Indeed we are getting ready for the Friendster/MySpace generation

Take it from Dr. Steve Warburton who talks about "Deploying Social Software in Learning and Teaching Environments" using slideshare (a Web 2.0 tool).

Shouldn't there be a disclaimID?

gsiemens observes that "Social network users have ruined their privacy, forever" and thus argues that we should be "teaching people how to use them (social networking) responsibly". (emphasis mine)

Now the pain comes when "something appears on the Internet, it's almost impossible to remove. Within minutes, chances are a search engine will crawl it, then that search engine will cache it, so that even if the page changes, the original content will still be there, for a while, at least."

I am told that there is such a thing as claimid.com which should work as another layer of privacy protection. It is supposed to let "you track, verify, classify, annotate, prioritize and share the information that is about you online."

I stick to my question above.

Meme of the day (year?): Blog-tag

I came across something that had a five-things-about-me spin about a week ago, but hadn't realized it as a meme until I chanced upon a reference to a blogsphere game started by Jeff Pulver. So I will join in.

Five things about me:

1. I've been hooked on the Internet since 1995
2. I believe that the Internet teaches people with ADHD to push their personal productivity to a higher plane
3. I was a special investigator with a government agency in my past life.
4. I rarely use VOIP, the reason being I have no compelling personal/professional reason to do that yet
5. I have been an innovation junkie since grade school

Happy New Year!

Tags: JP Loh Janette Toral Nashman John Husband Terry Freedman Ross Mayfield

Just thought I'd try something new

Old media (Read: radio) + new media (Read: internet) = streaming audio

Problem is you have to live with the adverts. But you'll get some consolation at 12 mn (1600 GMT) when "Midnight Oasis" kicks in. I am talking about Joey 92.3 FM in Manila. Take it for a spin, to see what I mean.

Perhaps we can learn a thing or two

... from overmundo.com

Could be a good platform for pushing the economy via cross-promotion and evolution of pop/folk culture. Reminds me of the need for supporting national policies promoting "unlocking creativity" initiatives. Perhaps it's also time to leapfrog eskwela.com in the Philippines. There is just so much FOAF going around already (IMHO).

A constitutional agency (Read: COMELEC) in the Philippines

is into blogging (officially).

Here's a sample post. More interesting thing is, it's loaded with honorific titles such as COMMISSIONER, ACTING DIRECTOR IV, ELECTION OFFICER, etc. Perhaps you can start calling me BLOGGER joelogs.

Time to reflect a little more

... and wish everyone the blessings of the season and the coming new year. Happy birthday to the greatest Innovator!

Participatory culture and purposeful social networks

I like the sound of it.

UNICOM: Conference London 21-22 Feb 2007: Social Tools for Business Use: Web 2.0 and the New Participatory Culture. More here.

Now they are talking. And Open University was part of the earlier conference. I'd like to see more of them walking soon.

When is linking a violation of copyright?

Simple enough, I guess. When the owner of the site you are linking to says so.

Now although it is simpler enough to just create a link to an interesting site (That was the original main point of the World Wide Web anyway!) and acknowledging another person's work might be more acceptable than copying and pasting (Go here to see what I mean), I am told that it had to take a trial court to resolve linking issues. Follow this link for more. (Thanks to Xeni Jardin) By then, you will have noticed that I should have used this other one for a more direct link. So what's the beef about links?

How to promote your NGO

Seth Godin shows us 6 ways to do it.

Got YouTube? You got one right



One-page cheat sheet is here.

I have been using elggspaces.com for about a month now.

... so I thought "Why not look under the hood?"

Then I found this: elgg.org which led me to this (Excerpt follows):

"Elgg is an open source software platform designed to allow people to easily connect and share resources. Elgg allows you to create a social network and host it on your own infrastructure, modifying the features to fit your specific needs. Users establish personal digital identities and connect with other people, collaborate with them and discover new resources through their connections. Plugins allow users on different social networks to collaborate, and provide specific functionality for tasks like project management, mobile browsing and collaboration through user-controlled wikis."

It has good multilingual collaborative translation support. There is one in Filipino. (Sounds like a useful school project. Any takers?)

Social Networking for Pinoys


... especially students forever. Partly inspired by Facebook.com, it's called eskwela.com.

Good start. They say it is based on tagging. I navigated the interface looking for a search field. Couldn't find one.

May hold a lot of promise, but personally I would like to see it move into the realm of "purposive" (Read: Collaborative) social networks.

Now the rest of the World notices

Thanks to Time Magazine. And thanks to people who've always believed in a connected humanity, especilly via "championing and channeling", YOU are now officially mainstream.

I remember John Husband telling me about a month ago that we were getting there "bit by bit".

That was totally prophetic!

technorati tags:TimeMagazine, PersonOfTheYear, 2006

Blogged with Flock

I gathered from (of all places(!) the source code of Dan Pink's main page)

... that "Story-building" should be part of one's professional and personal abilities. Yet an other essential part of a 21st century learner's skillset.

Another nugget I found lying there:

"A fleet of Mobile Booths is traveling the country collecting the stories of ordinary Americans, recording the tales for posterity, and eventually housing the recordings at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress."

Now I'd like to call that walking the talk about Folk Knowledge Management.

Ever seen/heard Cold Play song done by old-timers?

Click here. (Sorry, I had to do that. Thanks, JP for pointing out what was wrong! Would have been better if I used a permalink.) Ok, just view the clip below.

Now I understand why we are living in the Right-brainers' century. Thanks to Dan Pink.

Get an overview of his book. And I gathered from (of all places(!) the source code of Dan Pink's main page) that "Story-building" should be part of one's professional and personal abilities. Yet an essential part of a 21st century learner's skillset.

P.S.

Now what purpose will comment aggregation serve?

Offhand, that just sounds like comment syndication. But its usefulness still evades me. Then again, if people aggregate news, perhaps there is some value in aggregating comments.

Enters Commentosphere, an application sitting on ning.com which by the way can be integrated with Blogger. Code snippets are here. Thanks to Stephen Paul Weber.

.

In online teaching, the teacher is center (?!)

Something tells me that there is something wrong with that inq7.net "news" article. I just can't seem to place it. Then again, perhaps it's just the title.

The Social Software effects

... will continue to move in high gear.

And David Teten and Scott Allen of Fast Company see 10 key implications. In no particular order, they come down to the following:

"long tail" | "prosumer power" | "forever beta" | "Pro-am revolution" |"visible dialogues" | "focused social networks" |"sharp communication skills" | "pervasive personalization" |"native computer skills" | "visible professional (in)competence"

Need I say more?

Seems like some African countries are poised ...

... to leapfrog some Asian Countries in the use of ICT (if the shoe fits...)

Read more here.

Spreadsheets smackdown

Zoho Sheet vs.GoogleSpreadsheets vs. EditGrid vs. ...

A list of the contenders is here. Here's how they all play out (Using EditGrid). No fair? See for yourself here.

A bit of trivia. I am told that EditGrid was developed in Hong Kong in 2003. I wouldn't be surprised if students from a Uni were involved in this product.

Seems like the loser is ... uhm Excel?

Help with translating cucumis.org interface

into Tagalog ...

I am posting this in the hope that I could get some kind-hearted Pinoys to help in translating some files of Cucumis.org - a Social Network devoted to translating languages.

Just holler out so I can send parts of the files your way.

How do you learn from Creative People of centuries past?

Can you imagine picking the brains of hundreds of

history's greatest thinkers - from Leonardo da Vinci to Pablo Picasso?

Perhaps this compilation could make it a bit easier to do.

How can viewers help upgrade local (Read: Filipino) entertainment?

So asks Nestor Torre here. He noticed for example that "Filipinos make up one of the most passive and accepting audiences in the world."

Here's my prescription. Go to YouTube and be creators instead of just being consumers.

My flickr account has been spammed!

Then again, perhaps that was part of the fine print. Anyway Flickr is basically free. How can I complain?

Word of the Day: Friending

More of that in danah boyd's paper: "Friends, friendsters, and top 8*: Writing community into being on social network sites" via Cory Doctorow.

*Reference to MySpace

Attention Economics

or how to move from the science to the art (of economics)

John Hagel writes a rather thought-provoking, more like intuition- triggering, piece which makes me conclude (IMHO) how the economics of the product (information included) is steadily giving way to the economics of attention (Think: YouTube). More here. Thanks to Alexander Osterwalder

Now, when you hear/read the phrase "It's the economy, stupid!" doesn't that sound more like "Mind the gap!"?

Personal Branding Checklist

I thought I'd have to start this from scratch but this article from Jesse Warden validates the argument: "Why reinvent the wheel?" Funny though that I found this when I googled the keywords [managerial skillset checklist] for some other purpose.

Incidentally, I think I am safe on item #5 "Have a Blog / Website / MySpace, or other online presence".

Some updates on a couple of Social Software Apps

• Elggspaces is completely free (in exchange for Google adsense) with 1 Gb of space for file uploads

• Twitter supports IM.

Queen's English not so high brow any more

Thanks to Jonathan Harrington's analysis. According to him: "We may be able to relate it to changes in the class structure." More here.

No need to cringe at Pacquiao's English then.

Now let's talk about Mobile Social Software

aka Mososo

Latest app I discovered is called Jaiku.

Its 'About Page' says:

Jaiku's main goal is to bring people closer together by enabling them to share their presence. For us, presence is about everyday things as they happen - what you're up to, how you're feeling, where you're going. We offer a way to connect with the people you care about by sharing presence updates with them on the Web and mobile.

Reminds me of a grid that incorporates Malinowski's idea of phatic communion.

I'd like to call this the economics of sharing

This seems like an interesting read.

Amazon.com: Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape: Books: Henry Chesbrough

technorati tags:openbusinesssmodel, innovation

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Sometimes we take this for granted...

but there are a whole lot of people who still don't know a thing or two about basic HTML. Perhaps because of push button publishing, people just "learn drive without knowing what's under the hood". Frankly, time and again, I still get inquiries for help on how to do HTML from digital immigrants. So let me share a couple of resources: HTML Goodies is an all-time favorite. Now, if your internet access is unrealiable, you can just opt to download/unzip this and work offline. I call it Web Design in 20 minutes.

Who is your daddy?

Google Answers yields to Yahoo Answers.

Even Homer sometimes nods.

How trivial can one get?

Twitter, yet another social software, addresses the need to show friends and strangers what one is currently doing (I wonder where this fits in Maslow's hierarchy of needs). Must everyone else find out what brand underpants you are wearing?

Regardless, I still registered to take it for a spin. Could be as close as one could get to discerning desire lines (Read: PR and Marketing applications).

Quote of the Day

On Education 2.0

“The challenge isn’t whether to use these (Web 2.0) technologies or not (our children are already making that choice for themselves). The challenge before us is to capitalise on the ‘openness’ of these technologies to create local and international learning communities where our children learn from teachers and each other not just from text books.”

- Dan Ingvarson, Consultant to Editure.

Enough said. Next step. Get the Luddites out of the way.

You are what you eat. Sort of.

aka "What flavor is your personality?"

Dr. Alan Hirsch offers a "food horoscope" that can be read here. Now I understand why I like Snack crackers.

More wonderful trivia here.

Techno Retro

Here's a little bit of historical artifact. More of a replica. Altair 8800: The forerunner of the PC revolution.

Via boingboing.net.

Is this the shape of things to come?

wwwtools for education reports:

"A Terrible Decision (Graham Wegner / November 17, 2006) - South Australia’s Technology School Of the Future will be closed, to be replaced by videoconferencing and online courses."

Bad news for some people, perhaps good news for some others. I wonder how this plays out within the next few years.

Phrase of the day: Cognitive Dissonance

or WTF?! :) You would not want those kids to land on real rocks would you?
Thanks to Cory Doctorow for the link.

Old School/New School

Knowledge is power/knowledge is power

So what's the difference? Hoarding/Sharing. Guess what pays back a whole lot better? Read more here for the answer.

Ten ideas for Learning using Mobile Gadgets

Leonard Low identifies some interesting ideas which when combined might just be more powerful than the usual desktop-bound approach to learning:

• Situational/proximal
• Social/Collaborative
• Just-In-Time
• Lifelong/Informal
• Contextualised/Adaptive
• Convenient/Portable
• Personalised/Individual
• Connected
• Ubiquitous

I counted only 9, so another one could be Decentralized (Think: James Surowiecki's Wisdom of Crowds). I'd like to describe that combination as leading towards a richer, more real and more relevant learning. For more on the article, have a listen here.

21st Century Skills

Here's a list drawn up as part of a White Paper titled: Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century by Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologywith Katie Clinton, Ravi Purushotma, Alice J. Robinson, Margaret Weigel:

1. Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
   
2. Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
3. Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
4. Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
5. Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.
6. Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
7. Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
8. Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
9. Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
10. Networking (information) — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information
11. Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.
    

Note that implicit in the above skills set is metacognition or reflective learning which focuses on the learner's ability to monitor and regulate his/her learning. More of the paper here.

There is no turning back (I think)

Lex (Alexa Joyce) is upping the ante on Social Software and Education with her blog on Futurelab's work.

I remember alluding to that intersection on July 4, 2006. Nice to know I'm in good company.

My blog profile

joelogsblogprofile
Originally uploaded by joelogs.

How is your blogging behavior/pattern/habit like? This is a visual representation of my profile. It is based on Lilia Efimova's work at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2006/11/17.html

Word of the day: Crowdsourcing

Elearningpost calls it a new model for innovation particularly in Science.

Wired.com wrote about the rise of crowdsourcing here.

Imagine a future where teachers are the bad guys

"So what else is new? " You might ask.

Well that "school of thought" is being encouraged in a college in Santiago, Chile. Enter a computer game called 2065, where students battle evil and remorseless teachers. Read more here. Could be a fun way to remind ourselves to appreciate the value teaching.

Community Manager = Knowledge Champion

While the essential technical skillsets of the 21st century revolve around Web 2.0 toolsets, it is likewise about attitudes and behaviors.

Patrick Lambe and Edgar Tan tells us more here.

Nory B. Jones et al. focus on the strategic top-down perspective here.


Note: both links download as MS doc files.

Just found an online Beer Wars Game.

Even has a chat functionality tossed in. Link is here.

Discovery of the day

I just learned (courtesy of a MySpace generation member) that you can actually configure your elggspace.com learning space to sport the "look and feel" of Friendster.com or Myspace. Go to "Account Settings" >> Change Theme. Then paste CSS snippets from a suitable profile generator.

What is a FOAF file?

Friend-of-a-friend they call it. Wikipedia tells us what FOAF is (here and here), but a file? Then I found a FOAF file generator here. I am still validating its usefulness. I noticed that elggspaces.com implements it in profile-building. BTW, the technical spec side of FOAF files is here.

"Customer review" review

Flock in the spotlight. Try Kathleen Gilroy's review of useful features of a Web 2.0 browser. Even talks about OPML.

One benefit of hyperlinks. You can avoid claims of plagiarism. Now as to claims of other forms of deceit (think: unethical search engine optimization), that's another story.

How-to galore!

It evolved from ehow.com to wikihow.com. Really makes sense to pull in the wisdom of crowds and produce a whole new world of creative commons.

Quo vadis email

Sick of spam? (2003) Chat is king? (2004) Death of email? (2005) Are you ready for Social Software? (2006)

It is almost 2007. Where to, Email?

viki, tiki, giki, whatever

... I'd like to see this used extensively in schools.

I call it more immersive use of concept maps.

"Image insert" button doesn't work but image is here.

Does social necessarily mean real ?

Here's another social network(ing)* site.

"The Experience Project is a genuine community of people sharing, growing, and connecting-- while keeping real-world identities private. Be your true self and make new friends who understand you." (italics supplied)

This I got to see.

* danah boyd proposes her definition here.

Higher Order Thinking Skills and Web 2.0

I am testing the validity of mapping Web 2.0 tools to Bloom's Taxonomy
of Educational Objectives.

1. Knowledge - rss/atom
2. Understanding - blogs
3. Application - wikis
4. Analysis - (Google trends?)
5. Synthesis - evolutionary mash-ups
6. Evaluation - poll
7. Innovation* - revolutionary mash-ups (blending elements from totally novel dimensional sources)
   

* The last one is my idea. Would appreciate comments.

For the record

Not that it isn't already so. But mainly for my purposes.

Components of social software include the following (list is not exhaustive):

• web logs (blogs)
• wikis
• feed aggregators (rss/atom)
• calendars
• chat
• forums
• instant messaging
• shoutboxes
• embedded sounds (podcasts)
• embedded video (think YouTube)

And according to Timothy Fisher:

Social software transforms knowledge management into a social process, in which the knowledge is a social construct. Traditional knowledge management tools treat knowledge simply as content to be managed. Treating the knowledge as a social construct will create more relevant knowledge that can be applied in daily work. Employees are free to share what they want and how they want. They are not forced into a rigid knowledge management process or hierarchy.

More here. Funny but I've been raving about Social Software for one year yet I got around to talking about its components only now. I hope it's not a fad.

Just a bit of comparison between ning.com and elggspaces.com

Ning is pretty straightforward, template-driven, perfect for connecting; elggspaces is more complex (multilayer spaces, a lot of rss across spaces, file uploads, FOAF) yet more useful for purposive collaboration.

Forget about bumper stickers and buttons

More people (actually kids) are now into snippets (those code sets that contain "embed" and programmed on screens of their social networking sites' opening pages for a more personal flavor. Bambi Francisco shows us how Sony Pictures via Grouper is leveraging this personalization channel to (IMHO) lure the younger set back into the world of old media. More here.

Did I say forget about bumper buttons? Perhaps not entirely. If you think of embedding RFIDs in them.

Death of the newsboy

aka Where teens will get their news

In a section on User Generated Content, Bambi Francisco wrote that upwards of 75% of teens get their news from the Web, citing a study by Pew Internet and American Life. So she bets that "anyone under 10 years old will be receiving a lot of their news from News Corp's MySpace or Facebook, or some unlikely place, by the time they start caring about the news (italics mine)". She argues her point here.

Now looking back (more like a month ago), I kind of got that strange feeling here in Manila when one morning my 13 year-old son (who has a myspace account and counts as his friends Demetri Martin of "I've got 9000 friends" fame) asked me why we still got dailies tossed into the yard by the neighborhood newsboy. Then I said, well yes, we still needed to read the latest advertisments". Then again, I thought, perhaps we only needed the latest print ads on Saturdays. Bad for the newsboy.

Another casualty in the wake of the MySpace generation.

Pinoy* develops $100 PC

Thus reports Inq7.net.

Raffy Mananghaya knocked up parts that included a mini-motherboard with 256 megabytes of memory integrated with a Via C3 800 megahertz processor and a memory adaptor and a plastic briefcase.

More here. I'd like to see this as an item in instructables.com


* may also be defined according to the lyrics of an original pilipino music.

Have they (users) come of age yet?

When I go around schools to promote blogging and social software, I usually pose this challenge to educators: Are you ready for the Friendster Generation? Michael Hotrum seems to share my view when he foresees a tsunami in education. Now Stephen Dale asks local governments (in the UK?): "Are you ready for Social Software?"

I'd like to agree: How can they embrace Social Software to "Champion and Channel" when government is inherently about "Command and Control"? This resonates with sounds of an earlier post.

Set up your own social networking site

... at elggspaces.com

This is not free (e.g. First tier: up to 200 users £50 / month) but should be worth considering if you want a social web application (read: friendster, myspace, etc.) that can keep creepy characters off your children.

Word of the Day: Wirearchy

From  command-and control to champion-and-channel. Wow! I sure hope we really are getting there.  Or is it a pipe  dream?

More below.

Wirearchy :: What Is Wirearchy ? Open Source Updating, Please

technorati tags:old-school, new-school

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How do you visualize your online network?

Use vizster. Developed by Jeffrey  Heer and danah boyd at UC Berkeley, it is based on prefuse - a Java-based toolkit for building interactive information visualization applications.

vizster | visualizing online social networks

Blogged with Flock

Now they are talking and doing something about it.

Scientific American reports that:

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Southampton in England announced on November 2, 2006 that they would jointly start a new branch of science: the science of the Web.

Perhaps its inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee fears that the Web might descend into chaos, what with fakesters, phishers, etc. More here.

About time. Watch the initiative evolve here.

Indeed, Internet Explorer 7 is Social Software

In effect, that is. Point well taken. So why not use Flock instead.

How to show approval the Web 2.0 way.

Do it with an animated gif. Follow this link to see what I mean.

I didn't realize Daylight Saving Time was over.

Don't know if this connected but I thought, I'd share this. How do you teach idioms to a non-native speaker of English? Use fotos. More here.

Is this ubercool or not?

IMHO that is creativity using elements from two worlds apart, viz., smiley and rings. I also call the source of that foto, a directory of wonderful pictures. A tad better than flickr.com, I should say.

ICT Across the Curriculum notes

The "Coming of Age: An Introduction to the NEW World Wide Web" (1st edition) booklet just got a glowing review from Roger Davies.

Excerpt: "The ‘Your tasks’ opener invokes you to investigate the resources, pass them on and, fundamentally, ‘try them out in your classrooms – no need for wholesale revolution, just small-scale experimentation will be fine!’ "

Sounds like "making small shifts that make a big difference".

Disclosure: I did one chapter in the 2nd edition which should be available by January 10, 2007

MySpace + Gracenote = Copyright Protection

NOT...

To see what I mean, let's read it from Andrew McLester (via boingboing.net):

I recently came out of the studio having recorded 4 original songs that were entirely written by me and a friend. I created a new page (www.myspace.com/tinystar) to showcase our work and after downloading our songs one of the main pieces (Festival Of The Seagoat) I recieved a "copyright infringement" notice next to the song on the edit page and consequently all the songs on my page are frozen. Frustrating to say the least! I've emailed support numerous times with no response....I cannot fathom how Gracenote technology can at all be accurate, as evidenced by this caper, and in the meantime I'm stuck with a frozen page and a piece of software telling me that my hardfought creative output is not mine after all! Thanks for reading and in advance for any help!

This just in (28).

Google acquires jotspot, a wiki tool for an undisclosed amount. Read news release here.

Now with wordprocessing (Writely), spreadsheets, video (YouTube) and other features and functionalities pulled into one central learning environment, we can perhaps do away with brick and mortar schools (Well, almost). Just add students.

A lot has really changed with the advent of Web 2.0

It only takes a 19-year old to teach educators about the benefits of Social Software. Read more here. You have to read Parts 1 and 2 as well. Note to students: Check out this game he featured on the sidebar.

Mainstream media takes notice of Friendster, Myspace, YouTube, etc.

Thanks in large measure to danah boyd's (lowercase intentional) pioneering efforts, FT.com dubbed her the high priestess of internet friendship. About time Social Software gets some "real" attention.

Paradox: comedy central videos looked better on YouTube.com than on comedycentral.com

No point comparing now because of a DMCA request. More here.

Too bad "when there is money and [agents] are involved" copyright issues come into play. Might as well forget about fair (Read:educational) use.

Blogging for Luddites

I have just been "stoked" with vox.com. Everything in this piece of Social Software seems to be more push-buttony than anything I've ever tried before. You can even ask friends to blog for you via their email. Try sending email to 4c8d04202880988e@moblog.vox.com to see what I mean. Talk about user-empowerment. Time to ask granny to pitch in for me. See my first few blogs there http://joelogs.vox.com/. While you are at it, why not create an account.

Have kids, will drink and wash

Very ingenious. More of that here. Validates the ideas behind Creativity in Product Innovation by Goldenberg and Mazursky. With "toys" like this, who needs inflatable slides?

Perhaps we should have something like this in poor regions of the Philippines.

I'd like to experiment with this

... using white board markers on what else ? whiteboard. More of the refreshing idea here. Thanks Jean Aw of Notcot.org.

Web 2.0 could also mean dot.com + dot.org

Espen Andersen's second law of the internet (the first being related to FOSS) states that "every dot.com should have a dot.org to watch over it. "

He explains: "A lot of companies are dot.coms, in the sense that they have an Internet presence with an address like companyname.com. I think their customers and other stakeholders in the company should organize and take command over the companyname.org, whatever it may be. So, let's pick a company, let's pick enron.com. If there had been an enron.org that watched over enron.com, perhaps Enron wouldn't have been in the papers quite so much. " (via Rajesh Jain).

Easier said than done. For huge enterprises, that is going to be a tad difficult to implement. Perhaps not as a matter of technology but because of rigid governance structures. Read this Harvard Uni op-ed for example. The story is altogether different for start ups like notcot.com. See how they are able to blend socially networked notcot.org (Read: community supported) with their business of churning out ideas+aesthetics+amusement. So how do we build a new new economy? Start looking away from moguls.

Narcissistic Search Engine?

I have just combined Google Blog Search, Google Customized Search Engine and Google Marker to produce a search engine for my Folk Knowledge Management Framework. "What diff does that make?", you may ask. For starters, the search engine can be populated by more relevant entries. Think: ability to upload items for more precise results. It should work for me. I stress-tested it with the keyword "joelogs" and discovered that 382 entries from diverse sources reference that item. Whether this really works for other users' purposes remains to be seen. I got the idea from Harry McCracken. You can access My Search Engine here. You can even help refine the engine. No wonder it comes labelled coop in its URL.

Web 2.0 takes the office out of the office

So wrote Edward Eliot on October 23, 2006.

I sort of felt this happening, so posted something along this theme weeks before. I just don't know if I should say more.

Online Communities and Social Networking Compared

Lee LeFever gives us the lowdown between BB, Forums, etc. and Friendster, Myspace, etc.

The differences play out on the following factors:

• Use of the Member Profile
  
• Identity without Collaboration
  
• Explicit Relationships with Forums and People
  
• New Forum/Group Creation
  
• Network Centric Navigation

More here. Bottom line for Social Web Applications is that they highlight the person in the context of a community. Whether this can solve the problem of spam is unclear. To be sure, we have options for broader user empowerment.

Technorati too much for you?

Use Google Blog Search. Very straightforward. Even allows you to configure search according to time stamp of blog post. Unless you want to count the number of links in and out of blogs. That one technorati can do for you.

Same topic, different modality

I'd like to call it "The Nature, Magnitude and Motivation behind Social Software: MySpace in Focus".

The following presents divergent approaches to a powerful thesis on the subject matter:

Dominantly Text | Dominantly Video

Tell me which side of 3Rs works best for you.

Thanks to Karl Richter.

Email is so old school

Perhaps even egroups may get lame soon. (I hear an echo: Are we ready for the Friendster generation?)

Karl Richter puts it more shockingly: Email is for the elderly

Point is, that schools need to see more of the fresh side of the 3Rs (Think: Real, Rich and Relevant) of learning.

I am told that some schools are even promoting podcasting already. I remember someone giving me a heads up on that somewhere. RSS could be a good place to start. Or perhaps downloading and using Flock. Are you a Flocker yet?

Here's an experiment on turning a 2D image to 3D

How to make money off your feeds?

Try TLA - a Feedvertising program that lets you advertise right in your RSS feed. I haven't tried it though. Tell me if you have any success with that.

How do you marry online games and education?

Build "Arden" - A game designed around Shakespeare's works. More here.

Now, let's see if we can figure out the context of "Two traded pilots 'twixt the dangerous shores Of will and judgment..."

IBM is getting ready for the MySpace (Friendster, if you will) generation

Deborah Rothberg reports that Big Blue and the University of Arizona will announce on Oct. 19 a Web 2.0 classroom curriculum designed to "introduce some level of education where students get an understanding of the tools—those from wikis, those for blogging—and familiarize themselves" with questions relating to social web environments, as well as those on "how to launch, populate and grow communities." More here.

Quote of the day.

"Most workplace rumors are 95 percent accurate." "A strong motivation we have as humans is to connect with a group."

- Nicholas DiFonzo

Time to listen to wisdom of crowds?

How do you make money out of your videos?

Switch from Youtube to Revver.com - A video social network that brings together Makers, Sharers, Watchers and Advertisers. This I gotta see.

How to make a coaster.

May also happen if you are experimenting with Blu Ray.

Inq7.net seems to have seen the writing on the wall.

... well, almost.

To see what I mean, read "Of newspapers, vinyl records and phones you actually dial" and "Are days of newspapers numbered."

Joey Allarilla admits "The world is changing. Evolve or die."

How not to die? Some areas they can improve on: allowing online comments (which can be moderated anyway) and inserting more hyperlinks in articles (not to worry, they can keep readers on their website if outgoing links launch in separate windows.)

Oh and perhaps trawl the Internet for references to their articles (I think it's called trackbacks). Yes, and while they are at it, build an rss of those "feedbacks" from their readers. Here's one. There's got to be a lot more out there. Some people might have gotten tired of sending comments the old fashioned way, couldn't wait any minute longer to get a response and just decided to post their thoughts the Web 2.0 way. I sort of felt that way when I wrote letters to the editor once or twice.

You know what comparison shopping is

... but do you know what comparison writing is?

Here's a social blogging site to watch. It is called Helium Exchange.

Marshall Kirkpatrick provides an interesting review of the site which has just ended beta.

Goofice vs. MS Office vs. OOo

How much functionality do we actually need?

Go here then here to see what I mean.

If you are plain curious, follow this link.

On a side note, "can we put Quake inside MS Word to make word processing addictive?"

We must have read a lot about Social Software

Now how about Social Conferences? The foto below should give us an idea of how it looks like. More fotos here.

This just in (27).

Ryan Blitstein reports that Big Business is now taking Social Software and allied tools more seriously. About time. More here.

Actually the piece of news that deserves more attention is perhaps the jaw-dropper of an announcement that Google has agreed to buy Youtube for US$1.65 billion. More discussion here.

Seen a Creative Commons licensed board game?

It's called Dugi. Combines the simplicity of checkers and strategic design of chess. More here.

The Sysiphus Syndrome of Upgrading

... or why we are stuck with Windows, yahoogroups, email, or anything we have gotten so used to.

More here including some useful prescriptions.

Want to share your slides ala youtube?

Slideshare allows you to do that and more (e.g. tagging). So you don't need to eye the latest 4 Gb thumb drive. Techcrunch gives a good overview feed here.

I did not know that Sayyid Ali Khameini blogs

You'll find very interesting insights from him. Boingboing has more here.

Wisdom of Crowds in action, again.

Test your ability to predict the market and put your money where your mouth is (well almost), any market. Yes even predicting the most popular word for 2006 (2004: blogs, 2005: podcasting).

It is called inklingmarkets.com. Go to this site. More of similar sites here.

I don't know about you but sometimes ...

... I'd like to believe in inadvertent sticky confluence of minds.

On the 2nd of October, I posted this asking whether Education 2.0 is in sight yet. Then the next day, Mark Wagner, wrote this, posing a similar question, "Administrators and Technology - Are We Seeing the Signs of Change?". I don't think he even knows about my earlier post.

Perhaps it is time to tame Social Software

Suw Charman documents, in beta mode (Read: draftish, perhaps because of this), Danah Boyd's talk at the BlogTalk Reloaded Conference.

One major point I managed to glean follows:

The language of techies differs radically from those of users.

Techies | Users

beta: testing | not profitable yet

great software: user-friendly | can I add you as a friend?

context: what context? | do I know you?

Read more here: BlogTalk Reloaded: danah boyd. Strange Attractor: Picking out patterns from the chaos that is the blogosphere.

technorati tags:DanahBoyd, socialsoftware

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Is Education 2.0 in sight yet?

Volumes have been written and spoken about ICT's role in economics, politics and society. Education being at the intersection and a subset of those domains cannot resist the "onslaught" of the transforming power of ICT. Run a search of your favorite school in places like Myspace, Flickr or Youtube to see what I mean. I tried it once. I keyed in [ateneo grade school] in Friendster's search tool and got more than 1000 entries. It seems like the venerable 3Rs are taking a new form: from Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetic to Real, Rich and Relevant. Would be nice to see how educators manage this evolution.

Just thought I'd share this

I conduct a course on Business Systems Simulations and found Beer Wars a rather interesting game (my students may think otherwise though). Revolves around the theme of Supply Chain Management. Sources are here and here.

I promised to post my blog being a website as art


... so here it is. Now I'll let you in on a secret. This "art form" could actually be useful as an initial diagnostic tool for evaluating the structure of clients' websites. Of course you need not include this art form in the diagnostic report. Tell me what you think.

This is a continuing challenge to the digital immigrants

... aka Baby boomers amongst us, here are the skill sets that are second nature to digital natives (Generations X & Y, et seq.):

• using search engines
• inserting links
• inserting images
• creating trackbacks (blog about another blog)
• using aggregators (Read: RSS)
• using italics, bold face, etc.
• differentiating media types (avi, mov, 3gp, mp4)
• unzipping files

all in a broadly collaborative sense.

Suw Charman observes in a larger context:

"We have a glimpse of how this works, but when the MySpace generation comes into business, they will expect this, and they will know better how it works, and how to sidestep the red tape that can get in the way of getting things done."

Now, as for the rest of us, at least perhaps we know how to upload files. So I will ask the 21st century Luddites, as I asked elsewhere: "Are you ready for the friendster generation?"

Just a marker.


Milenyo: The strongest typhoon to directly hit Metro Manila in 11 years.

I used Writely to blog this.

Indeed, this is the next level of open source empowerment. Down to the grassroots (Read:basic education). Check out the webtop tool here .

This is what I've been waiting for...

Social Capital, Social Value, Social Money. Now you have a wonderful way to recover the "pecuniary" equivalent of those unreturned books, magazines and umbrellas that your "friends" borrowed ages ago. Try Billmonk.com to see what I mean.

As an aside, a theoretical framework could perhaps be found here and here.

Web page as art.

Very interesting way to look at your website. Tells you whether a website is primarily underpinned by structure (Yahoo: left) or by content (boingboing: right). Here's the source. Will post mine soon.

Forget about open source, here comes open source

Technology moves so fast that while traditional firms (Read: Enterprise 1.0) and academic institutions (Read: Schools 1.0) may be actively pushing for open source, not a few are still blissfully clueless about the next wave of open source. Mash-ups and Web-based productivity tools are the order of the day. I am talking about Web 2.0 which could be a compelling argument for shifting the desktop to the webtop. For a discussion on the technical merits of a wholesale shift to the webtop, read Ebrahim Ezzy's article Webified Desktop Apps vs Browser-based Apps.

But as K.C. Jones of TechWeb Technology News reports:

"Web 2.0 is about people and Enterprise 2.0 will be less about less [sic] top-down structure and more about structure developed freely through lower-level interactions, said Harvard Business School Associate Professor Andrew McAfee and Socialtext CEO Ross Mayfield.

'The technology is not different,' Mayfield said. 'There are enough people, with a critical mass, using the Net long enough that we're beginning to see advanced social behavior.'

Mayfield said businesses should be asking themselves whether their Intranets are made of people. He added that the Web works well and businesses should be trying to replicate it behind their firewalls."

Mayfield and McAfee recently spoke at Interop New York.

"They explained that executives often fear turning over control to employees but giving employees control can actually increase their adoption of new software, cut down on corporate spam, shorten meeting times and increase the speed at which information is disseminated through a company."

More of that in Web, Wikis: Models For Business Software, Panelists Say - E-business & Business Technology News by TechWeb.

Now how soon can we see the school of the future (Read: Schools 2.0)? Sauce for the goose ...

technorati tags:Web2.0, Open+Source, Webtop, Schools2.0

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Plugging time again.

Coming of Age: An Introduction to the NEW World Wide Web.

I think I've found a solution for online ADHD problems.

Ziki allows you to

Find, Be Found & Connect.

I'd like to call it the social web app aggregator.

Oh and don't forget to use Flock as your social browser.

On the economics of networks and collaboration

Yochai Benkler argues that "online cooperation is spurring a new mode of production beyond the two classic pillars of economics, the firm and the market. 'Peer production,' as he calls work such as open-source software, file-sharing, and Amazon.com Inc.'s (AMZN ) millions of customer product reviews, creates value with neither conventional corporate oversight nor market incentives such as payment. 'The economic role of social behavior is increasing, he says. 'Things that would normally just dissipate in the air as social gestures become economic products.'" More here.

How about that for the evolution of economy? Freakonomics? World is Flat? Tipping Point? And the list goes on and on.

Some ponderable points on globalization

• respect for local traditions and cultures without imposing a globalization based merely on economic criteria
• respect for the human person as the main protagonist in the process of development
• avoiding excessive concentration of power at higher levels and allowing institutions such as the family, local communities and ethnic groups sufficient autonomy [to play their primary roles and] carry out their functions

Implication:

"Discernment is needed in order to avoid accepting a vision of globalization that sees itself as part of a postmodern process in which liberty is given an absolute value and a place for tradition and religion is denied."

Key here is how to strike a negotiated balance. (items in italics, mine)

And here is a way to manage information overload.


Go to Feed 101 to get you started on managing info ad nauseam.

Here's a clarion call to all Lasallians.

If you have a soft spot for the underserved, disenfranchised, the marginalised, etc., then volunteerism might sound sweet to you. Nurse your bleeding heart and take your desire line to the next level. Check out The Lasallian Volunteers Program - our space. Link is here.

Here's a Young Top Technology Innovator for 2006


You gotta love her ability to blend theatre, gaming and IT. Name is Jane McGonigal. See her projects here.

Web2.0 concept map, version 2

Web2.0 concept map, version 2
Originally uploaded by Spotrick.

Here's a 21 August 2006 version of Web 2.0 concept map. BTW I used a rich edit (italics, bold, quote, link) capability script for Firefox on flickr.com

This just in (26).

Butch Abad wrote a compelling piece on how the education system could/should/would be improved. Drawing on prescriptions from Howard Gardner and Adam Kahane, Abad seems to suggest that collaboration is key. No one can argue with that. Thing is, people need to be more upfront with their agendas in order for collaboration to happen. Deal or no deal?

More of the article:

Creative approach to education reform - INQ7.net

The Importance of User Experience

The Importance of User Experience
Originally uploaded by soldierant.

Now the focus comes down to the user.

Flickr User Model, v0.3

Flickr User Model, v0.3
Originally uploaded by soldierant.

Here's a brilliant piece of work on the ecology of a social software application. Case in point: Flickr.com. Take note that community of users should be at the heart of any piece of social web app.

How can you take the concept of Social Software to the next level?

Use sneakers as identity proxy. This seems to be what sneakerplay is doing. It features some sort of a fight club where sneakers take center stage in battles for attention. Not exactly old hat. At least they eliminate gore from the arena. Now for those familiar with ning.com, sneakerplay's idea should not be difficult to clone. Check out Girl on Girl.

Web 2.0 needs to lose the social software thing, please

Thus spake Gareth Knight:

"Following up from the d.Construct post yesterday, I wanted to talk about the apparent obsession with social software at the moment, and to ask for comments on why you think it's so. Seriously, there are so many other things that can be done!"

More of the article in Web 2.0 needs to lose the social software thing, please | Internet Marketing News and Blog | E-consultancy.com.

I posted something along this line at Pinoyblog2.com about 82 days ago.

Just thought I'd share this... for our children.

>> Waste Trading Market: The Philippine Business for
>> the Environment, the Ayala Foundation/ Ayala Group,
>> DENR and the Makati and Muntinlupa city govts invite
>> you to....THE WASTE TRADING MARKETS! The WASTE
>> MARKETS aim to make recycling convenient, safe and
>> accessible, especially for those who frequent
>> commercial shopping areas. They also aim to show
>> that Filipinos CAN make recycling a habit. Please
>> help spread the word. For more information, contact
>> Nancy Pilien at the Phil. Business for the
>> Environment, 6352650.
>>
>> ...... Every first Friday of the month: GoldCrest
>> Car Park, Ayala Center (along Arnaiz Ave)
>> ...... Every third Friday of the month: Alabang Town
>> center, Alabang - Zapote Road .
>>
>> WHAT THE WASTE MARKETS OFFER!
>> Trade scrap paper for new (office/ mimeo) paper!
>> Trade used ink cartridges for new!
>> Sell your electronic waste (e.g. junk computers)
>> and old / broken appliances
>> Sell your used lead acid batteries - don't let them
>> leach in your garage!
>> Redeem any of the following for cash: PET plastic
>> containers and other
>> plastics, aluminum / tin cans, scrap glass
>> Drop off points also provided for junk cellphones/
>> cellphone batteries/styrofoam.
>>

technorati tags:recycling

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Mobile Phone Programming for Entrepreneurs

A collaboration between MIT and the University of Nairobi, Kenya, it is designed as

"a project-based course that will allow students to learn enough of the basics of mobile phone programming to design and launch their own mobile phone application."

Can't we have programs like this in the Philippines? I mean in collaboration with MIT? After all we are a Third World country.

Now, let's have a little fun.



Got the inspiration from boingboing.net.