links for 2007-09-13
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“Content Robot has introduced iWPhone, a plug in that automatically generates an iPhone-compatible version of WordPress-based sites.”
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“…report came out of the U.K. today stating that Facebook is costing the U.K. firms over $260 million a day.While I don’t consider this report to be completely accurate, the bottom line is that Facebook has a significant opportunity cost deficit.”
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“Since launching its application platform, Facebook attention has grown over 50%.” (MySpace is down, but still a long way ahead!)
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“YouTube now accounts for 28% of total minutes spent on Google worldwide and an astounding 35% of global users. According to JMP Securities analyst William Morrison’s analysis of Comscore data.”
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… a software firm is suing [an Australian] community website over comments published on its message board. The firm, 2Clix, is suing the owner of the popular broadband community site Whirlpool, Simon Wright, for “injurious falsehood”, asking for $150,00
Learning Futures: Day Two Insights
Insight #3: If ePortfolios and other forms of electronic presence are going to be (or are) a core part of the way graduates ‘sell’ themselves to employers, then identity management needs to be taught at all levels of education. Identity management includes those aspects of identity which we intend employers to see, and those we don’t want seen. If a basic search online for someone’s full name reveals drunken party pictures on Flickr or YouTube clips of bullying antics in their youth, then that is just as likely to be viewed by employers as the intended ePortfolios or other material. Identity management clearly is something of a challenge, especially as many educators aren’t fully aware of how much students can put online (or how to temper that), but the Internet never forgets and we need students to be able to understand that for all sorts of reasons, and future employability is clearly one of them.
Insight #4:The unconference model only works when all the participants have a strong sense of what they are intending to pull apart or critique in advance. If half of a conference is populated by people trying to get a basic understanding of something – in this case Web 2.0 – then the unconference model of primarily relying on informed participants leading all the conference sessions themselves, directed by their conversations and thinking, to the exclusion of traditional papers or presentations, is doomed to disappoint a lot of people attending that form of conference. (This, incidentally, is not a personal gripe, but a clearly articulated sense from a number of my fellow conference delegates).
links for 2007-09-11
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On US Troops blogging the Iraq Occupation: “The toothpaste is out of the tube. And, try as they might, the military’s information nannies are not going to be able to stuff it back in,” [Via]
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Stephen Downes’ how-to on setting up Mozilla Subird (an open-source calandering tool).
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“The new film in the franchise is called Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. What is this, Harry Potter – or is Damien Hirst involved?”
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“Having a huge network of online buddies does not mean you have any more close friends than the rest of us, a British researcher said on Monday.” (Will Reader, an evolutionary psychologist at Sheffield Hallam University.)
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“Six Apart, creators of TypePad and Movable Type, would like to use the iPhone and the iPod touch for content publishing, too. They announced today the release of a mobile version of their TypePad blogging application, customized for the iPhone.”
Learning Futures: Day One Insights
I’m at the Learning Futures Symposium today and tomorrow. I’m not blogging summaries of sessions because, to be fair, that’s often quite dull. However, I thought I’d take the opportunity to take the conference discussions to springboard some observations or thoughts that occurred during these interactions…
Insight #1: There is a reasonable amount of critical distance in terms of the ‘digital natives/digital immigrants’ rhetoric, but the same critical perspective doesn’t stretch to critiquing the idea of ‘web 2.0’. Whereas ideas which supposedly encompass an entire generation are easy enough to pull apart, many educators seem wary of software and claims made about software as they acutely feel that this is one of the few areas in which students know more about this area than they do. I suspect that if the same educators were dipping their toes in a little more they’d realise something commonsensical which seems to have entirely escaped these kind of conversations: that while there are many types of web 2.0 software, there are generic skills to be found in using these tools and platforms. The reason that people can move from Friendster to MySpace to Facebook so easily, for example, is that at a basic level there is a lot of similarity between the way these platforms operate and the skills needed to use them. Sure, the rate of new names of software can be overwhelming, but if we remember that a large section of the skills learnt using one social software platform are viable for the next, super-duper, upcoming must-have web 2.0 tool are transferable, that makes taking the time to learn and teach them a whole lot more important and palatable. And social software platforms are just one example; skills in blogging, using wikis and many other forms of ‘web 2.0’ tools are similarly transferable and, at some level, generic. Perhaps we should be focusing more on what those skills are.
Insight #2: Often the people in the driving position for educational policy aren’t confident to make decisions about ICT – nor should they be!
links for 2007-09-08
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What’s hot (and hot means lots of edits) in the last hour, day, week or month? That’s what wikirage can tell you.
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“A day after it cut the price of its top-of-the-line iPhone, Apple said today that it would offer a $100 store credit to customers who had bought one at the full price of $599.”
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“Thousands of Facebook members are on the warpath after the social networking site removed images of breastfeeding mums and banned others for posting “obscene content”. They call themselves “lactivists” and say Facebook’s practices are discriminatory.”
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The case of one singing sensation would pretended to be a YouTube discovery, but had actually signed a recording contract before the Tube: “the gotcha moment doesn’t always lead to your demise — if you do it right, it becomes part of your legend.”
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Monopolistic lock-in tactics married to mega-corporate coffee franchising, all in the name of a few more tunes on your iPhone. (Or: Apple, we like our music evil!)
Piracy is … Cool?
On the CC-Community list Jessica Coates has posted links from the recent Sydney Law Review where, among other cool things, they created some parody advertisements based on the patronizing ‘Piracy is Wrong’ ads which play in Australian cinemas and are at the front of many legitimately-purchased Australian DVDs. Each one is funny, but I think the first is best!
Downloading Depreciates Copyright Somewhat…
You Wouldn’t Invade Poland …Piracy is cool… [Via The House of Commons]
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