In 1985, almost all PCs sat on desktops, the Internet was a Defense Department research project, and the cell phone revolution had barely gotten underway. It was also the year that Microsoft launched a DOS front-end called Windows 1.0.

Over the past quarter century, Windows has evolved many times, and it will change again in light of Microsoft’s investments in cloud services, mobile platforms, and other new technologies. And as the way people compute and communicate morphs faster than ever, the challenges ahead for Windows are huge.

With that in mind, Technologizer asked some of the industry’s big brains about what Microsoft needs to do to keep its operating system relevant in the years to come. Their advice ranges from merely simplifying the interface to borrowing ideas from other Microsoft products such as the Xbox to giving the OS a complete reboot. Here’s what they (and we) have to say.

» via Technologizer

A federal plan to wire the entire United States with high-speed Internet access will be key to creating a nationwide “smart” power grid for reducing wasted electricity, according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

» via Live Science

The state of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education in the United States has seen some unflattering appraisals in recent years, and deservedly so. In early February, the House of Representatives heard testimony on undergraduate and graduate education. The message from the panel, which included experts from academia, STEM-based industries, and the National Science Foundation (NSF), was clear: the problems in STEM education are well-known, and it‘s time to take action.

Both the hearing’s charter and its chair, Daniel Lipinski (D-IL), pointed out the obvious problem in higher education: students start out interested, but the STEM programs are driving them away. As the National Academies described in its 2005 report Rising Above the Gathering Storm, successful STEM education is not just an academic pursuit—it’s a necessity for competing in the knowledge-based economy that the United States had a key role in creating.

The potential for action comes thanks to the fact that the America COMPETES Act of 2007 is up for reauthorization. Its initial focus was on STEM education at the K-12 levels, but efforts at the undergraduate and graduate levels are needed to retain students to fill the jobs left vacant as baby boomers retire.

» via ars technica

I hinted that, with Office 2010, Microsoft would be moving the focus of its development towards the cloud, but I had no idea they were quite so involved! As of today, around 75% of its employees are working on cloud-related projects. “A year from now that will be 90 percent,” says CEO Steve Ballmer. According to its Wiki page Microsoft currently has 93,000 employees… yikes.

» via Download Squad

techspotlight:

From RWW:

According to Gartner, the worldwide market for mobile devices with touchscreens will grow over 97% this year. Last year, consumers bought 184 million devices with touchscreens. Gartner predicts that this market will surpass 362 million units this year. By 2013, Gartner predicts, touchscreen mobile devices will account for 80% of all sales in North America and Europe. Once the domain of high-end devices, touchscreen are now finding their ways into midrange phones and a growing number of consumers now expects all of their screens to be touch-enabled.

In the process of requesting iPad application startups, Y Combinator made an interesting argument as to why the iPad is important:

Most people think the important thing about the iPad is its form factor: that it’s fundamentally a tablet computer. We think Apple has bigger ambitions. We think the iPad is meant to be a Windows killer. Or more precisely, a Windows transcender. We think Apple foresees a future in which the iPad is the default way people do what they now do with computers (and some other new things).

Programmers may never want a computer they don’t control, but ordinary people just want something cheap that works. And that’s how the iPad will seem to them. Many will never make a conscious decision to switch. They’ll get an iPad as well, then find they use their Windows machine less and less. When it dies they won’t replace it.

That’s right, or at least that’s Apple’s longterm strategy with these post-PC devices. Jobs believes that the future is in mobile, non-PC computing devices, and Apple wants to own this market. The PC’s reign is over.

» via TightWind

Google is thinking about ways to inject search into the educational process as more than just a quick and dirty cheat sheet.

One of the most amazing things about Internet search is the speed and precision at which it returns answers to specific questions, ideal for students researching subjects for tests or papers. But this also generates criticism that the knowledge gained from services like Google can be a mile wide and an inch deep: data points don’t organize themselves into concepts and ideas.

Google’s Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, has begun exploring “education search,” or ways to help students “get to where they are going,” he said. Norvig told attendees at SMX West during a presentation on Google Research that he’s trying to understand “how can we support people who are looking for not just an answer in five minutes” but over a longer period of learning.

The project is in the very early stages, and Norvig and a Google representative were unwilling to share much more about the thinking behind its plans.

» via CNET news

Universities are losing their grip on higher learning as the Internet is, inexorably, becoming the dominant infrastructure for knowledge — both as a container and as a global platform for knowledge exchange between people — and as a new generation of students requires a very different model of higher education. Many people have written about this topic, in EDUCAUSE Review and other publications. The transformation of the university is not just a good idea. It is an imperative, and evidence is mounting that the consequences of further delay may be dire.

Now is also a time of great opportunity, and there is a steady stream of proposals for change. Some say the web enables distance learning and the elimination of campuses. Others argue that we need more technology in higher education or that colleges should be opened up and be made free to all. There are renewed calls to abolish tenure and even to replace traditional departments with a new set of problem-focused disciplines.10

The trouble is that most of the ideas being bantered about don’t address the fundamental problems with the university or show a way forward. Rather, change is required in two vast and interwoven domains that permeate the deep structures and operating model of the university: (1) the value created for the main customers of the university (the students); and (2) the model of production for how that value is created. First we need to toss out the old industrial model of pedagogy (how learning is accomplished) and replace it with a new model called collaborative learning. Second we need an entirely new modus operandi for how the subject matter, course materials, texts, written and spoken word, and other media (the content of higher education) are created.

We believe that if the university opens up and embraces collaborative learning and collaborative knowledge production, it has a chance of surviving and even thriving in the networked, global economy.

» EDUCAUSE Review

The economic problems facing ABC News and CBS News in many ways mirror those faced by newspapers, which have been similarly afflicted by a drop in advertising revenue. The reaction — severe cuts in personnel and other costs — also looks to be the same.

But can you shrink your way to prosperity? Andrew Heyward, the former president of CBS News who is now a news media consultant (NBC News is one client), said of the ABC cuts: “The real issue after this is what is going to drive growth? How do you generate more profit? And this doesn’t address that.”

» via The New York Times