Hasta La Gadget!

Udacity’s first partnership with an institution of higher learning might not have turned out as well as it hoped, but a setback at San Jose State University won’t cause the online learning portal to call it quits on college campuses. Quite the contrary, in fact. Today, Udacity announced the creation of the Open Education Alliance to “bridge the gap between the skills employers need and what traditional universities teach.” The alliance is comprised of both Silicon Valley heavyweights like Google, AT&T and NVIDIA and educators including Georgia Tech and Khan Academy. The OEA’s goal is to enlist the help of both companies and educators in building a new curriculum to help students learn what they need to choose and succeed in a modern career.

Here at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2013, Udacity CEO Sebastian Thrun and California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom discussed the need for a shift in our educational system, and consequently the OEA. “It’s important to be creative about this,” said Thrun, “we need to move away from an ‘industry of drones’ by enabling students to learn at their own speed.” Naturally, accomplishing this task requires a combination of Udacity’s online learning tools to give folks on-demand access to learning materials they need and a physical classroom environment to keep students on task. According to Newsom, “It’s not mass education anymore, it’s personalized.”

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Source: Udacity blog, Open Education Alliance

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.

Tesla has been on a tear this year, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the Silicon Valley-based electric car maker is using up the world’s supply of lithium-ion batteries, spurring manufacturers to ramp up global production. In other green transportation news, Smart has unveiled the Fourjoy electric concept car in advance of the Frankfurt Motor Show. Barcelona launched the world’s first public electric scooter-sharing scheme, which promises to help users save money and decrease fuel consumption. In Buffalo, a man built himself a 16-foot geodesic houseboat in just a few weeks for less than $2,000. And if you want to have your mind blown, check out the photos from this year’s Bloemencorso Zundert flower parade in the Netherlands, which features floats made from thousands of flowers.

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For a company that keeps millions of users’ personal emails and data under lock and key, Google found itself in a bad place earlier this year — on a list of “providers” that reportedly gave the NSA direct access to their central servers. The company immediately took steps to calm consumers, assuring its user base that it didn’t create a federal “back door,” and demanding more transparency from government agencies. Now, the Mountain View search giant has told The Washington Post that it’s accelerating its encryption initiative, which will hopefully offer users another layer of comforting protection.

“It’s an arms race,” Google VP of security engineering Eric Grosse told the paper. “We see these government agencies as among the most skilled players in this game.” That is to say, protecting user data isn’t easy — intelligence firms and skilled hackers can eventually find their way around even the most sophisticated encryption, but building these kinds of walls has become a necessity in a post-PRISM world. The move is designed to protect Google users against unauthorized snooping, but Mountain View will still have to comply with court orders and official requests. Still, who are we to argue with a more defensible inbox?

Filed under: Misc, Google

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Via: Ars Technica

Source: Washington Post

Every week, a new and interesting human being tackles our decidedly geeky take on the Proustian Q&A. This is the Engadget Questionnaire.

In this week’s installment of our regular session of inquiry, author and Europa Report screenwriter Philip Gelatt dishes on convenient fact-checking and rewind dreams for broken iPhone screens. Head on past the break for the full response rundown.

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Source: Distro Issue 106

If you have insatiable wanderlust, you just might love the newest Google Earth update for Android — especially if you travel enough to forget where you’ve been. Version 7.1.2 adds the ability to view your geotagged photos from a new layer within the app, as long as they’ve been previously uploaded to Google+. Since the images are placed on top of the locale they were taken in — simply click on one to view them all as a full-screen slideshow — it’s the perfect tool to use when you want to do some reminiscing. The update should now be available, so relax and sit back on your beach chair as you download it via Google Play.

Filed under: Misc, Mobile, Google

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Source: Google Earth (Google+), Google Play