Net Traveller

Video Archiving System for the Australian Parliament

2009-07-04T12:33:00.003+10:00

The Department of Parliamentary Services has issued a Request for Tender for "Provision of Equipment and Services for Media Asset Management and Archiving Solution". This is a digital system for the capture, delivery, and archiving of audio and video from the House of Representative, Senate, hearings and the like. There is also 55,000 hours of broadcast quality video to be digitised and

Vocational Graduate Certificate in ICT Sustainability

2009-07-03T10:04:00.005+10:00

Box Hill Institute of TAFE is now offering a "Vocational Graduate Certificate in ICT Sustainability" at its Nelson Campus in Melbourne. The course includes subjects of "Manage improvements in ICT sustainability ", "Use ICT to improve sustainability outcomes", "Lead personal and strategic transformation" and "Principles of sustainability". In May I visited Box Hill Institute to talk to Frank

Australian Government Web Publishing Guide Review

2009-07-02T21:21:00.017+10:00

The Department of Finance and Deregulation is reviewing the Web Publishing Guide provided for federal government agencies. I went along to a Focus Group Session today, run by TNS Social Research. This was entertaining, if not very useful. There is another group scheduled for early July. I did not have very high expectations for this activity. Given the confidentiality footer on the email

Whole System Design: An Integrated Approach to Sustainable Engineering

2009-07-01T14:03:00.003+10:00

After is seminar on "Advances in Climate Change Mitigation", Michael Smith handed me a copy of his new book "Whole System Design: An Integrated Approach to Sustainable Engineering" (Earthscan, 2009) to review. This is intended as a textbook for a course on how engineers can approach creating more sustainable systems by taking a broader approach. There is accompanying online material. However,

Green ICT Course Available to UNSW Students

2009-07-01T11:30:00.006+10:00

My "Green ICT Strategies" course (COMP7310) is now available to students in the Master of Information Technology and Graduate Diploma in Information at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales. The SCE UNSW Student Office has advised that their students can undertake the course as a free elective.The paperwork for this is a bit complicated,

E-learning more popular than blended course

2009-07-01T11:04:00.003+10:00

I planned to run the course Green ICT Strategies (COMP7310) at the Australian National University in a blended mode: e-learning via the web with optional seminars on campus. But this has not been popular with the students and yesterday I decided to drop the on campus seminars making it a pure e-learning course.This is disappointing as I wanted to combine the best of the on-campus experience with

Open Web Education Alliance

2009-06-30T11:29:00.002+10:00

W3C, the people who do web standards, have set up an Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group, to foster education about web standards. See: News, Deliverables, Meetings. and Charter: The goal of this Incubator Group is to bring together interested individuals, companies, and organizations with a strong interest in the field of educating Web professionals, to explore the needs and issues

ACT Strategic Public Transport Network Plan

2009-06-30T09:14:00.003+10:00

The ACT Government has issued for a request for tender for a "Cost Benefit Analysis - ACT Strategic Public Transport Network Plan" (29 June 2009). There is a 35 page (109.5 kb PDF) tender document which outlines the ACT's public transport strategy and triple bottom line approach to cost benefit analysis. Unfortunately, apart from the tender documents, I was unable to find any reference online to

Social Networking for Business

2009-06-29T17:03:00.004+10:00

I will be speaking on "Social Networking for Business" at the 2009 International Young ICT Professionals Conference, 3 to 4 September 2009 in Sydney. Another speaker is Fiona Balfour, former CIO of Qantas and Telstra. The program is designed for young professionals, recent graduates and university students to advance their career in Information Communications Technology (ICT), focusing on

Australian E-portfolio Plan

2009-06-29T09:02:00.007+10:00

A "VET E-portfolio Roadmap: A strategic roadmap for e-portfolios to support lifelong learning" (640 kbytes PDF, 16 June 2009) has been released by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework. This provides a useful 26 page overview of what electronic portfolios are, how they are useful in education and how they can be applied in Australia. Unfortunately AFLF published the plan as a difficult to

Islamic Science and Technology Museum

2009-06-28T16:26:00.007+10:00

The Islamic Science and Technology Museum gets a mention in "Fathers of Invention: What the Muslims Gave the Scientific World" by Jennifer Hattam (Wired magazine, of June 2009). The museum celebrates scientific and technological discoveries from Islamic scholars and makes the point Islam is not anti-science. Examples from the ancient world include the Alembic, for the distillation of liquids and

Michael Jackson on Amazon.com

2009-06-28T14:10:00.004+10:00

Amazon.com have set up a Michael Jackson store. It is remarkable how quickly sellers have reacted to his death. As well as albums and MP3 downloads for sale, this has videos, books and a discussion area. Surprisingly, not all the discussion is uncritical tributes from fans, with allegations about his relationships with children discussed.

Shared Office Design

2009-06-28T11:47:00.005+10:00

One way to reduce energy use in offices is to have more sharing of printers, but another way is more shared office design, with more people per office. The example I will use is for visiting and adjunct staff at the School of Computer Science, in the Computer Science and Information Technology building (CSIT), ANU, Canberra. A simple arrangement could increase the number of people per office

Sharing Printers to Reduce Energy

2009-06-28T10:16:00.005+10:00

The students in my Green ICT course just completed their first assignment on estimating the greenhouse gas emissions from ICT in the organisations where they work. What stuck me was how much energy the average office uses. As an example, I found an estimate that a office worker causes about 1,078 kg-CO2/person/year in Japan and 2,470 kg-CO2/person/year in the USA.The students came up with

Advances Needed in Climate Change Politics

2009-06-27T19:12:00.004+10:00

Michael H. Smith, Visiting Fellow at the ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society talked on "Overview of Key Advances in Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation - Updating the IPCC 4th Assessment 2 Years On", 25 June 2009 in Canberra. Michael outlined areas where there have been rapid advances in technology to reduce CO2 emissions and other areas where the original IPCC report had not

Internet Learning Future

2009-06-26T11:58:00.004+10:00

Matthew Allen from Curtin University of Technology will be giving two free talks at ADFA in Canberra, 17th July, 2009. The morning seminar is for those with online teaching experience and the afternoon for those with an online learning design focus:Innovative education online: Ideas for the future of learning and the InternetAn Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) Workshop with

Australian Government Green ICT Quick Wins

2009-06-25T14:35:00.016+10:00

Greetings from the AIIA "Canberra: The Standing Agenda" in Canberra. Kayelle Wiltshire from AGIMO is talking about 'Green ICT Quick Wins'. She pointed out that the ANAO estimate of 10% of energy use in agencies is probably low. The quick wins are easy steps to reduce energy use, such as shutting down desktop computers overnight (As at March 2009, only 48% of agencies do). In the longer term

Australian Government ICT Sustainability Plans

2009-06-25T14:35:00.006+10:00

The Australian Information Industry Association's "Canberra: The Standing Agenda" monthly drinks are on in Canberra today at 4:30pm. This month it features Ms Kayelle Wiltshire, Branch Manager, Central Facilities, AGIMO on 'Green ICT Quick Wins' and Mr Al Blake, Assistant Secretary and CIO of the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA) on the whole of Government ICT

Sony LCD TV Presence Sensor

2009-06-24T20:41:00.005+10:00

The Sony BRAVIA 40 inch WE5 Series HD LCD TV comes with a "Presence Sensor". This can be switched on so that the unit will turn off the screen to save power if it detected no one is in the room. It switches the picture back on instantly when someone comes in. The feature does save power with my measurements showing a drop from 109 Watt to 60 Watt.Presumably this feature works using an infra-red

Government ICT Reform Program

2009-06-24T18:21:00.013+10:00

Greetings from "Walking the Walk - the governance and progress of the Government's ICT Reform Program" by John Sheridan, Australian Government Information Management Office at the joint ACS/AIPM meeting in Canberra.John is discussing the implementation of the Gershon Recommendations. He mentioned the Portfolio, Programme, and Project Management Maturity Model (P3M3) tool would be used. I got a

Sony 40 Inch LCD TV Initial Impressions

2009-06-24T14:44:00.014+10:00

The Sony BRAVIA 40 inch WE5 Series HD LCD TV comes in a box 210 x 1250 x 785 mm weighing 26 kg. It is light enough for one person to lift, but so large it takes to to move it. This is much heavier and larger than a LCD projector. But it is lighter than a comparable sized plasma screen.The

Sony BRAVIA WE Series LCD TV

2009-06-24T14:08:00.007+10:00

Sony have loaned me a Sony BRAVIA 40 inch WE5 Series HD LCD TV to try out for a few days. Specifically I wanted to see if this unit save much energy. The application I have in mind is for learning commons, where flat screens are used for digital signage and for presentations. In this applications the screens tend to be left on all day, so energy use is an issue.One disappointment is that

Broadband for disabilities $20,000 prize

2009-06-24T09:44:00.005+10:00

The Australian Computer Society is offering AU$20,000 in prize money for innovative use of telecommunications technology to assist individuals with a disability. Entries are invited from around the world for papers in the May 2010 issue of the ACS Telecommunications Journal of Australia. The Prize commemorates the disability advocate Christopher Newell.Hon. Bill Shorten MP, Parliamentary

Extending university events into the online world

2009-06-23T11:44:00.006+10:00

The Australian National University College of Engineering and Computer Science held a Poster Day on the topic of "Connecting Research to Business" on 22 June 200 in Canberra. Unfortunately I could not attend as I was at Parliament Hose talking about Government 2.0. It occurred to me that it would be useful to extend the poster day into the online world, so as to allow those who could not be there

Wiki Government

2009-06-22T15:14:00.003+10:00

At Government 2.0: Policy and Practice, Roxanne Missingham, from the Parliamentary Library mentioned the book "Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens" by Beth Simone Noveck Beth Simone Noveck (Author) › Visit Amazon's Beth Simone Noveck Page Find all the