31 Days, 31 Ideas
Source: 31 Days, 31 Ideas
Daniel Sieradski, known blogger and Jewish culture tech innovator has begun to publish 31 ideas that he believes to be truly revolutionary and transformative — things that have the potential to alter the Jewish world as we know it. Most are ideas for web applications, some are web publications, and some are ideas for new organizations all together. One idea a day will be published online during January, 2010.
Each day, Daniel will explain the thinking behind, the argument for, the execution of, and the expected outcomes and benefits of each and every one of these projects. What he hopes to achieve in doing so is to attract collaborators, executors, funders and general community support for these ideas so that wherever interest lies, we, collectively, can move forward in seeing these ideas manifest. He also hopes to spark an open discussion about innovation, addressing the emerging needs of 21st century Jewry, and the role of establishment Jewish organizations in providing for the needs of the Jewish public.
Among the ideas posted:
- A Surfcasting Tool
Capture a Web browser session along with mouse movements (clicks, highlighting), user contributed instructional text, audio and video, and make it editable. Then, provide a pop-up window through which students can control the playback. Such a guided Web surfing session would allow end-users to see the actual, full-resolution Web page loaded by the instructor, copy and paste text from that page, bookmark it if so desired, flip back and forth between pages so that they could learn at their own pace, and to contribute additional material to the tutorial collaboratively. It could also incorporate form elements which ask students questions during the lesson.
- A Hebrew Input Widget
Allowing authors of Jewish content websites to incorporate for their readers the ability to comment and search in Hebrew.
- A Pop-Up Jewish Dictionary
It would put a Jewish terminology search bar in every user’s browser. It would work on every Web site, regardless of whether or not the publisher had installed the widget. It could be given an on/off switch, just in case it ever gets in the way. And it would have a Web front-end free, searchable online Jewish dictionary,
- Pop-up Parasha
A Javascript widget (or, alternately, a Firefox plugin) that will scan web documents for references to p’skuim and parshiyot in Hebrew and English will open a pop-up that will display a given chapter or verse and its translation, an audio link to hear it read aloud, a link to a Web search for commentaries on that verse (confined to Jewish community sources and featuring links to commentaries on sites using the widget), and a chat board for site-based and Web-wide discussions of that portion of text.