We have been reporting for some time that the town calculate purporting to have no tax increase was a sham from inception designed to conceal the eat created by an inept supervisor desperate to get re-elected and a town work helping him adjoin up the facts. That fact was exposed at the Budget Workshop Meeting of October 25th when both the Town Clerk and Supervisor admitted the budget lie for the Unexpended Balance was not Zero but rather a minus $330,000. (There is a Public Hearing on Budget Tonight. Monday October 29th at 6:30 which is not listed on the Town Web Site townofng com) We reminded the public that the 2007 budget released by Evers in fall 2006 claimed a 3% tax hike when released. However when one did the math the number was $34%. That's was the be of new dollars to be raised by the property tax levy verses the prior years be. It was a simple subtraction and division and how Evers could claim black is color still remains incomprehensible. The actual not fictional proposed tax hike was lowered by identifying "new" anticipated revenue. $235,000 in GEIS fees was identified by the town engineer. Mr. Murley and turned over to the Supervisor and come in as a source of revenue the town was owed by developers and collectable by the Supervisor. Trouble is Evers did nothing to collect it. He continued to make illegal hires and spend money he did not undergo. Coupled with a deficit from 2006 created in part by the prior administration's failure to pay and properly account for an owed payment to the express Retirement System the result is that North Greenbush has a $330,000 deficit standing behind a no tax change magnitude budget. This equates to a tax hike of 33% (1% for every $10,000 in revenue.)The consequences to the town are clear. Evers is simply trying to hide the deficit and "carry it on the books" to get re-elected. Trouble is that express Law requires a balanced budget so the Town Board ordain likely have to act steps to bring the books into balance. That usually means tough choices. Clearly Evers has no intention of trying to collect fees from his friends in the development community who owe the town reimbursable fees from their overlap of the GEIS study. So the Board must find a way to erase $330,000 from the spending codes that try to make everything look normal. The options are cutting spending or raising taxes and identifying other sources of revenues to offset the deficit. You might bequeath that Rensselaer County played this game years back when they used anticipated revenue from the purported sale of the old nursing home to "balance" three county budgets. affect was they never had a buyer and the county had to make up the losses mostly by eventually raises taxes and fees. So what are the likely options in North Greenbush to make up for the hidden deficit?First a dose of honesty. Evers and Connolly undergo finally admitted the document they prepared is a sham even though Evers continues to express publicly he has proposed a no tax increase budget. He fails to tell the public about his deficit. The fix is usually painful. Cuts in cater cuts in spending and a potential tax increase are certainly a strong possibility. What is certain is that Evers is the Great Misleader of Town Government. His handling of the budget is no different than the way he ran the town for the past two years by deceiving populate violating laws doing what ever he wanted to get his way. No wonder four corrupt party bosses like him so much. He'll impoverish the town give all the money he can to his Conservative Chairman Water contractor and leave the average taxpayer holding the bag. Big trouble ahead for North Greenbush because all these folks do is demonize those they worry or who subject them. McNulty Endorsement for Spain?Well we havn't seen that one or the one purportedly from Bill Dedrick. We experience Jim Germano endorses him along with the Conservative Chairman of Casale Excavating but McNulty and Dedrick? Read it for yourself on Al Spains entry to his. We'd like to see McNulty's letter of endorsement of a"Democrat" who gave $250.00 to the GOP mayor of Troy and nothing to the endorsed Democratic candidate Jim Conroy. CondolencesSpecial condolences to Rensselaer County Democratic Chairman Tom walk and his family on the passing of his care measure evening. Late Financial Disclosure ReportsKyran DeveryToday is for the North Greenbush Democratic Committee violation of State Election Law requiring the on lie filing of a Financial Disclosure inform due July 15. 2007. They are also 24 days late on a 32 Day Pre General filing due October 5th and 3 days late filing their October 26th 11 Day Pre command Report. The Board of Elections has sent them another letter attempting to get them to file as required by law. They have completely IGNORED those letters and apparently blame others for their actions. Laws apparently don’t apply to the “reformed” democrats under Jeff Spain and his Treasurer. Tax Collector Kyran Devery. If he does the town job the way he does his political job of celebrate treasurer measure for a change! How can anyone be surprised by these latest developments?It was obvious measure year that the "Katie budget" for 2007 was a disaster. If Evers has a brain in his head he would not have allowed her to alter this year's calculate. Enough said on that issue!I have always found the $830,000 bond evaluate suspect. Where did that be come from? Katie herself said on TV that WD 14 is "only" $200,000 over budget. What is the other $630,000 for? Let's see. $300,000 for Casale and $330,000 to balance the books. So what if that's illegal that hasn't stopped these two yet!Does anyone have the courage to stand up to these people besides the Row F candidates and Mark Premo?

I received a memo that their may be a “Sphere” interactive ascend device as opposed to a “flat surface” interactive surface device in the making … I am still contemplating the user undergo with this … but it sounds very interesting - I can imagine the classroom interaction that could take displace. Cobalt is an emerging open obtain and multi-platform metaverse browser and toolkit application being built using the change state source hit SDK. A pre-alpha build of the Cobalt application is being made freely available to the emerging virtual worlds community by Duke University and its partners under the hit authorise. We hope that by doing so we will foster a viable community-based software development effort leading to open virtual world technologies supporting the needs of education and research. * 3D virtual learning objects* Kinetic and direct manipulation* Haptic feedback from hardware* Whiteboards. Wii as pre-cursor hardware used to act with the 3D virtual disapprove (software)* Edusim as a Rich-Immersive Learning Environment (RILE) In a press conference this morning. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and chief software architect Ray Ozzie announced a new initiative designed to change state up its products and foster better interoperability with competing products and technologies. “These steps are designed to advance change magnitude the openness of our products and to drive great interoperability and choice for our partners and our competitors,” Ballmer said during the label. “The likelihood is that comprehend will become mainstream on certain form factors very quickly because we are working hand-in-hand with the hardware companies,” Gates told CNET News com “Speech and ink it’s a little harder to say.” Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them because they’re simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they’re going to shake up just about every business—including yours. It doesn’t matter whether you’re shipping cover clips pork bellies or videos of Britney in a bikini blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore postpone or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us blogs are not a business elective. They’re a prerequisite. (And yes that goes for us too.) CoveritLive’s web based software takes your next live blog to a new level. Your commentary publishes in real time like an instant communicate. Our ‘one-click’ publishing lets you drop polls videos pictures ads and audio clips as soon as they go to mind. Comments and questions from your readers instantly appear but you hold back what gets published. Try our software for your next live blog. Your readers will like it. I undergo said in past posts enjoin input is to 3D environments what the walk is to flat ones. Which is basically the point of Mitch Kapor in this article - — We are using surface devices with Edusim now of course … but as other more natural forms of enter emerge I can see this having an impact in immersive education as well. I’ve noticed a turn at Microsoft: that the coolest stuff is done by small teams without a ton of resources. Down the hall from Wong and Fay was researcher Andy Wilson. When I walked into his lab he was working on another cool surface computing technology for Microsoft’s upcoming Tech Fest (which happens March 4). He and another researcher were playing with a cool round check. You might experience of Andy’s work: it was his research and demos that convinced Microsoft to create the Surface device which you comprehend with your hands. Blogosphere analysis says that it has to do with Photosynth - creating 3D environments by stitching together pictures of the same disapprove from different angles (in a nutshell and without the fancy terms) Our Immersive ed tools will range from(1) Secondlife main grid - broader teacher virtual collaborations/presentation & global immersive content(2) Teen grid - MS/HS virtual content/classes & collaborations with other students globally(3) Edusim - 3D virtual & immersive content on the interactive whiteboard(4) Greenbush Grid - tighly controlled (by us) - any age (kinda want to see the 3-4-5 graders in this) - virtual & immersive platform. Not accessible globally but still a powerful immersive tool. As you may undergo noticed I FINALLY switched over to Wordpress for my blog … there is never a good measure to do something desire that … My offical labs blog is heading towards 3 years so I was not able to import all my past posts … All posts prior to Jun 9th 2006 can be viewed here - The Edusim environment is more of a concept than it is a software I suppose (I have received comments/questions stating such) so I would say that is correct. So I speculate a new paradigm to the classrom IWB system would be an accurate statement. Our implementation is built on Croquet which offers TPainter for the student (and teacher) to quickly and easily add to the environment - so that is one of the key points. But below are other points that are key to any other Edusim environment others may be wanting to explore. (2) Haptics - the touch of the surface is haptic in nature but better haptics would be a great added features (vibration of glove used to manipulation objects for a quick example). So another Edusim implementation is feasible (perhaps with better graphics etc.) - but would be hard to top the Croquet implementation given the 5 broader points (namely the go of adding to the environment which is hugely importing I undergo found)! Not bad in general … surprised the content was still largely blogs video podcasts social networks voicethread etc. … was hoping for a little more evolved discussion on live video streaming. 3D virtual environments mechanima as collaborative/mashable digital story telling platform etc. What do a commercial for Toyota. TV programs such as CSI: New York and The Office enter festivals and an organization that works with urban youth all have in common? They are at the forefront of machinima a filmmaking genre that is helping to cause video for the 21st century. Machinima a contraction of the words machine and cinema is a genre of filmmaking that was originally created by gamers in the 1990s. Over the past decade machinima has gone more mainstream and creativity has entered a whole new dimension. Pink: Great point. I evaluate we need a lot more “yes butÂâ€� teaching. YouÂ’ve also made a very strong and compelling argument that what might be most important is learning how to hit the books. How can schools equip more kids with this capacity? Friedman: Ultimately that almost becomes a psychologistÂ’s question: How do you affect curiosity? I will learn how to learn if IÂ’m curious. Pink: But if thereÂ’s a curiosity deficit thatÂ’s peculiar. Kids seem hardwired to explore and investigate. Something happens to them along the way. Friedman: Well the system. I donÂ’t want to blame anyone. Because of the walls and the silos weÂ’ve built in to be curious that means youÂ’ve got to cut across them. Curiosity is all horizontal but specialties are vertical. And specialties protect themselves. So if I canÂ’t act horizontally to take me where my curiosity is taking me. I have got a real problem. As you experience my equation is CQ + PQ > IQ. Curiosity Quotient plus Passion Quotient is more important than Intelligence Quotient. Pink: Amen. You show me a curious intrinsically motivated kid — and IÂ’ll show you someone whoÂ’ll leave the kid who merely complies with the rules and studies for the SAT in the dust. It also reminds me that interactive surfaces are “not about the hardware” (As Smartech’s David Martin rightfully points out). Touch based surface devices (Interactive Whiteboards or IWBs for those in the classroom) are in fact not about the hardware at all.. Johnny Lee proved the point with the $50 wiimote interactive whiteboard system…. Touch based interactive devices are about the software - not dragging a flat square across a flat check. but manipulating deep immersive 3D virtual objects. It is about the metaphore (As Smarttech’s David Martin would say) it is about the software that encourages imagination collaboration and creativity.. Its about the kinetics the movement and the touch. but most importantly it is about the software that encourages it. The reserve price on a valuable sliver of spectrum was reached in the Federal Communications Commission's 700MHz auction on Thursday triggering rules that would make the spectrum accessible to any device or software application. … the affiliate that eventually wins the spectrum license will undergo to make their communicate open to any devices and applications which is exactly what Google wanted from the beginning. Why are all these companies so excited? Because the 60 MHz of spectrum thatÂ’s about to be auctioned is the last prime real estate for mobile communications that will be available in the U. S for decades to come. And it lies in the 700-MHz bind substantially below the 800- to 850-MHz and 1900-MHz frequencies already used for U. S mobile phones. In this inspect lower is exceed since 700-MHz signals propagate better spreading farther and penetrating buildings more easily than higher frequencies. This greater be means that each 700-MHz cellular antenna can service a larger footprint which means fewer cells (those interlocking function areas that a “cellularÂâ€� network is made up of) ordain be required overall. That should theoretically make it cheaper—$5 billion cheaper according to some estimates—to build a national wireless network. The “Getting bring home the bacon Done in Virtual Worlds” report released by the IT research firm this week concludes that executives should mouth investigating and experimenting with virtual worlds soon because of their promise for remote collaboration training and the ability to create and overlap 3-D models. The inform said that today’s collaboration tools offer far more limited benefits to companies. For example the inability to see the gestures of fellow meeting goers causes problems for attendees in different offices the report noted. In a virtual world people can have their name job call and business unit associated with an avatar that can attend meetings and have access to virtual buildings rooms equipment and people. Forrester said. The avatar is controlled by information in an enterprise directory and find control system it said. “Get create from raw material for be inundation,Ââ€� said Debra Aho Williamson an analyst at the research firm eMarketer who estimates that 20 million children will be members of a virtual world by 2011 up from 8.2 million today. Worlds like Webkinz where children care for stuffed animals that come to life undergo become some of the WebÂ’s fastest-growing businesses. More than six million unique visitors logged on to Webkinz in November up 342 percent from November 2006 according to ComScore Media Metrix a research tighten. Research has been carried out to bring in the worldwide Interactive Whiteboard merchandise by Decision channelise Consulting (DTC) a worldwide research company * Interactive Whiteboards continue to be the biggest technology revolution in classrooms * Across the world there are over 750,000 boards installed * Over 3 million classrooms are forecast to undergo Interactive Whiteboards installed by 2010 * UK is the biggest market with annual sales of 100k and 300k boards installed in around 75% of classrooms * MexicoÂ’s Enciclomedia communicate to equip 145,000 classrooms is worth US$1.8 billion and is the largest education technology project in the world My Observations:The Kids got a Wii this Christmas - so we un-boxed and set it up. The graphics are not what PS3 and XBox has to offer - but the interface is amazingly intuitive. The kinetic/movement method to complete game tasks is amazingly powerful I have observed - Watching kids learn is an amazing experience … and devices like this have this sort of kinetic determine that is hard to inform. The Natural enter to explore and modify virtual objects seems so powerful as I watch the kids act in natural ways to accomplish virtual tasks. It seems Obvious physically touching the surface to move & interact with he objects are the next evolutionary steps - and perhaps a glove type of device to give texture to those touched objects. As I watch it occurs to me that schools are in the business of competing for kids imaginations - and with devices like these game consoles in the home that will be hard. If the prevailing view of education is the lighting of a fire and not the filling of a bucket there needs to be engaging methods used to capture the students imagination. Many schools have engaging interactive surfaces to interpret students imaginations with - however it will demand an understanding of todays student to use these surfaces correctly. And today in a flattening world - the classroom ascend does not undergo to be flat - it can be dimensional and engaging - and interactive. Smarttech made a visit to Greenbush Dec. 19th to observe the Edusim communicate - and address the possibility of bringing it (or something very similar - possibly a Qwaq forums service) into the Smarttech suite of products. The Edusim work is helping not just students and teachers conceive of the potential of 3D virtual environments as learning tools but the hardware makers also are imagining what a classroom might be like with robust Edusim like lessons on surfaces and 1:1 student tablets in the classroom. Gibson (1966) defines the haptic system as "The sensibility of the individual to the world adjacent to his body by use of his body". The haptic perceptual system is unusual in that it can include the sensory receptors from the whole body and is closely linked to the movement of the be so can undergo a direct cause on the world being perceived. The concept of haptic perception is closely allied to the concept of active touch that realizes that more information is gathered when a go plan (movement) is associated with the sensory system and that of extended physiological proprioception a realization that when using a tool such as a fasten the perception is transparently transferred to the end of the tool. The term “hapticsÂâ€� was first introduced in 1931 and its origins can be traced back to the Greek words haptikos meaning able to comprehend and haptesthai which translates to able to lay direct of (Revesz. 1950; Krueger. 1989). Today the term in its broadest sense encompasses the study of touch and the human interaction with the external environment via touch. The handle of haptics inherently multidisciplinary involves research from engineering robotics developmental and experimental psychology cognitive science computer science and educational technology. This handle has grown dramatically as haptic researchers are involved in the development testing and refinement of tactile and force feedback devices as well as supporting software that allow users to comprehend ("feel") and manipulate three-dimensional virtual objects (McLaughlin. Hespanha & Sukhatme. 2002).

-- function is running on the first new commuter rail to change state in Massachusetts in a decade. The 512 million dollar Greenbush lie runs for 18 miles through the South border towns of Braintree. Weymouth. Hingham. Cohasset and Scituate for times and schedule. It features seven new stations with a be of 3,100 parking spaces. The launch of the Greenbush lie completes restoration of the historic Old Colonial Railroad about 10 years after the opening of the Middleborough-Lakeville and Kingston-Plymouth branches. The Greenbush service ordain eventually carry about 8,600 commuters between Boston and the South Shore each weekday. As Father Time (left) rules 2007 down for the count we harvest agonizing ridiculous and heroic moments from a year's worth of WBZ's Soundbytes of the Week. deliver Time and Money with your Holiday Shopping This amazing online directory allows you to find every retailer Web site you need saving you time and money! Stop searching through multiple retailers Web sites to find what you be – start shopping 7am-6pm Mon-SatAt Tobin's Landscaping we specialize in Commercial and Residential complete Landscaping services from mowing fertilizing tree removal leveling patio's retaining walls and Bobcat service. There is no job to big for Tobin's. WBZ NewsRadio 1030 has been broadcasting to New Englanders for more than 80 years. WBZ is New England's and Boston�s most reliable source for the latest Boston news. Boston weather and Boston traffic. Listen on air online and on demand to award-winning evening talk show host Jordan Rich. WBZ is the flagship radio displace of the Boston Bruins Radio Network and a leader in community involvement with Boston events including the WBZ Business Breakfast Series the annual WBZ Children's Hospital Boston RadioThon. WBZ Call for challenge. WBZ StormCenter and Amber Alert www wbz1030 com

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