san jose

Udacity, San Jose State University offer online classes for credit

So you've graduated from high school and been accepted at a four-year college. But when you arrive on campus you find out that you can't pass college entry-level courses, so it's back to remedial classes. That's the fate of half of all freshman at San Jose State University, according to Provost Ellen Junn. Add to those woes decreases in funding for higher education across California, higher tuition fees, and greater competition for college admission.

Those are just some of the reasons the university has partnered with Silicon Valley startup Udacity to offer San Jose State Plus, … Read more

Student misses e-mail, loses college place

Colleges seems like frightfully commercial enterprises to me.

They enjoy pretending they're about education. But they do seem to charge absurd amounts of money in order to give the young and impressionable the often erroneous belief that they're worth something. For a price that can be $50,000 a year.

So I find myself curiously unsurprised to hear the story of Hanaroo Kim, a student who thought he was entering San Jose State University.

As CBS 5 in San Jose describes it, Kim turned up for freshman orientation, only to find it utterly disorientating. For he was told … Read more

IBM breakthrough could measure rapid changes to atoms

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Scientists at IBM Research say they have figured out for the first time how to record rapid changes at the level of individual atoms.

Until now, it has usually taken hours to get a picture of what is happening to a single atom. But according to IBM Research, scientists at Big Blue's $6 billion R&D unit have figured out how to use a scanning tunneling microscope to record and study very fast changes at the atomic level. It is thought that the scientists will now be able to record atoms' behavior at speeds of … Read more

When LEDs and math equal high art

reporter's notebook SAN JOSE, Calif.--Can math make art? Can logic inform patterns and sequences that are visually compelling? Is light a medium suitable for the artistic canvas? Clearly, the answer to all those questions is yes, and people like James Turrell and M.C. Escher have offered years of proof of that.

But now anyone in or near Silicon Valley has a chance to take in a fantastic collection of light works by the New York-based artist Leo Villareal at the San Jose Museum of Art (see videos below). And having gotten a chance to see the show … Read more

BookSwim: Netflix for books?

A new Web-based rental service called BookSwim describes itself as Netflix for books.

After checking it out, that seems to be a fair enough summary.

The pricing doesn't seem to be quite as good a deal as Netflix; the fees are slightly higher and the average price of books is somewhat lower than for movies. But it's in the ballpark.

For example, BookSwim offers a subscription with three books out at a time for $19.98 per month. BookSwim covers shipping both ways via U.S. Postal Service media mail, though books over two pounds do carry an … Read more

San Jose: Hub for a green-tech gold rush?

q&a SAN JOSE, Calif.--Could the self-proclaimed "capital of Silicon Valley" become the world's center for clean-tech innovation?

Mayor Chuck Reed unveiled a 15-year plan in October to "green" San Jose. Of the city-greening road maps from mayors around the nation, his is among the most ambitious. Reed wants the city's 974,000 souls to get all electricity from renewable sources by 2022 (affording five more years than former Vice President Al Gore's similar yet scoffed-at challenge for the nation). And Reed aims to add 25,000 green jobs, keep all … Read more

Virtual Worlds conference opens to big questions

Starting Wednesday, most of the movers and shakers in the virtual-worlds business will be descending on San Jose for the Virtual Worlds conference.

I'm very interested to see how this show turns out. I covered and spoke at the spring edition of this show, which was held in New York, and I really wasn't overly impressed. At the time, I felt that the hundreds of people who attended weren't entirely sure why they were there, though they knew they should be.

On the other hand, as a veteran of such shows, maybe my standards were too high. … Read more

September 11, six years later

I woke on September 11, 2001 to the news of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the loss of UA Flight 93 in Pennsylvania.

I went in to work that morning, but nobody was getting any work done, and I couldn't concentrate, so I went home again.

While watching the news coverage, I wrote and emailed a letter to the San Jose Mercury News and several nationally-recognized newspapers. I don't actually know if my letter was printed anywhere else, but the Mercury News contacted me later that day and… Read more

Google deems cost-per-action as the 'Holy Grail'

SAN JOSE, Calif.--On the morning of day three here at Search Engine Strategies ("SES") San Jose, Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search product and user experience, gave her keynote presentation. She said a lot of interesting things, but of particular note to me was that she deemed cost-per-action (CPA) "the Holy Grail."

According to Marissa, Google is making moves towards cost-per-action as a more ideal auction-based pricing model, but she also pointed out that it's a long way away.

Cost-per-action may be a new term for some readers, so I'll review … Read more