Boomers and generation gaps

Interesting report from LexisNexis on their Survey into the Technology Gap.

One to mull over...

Right now, my head's still in holiday mode even though my body has put in an appearance at work.

Guardian reveals insight into birds and bees...

Nothing vaguely e-learningy to write at the moment, but I thought I'd share how pregnancy happens which I saw in The Guardian...

Parenting qualifications for young people recognised | Society | guardian.co.uk:

"Sandra, 24, from Gloucestershire, did her first minor accredited course when she became pregnant at 17 after her youth worker referred her to the NCLP"

So, to avoid teen pregnancy... don't allow your youth workers to refer you to the NCLP :o)

A few of my favourite web 2.0 things...

Just fancied collating some of the free web 2.0 goodness I've liked over the last year or so, and which are particularly useful if you're working in education... so here they are...

Writing tools

Google Docs – good for online document storage, collaborative writing, off-site backup

Evernote - note-taking facility available via mobile, online and offline with synchronization available between any installation / version

Scribd - share documents which are automatically converted so they can be downloaded as Word, Adobe pdf or .txt files / can be embedded in HTML pages

Wordle – useful for analysis of a topic or issue by simply uploading the text you want to look at

Zoho - full suite of tools from Office-type word processors to note-taking and project management tools. Free option available on most tools.

Blogging / RSS / Collaboration

Blogger - good, free blogging service from Google

Delicious - one of the original social bookmarking sites. Straightforward to use!

Diigo - great social bookmarking tool with added annotation, communities and discussion. Can also automatically post your links to Delicious if you've already got a Delicious account you don't want to lose.

DimDim - free web conferencing / web-hosted online, open-source meeting tool

Drop.io - instantly create collaborative working spaces, private, no account necessary, shareable outputs, easy to use.

Google Reader - full-featured RSS aggregator with good integration into other Google services

WordPress - another blog service, but is slightly more 'professional' looking and the ability to view stats on blog postings is also useful

WetPaint - free wiki with plenty of templates and features

Video / audio

Jing - web-based screencasting tool, create screen captures, narrated video etc.

quietube - view or share YouTube videos without distracting comments and other YouTube branding

ScreenToaster – create and record video to create screencasts or tutorials

SlideShare - useful for hosting PowerPoint slides to share / embed, also good for linking in MP3 files to easily create a slidecast

Xtranormal - create 3D videos by selecting characters and inputting the script. Sharable video output.

YouTube - video sharing site with lots of creative commons licenced resources / facility for comment / closed captioning

Social Networking

Facebook - major social networking site, useful for both personal and business networks / use of groups for students etc

LinkedIn - similar to Facebook, but with a more professional feel

Twitter – microblogging tool, useful for concise communication, resource-sharing, networking, discussion, current affairs / breaking news

Diagramming

Exploratree - from Futurelab this is an online ideas tool, a little like mindmapping but with other types of 'thinking' diagram templates available

Gliffy - creates flow charts, organisational charts, plans etc in the style of Microsoft Visio and can support collaborative working

MindMeister - mindmapping tool, allows users to create up to 6 mindmaps for free and export in various formats including jpg, rtf etc

ProjectDraw - CAD-like online drawing tool

Skrbl - free, shareable online collaborative whiteboard.

Image editing

Flickr - online photo sharing (plus tagging, commenting and annotating) and photography-related discussion forums / community

Picnik - online image editing with links to popular image-hosting sites such as Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Facebook etc

Miscellaneous / Utilities

Box.net - online file storage service

Doodle - meeting scheduling tool

DownForEveryoneOrJustMe - does what it says! Put in a URL to check whether or not a site is down or it's just you having problems.

How Do I? - search Google for tutorials on any subject

Media Convert - convert files from one format to another using this free tool

Read The Words - create MP3 audio files from text input with a variety of voices and speeds to select

This list is a work in progress, so watch this space (i.e. I'm sure I've forgotten some of the ones I really like and I may sneak back to edit them later!) :o)

Twitter mysteries and "twetiquette"

Ever feel like you just got aggregated on Twitter?



Following lots of people and not one single update. Why do people do this? If you want to be interested in my life... have a bit of a life yourself, if you don't mind, ta everso. I don't want to be followed by a service or website unless I followed you first or signed myself up to be added. I'd really like just a tiny sliver of control over my online life. Yes, I know it's not massively realistic to want that... but... where's the twitter-etiquette (good grief, I nearly invented a hideous word then: "twetiquette", but stopped myself just in time!) when you need it???

Why also, do they follow you and then protect their updates?



You get a message saying so an' so is following you. You think... oh, that's nice... I'll go see their profile and see if I should be following them. But oooooh no. You can't. Protected updates only. What *is* that about? If you're following people who don't know you... why are your updates protected? Don't you want to let me see just a tiny bit about you? Okay, so you may be new to Twitter... I accept that. But for those of you who aren't... que???

So, my Twetiquette list*

1. Fill in your profile - I don't want loads, I just want to see a tiny smidge of the real you which would help me decide whether or not following you is a good idea

2. Picture please - it doesn't have to be anything much, but I do like to see that I'm talking to a someone or something

3. Don't protect your updates - Twitter is social... it's not a private club. I know it looks like a nice privacy feature, but if you're to get the most out of Twitter you've got to make connections and protecting your updates, hiding your status, is another Twitter-turn-off

4. Participate don't just aggregate - I'm sure no-one minds the odd bit of blog promotion or Blip-ping... but actively participating with a few thoughts of your own sure makes for a more interesting Twitter

5. Update don't stagnate - a few updates here or there... that's not too much to ask, is it?

6. Learn the importance of @ and 'd' - if it's one-on-one communication you're after, direct messages (d + twittername) are much better than clogging someone's stream with personal communication. If you want to make a comment which'll get noticed by someone else, but which isn't private / exclusive... then an @ reply is the daddy.

7. Retweet selectively - yes, I may have missed someone else's tweet or not be following them and find their message really useful... but use the retweet (RT) facility too often and I start to wonder what you've got to say of your own. Think before you retweet.

Am sure there are more... but those are my main rants converted into a handy little list. Ta da!

* see what I did there - said I wasn't going to use that word and then did - shame on me!

Skype for iPhone and iPod Touch!

Skype for iPhone: It's official | CTIA show - CNET Reviews:

"Assuming your connection is solid, you can dial a number or quickly call a contacts stored in your address book. iPod Touch users will need earphones with an embedded mic to talk. During a call, you can mute the line, go on hold, or put the call on speakerphone. In the My Info window, you can follow a link to buy more SkypeOut credit online."

Cool! iPod Touch as IP phone care of Skype, wifi and a headphone + mic combo. Bring it on! :o)

Deleting bits of my online self

Sometimes a gal gets a bit bored. Y'know. The shiny sparkly new service / tool she's started using loses its lustre. In the spirit of that, I just deleted myself from Plurk. It's not that it's a bad tool, particularly. It's a bit unreliable along the same lines as Twitter and its infamous Fail Whale, if y'know what I mean! There were some advantages to using it - the threading of discussions was good, for example. But, the difficulty of following conversations where you missed the start or where your contacts have lots of other contacts you don't know (and who you wouldn't choose to follow)... and you can't avoid their interjections makes it much harder work than it need be. Yes, you can easily mark all messages as being read... but you can't just pick out some messages to read and others to avoid terribly easily. On Twitter, I dip in and dip out and it doesn't seem to matter. I don't have lots of messages waiting for me. I just have a stream which continually flows. No 'read or unread' required really. Just watch it passing you by.

So... bye-bye to Plurk. It was fun. I couldn't keep up. Turns out I like the simplicity of Twitter more than I thought! Now then... about that next shiny bright thing on the horizon... :o)

PS Deleting my Plurk account involved a couple of clicks. Can hardly believe it was that easy. Time will tell no doubt...

Tranmission misunderstood

Yet another journo gets their own transmission-media mindset tangled up with the concept of Twitter:

Is your life really better for being Twittered? - Telegraph:

"I can see that Twitter is a useful tool for genuinely breaking news, as during the terrorist attacks on Mumbai, but it is somewhat less compelling when charting the minutiae of daily life. Our parents' generation made do with a handful of curling photographs, letters, and their memories. Now, every tiny happening can be instantaneously logged and broadcast: 'Finding time to put the rubbish out!' people tweet, or 'Just enjoying a glass of champagne in the sun!'"

I suspect the author in question is yet to have that 'ah-ha, that's an interesting use' moment with regards using Twitter because she's certainly neglected to consider it as being anything other than a means to broadcast. For me, it's a useful place to see what's going on with colleagues, whether they're ones I see on a day-to-day basis to those who work in remote locations or simply in the same field as me. It's a useful place for a bit of occasional chit-chat / banter to break up an otherwise intense day. It's a useful place to explore ideas / concepts in a manner which forces you to be concise and clear about your writing style. It's a useful place to pick up links and resources. It's a useful place to make connections. It's a useful place to quickly canvas opinion. It turns out, it's just a useful place.

Two years ago, I had the exact same reaction. Why bother? Who cares? But... it's one of those things. Shift your mindset and you might find that it could become a useful place for you too. Y'never know. Transmission-only, it ain't.

Bringing your online life together - Skimmer

Skimmer - We Are Fallon:

"Skimmer℠ is an Adobe AIR desktop application designed to streamline, beautify, and enhance the experience of participating in your most frequently used social networking activities. It improves upon your day-to-day interaction with multiple social networks, removing distractions and providing a rich experience that is particularly suited to multimedia content."

I do like a nice simple life and anything which pulls 'things' together all those bits of my online life into one easy to access place is good for me. I've been using Digsby for a while and I do like it in lots of ways. It's quick. I can access Facebook, Twitter, MSN, MySpace (although I don't know why because I very rarely log on there) as well as Gmail and Google Talk all at the same time. When I'm online, I'm online with those services without having to sign in umpteen times. However, it's not that pretty. If you're not after chat, then for pretty... take a look at Skimmer.


So far the supported services are Twitter, Facebook, Flickr (which trumps Digsby), Blogger (also not available via Digbsy) and YouTube. The streaming of the feeds from the various services is excellent and although it won't set the world on fire in terms of speed, the concept behind it is great. A bit like "Flock does Adobe Air".

Screenshots are available on the Skimmer site and perhaps it is design over function, but hey, I like design from time to time! Will be interested to watch this develop.

Ada Lovelace Day dithering

A couple of months ago, I signed up to the following:

'I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire' - PledgeBank:

"Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women's contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements."

... and the slightly sad fact is that I cannot think of anyone. I don't actually revere any particular person for their role in technology. A quote I remember reading about ten years ago has always stuck with me:

"Over the course of several hundred years new people come along and each lays down a block on the top of the old foundations, each saying, "I build a cathedral". Next month another block is placed atop the previous one. Then come along an historian who asks, "Well who built the cathedral?" Peter added some stones here, and Paul added a few more. If you are not careful, you can con yourself into belief that you did the most important part. But the reality is that each contribution has to follow onto previous work. Everything is tied to everything else."

(Source: Paul Baran cited in "Where Wizards Stay Up Late -- The Origins of the Internet", Hafner and Lyon, 1996)

... and it's true. No one person made 'the' difference which made all the difference. No one woman made 'the' difference. We innovate because others innovated. We are the sum of all that's gone before.

So, while I reconise the difference that some people, women included, have made. And whilst I recognise that women don't have parity in the technological workplace (definitely haven't within any of the tech-type jobs I've had over the past decade or so) and that there is an issue there. I rather like the writing of several women in technology / ed-tech... but I still can't think of a specific woman who I particularly admire above all others.

My Ada Lovelace Day post is going to have to just be a celebration of all those who do help build that cathedral. Who do take what's gone before and push to see where it can take them. Who can stand back and transform ideas into reality. No names. No individuals. Inspiring people are all around us... whether they're male or female. A society in which those innovative, creative voices can be heard. Now that's gotta be worth celebrating.

Wearable computers... a step too far...

Bleurgh!!! In today's BBC News:

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Finn creates USB 'finger drive':

"Jerry Jalava uses the 2GB memory stick, accessed by peeling back the 'nail', to store photos, movies and programmes.

The finger is not permanently attached to his hand, so it can be easily left plugged into a computer when in use."

Things not to do on a first date: "Hold on dear, I'm sure I've got that photo to show you somewhere..." *removes finger and plugs it in to nearest computer"

Bleurgh!!!