What's with the plurking and all that?

In a June 2008 article, Darren Rowse put the Plurk karma (Read: credibility) bit under the microscope in "Top 10 Plurk Users Statistics - What’s the Karma Algorithm". This he does by pulling in some figures into a profile of a "typical" top plurker. That seems like a pretty neat way of helping us make sense of what makes plurk more interesting than twitter. Still, for purposes of online reputation management, it's nice to know that the data set indicates activity in the short term as the long term.

Yet something tells me the system can be easily "gamed". Perhaps one question is, "Will gaming the system be good or bad?" A quick answer could be "It depends." As to which variables the answer correlates is something I'm still trying to figure out.

E-commerce is incomplete

... without a payment mechanism.

And that can happen when there is an exchange of value, typically involving some form of currency or anything that is "capable of pecuniary estimation". We can talk about private capital or social capital, but the latter is best left to another discussion.

So just to focus on private capital, perhaps one example will do. Disclosure: I have more experience with another payment mechanism for personal business. At the enterprise level, the following "About Us" narration of services that YESpayments - The Payment Processing Professionals offers -- especially in Manila, might just be worth considering.

A little Googling led me to this cached edition:

"About YESPayments™ YESpayments™ is an Internet credit card payment gateway. It accepts credit card transactions from sponsored merchants over the Internet and processes them through Acquiring Banks in Hong Kong and the Philippines. YESpayments™, handles the technical interface, provides risk management information and daily reconciliation. YESpayments™ has been in operation since December 2000. Technology and Security To protect card details as they are sent over the Internet data is encrypted using the Industry standard known as SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). YESpayments™ uses 128bit SSL, the highest commercially available encryption. YESpayments.com has been independently audited and assessed by a risk management company to ensure compliance with PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard). In addition, each month, YESpayments™ is “probed” for weaknesses by an independent security company to ensure the highest protection against intrusion."

Now for a more updated version that I freely edit.

YESpayments is designed for organizations that are serious about conducting business on the Internet. Incidentally, it has been processing Internet payments since 2003 in the Philippines, which makes 2008 YES IT Corp's 15th year in the Philippines. Here's one bit of information on what gives real value in any business -- people. "YesPayment offers 24/7 personal support in the Philippines."

Hoping they keep it up.

Creative Commons and Business Models

Here's a documentary about Creative Commons licensing in the publishing industry. Could perhaps also solve IP issues in the academe?

As I've always maintained, "Share whatever is commonplace, make money off what's esoteric ... unless you want to do charity work."

via Cory Doctorow.

Why teach about Social Media?

Take it from Howard Rheingold: "Human agencies are important here." (or something to that effect.)

More here.

99% male & 94 % female teeners play video games

That's according to a recent survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Make your conclusion. It cuts both ways.

Still this arstechnica article says "kids are alright: gamers are adjusted and civic-minded".

Online Show and Tell

For those of us too scared to step up and make a real-time face-to-face pitch, flowgram just be what what we need. You don't want to waste your bright ideas, do you?

Should we live under a rock?

In a Scientific American article/blog titled How I Stole Someone's Identity, Herbert H. Thompson writes a how-to about an experiment in identity theft. Perhaps someone could turn this into a cautionary tale?

More related SciAm articles here and here.

I like

Photo credit: polytropia on flickr.com

Here it is in action:



Thanks to John Brownlee.

And here's a sample soundcloud music mix. BTW It's called a Korg DS-10 synthesizer.

Phil Kotler, Al Ries, Ned Roberto: Where's the intersection?

And that should include Ardy Roberto.

This post demonstrates how marketing gurus can get get some good attention even if they don't advertise on TV. Then again, perhaps this post should be titled: Ned and Ardy Roberto releases marketing business solutions book.

Which reminds me to share some 2005-vintage Marketing nuggets from the top-of-mind Guru himself: Phil Kotler.

Here's a snippet from an interview:

Question: TV advertising seems to be losing its effectiveness. What are alternative ways to get attention?

Kotler: The average American is exposed to several hundred ad messages a day and is trying to tune out. TV advertising is losing its effectiveness because of growing advertising clutter, the increasing number of channels, the availability of zapping mechanisms, and reduced watching of television by certain groups. The result is that marketers must consider other methods of getting consumer attentions.

Here are a number of possibilities:

• Sponsorships. Companies have put their names on stadiums, on whole teams and on individual athletes in order to gain exposure.
  
• Mentions on talk shows. During his evening show, David Letterman sent a camera crew out to buy Snickers candy bars and ended up talking about it on three subsequent shows, including when Mars sent a whole van of Snickers to feed the audience.
• Product placement. In the movie Die Another Day, James Bond drove an Aston Martin, used a Sony cell phone and prominently featured an Omega wristwatch. Products are also mentioned in novels—in fact, Bulgari commissioned a whole mystery novel to be written called The Bulgari Connection.
• Street-level promotions. Companies have hired actors and actresses to walk in busy areas and ask passersby to take a snapshot of them using their new camera phone. Hopefully the picture takers are impressed and tell others about the new camera phone.
• Celebrity endorsements. Michael Jordon's endorsements gave a boost to Nike shows, McDonald's, Hanes underwear, and Rayovac batteries. Ex-Senator Bob Dole's surprising endorsement of Viagra put Viagra on the nation's mind.
• Body advertising. College kids agreed to paste Dunkin' Donuts logos on their foreheads during an NCAA basketball tournament."

Care to add to that? I'm thinking along the lines of assailing other senses. Imagine if you can smell "aromatic advertisement".

Don LaFontaine, 68, RIP

Angels in heaven must be enjoying his all too familiar deep baritone voice .

Here's a link to a recent interview with the "Trailer King".

Why do I get the feeling I'm a magpie?

Last night, I got wind of the launch of Google's browser.  Next, I  received  a quick heads up from Graham Glass on the merits of using it.

Then found  Techcrunch's  Don Reisinger's  glowing  review:

"Google announced Chrome yesterday and the company has already offered Windows XP and Vista owners the opportunity to try it out. And although I've only been able to use it for just a little while, Google Chrome is not only one of the fastest browsers I've ever used, it's easily one of the best.

The Google Chrome install was quick and easy. In a matter of seconds (literally), I downloaded the application from the company's site and installed it on my PC. Once up, Chrome asked to import the data from Firefox and I was off." 

 Guess what I did?

Teaching gifted students + moving some of my blog posts

Tamara Fisher, a K-12 gifted education specialist offers a Gifted and Talented Education (GT) list which although written from a Montanan perspective, perhaps could resonate well with everyone who recognizes the value of gifted education in the larger scheme of things.

She starts with:

"GT is NOT a reward for kids who behave well in class and turn in perfect work. Rather it IS an academic necessity for children who learn differently. Their learning and abilities are significantly different from the norm. Yes, some gifted kids do behave well and turn in perfect work, but so do many high-achieving, hard-working, teacher-pleaser kids. Gifted kids can also be the ones who act up in class or who don’t turn in ANY work because they’re sick of learning about pronouns for the fifth year in a row when they had it the first time. "

More here. Thanks to Mary Laltoo for the lead to the link.

Incidentally, I've been officially recruited by Tessa as guest blogger at Meta-Mentoring to support her foray back into Gifted Education. (She used to teach in the MAGIS program of the Ateneo de Manila Grade School.)

You may wish to follow my less random thoughts there.

Then I found this too...

Educational Uses for the Nintendo DS (2007) by John Rice

Now let's look at some research on video games

... in the classroom.

"The paper presents a number of examples of the use of such games, and tries to determine likely trends in their use in such an environment. Of significance is an examination of the obstacles that teaching staff encounter in attempting to use such software during lesson times, and how some staff have overcome these obstacles."

This was circa 2003, so handhelds nowadays could swing the results differently.

Use of Computer and Video Games in the Classroom

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: education school)

This has gotta have some value

... to educational leaders. I hope.

That post is a little dated, but could already be mainstream by now: "School Lesson Plans Use Themes from Latest Pokemon Video Games to Teach Science".

Now I wonder how Nintendogs can fit in the Curriculum. Social Studies?

Who is your Grandma?

Guess it's never too late to start learning how to play video games!

Letting Go is a Life Skill

Didn't know adults could also get real world lessons from Sesame Street. More about separation lessons here.

Video Games that Make Us Smart

Just parking ideas about a wikibook on the value of video games (like Nintendo DS - anyone familiar with PictoChat?) for learning beyond the classroom. Suddenly, I'm reminded of a line that goes "Let's go get it!" in Timon & Pumba's bug tetris game.

So I get this 502 error

... then I thought I just needed to clear my computer's cache, cookies, temp internet files, etc. Instinctively, I launched Google search. This is what I got:


502 Error: Gmail Users Cut Off from Their Accounts.

I hope this is not a sign of a meltdown.

Quote of the day

"The Internet does not have a user's manual, so click away."

I searched Google for the author and found nothing, so I'm tempted to claim the quote.

But beyond that, it's more about the inherent difficulty of hand-holding digital immigrants that sometimes becomes a source of frustration when teaching this technology. Meanwhile, the digital natives collaborate and frolic on the web with each other.