Judy Smith: Learning Technologies

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 03:56:10 GMT

UIEtips Article: Tips for Designing Powerful RIAs: An Interview with David Malouf and Bill Scott. UIEtips 12/06/06: Tips for Designing Powerful RIAs: An Interview with David Malouf and Bill Scott In this issue of UIEtips, we've put together some of the best parts of the discussion Jared Spool and Josh Porter recently had with Bill Scott and David Malouf. You'll read what David and Bill think about choosing AJAX versus Flash, what's a good starting point for learning these technologies, and how design patterns can help with the development process. [UIE Brain Sparks]

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 03:41:16 GMT

Turning 50.

It’s been an unusual week. On December 3 I turned 50. On Dec 8 I announced that I’m leaving InfoWorld and joining Microsoft. It’s not a coincidence. When I saw 50 looming, a couple of years ago, I started to get really clear about what I want to do with the next 25. I’ve been laying out the vision to anyone who will listen, and I’ll continue to do so here, but first things first. Yesterday’s announcement left a couple of questions unasked and unaswered, so without further ado:

Q: Are you relocating to Redmond?

A: No. I’ll continue to work from my home office in New Hampshire. At first I’ll be spending maybe one week in four in Redmond, because there’s a lot of connecting to do. In the long run I may wind up traveling almost that much, but I hope to locations elsewhere than Redmond as often as not.

In January, for example, I’ll be speaking at Techology, Knowledge, and Society in Cambridge UK. And in May, at GOVIS in New Zealand. As was true for my recent talks in Guadalajara and Ann Arbor, I don’t expect to encounter any Silicon Valley regulars at these events. I do expect to give and to receive important insights about how people everywhere can use infotech to further their occupational, educational, personal, social, and civic agendas.

Q: What will happen to your weblog.infoworld.com/udell archive?

A: I’ve experienced namespace disruption before, and am very keen to avoid it this time around. Fortunately it’s in InfoWorld’s best interest to preserve my blog archive. Worst case, the material will be rehosted because nobody else at InfoWorld uses Radio UserLand anymore. In that case, I’ve offered to help redirect the current namespace to a different one. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, but I hope there won’t be a problem.

Q: Why would you work for them? Not since Standard Oil has such a brutal vicious rapacious thuggish company with such power existed.

A: That question, in private email from someone I deeply respect, reminded me that yesterday’s Q and A left some important things unsaid. In particular, although I mentioned Ray Ozzie and Kim Cameron and Jean Paoli and Jim Hugunin and JJ Allaire, I egregiously failed to mention such equally important folks as:

Tim Fahlberg, who wants to use screencasting to reinvent math education, and who was thrilled that I picked up on his mission and amplified it in InfoWorld, but who because of that only gained a tiny bit more of the exposure he deserves.

Dan Thomas, who’s pumping the operational data of city government out onto the web where, despite all my efforts so far, nobody except me sees that it’s there or imagines what to do with it.

Mike Frost, who’s building out a version of the energy web today instead of waiting for government to never do it.

To these stories I’ll add my own NHPR commentaries about online-map-enabled community work, rediscovery of the local library, and the social capital we can build when we work from home.

My proposal was to be an evangelist for the Net, to continue discovering and telling these kinds of stories, and to use them as the framework within which to explore and explain Microsoft’s current and emerging technologies.

When I met with Jeff Sandquist I had just finished this podcast with Jim Russell. It’s a story about migration and the mobility of intellectual capital, refracted through Jim’s experience with the Pittsburgh diaspora. Neither Microsoft’s nor any other vendor’s technologies are discussed. I’m certain that the ideas Jim lays out in this podcast will inspire new business models for social software, but it’s all rather speculative.

I explained to Jeff that it had taken me most of a day to interview Jim Russell, then edit our rambling two-hour discussion down to something more coherent. And I said: “Reality check, you’re OK with that?” He said yes. I do not regard that answer as evidence of thuggishness or rapaciousness. I regard it as a sign of enlightenment, and I am calibrating my expectations accordingly.

[Jon Udell]

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 03:39:22 GMT

Being here, being there.

Mike Champion raises an interesting point that applies to Microsoft but also more broadly:

The culture at MS is very F2F-oriented…if you’re out of sight, you have to work hard not to be out of mind.

But then he adds:

Geographic distance will help keep you from getting sucked into the groupthink of whatever group you’re in. Microsoft collectively needs to be constantly reminded what the world looks like to people whose view isn’t fogged up by our typical drizzle or distracted by the scenery on the sunny days.

We’re entering an era in which our personal, social, and professional lives are increasingly network-mediated. Trust-at-a-distance is a new possibility, with economic ramifications that everyone from Yochai Benkler to Jim Russell is trying to figure out. As someone who’s worked remotely for 8 years, and is about to work remotely for a company with relatively few remote employees, this question is extremely interesting to me.

On the one hand, I’ve learned that I can accomplish a lot because I spend an abormal percentage of my waking hours in flow rather than in meetings. I’ve also learned that network-mediated interactions can be more productive than F2F interactions. Consider my August screencast with Jim Hugunin, or my May screencast with Anders Hejlsberg, or indeed any of the other screencasts in that series. They’re all scheduled events, mediated by telephone and screensharing. I can’t see how physical colocation would improve them.

On the other hand, there’s the “watercooler” effect: being in a place, you see and hear and smell things that aren’t otherwise transmitted through the network. I have no doubt whatsoever that shared physical space matters in ways we can’t begin to describe or understand.

But as collaboration in shared virtual space takes its rightful place alongside collaboration in shared physical space, shouldn’t a company whose products are key enablers of virtual collaboration be eating its own dogfood?

Of course things are never as black-and-white as they appear. So I’m going to bookmark this posting and return to it in six months. Hopefully by then I’ll know more about the value of being here and of being there.

[Jon Udell]

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 03:36:30 GMT

Trailing-edge requirements for a community app.

One of the projects I’m tackling on sabbatical is a community version of LibraryLookup. The service I wanted to create is described here: an RSS feed that’s updated when a book on your Amazon wishlist becomes available in your local library. Originally I planned to build a simple web application that would register Amazon wishlist IDs and produce custom RSS feeds for each registrant. But as I thought about what would make this service palatable to a community, I saw two problems with that approach:

Familiarity. Most folks will not be familiar with RSS. If the primary goal is to get people using the service, rather than to evangelize RSS, it should use the more familiar style of email notification.
Deployability. A web application needs to be hosted somewhere. In most communities, the library won’t be able to host the service on its own infrastructure. But if it’s hosted elsewhere, there will be a (rational) reluctance to take a dependency on that provider.

To address the first concern, I’m doing this as an old-fashioned email-based app. You subscribe or unsubscribe by sending email with a command and a wishlist ID in the Subject: header. And you receive notifications about book availability by way of email.

To address the second concern, I’m doing it as a client-side Python script, so that the only dependency is some version of Python and an Internet connection.

Because a library might not even be able to dedicate an email address for this purpose, I’m exploring the use of Gmail as the communication engine. In order for that to work, Python has to be able to make secure and authenticated POP and SMTP connections. Happily, it can.

The recipe for connecting Python to Gmail’s POP service is trivial:

import poplib
p = poplib.POP3_SSL(’pop.gmail.com’)
p.user(’USERNAME’)
p.pass_(’PASSWORD’)

The recipe for connecting Python to Gmail’s SMTP service is less obvious:

import smtplib,
s = smtplib.SMTP(”smtp.gmail.com”)
s.ehlo(’smtp.gmail.com’)
s.starttls()
s.ehlo(’smtp.gmail.com’)
auth = ‘x00USERNAMEx00PASSWORD’
eauth = base64.b64encode(auth)
s.putcmd(”AUTH PLAIN”)
s.putcmd(eauth)

This won’t work with no authentication, but neither will it work with the SMTP module’s login() which uses the wrong authentication type (i.e., LOGIN rather than PLAIN, I think).

Any POP/SMTP servers can be used, of course, so there’s no dependency on Gmail here, but it’s nice to see that Gmail can easily be pressed into service if need be.

It feels retro and trailing-edge to do an email-based app but, in order to make it familiar and deployable that seems like the right approach.

[Jon Udell]

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 02:03:57 GMT

CHIL, Electronic Jeeves.

Communication tools often force the user to adapt human communication methods to the needs of the technology. The partners in the CHIL project are attempting to turn the tables, and to put human needs first in the development of new communication technologies.

CHIL is, at time of writing, still in progress. However the project partners have already developed some fascinating communication tools to assist human beings in their day-to-day interactions with others. The context for these interactions is the meeting room, lecture or classroom.

[Technology News Daily -]

Sat, 14 Oct 2006 02:16:45 GMT

Great quote.

This is a great passage from Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson:

“Your younger nerd takes offense quickly when someone near him begins to utter declarative sentences, because he reads into it an assertion that he, the nerd, does not already know the information being imparted. But your older nerd has more self-confidence, and besides, understands that frequently people need to think out loud. And highly advanced nerds will furthermore understand that uttering declarative sentences whose contents are already known to all present is part of the social process of making conversation and therefore should not be construed as aggression under any circumstances.”

I don’t think the above is always true but there are a good number of our fellow nerds for whom this is pretty accurate.

[Nerdherding for Beginners]

Sat, 14 Oct 2006 02:07:44 GMT

IT Security Industry Becomes Proactive.

Reducing security breaches is a key business priority for CIOs, and the security industry is addressing this priority as it moves to the next phase of its evolution, according to Gartner, Inc. This next phase for the security market will integrate security into each new wave of technology when it enters the market, not after a security attack.

[Technology News Daily -]

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 04:03:15 GMT

Talking LR and convergence on the radio in Virginia. A big thank you to WINA 1070 Newsradio in Charlottesville, VA for having me on the air Tuesday afternoon to talk convergence. The marvelously nice host Coy Barefoot put up with me for a good half hour as we went through an essay I recently wrote detailing the changes in the different media industries. Give a listen or download the podcast if you'd like, courtesy of The Charlottesville Podcasting Network's Sean Tubbs. Lost Remote, October 5, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old]

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 03:08:03 GMT

Konica Minolta shows wearable display prototype.

(InfoWorld) - Konica Minolta is developing a lightweight, holographic wearable display, a prototype of which was on display this week at the Ceatec exhibition in Chiba, Japan.

The Holographic See-Through Browser prototype resembles a pair of eyeglasses and uses a prism with a thickness of 3.5 millimeters and a holographic element to reduce the weight of the display to 27 grams.

Konica Minolta has just begun development of the lightweight display and is looking for an application where the device could be useful, said Hiroshi Itou, an assistant manager at the business development group of Konica Minolta Technology Center Inc. Possible applications under consideration include giving workers access to an instruction manual or allowing commuters to watch a video while riding a train, he said.

In a video demonstration of the technology, Konica Minolta showed how a user could watch a motorcycle race on the display while walking around their house. In this demonstration, the see-through image of the game appeared to be float in the user's line of sight.

The display image is produced by a small attachment above the glasses, which contains an LED (light-emitting diode) that projects the image through a condenser lens and a prism. Once the image travels through the prism, it passes through the display where it is projected onto the holographic element.

The display attachment on the glasses is connected by a cable that leads to a small, wearable device.

By Sumner_Lemon@idg.com (Sumner Lemon). [InfoWorld: Top News]

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 02:16:28 GMT

On Avatars and Identity. For many undergrads, college is as much an experiment in identity as it is a pursuit of knowledge. So itâ€™s no wonder why Second Life strikes a chord with students: The virtual world, which lets users create their own fanciful avatars, offers almost limitless possibilities for self-presentation, as The Christian Science Monitor observes.Bill Moseley, a professor who teaches a course in Second Life at Pepperdine University, says that about 70 percent of his students create Second Life avatars that look similar to their real-world selves. But the other 30 percentâ€”including students who switch genders and, often, speciesâ€”look â€œstrikingly differentâ€� in their virtual bodies, he says.But technical problems occasionally stand in the way of clever self-presentation, as Scott James, a student from Mr. Moseleyâ€™s class, points out:At one point, when he tried to put new clothing on his avatar, Reign Buchanan, the words â€œno imageâ€� appeared instead of a head. â€œI was pretty much missing a face,â€� he sa The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog, October 5, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old]

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 02:07:53 GMT

Taking Fake News Seriously. By way of Doc Searls we learn that a new study finds that The Daily Show "is just as substantive as network coverage". The study, "No Joke: A Comparison of Substance in The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Broadcast Network Television Coverage of the 2004 Presidential Election Campaign," will be published next summer by the [...] AssortedStuff, October 5, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old]

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 02:01:09 GMT

Autumn is EduConferencePalooza Time. Leaves are falling (somewhere) and it's time to get the luggage out and truck off to an educational conference. Or not, stay at home, put your feet up, and jump into an online conference! This dog's bowl is a bit full the next few months of conference, and conference-like activity. Sorry, but I am likely the one ed tech NOT going to the EDUCAUSE annual conference in Dallas. Eeek, crowds of 10,000 scare me. Maybe someone can send me a conference bag or some Blackboard swag.. No, there is too much going on, and the big show is... well so big. So let me toot some horns for some other events, especially ones I am associated with The NMC Online Conference on Digital Media October 24-25, 2006 is associated with our work for the MacArthur Foundation's Series on Digital Media and Learning, a project involving the heaviest of heavy hitter academic authors. Our 2-day event wil feature sessions associated with the series' themes: Identity and self-image, Credibility CogDogBlog, October 5, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old]

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 01:34:40 GMT

PowerPoint is 2.0-fied with SlideShare. Very cool-- after reading on TextCrunch about Introducing SlideShare: Power Point + YouTube I checked out the site to see its one of those betas. But you can ask to get in, adn I got an account before I had finished lunch. TextCrunch is right- this is YouTube for PowerPoint, even the interface is a dead ringer for the popular video sharing site. You upload those heavy, creaky, bullet laden PPTs (20 Mb limit), and Slideshare converts it to a Flash format, that can be embedded in a page (see below), direct URL linked (once the site goes public), tag shows, share them, and all the now run of the mill groovy social software stuff. My "slidespace" showing slide shows I have uploaded As you search, browse tags, and look at a Slideshare page, it is just the same function as YouTube: And from here, you can thumb through the slides, flip to full screen mode (which looks great). They even consider slides as "micro-content", so via the URl you can link directly to sl CogDogBlog, October 5, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old]

Sun, 01 Oct 2006 22:27:17 GMT

Last Day to Guarantee Conference Proceedings. We're a little more than two weeks away from the start of the UI11 Conference and we're just putting the finishing touches on everything. If you've been hearing about the conference but can't attend, you can do the next best thing and order a full set of conference proceedings on CD.

[UIE Brain Sparks]

Sun, 01 Oct 2006 22:22:45 GMT

UIE Virtual Seminar: The Visual Design of Web Applications. In this Virtual Seminar, Hagan Rivers, a pioneer web application developer, will cover strategies for creating both usable and aesthetically pleasing web applications for your customers. (You can find the virtual seminar details here. )

[UIE Brain Sparks]

Sun, 01 Oct 2006 22:21:05 GMT

The Bug Hunter, Always at Play . Timothy McCracken, an amiable guy who works for Firaxis Games in Hunt Valley, Md., has what is either a gamer's dream job or the classic "be careful what you wish for" sort of gig. By Mike Musgrove. [washingtonpost.com - Technology - Industry News, Policy, and Reviews]

Sat, 23 Sep 2006 04:14:33 GMT

HP lawyer gives blow-by-blow of leak probe. The Hewlett-Packard surveillance campaign ranged from internal monitoring of e-mail and instant messages to physical surveillance of an HP board member and at least one journalist, according to one of the lawyers at the firm recently retained by the company to investigate its conduct in the matter.

[Computerworld Breaking News]

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 01:40:27 GMT

ATM Maker Readies Anti-Hack Patch. A high-tech scammer may have used an easily obtained default pass code to reprogram an ATM into giving out free money. With 75,000 cash machines in service, the manufacturer says it's developing a software update to force careless operators to change their codes before the cash scam gets out of hand. By Kevin Poulsen. [Wired News: Top Stories]

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 05:44:07 GMT

It all changed: a breakdown by industry and how to win. BY STEVE SAFRAN MANAGING EDITOR LOST REMOTE Itâ€™s been eight years of preaching convergence here at Lost Remote, and the changes just in the last several months finally have us heaving a sigh of relief. Hearing â€œit will never happenâ€� for this long can make it tough to stick to your beliefs. We're just as plagued with naysayers as any website. Now there are so many convergence developments that itâ€™s time to put them into context and look at exactly how your business and your life as a communications consumer is changing. I donâ€™t deal in predictions. There are too many people out there doing that, and they have long since been discredited. Instead, this is simply the logical scenario based upon the current and developing technologies, along with some common sense. CABLE AND ISPs: Free WiFi changes your life forever. The monopoly or virtual monopoly you have providing web service is gone. The high prices are gone. The very high prices of access via laptop cell cards are gone. Instea Lost Remote, September 20, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old]

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 04:00:25 GMT

Video explodes. A global study by Accenture -- which I find only at Media Guardian -- reports that nearly 40 percent of internet users download and watch videos on the web and -- get this -- 54 percent of young people want to create or share their own content on the web. "The global study by consultancy Accenture found that audiences want more control over where and when they watch footage, and they want to make more of their own." Amen to that. "But there is some good news for the future of television -- people would still prefer to watch downloads of video footage on their TV rather than their computer," says the Guardian. Well, I'd say that is actually good news for the TV set and not at all for TV networks and producers, for it means that we will be freed from their tyranny, able to watch whatever we want from wherever. That is why Apple's new device, linking the PC and thus the internet to the TV set via wifi, is so significant; ditt BuzzMachine, September 17, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old]

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 03:57:56 GMT

Viral Nielsens. I've been wanting to know what viral videos had infected the most conversations and was thinking about trying to do something that looked at links and insertions into blogs and such. Well, somebody just went and did it. Scott Button unveils the Viral Video Chart. What's interesting about this is that it isn't purely traffic. It is about conversation. They explain: We scan several million blogs a day to see which online videos people are talking about the most. We count the number of times each video is linked to and the number of times each video is embedded. Every morning, after we've had a cup of coffee, we publish a list of the 25 videos that generated the most buzz over the previous day. We reckon this is a pretty good yardstick of what's hot and what's not. At the moment we only look for references to videos on the three most influential video sharing sites: YouTube, Google Video and MySpace. We tried looking for references to videos on some ot BuzzMachine, September 17, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old]

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 03:39:06 GMT

Pageflakes Tabs Shareable in Groups. Pageflakes has been bubbling under on my 'post about this' radar for some time - I wanted to hold off until I'd built a pageflake or two to how off - so when they got in touch to talk about sponsorship (no can do from an academic network:-(, I bounced a couple a of questions back about how groups would be handy for sharing tabs amongst students regstered on a particular course in the hope I could get a story or two out of them;-) I should possibly have done my homework first, of course, because it seems that Pageflakes supports group sharing: Sharing means invitation-only. If you share a page, only the people that you invite will be able to access it. These selected people will also be able to edit the page. If you publish a page, anyone can view it but only you can make changes. ... Now, invite some people to your page. The people that you invite don't have to be Pageflakes users. They will receive an email with a link which lets them view your page. You can also invite more people l OUseful Info, September 17, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old]

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 03:38:48 GMT

Reflecting on Podcasting. When I was preparing for my podcasting class last week, I stumbled across ICT - UCan blog by a classroom teacher, Jane Nicholls. I was thrilled to read this and have downloaded the m4a file to "view/listen" to the presentation: I have been stating that podcasting is improving oral language in my classroom and now it is time to put my money where my mouth is. I decided to conduct research to support or refute this assertion. I gathered data using an attitude survey, audio recordings, video recordings and a reflection journal. This podcast outlines my study and the findings with theoretical backing. I can now say why what I do works. I mention the KPE podcast again in this podcast and the application that I mention for putting a map on your page can be downloaded from http://www.clustrmaps.com. I have two major points in this podcast. The first is that podcasting provides a vital middle step for students when crafting an oral language presentation. It gives them the chance t Around the Corner - MGuhlin.net, September 17, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old]

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 03:13:05 GMT

Go2Web20 reveals just how silly Web 2.0 is. A bunch of them have significant competitors that aren't included (in other words it's a club of some sort, with vague rules about who's included). I see a few there that are dead, in other words no one uses them. And quite a few that are vaporware. One where the CEO was just fired. A number of them are part of very large companies, so why aren't their other sites listed? Why are some Web 2.0 and others not? Who doesn't know this is all bullshit? [Scripting News]

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 03:03:37 GMT

Software allows people to write Indian languages using English alphabet (AFP).

[Yahoo! News: Technology News]