Wired Campus: New Online Video Game Teaches Students Chinese - Chronicle.com

“A professor at Michigan State University has created a free online video game to help students learn Chinese.The multi-player role-playing game, Zon/New Chengo, allows users to choose Mandarin phrases to converse with other characters in the game about exchanging money, buying breakfast, and other activities visitors to China would experience.”

Beta Beat: New York Times Reader Now Available for Mac

Musopen puts classical recordings, scores in public domain

“Pre-twentieth century music all exists in the public domain, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to get access either to recordings or sheet music. Want to include a Beethoven sonata as background music in your wedding video, documentary, or indie feature film? You’ll need to pay unless you can dig up an ancient recorded copy from the early 1900s (and can live with the sound quality). Want to pass out sheet music of that same sonata to your high school band? Again, you will need to pay unless you can track down an ancient, out-of-copyright score.”

ODF wins the office document format war? | InfoWorld | News | 2008-05-22 | By Neil McAllister, PC World
Microsofts backpedaling on support could have something to do with its current regulatory troubles in Europe and with the standards bodies that govern OOXML

By Neil McAllister, PC World
May 22, 2008

“Good news for those of you who have been following the XML office document standards battle. Microsoft Wednesday announced that Office 2007 will support ODF Open Document Format, the document standard used by OpenOffice.org and other open source productivity suites, with the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2, due sometime in early 2009.”

Can OpenOffice 3.0 finally replace MS Office? | InfoWorld | News | 2008-05-16 | By Preston Gralla, Computerworld

“If you think that you always get what you pay for, the just-released beta of OpenOffice 3.0 should convince you otherwise. This free, open source software suite provides most of what anyone could want in an office suite, including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, database, drawing tools, and math equation editor.”

Apple: Music Video Is Complete Mac OS X Leopard Tour

via Gizmodo

Hello everybody! Welcome to the 2008 Summer Laptop Program!

Beta Beat: OpenOffice 3.0 Beta Now Available, Adds Native OS X Support
Windows/Mac/Linux all platforms: OpenOffice.org, the free office application suite, has released a beta of its 3.0 version to the public with a few key features rolled in. The biggest update is native support for Mac OS X platforms, meaning no need to install X11 packages on older Macs or switch to NeoOffice for a smoother experience

Maxtor 500GB OneTouch™ 4 External Hard Drive $89.99 at Staples®

Everyone needs a backup hard drive.  At $0.18 a Gigabyte, this is one of the cheapest I’ve seen so fare.  If you get frisky, add $10.01 in filler and user the $25 off $100 coupons that are floating around right now, it comes to $75 or $0.15/GB.

Wired Campus: A Class Blog Studies Fair Use - Chronicle.com
A professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law has created a nifty blog for students to hash out a debate about a fictional copyright-infringement case.