Dr. Constantine Vaporis, Professor of History and Director of the Asian Studies Program, has been chosen as the UMBC 2013-2016 Presidential Research Professor. 

A new Boston-based developer bootcamp kicking off this year, a 10 week, full-time Ruby on Rails bootcamp aiming to turn novices into entry level developers.

JoomlaHosting.co is now easier to use, featuring a redesigned look that adapts to all screen sizes from mobile phones to widescreen monitors.

We felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were about to be silenced. We fear something terrible is about to happen. We went access the blogs we follow on Google Reader and found this.

Powering Down Google Reader
3/13/2013 04:06:00 PM

Posted by Alan Green, Software Engineer

We have just announced on the Official Google Blog that we will soon retire Google Reader (the actual date is July 1, 2013). We know Reader has a devoted following who will be very sad to see it go. We’re sad too.

There are two simple reasons for this: usage of Google Reader has declined, and as a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience.

To ensure a smooth transition, we’re providing a three-month sunset period so you have sufficient time to find an alternative feed-reading solution. If you want to retain your Reader data, including subscriptions, you can do so through Google Takeout.

Thank you again for using Reader as your RSS platform.
Labels: reader, sunset

Where is old Bloglines now that we need him again? We should not have been so disloyal.

Have you ever wanted to start a blog but you've been uncertain how to get started? In this article we'll look at ten steps to get you up to speed. Some of the topics well cover are: Blog types, hosting options, security, SEO plugins, analytics and more.

Following a successful run on the internationally-ranked UMBC chess team, Ian Harris ’11, psychology, is making a career of the strategic game in his home state of Connecticut, the Norwalk Hour online reports.

Harris, who is ranked a national master by the United States Chess Federation and 7th in Connecticut, is working as an instructor at the Chess Club of Fairfield County, the story says. He has also co-authored a book, “Mastering Chess,” which is set to publish sometime next month.

On the topic of sharing his chess secrets with a new generation, Harris tells the Hour:

“I think a lot of people want to learn [chess] but are intimidated by it. We offer camps for kids to learn chess and a lot of kids love it. They get hooked because it’s fun and educational.”

Read the full story in the Hour here.

"Shafi Goldwasser of MIT and the Weizmann Institute of Science and Silvio Micali of MIT were names as the winners of the 2012 ACM A.M. Turing Award. Working together, they pioneered the field of provable security, which laid the mathematical foundations that made modern cryptography possible. By formalizing the concept that cryptographic security had to be computational rather than absolute, they created mathematical structures that turned cryptography from an art into a science.

Their work addresses important practical problems such as the protection of data from being viewed or modified, providing a secure means of communications and transactions over the Internet. Their advances led to the notion of interactive and probabilistic proofs and had a profound impact on computational complexity, an area that focuses on classifying computational problems according to their inherent difficulty.

The ACM Turing Award, widely considered the "Nobel Prize in Computing," carries a $250,000 prize, with financial support provided by Intel Corporation and Google Inc."

…more…

Netflix now allows frictionless sharing of the movies you watch on Facebook.

Back in 2011, following Facebook’s F8 developers conference, a new phrase began to buzz: “frictionless sharing.” Soon, news-sharing apps proliferated with Facebook, which enabled automatic posting of articles you were reading to your news feed. More famously, Spotify originally required users to register via their Facebook account. Spotify claimed that it was all just to make things simpler for the user: “As most of our users are already social and have already connected to Facebook, it seemed logical to integrate Spotify and Facebook logins,” the company said in a statement. But the move was transparently to create viral buzz in Facebook news feeds. Pretty soon, my feed was full of the unneeded “news” that Joe was listening to Kanye, while Kate was listening to Madonna. My listening habits were likewise broadcast, and though I think I’ve disabled them, I’m not entirely sure (last I checked, the Spotify iPhone app’s privacy settings remained a bit opaque to me).

The New York Times today examined the experiences of older students — in their 60s and beyond — at colleges and universities. The article cites many reasons for retirees taking college courses, including tuition waivers, social connections and an interest in lifelong learning.

“Novelty is something the brain thrives on,” said Erickson School Dean Judah L. Ronch, commenting on the physiological and psychological health benefits that older students experience. “It helps connections between nerve cells form, and that’s the basis of new knowledge and ability. Research now supports the idea that at any age these connections can continue to be made.”

In addition to supporting brain health, the classroom can also be a helpful for adults coping with the death of a spouse and struggling to socialize with friends who are intact couples. Ronch noted that in college fellow students are unlikely to ask, “Is your husband dead or alive?” Read the full article to learn more.