience, we must ensure that employees have the opportunity to learn new skills required for the current economic environment.  California’s 740,000 small businesses are the engine of jobs and recovery, and on-line competition for consumers occurs over the internet from every state and country.  The ability of California business to adapt and grow revenue utilizing these tools is essential for economic growth. 

Materials and curriculum were developed by the iima4biz Initiative with a grant from the Economic & Workforce Development Program and materials are being presented at no cost. There is no commercial interest or product endorsement in the content.  iima4biz is an Initiative of the Economic & Workforce Development Program. 

About iima4biz

The Interactive Internet and Mobile Applications for Business Initiative, or iima4biz, is one of several innovative initiatives led by the Economic & Workforce Development program hosted by the California Community Colleges. Iima4biz provides workshops and training for the business community, as well as, curriculum assets for the California Community College system.  Timely social media conferences for government and for Spanish speaking businesspersons can be found at the Economic & Workforce Development  website: www.iima4biz.org.