Edu_RSS
'Folksonomies' to Organize the News
This morning, the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference looked at "folksonomies," a term used to describe how large groups of people can organize information by adding freely chosen keywords. Picture site
Flickr, for instance, lets users add "tags" to their own pictures. These tags' main purpose is to help people organize their own pictures, but they also serve as a way to organize the vast ocean of public pictures. (As an example, see pictures of the O'Reilly event itself under the
"etech" From Poynter E-Media Tidbits on March 16, 2005 at 10:54 p.m..
Infovis on Animation
This article from Infovis provides a brief on the two main uses of animation: visual narrative and process visualization. However, my takeaway from this article is this description, which makes for a good definition of an
interactive: "The ensemble of visualization, animation and interaction make a very powerful trio both for the discovery of knowledge hidden in the data and for the transmission of the existing knowl From
elearningpost on March 16, 2005 at 10:46 p.m..
Jade Walker’s Great New Job: AP
One of my colleagues and fellow E-Media Tidbits contributor Jade Walker recently announced that she's moving on to a choice position: night online editor for Associated Press. They couldn't have selected a more qualified candidate... From
Contentious Weblog on March 16, 2005 at 8:54 p.m..
New direction
It has become increasingly difficult to talk only about e-portfolios on this weblog and actually, I think too many technologies and approaches overlap - therefore, from now on this weblog will concentrate on e-portfolios and related technologies including my main... From
ERADC Blog on March 16, 2005 at 8:53 p.m..
Pharmaceuticals and the Death of Art
One of the leading causes of artistic and creative decline is the modern view of mental illness, and the treatment methods used to prevent or minimize it. If one views creativity as a form of madness (or deviance), then the modern view that all forms of psychopathology must be eradicated will be detrimental to societies body of great artistic works. From
kuro5hin.org on March 16, 2005 at 8:45 p.m..
[etech] Microsoft Tesla
Last night I got a demo of a Microsoft lab project that will be available this summer. Tesla is a layer on top of XP that provides an alternative way of structuring and accessing the files on your desktop. You can sort your files by a whole bunch of the usual file attributes (date, size, etc.) but also by tags. Tags replace folders. (It's a faceted classification system.) Tesla virtualizes the file system to the point that it doesn't care which actual machine a file lives on. So, if you have home and office computers, it syncs them up automatically.... From
Joho the Blog on March 16, 2005 at 7:48 p.m..
[etech] Day 2 Clay Shirky - Phone as platform
Clay begins a segment on tech and education. He says he thinks of his group at NYU as "The Department of the Recently Possible." A few years ago they noticed that students were increasingly integrating phones into their apps. So they started looking into it. One experiment: PacManhattan that mates the urban grid and the game grid. The runners are controlled by people in a control room via mobile phones. DodgeBall was an experiment in mobile social networking. "Mobile phones are the first things since keys that everyone carries," Clay says, citing Marko Ahtisaari. DodgeBall alerted him that the From
Joho the Blog on March 16, 2005 at 7:48 p.m..
[etech] Day 2 - Tom Igoe - Net Objects
Tom describes student projects. [I missed many of these] - A purse displays when wifi is present - A protest button initiates a DOS attack on a nearby malevolent corporation - "Needies" — stuffed animals with mp3 players. If two get together, they talk shit about others behind their backs. - CareNet displays grandma's life signs around the edge of an electronic photo of her - Junkie's Little Helper: If levels of meds in a med cabinet drops low, it goes on line and alerts IRC chats that the person is high - Ku: It communicates sadness over the Net.... From
Joho the Blog on March 16, 2005 at 7:48 p.m..
Links from Day 2 of ETech
This is a dump of lnks of interest to me that come up during talks during the second day at Etech. Newest at top. Late start because I was running in the AM. Instiki "Instiki is a Wiki Clone (What is a wiki?) that's so easy to set up and so pretty to look at, you'll be wondering whether this is a real wiki at all...Instiki only relies on Ruby--no Apache, no MySQL, or other dependencies(yay!). Instiki runs on Windows, Linux, OSX, and any other platform where Ruby does." Dodgeball "A service which aims to coordinate social interactions between mobile users" Pac-Manhattan "Pac-Manhat From
megnut on March 16, 2005 at 7:45 p.m..
Craigslist in a Box
Online classifieds vendor
CityXpress dropped a press release into my in-box today announcing the official debut of something it calls eMarketplaceXpress. This is basically "Craigslist in a box" -- a stand-alone online classifieds marketplace. The company explains that the platform "enables newspapers to create free and low-cost online classified marketplaces, separate from the newspaper's site of print listings."I've written quite a bit lately about how
Craigslist is badly hurting big segments of From
Poynter E-Media Tidbits on March 16, 2005 at 6:53 p.m..
Mathemagenic in 2004: 329 pages
Yesterday I printed out 2004 archives of my weblog (if you need the same for whatever purpose the best way is to print
monthly archives: they don't have any navigation bars, just text). It is surprising: not only the number of pages (329 pages in total - I could write draft of my dissertation ;), but the fact that there are many things I forgot I wrote and even more things that feel like distant past while they are only a year or so old.
Mathemagenic on March 16, 2005 at 6:51 p.m..
Folksonomies at Etech (Ross Mayfield)
A transcript from a talk with Clay, Stewart, Joshua and Jimmy. Clay: Not a debate about the meaning of folksonomy. This is about allowing a large group of users in on organizing a large volume of material. this is... From
Corante: Social Software on March 16, 2005 at 6:49 p.m..
[etech] Day 2 - Justin Chapweske
Justin, of Onion Networks, talks about "the swarming Web." Standard http, he says, doesn't work well for transferring large files: You have a 64% chance of failure if you transfer a gigabyte. (Here's his "large file hall of shame".) "Swarming" is like RAID for Web content. Even as bandwidth increases, we need more reliable servers. And better make 'em fault tolerant. And he doesn't like setting up mirrors because it's a bad experience for users. Instead Onion Networks uses swarming — the technique BitTorrent uses — as a native Web format. "It's ad hoc, From
Joho the Blog on March 16, 2005 at 6:48 p.m..
[etech] Day 2 - Jimbo Wales, Wikipedia
Jimbo [I find it hard to call him that] gives an update on Wikipedia. The English version will pass 500,000 articles today. 350,000 hierarchical categories. The site has passd USAToday.com and the NYT.com. It's so popular, he says, because it addresses the original deam of the Internet: People sharing information freely. WikiCities.com is Jimbo's new for-profit company, expanding the Wikipedia's social model, "the social computing successor of free home pages." 170 communities have formed in 3 months. (Communities are built around topics, it seems.) He views Wikipedia as a socia From
Joho the Blog on March 16, 2005 at 6:48 p.m..
[etech] Day 2 - Folksonomies panel
Clay Shirky moderates a panel on folksonomies. Participants: Jimbo Wales (wikipedia), Joshua Schachter (del.icio.us) and Stewart Butterfield (flickr). Clay: Why did you decide to let users in to categorization? Jimbo: We launched our categorization system last June. For the first few weeks, it was a complete madhouse in the English wikipedia. In the German one, they held off for a couple of weeks. It took a little while for things to be rationalized. We decided to let the masses categorize it because that's just the Wiki way. Stewart: We added it because Joshua told us to. I don't th From
Joho the Blog on March 16, 2005 at 6:48 p.m..
Hey fishy
"...[Fundamentalism] is an embattled faith, which requires an ever evolving list of enemies to keep its focus. It includes Satan worshipers one year, “secular humanists” the next. Panic over backward masking on phonograph records yields to fears that supermarket bar codes harbor the Mark of the Beast... "I’ve also learned that fundamentalist Christianity’s spiritual entrepreneurs are never more dogmatic than when they are ignoring, if not contradicting, the essence of Jesus Christ’s teachings. The basic con is to insist upon the historical and scientific accuracy From
silentblue | Quantified on March 16, 2005 at 5:54 p.m..
Blog disclosures
Una relación abierta de blog disclosures y editorial statements, para ir preparando el terreno... David Weinberger: Disclosure Statement John Palfrey: My disclosures The Blog Herald: Disclosure and Editorial Statement Relacionado: ¿Ética blogger? Pues va a ser que sÃ.... From
eCuaderno v.2.0 on March 16, 2005 at 5:51 p.m..
[etech] Day 2 Morning - Neil Gershenfeld
Neil heads MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms. He teaches a course called "How to make (almost) anything." As an example, he shows Kelly Dobson's class project, a scream body. You scream into it in public spaces. It muffles the scream entirely, and then you can release it at a more appropriate space. Very funny. Another made an alarm clock you have to wrestle with to prove that you are awake. He says the liberal arts originally were about learning to control the means of expression; the Trivium consisted of grammar, rhetoric and logic. The "illiberal" arts had to do... From
Joho the Blog on March 16, 2005 at 5:48 p.m..
[etech] Day 2 - Cory Doctorow - All Complex Ecosystems Have Parasites
[Cory's talk will be posted on his site.] You could stop spam by simplifying email, he says. You could charge a penny or two for sending emails. You could put in place strong ID. You could solve spam...by breaking email. Complex ecosystems are influenced, not controlled. Global efforts are underway to require anyone who makes a device that touches video first to get permission. You already need permission from a controlling body if you want to create a DVD player. That's why there's no innovation there. He argues against "trusted computing," the attempt to simplify the ecosystem From
Joho the Blog on March 16, 2005 at 5:48 p.m..
Standing in Broadcast Flag Case
See Susan Crawford's
post on the court's
request for additional evidence regarding the petitioners' standing int he broadcast flag case. Crawford concludes that "this court wants to find standing." Certainly, the two judges in the majority lay out in some detail exactly how the petitioners can convince them. At the same time, Judge Sentelle in dissent states that "standing is at best questionable" and would From
A Copyfighter's Musings on March 16, 2005 at 5:47 p.m..
Blog(wiki)vangelism Tour
So I leave at 4 today to drive to DC, get there around 8, work on slides until, say 10, get up at 6, do more work on slides, give
keynote from 9-10, do more work on slides, give
wiki presentation at 11:30, leave DC around 1, drive to Philadelphia by 4, get on plane at 6, land in
Detroit at 8, get to hotel at 9, work on slides until, say 11, get up at 6, do more work on slides, give blog presentation at 8:30, give Read/Write Web presentation at 10, giv From
weblogged News on March 16, 2005 at 5:47 p.m..
John Edwards Debuts Podcast (Sort of)
According to the Democratic site and weblog One America Committee, next week former US Senator and VP candidate John Edwards will launch his very own podcast. Well, sort of. It's painfully obvious from the site that Edwards and his online staff need to learn a bit more about podcasting. Here's a quick lesson for you, Sen. Edwards... From
Contentious Weblog on March 16, 2005 at 4:54 p.m..
Google's Translation Used in News
There have been bigger news developments reported in this weblog, and the following is probably not the first such incident recorded. Still, it's a sign of how far automatic translation has come since the days of
universal ridicule.The question is: What do you do when you want to link to a website written in a language your own readers cannot be expected to understand? Like when
dagbladet.no, a mainstream news website in Norway, wants to From
Poynter E-Media Tidbits on March 16, 2005 at 4:53 p.m..
Farewell, My Friends; Hello, AP
Although I was born with ink in my blood (both my father and grandfather were printers by trade), I've spent the past 10 years working in
new-media ventures. I love the immediacy of the Web and the limitless space it provides to expand on stories with slideshows, multimedia presentations, interactive polls, and community forums. I'm also a diehard newshound who thrives on a vampire's schedule. So when my best friend recently asked me to define my dream job, I replied without hesitation: "Web editor on the graveyard shift at the Associa From
Poynter E-Media Tidbits on March 16, 2005 at 4:53 p.m..
Yahoo 360 (Ross Mayfield)
The other shoe is dropping for Yahoo, with the announcement of their blogging, photo sharing and social networking service, Yahoo 360. Here is the AP story, and highlights from the WSJ article. Anyone tried it? I’m sure we will get... From
Corante: Social Software on March 16, 2005 at 4:49 p.m..
Meta-tags, or, the Dublin Meta Core
As we sort through tags, it'd often be useful to know who created a particular tag. And when. And in which application. And probably other stuff also. While some apps remember who created which tag (e.g., Flickr), as we begin to aggregate tags, we could use a standard way to express this tagging metadata...a Dublin Core not for objects but for tags attached to objects. If this were to happen, it's very likely to come from the apps that benefit from having standardized tag metadata. The most obvious suspects are the search engines. (Hmm. I may be re-having Mary Hodder's... From
Joho the Blog on March 16, 2005 at 4:48 p.m..
why sxsw? (Liz Lawley)
This year, two tech conferences directly related to social computing—SXSW and Etech—were scheduled so close together that many of us with an interest in these topics had to choose between the two. Clay and Ross ended up at ETech. danah... From
Corante: Social Software on March 16, 2005 at 2:49 p.m..
Ripping, Mixing and Learning
From an
interesting piece in the
Washington Post on
Creative Commons and how there is a groundswell of copyleft activity: "There is this weird sense that the Internet is broken because it lets people make easy copies. . . The Internet is a machine for making copies, and artists need to come to grips with that," Doctorow said. So here's my mix: take out "artists", put in "educators". I think From
weblogged News on March 16, 2005 at 12:47 p.m..
Skype is enjoying the hype - John Blau, IDG News Service
Niklas Zennström made a name for himself as cofounder of the Kazaa peer-to-peer file sharing service. Now the entrepreneurial Swede hopes to make his latest venture, the Skype p-to-p voice service, a household brand. In recent weeks, the CEO of Luxembourg From
Techno-News Blog on March 16, 2005 at 11:49 a.m..
Free Public Access To Your Own Cultural Wealth: Italy's Creative Commons Leads The Way With Scarichiamoli!
Should public domain artworks like music, sculpture and paintings, which are part of our cultural heritage to be made accessible only via access to difficult to reach and not-always-open museums in which we need to often pay also an entrance ticket? Photo credit: Gabor Palla If we pay our state to create public works like art, music, architecture, research, is it right that these creations are then exploited for commercial uses by a restricted few? If through the taxes that I and you pay, the government decides to commission an art piece, major event or concert, should this event be... From
Robin Good' Sharewood Tidings on March 16, 2005 at 10:50 a.m..
Five Lenses: Towards a Toolkit for Interaction Design
Tom Erickson of the IBM Watson Research Centre explores the
foundations of interaction design: In this essay I explore these issues. I begin with a definition, and illustrate my approach to partitioning the terrain of interaction design using five conceptual "lenses." In so doing, I cover most of what I see as the theoretical roots of interaction design. I then turn to the role of theory in interaction design, and suggest that a good way to begin is to assemble a toolkit of concepts for interaction design that consis From
elearningpost on March 16, 2005 at 10:46 a.m..
Knowledge Representations
Denham Grey talks about the usefulness of
representations: Representations are material, they allow ideas and experience to have an independent existence in an externalized form, they help to capture emergent thought. Like a lump of clay, a representation is tangible, it can be pointed to, passed around, played with. It takes thought experimentation one step further, eliciting new ideas. From
elearningpost on March 16, 2005 at 10:46 a.m..
ChoicePoint Says It's Sorry
In a congressional hearing, the data broker's chief apologizes to customers whose data was exposed to hackers due to ChoicePoint's negligence. The company's head endorsed some proposals to toughen privacy laws, but backed away from others. From
Wired News on March 16, 2005 at 10:45 a.m..
A Samurai With Style
Square Enix's cartoon-shaded samurai RPG is slickly rendered, but the gameplay isn't nearly as polished. Chris Kohler reviews Musashi: Samurai Legend. From
Wired News on March 16, 2005 at 10:45 a.m..
Student Job Sites Hit or Miss
Now's the time for students and grads to start thinking about a summer job. While plenty of sites cater to student and teen workers, actually getting a job through one can be tricky. By Rachel Metz. From
Wired News on March 16, 2005 at 10:45 a.m..
New Dr. Who Leaked on Purpose?
The BBC might have slipped a new episode of a cult classic onto the internet to generate buzz, says a consultant. He should know -- he told the BBC to tap the power of viral advertising to make people talk about its TV shows. By Daniel Terdiman. From
Wired News on March 16, 2005 at 10:45 a.m..
Photos Richer in 144 Megapixels
A New York photographer sees growing demand for the high-resolution images possible with a souped-up, laptop-connected still camera. The slow picture-taking speed works for photos of things that don't move. By Alison Strahan. From
Wired News on March 16, 2005 at 10:45 a.m..
Medicare: Bring on the Tech
Rising chronic-care costs have officials at Medicare scurrying for technology to help save the program some bucks. Recent studies suggest it's a risky approach. By Kristen Philipkoski. From
Wired News on March 16, 2005 at 10:45 a.m..
Weblogs oficiales de servicios online
Una selección de weblogs oficiales de servicios online y de algunas empresas del sector NTI: Acelblog: Noticias de Acelblog Alexa: Alexa Web Discovery Machine Amazon: Amazon Web Services Blog Apple: Apple Hot News Ask Jeeves: Ask Jeeves Blog Blogads: Blogads... From
eCuaderno v.2.0 on March 16, 2005 at 9:51 a.m..
Elektronischer Selbstbetrug
Der Legitimations- und Kostendruck, der derzeit auf Bibliotheken lastet, ist gewaltig. Vor diesem Hintergrund warnt der Autor, selbst Bibliothekar, davor, alle Ressourcen einzig auf die Karte "Digitalisierung" zu setzen. Er hat sicher Recht, wenn er daran erinnert, "dass die Kosten... From
www.weiterbildungsblog.de on March 16, 2005 at 7:52 a.m..
Bangor librarians face internet threat
Zur untenstehenden Meldung passt diese Nachricht des Guardian, mit der ich am Montag auch in meine CeBIT-Präsentation eingestiegen bin (die ich übrigens am Freitag hier einstellen werde). Ich glaube, besser kann man den Wandel, dem Bildung und Lernen unterworfen sind,... From
www.weiterbildungsblog.de on March 16, 2005 at 7:52 a.m..
Training Analytics: What Works
Dieser Report bietet einen Überblick über das Thema, definiert einige zentrale Begriffe (Analytics/ Reporting/ the Training "Dashboard") und hebt sehr konkret die Lösungen von SumTotal und Saba hervor. Ganz nebenbei wird gleich eines der letzten Rätsel der Personalentwicklung gelöst: "The... From
www.weiterbildungsblog.de on March 16, 2005 at 6:51 a.m..
The Perl King
I had 5 minutes of technical glory today, where I felt like I mastered the machine. The rest of the day I may have been under its thumb, where I belong. Readers may note that a few weeks back I was dealing with some strange web server activity every Saturday morning that managed to take out my XServe that runs this blog,
Feed2JS, and our
eportfolio service. The man from Apple said, "Stick a Fork in It", so 2 days before leaving town for a conference, I was re-installing a new OS volume (all the data resided separ From
cogdogblog on March 16, 2005 at 6:48 a.m..
Five More Skyperviews Added
Whew, this is fun! Without much effort, I have added another 5 interviews, each under 5 minutes, for my upcoming article on digital net audio, You can find all 11 and (more as I add 'em) on the
mcli Forum Spring 2005 Podcast. Joining the crowd, and rounding out some of the gender gap thanks to
this morning's call for help, are: * D'Arcy Norman, University of Calgary * Sherri Vokey, University of Nevada From
cogdogblog on March 16, 2005 at 5:48 a.m..
No Chumps at Chumpsoft
I've been very happy with our purchase of
phpQuestionnaire, a PHP + mySQL set of scripts that have allowed us to easily create, admin, and export dat for online surveys. It's been a champ, not a chump. Today I was doing a CSV (comma separated value) export for a recent survey, somthing I had yet to use. This was so I could put the data in Excel for a project manager at one of our coleges. I was disappointed to find that in the open response questions, any RETURN characters entered in the text area input fields was NOT s From
cogdogblog on March 16, 2005 at 5:48 a.m..
[ MacinDash ]
The Mac Mini continues to attract scores of fans, intrigued by its relative power and diminutive form factor. Over at Gizmodo, a report describes the recent efforts of a Mac-obsessed VW Golf GTI owner, who has gussied up his auto's... From
futureStep | net.tech, academia, society & culture on March 16, 2005 at 5:00 a.m..
Visiting author Chris Hedges
I've just come back from a talk by Chris Hedges, who was for a long time a war correspondant for the NY Times. His book, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, has been up for discussion here on campus this year. He spoke to perhaps 165 people, first reading a powerful essay that seemed to be built of highlights from some recent pieces, and then he took questions, speaking carefully and well about the impact of combat, the mythology that protects the country from... From
Weblogs in Higher Education on March 16, 2005 at 4:51 a.m..
A Conversation with Neil Finn, Part Two
No time to put together anything very elaborate this evening. (Lucky you.) Here's part two of the interview. I do regret hounding Neil so much on the Beatles stuff--but only a little, as he was such a good sport and it was fun to talk to a fellow Beatles fan ... From
Gardner Writes on March 16, 2005 at 4:00 a.m..
Links from Day 1 of Etech
This is a dump of lnks of interest to me that come up during talks during the first day at Etech. Newest at top. Citizen journalism, one-handed department "There has been so much debate over whether bloggers are journalists, the real issue has been obscured: are IRC chatters journalists? Mr. Sun has done some careful investigation and found that the IRC conversation logged below preceded the supposed revolutionizing of journalism by bloggers." Totally unrelated to the conference, but a funny reminder that I don't read Mr. Sun enough. Ten Hour Takeover "Ten Hour Takeover is your chance t From
megnut on March 16, 2005 at 2:45 a.m..
[etech] Reinventing radio
Four guys from the BBC are talking about radio. They say it's a popular medium. It's growing. In fact, in terms of the hours per week people spend listening to it, radio is at an all time high. It is, they say, a re-emerging tech. The BBC Radio Player lets you listen to any radio program over the past week. They're broadcasting 4M hours of radio over the Net every week and 6M of on-demand music [or possibly vice versa]. So, they ask, how can we make radio more social and interactive? Last April they tried an on-air experiment to... From
Joho the Blog on March 16, 2005 at 12:48 a.m..
Sy Wexler, Maker of Ubiquitous Classroom Films, Dies at 88
Movies > Sy Wexler, Maker of Ubiquitous Classroom Films, Dies at 88" href="http://nytimes.com/2005/03/15/movies/15wexler.html">The New York Times > Movies > Sy Wexler, Maker of Ubiquitous Classroom Films, Dies at 88 Sy Wexler, an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose educational movies - from "Squeak the Squirrel" to "Teeth Are for Life" - flickered for decades in darkened classrooms around the world, died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 88 and lived in Hollywood. As a member of the Edison Elementary School AV club, I bet I showed a few of Mr. Wexler's films while in elementary sch From
Education/Technology - Tim Lauer on March 15, 2005 at 11:49 p.m..
Less monetize, more somethingelseize please
As much as I've been enjoying Day One of ETech, I have to say I've heard far too much of the verb monetize. While I understand the intent, can't we use something else? Monetize emits a kind of rotten dot-com stench. Let's have a new word we use to describe a way to implement a business model and keep something going, and growing, once one's got a cool product. Something akin to sustaining, or sustaining and growing, and making the web a better place, while rewarding the people who are trying to do so. From
megnut on March 15, 2005 at 11:45 p.m..