New Bookmarks
1999 Quarter 1: January 1-March 31, 1999 Additions to Bob Jensen's Bookmarks
Bob Jensen at Trinity University
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set of Bob Jensen's Bookmarks go to http://WWW.Trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob.htm
(The full set is never up to date with the latest
additions to my New Bookmarks.)
Click here to go to Bob Jensen's home page http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
Choose a Date of 1999 Additions to the Bookmarks File
March 26, 1999 March 19, 1999 March 12, 1999 March 5, 1999
February 26, 1999 February 16, 1999 February 9, 1999 February 2, 1999
January 26, 1999 January 18, 1999 January 11, 1999
For the other editions go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
"Who's Killing Higher Education?" by Steve Talbut, Educom Review, March/April 1999, 26-33. The online version is at http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/html/erm99024.html
A growing consensus holds that new information technologies foretell the end of higher education as we have known it. I suspect this is true. Its truth, however, is not that the technologies are positively revolutionizing education. Rather, what we are watching is more like the end -- the final perfection and dead-end extreme -- of the old regime's shortcomings. (Page 26).
. . .
The most damning testimony against higher education today may be that students have not rebelled; they are evidently incapable of it. Two things prevent such rebellion. One is the inability of high school graduates to take their own education in hand. We do not teach them to become self-learners. I am continually amazed at the number of adults who assume that, if they are to learn anything new, they must "take a class." (Page 29)
The second obstacle, pointed out in Borgmann's analysis, is the fact that, for extraneous social reasons, we insist on the academic degree. It is one of the revealing facts about the Information Age that it is the supreme Age of Credentials. Not just credentials as such (against which I have no complaint), but wooden credentials -- degrees, certificates, diplomas and licenses based solely on "measurable outcomes," such as credit hours and standardized test grades, with scarcely any reference whatever to the actual inner accomplishment and capability of the certificate bearer. (Page 29)
Other feature articles in the
March/April 1999 edition include:
The Great Swami, Bob Jensen, looks into
his crystal ball and concludes the Y2K problem is overblown with hype by consultants
seeking to strip the tit (an old Iowa dairy farmer's term for squeezing the last drop into
the bucket). The Gartner Group, however, has a more reliable crystal ball, and they
remain pessimistic. I think I would trust the Gartner Group more than the
off-the-wall Great Swami who never did strip well in a dairy barn.
In the Faculty Club on Wednesday morning, John Howland told us about how one of his Computer Science students experimented with his new sport utility vehicle. The student moved the clock and calendar ahead to just prior to midnight on December 31, 1999. At the simulated dawn of Y2K, the computer controlling ignition froze --- the new vehicle would no longer start. The new car dealer who put in a replacement computer under warranty pooh-poohed the idea that this was a Y2K problem. So the student experimented again with the newly installed computer behind the dash board. Guess what?
Also see Carol Brown's students deal with
the accounting issues of Y2K at
http://www.bus.orst.edu/faculty/brownc/Year2000/Year2000.htm
I fine tuned and made some corrections to my Mexcobre Case solution illustrating some accounting theory major concerns with SFAS 133 and IAS 39. I fact the case raises serious questions about adjusting investments to market values in financial statements.
The case (without solutions) can be viewed at http://WWW.Trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/133sp.htm
If you are interested in my recommended solutions to the case questions, you will have to convince me that you are not a student enrolled in an accounting course. Please send me an email message to rjensen@trinity.edu .
For those of you who remain suspicious of my New Bookmarks, we now have The Luddite Reader for doubting Thomases seeking reasons to ignore or pan the paradigm shifts in commerce, scholarship, research, human behavior, and education. See http://www.ludditereader.com/
Another good site in the areas of art,
literature and culture (the University of Pennsylvania ‘s Special Collections
Library)
http://www.library.upenn.edu/etext/
Things go better with Coke --- read about
how Coke Unbottles the Web Potential
http://www.internetwk.com/story/INW19990323S0001
Especially note the web security hardware and software.
Interesting archives on research
methodology issues in general
psych-methods
http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/psych-methods/
A $49 CD-ROM Internet training program from GK Intelligent Systems, Inc. that has artificial intelligence that claims to do the following in an interactive mode:
- Coaches like a real teacher
- Focuses on your learning needs
- Tailors the lesson plan to you
- Adapts to your responses
- Offers several learning styles
From InformationWeek Daily
KPMG, iPass Team
On Global VPN Services___ Multinational companies are getting more options for putting
together virtual private networks. Consulting firm KPMG and VPN service provider iPass
Inc. will reveal this week that they are working together to offer customers a single
point of contact for global VPN services.
KPMG plans to bundle applications such as sales-force automation with iPass’ VPN remote-access service and sell the package around the world. By working with iPass, KPMG says it will be able to cut remote-access costs by an average of 30% for domestic users and 70% to 90% for international users. In the United States, companies will pay an average of 5 cents per minute for dial-up access to the Internet, while calls from expensive international locations such as Thailand and Uganda will cost 25 cents a minute. The savings will come partly because iPass users can connect to VPNs via a local call to more than 3,000 Internet access points in 150 countries. KPMG offers services in more than 840 cities in 157 countries. Also, network managers will have to manage only a single high-capacity connection from the Internet, rather than individual access lines in dozens of cities.
KPMG will provide clients with wide area networking services—including network design, implementation, and production rollout—remote-access management, and help-desk support. Increasingly, enterprises want consultants to do more than just provide consulting services. "Users tell us that it slows down the implementation when the users have to negotiate their own contracts," says David Moyer, senior manager for KPMG LLP in Radnor, Pa. Additionally, KPMG can then provide enterprises with one bill for everything from consulting and designing a VPN to actually billing for it.
Accounting and marketing professors can
probably create some interesting cases on the software pricing issue. Companies who develop the software have allegedly got the
pricing strategies all wrong.
http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/columns/0,4351,394322,00.html
Tools for College Writing
http://www.cabrillo.cc.ca.us/divisions/english/290/
This week, I feature four ACE professors who classified their courses in ACE as "graduate courses in managerial accounting." Actually, there is still a shortage of coursepage listing that I would classify as truly "managerial accounting" at a graduate level. For example, some of the most helpful courses presently listed might easily be classified elsewhere such as in financial accounting, accounting information systems, or auditing. We need more managerial accounting ACEs at the graduate level.
Instructor: Cindy Peck
Institution: Anderson University
Course Name: Managerial Accounting
Textbook: Managerial Accounting
Author(s): Garrison & Noreen
I found it more informative to visit other courses where Cindy
includes more study guide materials. Her home page is at http://users.anderson.edu/~cpeck/
Instructor: Tanya Lee
Institution: University of Arkansas
Course Name: Asset Management Textbook: Cost Accounting
Author: Maher
This morning Professor Lee's handouts, notes, and presentations gave
me "Cannot Be Found" messages. However, I suspect that she is willing to
share these with educators since she registered her coursepage with ACE.
Instructor: James M. Peters
Institution: Carnegie Mellon University
Course Name: Financial Analysis
Course Packet Author: James M. Peters
This appears to be a great web site. I found a lot of
"File Not Found" solution file disappointments. However, James may be
willing to share some of those hidden solution files with educators. He has some
very interesting illustrations and cases in financial statement analysis that are linked
through ACE. This particular course might be better classified under financial
accounting, but there are many points of interest for managerial accountants as well. Bravo James.
Instructor: Karen Pincus
Institution: University of Arkansas
Course Name: Fraud Prevention and Detectiion
Textbook: None
This course might be better classified under accounting information
systems or auditing. With Karen teaching it, I would love to take this course.
However, the shared materials presently linked in ACE are very limited. Karen
might be willing to share more if contacted privately by accounting educators.
The American Political Science Association
launched Teaching Political Science.
http://www.apsanet.org/teaching
ZDU’s roster of self-study technology
training courses has grown with over 100 asynchronous ways for you to learn technology at
your own pace.http://www.zdu.com/catalog/all.asp#tut
While it lasts on the web, you can also read
about short (like 15 minutes) courses at
http://www.zdu.com/catalog/all.asp?Sort=date#tut
Also see HyCurve, Inc. for training
courses
http://www.hycurve.com/skills/index.html
Summer Computer Camps (not just for kids)
http://www.computer-camp.com/
Online Continuing Education courses for
Healthcare Professionals
http://www.onlinece.net
The Andrews School (online asynchronous
training courses in medical record keeping, billing, etc.)
http://www.transcription1.com
Bryon Tosoff; piano and theory teacher
http://members.tripod.com/~TOSOFF/
The webex.com site is featured in Newsweek,
March 22, 1999, Page 11.
http://www.webex.com/
Webex.com is the first Web-based meeting center that allows you to meet and work together spontaneously with your friends and colleagues. At webex.com, create your own private meetings where you can share documents, show presentations, surf the web and work together on any application. Once you've started a meeting, it is easy to invite others directly into your meeting room. There is no software installation and no complicated network configuration. With webex.com, working on the Web is as easy as dialing a phone.
WebEx Offices - Set up your virtual office at webex.com! Conduct Web-based meetings in your customized WebEx office. Chat - adds text-based chat to your WebEx meetings. Teleconferencing - aggressively priced conference calls.
Bible Study for Ordination
http://www.ordination.org
Islam and education
http://freewww.ns1.net/members/zurichwala/
MOST Clearing House on Religious
Rights—UNESCO
http://www.unesco.org/most/rr1.htm
Human Progress Network
http://www.hpn.org
Links to living and religion --- from Johnnie and Anne
http://max@maxpages.com/redroverbunch/Home
SpamCop - technology for Internet security
http://spamcop.net/
BusinessWeek e.biz
http://ebiz.businessweek.com/
In a previous edition of New Bookmarks, I discussed
digital MP3 compression that puts hours of highest quality audio on a single CD and/or
allows you do download highest quality audio from the web. Check out Epitonic:
http://www.epitonic.com/
If you enjoy chamber music
http://www.ahntrio.com/
National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature
http://www.nccil.org/
Unclaimed Baggage Center --- yuppie deals galore for show
off brand names
http://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/
Yahoo! Coupons - free online shopping coupons
http://coupons.yahoo.com/
Some funny quips from bored flight attendants to cheer up
or frighten the hell out of bored passengers
http://www.zdnet.com/yil/content/depts/forward
Self Test Software
http://www.stsware.com
PI: Team Chess Game (for multiple players)
http://www.kidslovechess.com
The local ATM service will provide customers with an end-to-end ATM offering. "Customers will have one contract, one bill, and a single point of contact for customer care for their local and long-distance ATM," says Kristine Demareski, AT&T’s local packet services product director. The Transparent LAN service will convert Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Token Ring, and Fiber Distributed Data Interface traffic to ATM traffic using an AT&T-supplied LAN-to-ATM Concentrator at the customer’s premises. It’s aimed at customers who aren’t ready to invest in ATM equipment.
For more information on ATM-type stuff see http://www.techweb.com/se/directlink.cgi?INW19990315S0046 and my glossary at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245glosf.htmFrom David Fordham
I assume you mean connectivity for the Internet and public network communications (phone),
so if you actually meant connectivity for something else, please disregard this reply.
Right now, the only two large-scale options for connections via satellite are (a) fixed-base with the geostationary satellites (the K-band pizza dishes on the side of apartment buildings, or the huge C-band dishes in the rural farmyards), or (b) the LEO satellites, intended for mobile hand-held or other "non-pointed" devices.
I doubt you mean the geostationary connections, since each one of these would probably require a licensed transmitter, and require much more power for that transmitter than you would want to pull through your house wiring (126,000 miles is a long way for a microwave radio wave to travel and still maintain its signal integrity).
If you mean LEO satellites, you don’t need to wait. Several
providers are already selling services on these. For example, see: http://www.iridium.com
But do you really need such a service right now?
Most Internet providers I’m aware of provide support for V.90 over POTS. Even if there isn’t a local phone number for your provider, almost all of them have toll-free connect lines which support V.90.
V.90 works over POTS. Your throughput will not be as fast as advertised (*very* few people actually realize transfer rates of 56kbps), but for most home-office applications, it should be sufficient, even for generalized web browsing. It may not be sufficient for real-time video and audio applications, but most of those are dependent upon your switching center, anyway.
If V.90 is not fast enough for you, you can still use V.90 for the UPLOADS (remember, very little is going FROM your client computer TO the Internet), and use satellite for your DOWNLOADS (data coming FROM the Internet TO your computer, such as web pages, weathermaps, video clips, etc.) over the Iridium and other LEO constellations.
Most satellite Internet services I’m aware of indeed utilize POTS for uploads, and the satellite link for downloads only. In fact, I’m not aware of any satellite services which allow satellite connection for UPloads. So any way you slice it, you’re probably going to utilize a V.90 modem over POTS one way or another.
Now, for my personal suggestion:
If you can wait a couple of years, I expect to see mucho change in the pricing of satellite services in the coming 24-48 months.
Right now, today, in our "backwater" locale, way out here in the boonies, (the agricultural Shenandoah Valley, largest town within a five-county radius is population 45,000), we have digital PCS providers offering "unlimited connect time" packages for as little as $75 per month, long-distance included (yes, amazing isn’t it! unlimited long distance INCLUDED along with unlimited air-time, on the handheld digital PCS "cellular" phones (PCS isn’t really cellular, but to the consumer it appears the same).
And regarding pricing structures, let me take a side trip by mentioning that I personally have a land-line POTS unlimited long-distance service for $39 per month at home. Four years ago, who would have predicted unlimited long-distance service, both in-state and out-of-state, U.S. plus Canada, 24-hours per day, 7 days per week, for a flat fee of only $39 per month?! "Ridiculous," I would’ve said four years ago. But here it is today.
The Iridium and other satellite constellations will be facing increasing competition from these type services. So we will probably see all kinds of innovative pricing strategies in the year 2000 and 2001. Remember, a satellite service is heavy on fixed costs, low on incremental costs. So as long as capacity exists, it is to their best interest to sign up new customers for a song. (... and you can’t begin to imagine the digital capacity available in a 2 gigahertz-wide band of wireless spread-spectrum RF in the sub-millimeter wavelength band!).
David R. Fordham, CPA, CMA, Ph.D.
James Madison University, School of Accounting
Mail Stop Code 0203, Harrisonburg, VA 22807
Phone: 540-568-3024, Fax: 540-568-3017, Email: fordhadr@jmu.edu
Homepage: http://cob.jmu.edu/fordhadr/
And that's the way it was on March 26, 1999.
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob) http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
You can read more about middleware at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/260wp/260wp.htm
I recommend that all researchers, especially accounting researchers, take a look at the favorable book review by Dennis Patz that begins on Page 121 in the January 1999 issue of The Accounting Review. The book being reviewed is entitled Critique of Accounting: Examination of the Foundations and Normative Structure of an Applied Discipline (Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1995) by Richard Mattessich. I recall receiving unsigned letter years ago claiming, in effect, that esteemed accounting researchers were emperors without clothes in fiefdoms of little importance to the real world. This was followed with a signed and widely circulated, albeit unpublished, document by several of the top researchers in prestigious research universities that raised the same concerns. Mattesich tackles these issues in his book. In the book review, Professor Patz lists those concerns that still haunt us and researchers in many, if not most, other disciplines. In accounting, however, it is more difficult to pinpoint where research of those that control the tenure gates in the most prestigious research institutions has added genuine value to the practicing profession.
Booknews, Inc. , February 1, 1996
A critical examination of contemporary accounting, investigating the methodology and reasoning process appropriate for the discipline. It aims at a synthesis of the two major opposing camps of present-day academic accounting: the "critical-interpretive view" of Great Britain and the "positive accounting theory" of America. Among the topics in 12 chapters are the historic and cultural mission of accounting; valuation models, capital maintenance, and instrumental hypotheses; and what has post-Kuhnian philosophy of science to offer?
It would be interesting to turn the tables and process trace major changes in the accounting profession. Where and from whom did the seminal contributions to practice arise? For example, I have always admired the credit given by Bob Kaplan to cost accountants at John Deere for originating some of the seminal activities-based costing changes in practice that are belatedly soaring in popularity in business firms and other organizations. In a plenary session (New York City in August 1994) of the American Accounting Association, Joel Demski claimed that about the only academic contribution to practice was dollar-value LIFO. Knowing Joel, he was probably exaggerating with tongue-in-cheek, but then again was he really exaggerating in a featured presentation in front of over 2,000 accounting educators, practitioners, and researchers in the audience? Certainly academic research has had an impact upon standard setting and education. It is less clear what that impact would have been inter alia in the real world without being forced via changed standards. In any case, the book itself is probably the best of the Mattesich treatises on research.
Thank you Dan Price for this lead on an excellent
environmental report web site
http://www2.gol.com/users/hsuzuki/report.html
My innovative software feature of the week is called Quick
View Plus 5.1.
This product comes for the same company (Jasc Software)
that sells the wonderful and inexpensive Paint Shop Pro.
Quick View Plus lets you view email attachments when you may not have the software
installed to view those attachments. For example, you can read an Excel spreadsheet
on a computer that does not have any spreadsheet software. I just received some
pictures from my wife's brother in Germany. I could not view these pictures as email
attachments. But they can be viewed with Quick View Plus. No mention is made
of virus protection, but my hunch is that there is virus protection here since you can see
the documents (like Excel spreadsheets) with less risk of engaging the macros that allow
viruses to do nasty things to your computer. You may want to view some documents
with Quick View even if you have software like Excel that will stimulate nasty viruses
embedded in macros. Quick View will also do the following:
I took advantage of the download trial offer at
http://www.jasc.com/qvp.html
I have updated my listing of accounting and finance
glossaries along with my own Technology Glossary at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245glosf.htm
I am active in the FEI. Belatedly, the FEI has some
technology helpers. An archive of presentations is now available at http://www.fei.org/download/dl_index.htm
One presentation you may want to download is Gartner Group?s technology trends for the
next five years. This presentation summarizes the state of key technologies and
assigns probabilities to some possible future scenarios.
There is also a new FEI Express listserv for members.
Associated Colleges of the South Technology Fellowships (I
had one --- they're great). If you are in an ACS institution, now is the time to
apply.
http://www.newhomemaker.com/
Harvard will help educators integrate newer learning
technologies
http://www.cdlib.org/
Grade tracking software called GradeQuick
http://www.jacksoncorp.com/
Thompson Publishing and VarsityBooks.com are moving toward
bypassing campus book stores with online sales of 400,000 titles and up to claimed 40%
discounts. Required books for courses in more than 50 colleges are now listed
online.
http://www.varsitybooks.com/
Career life services and instructional tools from
Knowledge Universe
http://www.knowledgeu.com/
PERSONALIZED STOCK NOTIFIER
http://www.dealtime.com/Notifier/Lycos/LycosNotifier.htm
CAR FACT SHEETS
http://www.lycos.com/autos/autosite.html
TO SCRATCH & WIN
http://superbowl.lycos.com/contest/
Note from Jensen: CNN
reports that less a year ago, 2% of the users of a web page with advertising clicked on
the link of the advertiser. This has declined to a current rate of 1%. There
is software available to suppress advertising on a web page. As a result, commercial
web sites are resorting to attractions other than advertising. Free services and
contents are the current rage on the web. For example, see the above examples from
Lycos. Be very careful, however, that you are dealing with the true web site of a
reputable company. Beware of any contests that request money. Even if the
contests are free, however, the vendor may be asking for information from you that can be
sold or bartered. I have a case dealing with some of these issues at
http://WWW.Trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5342/262wp/262case1.htm
PC Week’s Fast-Track 100 spotlights technology
innovators in government and education and finds the public sector turning Web-ward to
deliver new services and cut costs.
http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt99031/393441
Related links
If you know any accounting
educators with helpful materials on the web, please ask them to link their materials
in the American Accounting Association's Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) web site at
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/index.htm
Please send these professors email messages today and urge them to share as much as they
can with the academy by easily registering their course pages with ACE.
This week, I feature three ACE professors in the area of Accounting Information Systems (Ceil's excellent web site was acknowledged previously)
Instructor: Lisa Austen
Institution: University of Arkansas
Course Name: Accounting Technology
Textbook: Accounting, Information Technology, and Business Solutions
Author(s): Hollander, Dennam Cherrington
Lisa has some cases and case solutions on the web. She has
removed some, but my guess is that she will share them with you if you send her an email
message.
Instructor: W. Darrell Walden, Ph.D., CPA
Institution: University of Richmond
Course Name: Accounting Information Systems
Textbook: Building Accounting Systems
Author(s): Perry & Schneider
Darrell provides a lot of helpful materials, including multiple
choice questions with solutions. This is an especially helpful web site for those of
us teaching Microsoft Access applications in accounting. You can also download the team PowerPoint presentations. Hew uses
Great Plains general ledger software. Bravo for this excellent web
site Darrell.
Instructor: Marcus D. Odom
Institution: Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
Course Name: Accounting Information Systems
Textbook: Accounting Information
Systems: A Database Approach
Author(s): Murthy and Groomer (Jensen also uses this online AIS textbook)
Among other things, Marcus shares his AIS discussion board.
This course also uses the Great Plains general ledger package. There are extensive
study aids and PowerPoint presentations that can be downloaded.
New online MBA Program from SUNY Empire State College
(competency-based academic standards)
Limited to 50 students
mba@sescva.esc.edu
Virtual University Net (helps you find networked higher
education and training courses)
http://www.users.uswest.net/~phdtom/home.htm
And why not get your own copy of the "Interactive Designer" by clicking one of the "FREE ISSUE" icons throughout both the tutorials?
There’s more! -- "lynda.com" is offering "Learning Dreamweaver 2" (now!); and "Learning Fireworks 2" (by the end of April). Order your copies online at: http://store.lynda.com
What’s more, Alexandra Barrett of PC World reports, "Macromedia Makes a Big Flash: Two-thirds of Web users have [Macromedia’s] fast graphics viewer and don’t know it." Read what else PC World says at: http://www.pcworld.com/pcwtoday/article/0,1510,9939,00.html
eCode - manage your online identity
http://www.ecode.com/
Enhanced Learning (a web site devoted to newer
technologies for learning)
http://enhanced-learning.org
It's never too late to learn Ben
Simulations Plus, Inc. creates advanced simulation software for education,
pharmaceuticals, and industry. Our exciting new FutureLab™ educational software
series, for science curriculum, enables teachers and students to quickly and easily
perform simulated laboratory experiments on a personal computer.
http://www.simulations-plus.com/
California Digital Library (Browse or Search)
http://www.cdlib.org/
Internet Cafes Guide
http://www.netcafes.com/
Bob
Thank you for linking to The New Homemaker! Every mention helps get the word about my site
out, and I appreciate it.Regards,
Lynn Siprelle
Editor, TNH
http://www.newhomemaker.com/
American History
A full-text version of Edward Bellamy’s, "Looking Backward from 2000 to
1887".
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/hypertex.html
Also see Ollie’s History Place
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Workshop/2224
Inka Empire
http://members.tripod.com/~Gialma/Inka.html
Mysteries of the Nile - Land of the Pharaohs.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/egypt/
News from and about Microsoft
Probably the most important news is what Bill Gates calles "a big milestone" in
the history of Microsoft.
http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153,1014167,00.html
Download Internet Explorer free from
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie5/default.asp
Maximize your search capabilities
http://www.microsoft.com/magazine/ms/preferredpc.htm
Windows 98 Second Edition?
http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt99032/1014132/
Free Windows Media Player
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/mediaplayer/download/default.asp
What’s New in Outlook 2000?
http://www.microsoft.com/magazine/guide2000/office2000/outlook2k.htm
The Biggest Online Sidewalk Sale - and
Sweepstakes
http://national.sidewalk.msn.com/link/31316
SHOP.MICROSOFT.COM at:
http://shop.microsoft.com
A letter from Microsoft concerning privacy
(including an identifier patch utility)
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/1999/03-08custletter2.htm
Are You Stressed Out? Take the
WomenCentral Stress Test
http://womencentral.msn.com/women/health/stressquiz.asp
Speaking of stress, Microsoft is
reorganizing to blur the lines between operating systems and applications. Could it
be that Bill Gates is trying to make it difficult to break up his empire?
http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt9903121/2225041/
Watch out Bill Gates --- Apple has bounced back from 5% to
10% of market share!
Its colorful iMac is now the top selling PC since overtaking the Compaq Presario 5050 as
the top selling PC
Sadly, I think Apple's market share on higher education campuses is still plunging, but
those iMacs make great XMAS gifts for homes and apartments.
http://www.apple.com/
Interactive Drama, Inc.(uses Speech
Recognition technologies to learn Spanish)
http://www.idrama.com/Roberto.htm
Worldwide Speech and Communication
http://www.flash.net/~speech
Equity - women and money.
http://www.equitymag.com/
MJuice - digital songs for your desktop.
http://www.mjuice.com/
Did you see the NY Times , March 8, Page B1
article entitled "Musicians Want a Revolution Waged on the Internet?"
"Optimists" (this is the word used by the NY Times) think that
the music industry will become a cottage industry where musicians will bypass recording
music companies and radio stations in order to offer their best material directly online
(a bit like Branson musicians bypassed Nashville). There are various industries
where the "revolution" has already been one, including high-end art galleries
and low-end sleazy (husband with hidden video camera) porn cottage industries. The
jury is still out as to whether online "book" authors' cottage industries will
drive publishers out of business or whether "educators" will drive vocational
and higher education schools out of business in some disciplines. Richard Campbell
leans toward the "optimism" side of things in his postings on the aecm
(especially from the standpoint of the publishing industry).
http://www.rj-int.com/
Also see the excellent online cottage industry information
systems textbook offerings at Cybertext
http://www.cybertext.com /
Native Traditions Circle
http://www.clubhomepage.com/native
Mixed drinks/cocktails from PartySchool.com
http://www.partyschool.com/drinks/maindrinks.htm
Never again. Does anyone know of any good packages out there that can be used to teach the fundamentals of project management? Shareware/Freeware is OK by me.
Thanks.
Joe Brady
MIS Instructor, Accounting & MIS, College of B&E
University of Delaware
From the Scout Report
Georgetown University Library’s NAICS Clearinghouse
http://gulib.lausun.georgetown.edu/swr/business/naics.htm
Investor Insight (for Eastern Europe)
http://www.invest.centraleurope.com/
Fortune’s Best Mutual Funds 1999
http://cgi.pathfinder.com/fortune/investor/1999/03/15/thedetails.html
SocialFunds.com
http://www.socialfunds.com/
Stocks.com
http://www.stocks.com/
Gen X Guide to Finance
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/student/dwgenx.htm
Many, probably most, accounting professors and practitioners argue that SFAS 133 is too complex for financial statement preparers and investors. One simplification being advocated by former FASB Chairman Dennis Beresford (Journal of Accountancy, March 1999, pp. 65-67), the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC), and many others is to adjust all derivative financial instruments to fair value and delete the enormous complexity of making decisions as to what contracts must be versus what contracts cannot be adjusted to fair value.
I have my doubts about fair value adjustments in many instances. And that is not just because one of my professors years ago at Stanford University, Yuji Ijiri, was and is forever more an advocate (at least in elegant theory) of historical cost.
My real-world Mexcobre Case has been revised. This case illustrates a real-world instance where, in my analysis, adjusting derivative instruments to fair values is highly misleading to investors. The valuable copper price swap should not be booked at anything other than zero in this real-world case. This would be true even if the particular derivative instruments in the Mexcobre Case were traded in markets that were wide and deep (which is not the situation in the Mexcobre Case).
The Mexcobre Case actually supports the arguments of many bankers who contend that SFAS 133 leads to misleading financial statements if financial instruments derivatives are adjusted to fair value each period.My revised Mexcobre Case is located at http://WWW.Trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/133sp.htm
My revised teaching notes and case solutions are available to accounting educators and practitioners. You may request free access by sending me an email message to rjensen@trinity.edu .
Bernie Milano discusses KPMG's very serious efforts to
break the glass ceiling
http://www.accountingstudents.com/toolbox/workingworld/
Paint Shop Pro will capture all or your selected part of any screen and make virtually any kind of graphics file. PSP will also read most any graphics file and convert it to most any other type of graphics file. It is also relatively easy to covert most graphics pictures to text using OCR programs such as my favorite Omni Pro.
The PSP software is the best buy in the history of Windows. For layering, I also use the expensive and user-unfriendly Adobe Photoshop, but for most of my graphics captures the inexpensive PSP will do the job. You can download a trial version of PSP from http://www.jasc.com
I might add that I also really like Lotus ScreenCam for making animations or videos of successions of screen images. The current price from PC Zone is only $28. This software does not come with a user's manual because the software is so easy to use that no manual is necessary. You can also capture audio, although Brian Zwicker notes that even professionals have problems with ambient noise (I also have this problem). Lotus ScreenCam is great when you want to show students a succession of steps (software usage, journal entries, mathematics calculations, statistical tests, etc.) and narrate while you go. The reader is free (and not even necessary if you save the animation as a video).
In response to Brian's question, I don't think the quality of the audio or the video has a much of anything to do with whether you use Lotus ScreenCam, Microsoft Camcorder, or Hyperionics. HyperCam.
I will comment on Lotus ScreenCam scm animation files versus avi video files. When I make an animated scm file it looks great and requires a small amount of disk space, say 249Kb of space for a 62 second animation. If I save the same file as a video avi file the same segment requires up to 55,092Kb of disk space for the highest quality video.
A minor difference is that the scm player must be downloaded to play the 249Kb file or any other scm files (this free scm player is very quick and easy to download and install from the Lotus web site). Most computers already have some capability to play avi files without downloading a proprietary player.
The essence of this problem arises in terms of web bandwidth. I just downloaded a 3,153Kb avi file from Ronald's web site at http://www.sbea.mtu.edu/rrtidd/avi/Excel/excel97.htm . It took 78 minutes to download across a T1 line starting at 1:22 p.m. on Thursday, August 11. Of course the download would have been much faster when I arrived at work before 5:00 a.m. At either time of day, however, the download would have been much faster if Ronald had instead made a scm or other animation file of the same screen events the file would have been much smaller and flowed over the web much more efficiently.
As a compliment to Ronald, I want to stress that the quality of the audio and video is magnificent. However, It took 78 minutes to download a 3,153Kb file that only yields 45 seconds of playing time. One of the reasons for the high quality is his high sampling rate used in capturing the audio and video. A high sampling rate yields great quality at a great cost in terms of file size and bandwidth requirements on the Internet. I doubt that the software used matters nearly as much as the video/audio sampling rate, the quality of the microphone, the quality of the computer's capture hardware, and the screen resolution and video adapter quality of the computer itself (since we are talking about capturing successions of screen images here). I would opt for the Lotus ScreenCam scm file unless higher quality audio is absolutely essential. Users will save immense amounts of downloading time and disk storage space savings.
One drawback of the Microsoft Camcorder and the Hyperionics. HyperCam appears to be that they will only capture avi video files. Lotus ScreenCam provides a choice between the scm animation or the avi video options.
In any case, the relevant web sites are as follows:
Lotus ScreenCam free trial version
http://www.lotus.com/home.nsf/tabs/screencam
$28 PC Zone price at 800-419-9663Microsoft Camcorder
Free inside the MS Office 97 Package
Reviewed at http://winweb.winmag.com/library/1996/1296/12r48.htmHyperionics. HyperCam
http://www.hyperionics.com/
$30 for downloading at the Hyperionics web site
If you know any accounting
educators teaching doctoral courses, please ask them to link their materials in the
American Accounting Association's Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) web site at
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/index.htm
Please send these luddites email messages today and urge them to share as much as they can
with the academy by easily registering their course pages with ACE.
Only two accounting educators have registered their doctoral program coursepages with ACE. Special thanks to the following good guys.
Jagdish S. Gangolly
Institution: State University of New York at Albany
Course Name: Inf 703 Information Organisation
Textbook: Automatic Text Processing
Author: Gerard Salton
The Adobe Acrobat course materials and the many web links should be
of great help to Accounting Information Systems instructors in undergraduate as well as
graduate courses.
Instructor: Jagdish S. Gangolly
Institution: State University of New York at Albany
Course Name: Inf766 Quantitative Techniques in Information Science
Textbook: Modern Applied Statistics with S-Plus
Author: Venables & Ripley
This course has less shared information than the AIS course above,
but it provides a good syllabus and some other materials for the quantitative foundations
of information systems and data analysis.
Instructor: Dan Stone
Institution: Univ. of Illinois
Course Name: Accountancy Research Orientation for Ph.D. Students
Textbook: (1985). Basic Research Methods in Social Science. New York, McGraw Hill, ISBN
0-07-554463-6.
There is a great section of this course entitled "What is
research?" along with an interesting assortment of readings. There is another
section on "The Craft of Scholarship." I could not get Lecture and Review
materials buttons to work at Dan's web site this morning, but the fact that the buttons
are there indicates that he must intend to share some of the materials.
Gleim's CPA Exam Preparation software is available as a
free academic site license to colleges and universities. Students who use the free
online campus network materials may also purchase the Gleim books and software for a
discounted price of $100.
http://www.gleim.com/
Becker reports only 12% candidates sitting for the CPA
examination pass it on the first go around
http://www.accountingstudents.com/toolbox/cramtime/
The Becker prep course uses a lot of video presented in classes given in many cities
across the U.S.
Micromash has a $595 price to individuals, but I could not
find any information about a site license at
http://www.micromash.com/
Because of the multimedia and some other features, I
prefer Bisk's TotalTape multimedia CPA package and frequently demo it in my technology
road shows. Its site license is $750 on a campus. A student or former student
can get it for $375 or $475 depending upon whether their campus or alma mater has a site
license.
http://www.bisk.com/
I lost some of my trust in the U.S. Department of Education data tables.
The source of most AACSB enrollment data is the U.S. Department of Education. The USDE web site is at http://nces.ed.gov. One nice feature at this web site is a form where you can request data for the USDE to look up for you (with human reference librarians in this day in age?). The form is at http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/index.asp.
One really interesting education fact document is at http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/FAQTopics.asp?type=3 This points, among other things, to the Most Popular Majors in higher education at http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/470.asp?type=3#majors.
In 1994/95 there were 43,940 (less than 44% were men) accounting undergraduate degrees awarded out of 234,323 degrees in business and administrative studies. The total, according to the USDE, for all four and five year bachelors degrees was 1,160,134. Business seems to be clinging to its lead in popularity and has more than double the number of graduates as education colleges and departments. Accounting has about as many graduates as the entire number of graduates in visual and performing arts. Accounting is only slightly below the entire discipline of communications and communications technologies. We had nearly double the number of graduates as the 24,404 graduates in computer and information sciences. However, I suspect our market share is shrinking in the 1996-1999 years vis-à-vis computer and information sciences. High salaries and signing bonuses do make a difference in the attractiveness of a computer science degree.
The USDE table where I got this data also contains masters and doctoral degrees statistics. There are only 54 doctoral degrees in accounting (35 men and 19 women) in 1994/95. I am suspicious of that data. Hasselback (Page -2 in the 1998.99 Edition) reports 163 accounting doctorates for 1995. Hasselback tracks accounting doctorates by name regarding where they graduate and where they work after graduation. Hasselback's online Accounting Faculty Directory is at http://rarc.rutgers.edu/raw/Hasselback . You may have to go to the free hard copy version (ISBN 0-13-613696-6) for doctoral enrollment data (I cannot find that table in the online database). In this one instance, the USDE statistic of 54 accounting doctorates in 1994/95 is way off the mark of the 163 doctorates reported by Jim Hasselback.
After I sent the above data out on the aecm listserv, I received a message from Frimette:
As an aside, did you know, that at NYU there appears to be a larger number of CPAs in the doctoral program in business education (School of Education) than in the doctoral program in accounting (Stern School of Business)?
Frimette Kass-Shraibman, CPA, Director
Foundation for Accounting Education - NYSSCPAs
530 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10036
It may be that the USDE is missing some data because business or accounting majors earn their degrees from colleges outside the college of business. There also is a problem of dual majors, etc. when undergraduate data are collected. It also may be that the USDE does not correct its data tables to fine tune them for accuracy as time goes by.
Hi Will,
I haven't found any free financial ratio calculation software available with the level of
sophistication that you need, but there are some financial calculators on the web. See
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob.htm#080512Calculators
For heavy duty stuff, you should go to commercial web sites. One that advertises what you are looking for is at http://www.infotivity.com/dm_adv00.htm#financial
You might also want to take a look at http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Companies/Financial_Services/Software
Many accounting software packages will compute these ratios. Links to some of these packages and campuses who use these packages in courses can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/survey1.htm#Commercial
Perhaps some of my friends on the aecm listserv will help us out with respect to free software and good web sites.
NACRA: North American Case Research
Association
http://www.nacra.net/
Thank you Richard Campbell
For those of you who want to see Java alternatives to MS Excel - check out the demos on
this site. http://www.tidestone.com/fopro/ssheets.htm
Announcing the newest release of Microsoft’s Web browser, Internet Explorer 5.0-with new features. http://www.microsoft.com/magazine/ms/preferredpc.htm
OFFICE 2000 GUIDE NOW ONLINE
Microsoft Office 2000’s individual components (Word 2000, Excel 2000, Access 2000,
FrontPage 2000, PhotoDraw 2000, and more)
http://www.microsoft.com/magazine/ms/office2000guide.htm
"Sticky Apps" for making people stick to your
web site
http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/columns/0,4351,391660,00.html
Harvard Business School Publishing (includes cases)
http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/home.html
In Canada you can find HBS cases at http://www.ivey.uwo.ca/cases/
In the U.K. you can find HBS cases at http://www.ecch.cranfield.ac.uk/
No web site is given for Australia, but you can send an email message to m.larosa@mbs.unimelb.edu.au
What faculty members will be put out to pasture? (Thank
you David Fordham). What David forgot to add is that the most likely professors to
be put out to pasture are those that spend too much time chatting on listservs rather than
taking a look out at the real world.
http://cob.jmu.edu/fordhadr/keepup.htm
Environmental Education on the Internet
http://eelink.net
SocialFunds.com
http://www.socialfunds.com/
Survivors of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill - 10 years
later...
http://www.exxonvaldez.org/
Meltdown at Three Mile Island
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/amex/three/
European Environmental Law Homepage
http://www.eel.nl/
If you keep hearing about XML and don't know what it is
see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245glosf.htm#HTML1
A Shockwave tour of the Tower of London (the next best
thing to being there.)
http://www.tower-of-london.com
Community College Web (U.S. and Canada)
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/cc/
NewsWatch
http://www.newswatch.org/
TEMPLATE SECURITY PATCH FOR WORD 97 (from Microsoft)
This patch addresses a vulnerability that would allow malicious code to be run in a Word
97 document without warning you. Word 97 will warn you when opening a document that
contains macros. However, if that document does not contain macros, but is linked to a
template that does contain macros, no warning is issued. A hacker could exploit this
vulnerability by causing malevolent code to be run without warning when you visit a web
site or open an e-mail. This code could be used to damage or retrieve data on your system.
To download this patch and others for free*, go to:
http://www.microsoft.com/magazine/ms/preferredpatch.htm
Ernst & Young launches eCommerce RapidStart
service
The new product is designed to help your company design and launch web-based initiatives
in less than 30 days.
http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt9903054/1014084/
Computer tips, news, and gossip
http://www.tipworld.com/
I especially like the section on "the most popular and widely read tips."
From Bobby Carmichael
Has anyone used the EMBANET software and web site for distance education? I believe
that Colorado State has used it very successfully for an MBA online with over 500 students
nationwide. This seems to be the equivalent to WebCT and the others several have
mentioned? Their URL is www.embanet.com.
Our University is currently planning to use them next year
to put more of our MBA online.
http://www.embanet.com/
Bobby J. Carmichael, Professor
Department of Accounting
Texas A&M University-Commerce
Commerce, TX 75429-3011
Phone: (903)886-5658 FAX: (903)886-5663
Web: www.tamu-commerce.edu/cobt/accounting/bjc
Educational Alternatives for an At Risk Youth
http://st6.yahoo.com/pursestrings2/aledguid.html
Gigabuys.com - Dell’s "online superstore"
http://www.gigabuys.com/
Intel Pentium III Processor Showroom
http://www.intel.com/home/pentiumiii/
The New Homemaker (a very helping web site)
http://www.newhomemaker.com/
Search for Giant Squid (Smithsonian Institution on an
expedition)
http://partners.si.edu/squid/
An amazing panorama (literally) of Civil War battlefields
--- A must see for those of you who still view learning
technologies with suspicion. Please drag your mouse inside the
pictures and watch them move about. This brings history to life. I wish the
subject matter of accounting made good pictures. It doesn't even make good
reading. But our books on the cost of that war have some staggering totals.
http://www.JATRUCK.COM/stonewall/
Guide to Ireland (boy would I like to go there someday)
http://www.askireland.com/
Cafe des Poetes (poetry)
http://members.tripod.com/Megan_Thomas
FILEWORLD'S Top Ten Spreadsheet Tools
1. Spreadsheet Assistant
Don't settle for what comes in the shrink-wrap. Add more than 180 actions and functions to
Excel spreadsheets; most integrate with the standard menus and dialog boxes.
http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C3828%2C00.html
2. Excel File Conversion Wizard
Excel File Conversion Wizard helps you convert Lotus 1-2-3 and Quattro Pro files (as well
as many other formats) to Excel files in batch operations rather than one at a time.
http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C3825%2C00.html
3. Web Queries Import
Get information from a Web site and put it directly into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
The information can come straight from a page, or you can easily customize the tool to
bring you just the data you need. http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C3830%2C00.html
4. SuperSub
This spreadsheet add-in displays a dialog box that makes it very easy to indicate
superscript, subscript, bold, italic, and font size for individual characters in a cell.
http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C4495%2C00.html
5. Cleaver
If you've got too much fat in your business, chop it out with this aptly-named software-a
series of Excel files designed to run "What if?" scenarios. Tailored to help
business owners streamline operations to increase profitability. http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C979%2C00.html
6. As-Easy-As for Windows 95
A powerful spreadsheet, originally designed as a Lotus 1-2-3 clone for the DOS
environment. It features math, financial, statistical, date and time, and scientific
functions, as well as graphics capabilities. http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C5115%2C00.html
7. DataLoader
This menu-driven add-in for Excel moves data from sheet to sheet based on a unique key
that identifies the data to be loaded and the target row. The key can be either
alphabetic, numeric, or a combination. http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C3279%2C00.html
8. Risk Analyzer for Excel
Navigate among complex choices with this set of decision-support and risk-analysis tools
for Excel. http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C3280%2C00.html
9. VistaCalc This easy spreadsheet can calculate columns and totals like all the rest. It can also handle loan repayment calculations, depreciation, and other statistical and financial functions. http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C4884%2C00.html
10. As-Easy-As Spreadsheet
Like Lotus 1-2-3, this program packs some sophisticated functions. Check out the linear
programming, multivariate regression, 3D graphics and hundreds of math, financial, and
stat functions. http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C2399%2C00.html
Have you ever wanted to center a graphic in the browser window? Doing so is actually quite easy. In FrontPage Editor, just click the HTML tab and enter the following code between the <body> and </body> tags:
<table border="0" width="100%" height="100%" cellspacing="0"
cellpadding="0">
<tr><td valign="middle" align="center">
<img border="0" height="355" width="616"
lowsrc="images/loading.gif" src="images/welcome.gif"alt="Welcome">
</td></tr>
</table>
Of course, you’ll need to enter the correct image
names and height and width values.
From—Martin Suchym [suchy@fastenal.com] (in
ZD Tips)
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob) http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
Voice: 210-736-7347 Fax: 210-736-8134 Email: rjensen@trinity.edu
My featured accounting educator this week is John Woodroof
at high-tech Middle Tennessee State University
http://woodroof.mtsu.edu/
There is a new article by him about how to import web data into Excel without having to retype the data. The utility is called Web Query in Excel. See "How to Link to Web Data," Journal of Accountancy, March 1999, 55-58. The hard copy of his article is available now. The web version will appear in about six months at http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/joaiss.htm
Professor Woodroof's templates can be downloaded free from http://www.woodroof.mtsu.edu/downloads/JofA.htmIf you want to build this template from scratch, follow these steps:
Current stock prices for the companies in the stock symbol column are automatically pulled in, as shown in exhibit 6, at right. The updated Trading Stock page will look similar to exhibit 7, below.
Now save the spreadsheet template. As it is saved, the query is automatically embedded into the file. The next time you wish to generate the investment report to comply with FASB Statement no.115, just open the spreadsheet. Web Query will command the computer to go out to the Internet, download the data and then generate the report as shown in exhibit 7.It can't get much easier--a dynamic link between a simple spreadsheet and a live Internet data source.
I found some step-by-step tutorials for the Excel web queries helpful in the Chapter 26 sections at http://www.hkkk.fi/~iss/37C015/luentomatsku/luento6/ch26/ The following example from the Australian Accountant in February 1998 describes the more general idea:Accounting Advances
Instructor: Ronald R. Tidd
Instructor: E. Barry Rice
Institution: Loyola College in Maryland
Course Name: Introductory Accounting I and II
Textbook: Accounting - A Business Perspective by Hermanson, Edwards & Maher
Note the randomized process of putting students on the spot by
asking them questions and flashing their pictures on the screen. Barry is an
enthusiast of scavenger hunts that send students looking for information relevant to
accounting. Shared materials are available. Note that Barry has won the
all-university teaching award at Loyola.
For information on WebCT and other shells, see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245soft1.htm
What's next for Microsoft?
http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt9903012/1014024/
The Concordances of Great Books
http://www.concordance.com/
"Copyright and Intellectual
Property"
http://www.arl.org/info/frn/copy/copytoc.html
"Intellectual Property: Database
Protection and Access to Information," by William Gardner and Joseph Rosenbaum.
SCIENCE MAGAZINE, vol. 281, no. 5378, August 7, 1998, pp. 786-87.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/281/5378/786
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998: U.S. Copyright Office Summary http://www.loc.gov/copyright/legislation/dmca.pdf [Requires free Adobe Acrobat Reader available at http://www.adobe.com/supportservice/custsupport/download.html]
Links on the Digital Future Coalition Website
http://www.dfc.org/
Access America (for senior citizens)
http://www.seniors.gov/
The Feminist Press
http://www.feministpress.org/
tutorials.com (over 150 online
tutorials)
http://www.tutorials.com/
Advanceland Online Learning Center
(includes audio instruction)
http://www.advanceland.com/learndeptmain.htm
Digital Toolbox helpers from the
University of Colorado
The digital toolbox is at
http://coloradodigital.coalliance.org/toolbox.html
For more information on the Colorado Digitization Project,
see
http://coloradodigital.coalliance.org/
Free classroom tools from Microsoft
The Online Learning Resource Kit CD highlights some helpful tools that have been developed
for Microsoft. They are now also available for download from our site. There is a Seminar
Online Tool, a Gradebook Assistant and a Course Mapper.
http://www.microsoft.com/education/hed/online/tools.htm
Software called Compose claimed years ago to be able to edit Adobe Acrobat PDF documents. You can read about Version 4.0 at http://www.ambia.com/compose . You can now download the software on a trial basis from http://www.ambia.com/compose.register.htm
I have never used this software and make no claims about it. It is intended for PDF power users. Be somewhat cautious with respect to how well Compose will work with the forthcoming Version 4.0 of Adobe Acrobat. There may be a time lag before Compose can handle the new version of Acrobat.
U.S. Education Journal: Guide for non-U.S. Students
http://www.usjournal.com
Learning English Adult Program, Inc. (free for adults)
http://www.weleap4esl.org/
Witzzle Pro -- A Math Game for Individuals or networked Teams
http://www.kaidy.com/BookMark%20Solution.htm
Game information and reviews
http://www.happypenguin.org/news
Classical Music (Information and Reviews)
http://inkpot.com/classical/
Favorite Poem Project
http://www.favoritepoem.org/
Professional Communications Series at the University of
California Santa Cruz Extension
http://www.ucsc-extension.edu/communications/comm_series.html