Write Technology

Repost: Personalize Your Invitations from LinkedIn

I'm reposting a post from May 31 of this year. Yeah, I know it's a bit soon, but there's a reason. I don't know if it's because of my increased visibility from bub.blicio.us, from public speaking, or from GCASTD, but in the last two weeks I've been slammed by LinkedIn invites. I don't know all the people who invited me but most of them just used the default invite. This tells me nothing about them - no contact information, no reference to where we met, nothing. So I thought it might be time to re-post this. I figure I'll post it every two months if I have to.

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Because I have started doing a lot more speaking and more public blogging, I get a lot more LinkedIn invites.In many cases, these folks feel they have a personal connection and don't realize that I have a heck of a time remembering names without a memory jog.

Would you send out an invitation to a party without thinking through the invitation and considering the wording? Probably not. I wish more people applied that same logic to LinkedIn invites.

Michelle:

I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

- John Doe

Now, I probably do want to connect with John Doe. He's probably a great guy and might even have some great contacts. But because I need a memory jog sometimes, I'm not sure who he is. I also question how seriously he takes connecting because he didn't bother to personalize his LinkedIn invite and just sent the default.

Now, I admit to having done this myself once or twice. I get lazy and send the default invite, especially when I'm connecting with good friends. But if you're reaching out to someone you met via Twitter, briefly at a conference, or someone who you know because of their blog, go ahead and personalize your invite. Not only will it jog your connection's memory, it will make you stand out a little more as well.

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Find Michelle Lentz here at Write Technology, on bub.blicio.us, on Twitter, or Pownce.

Cool Trick: Screenshots from Your iPhone

Over at bub.blicio.us, I've been reviewing the occasional iPhone application. I was thrilled to discover that screenshots are built right in to iPhone 2.0 software.

To take a screenshot of your phone, just press the Home button and the Power button. The screen will flash white and then return to the screen.

Your screenshot then lives in your camera roll. Simply pull it on to your computer as you would normally retrieve your iPhone photos - whether on your Mac or your PC. I am pulling them out to iPhoto on my Mac.

Cheers!
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Find Michelle Lentz here on Write Technology, on Twitter, Pownce, and FriendFeed.

PodCamp Ohio Recap

cross-posted from bub.blicio.us

If a Podcamp pops up in your area, I recommend you attend it. Among other reasons, Podcamps are free and you can't argue with free networking and knowledge.

Podcamp Ohio was a total success! I'm not sure of the numbers yet, but I believe they may have surpassed 200 attendees. Not bad for an unconference that ran a basically viral marketing campaign, depending on Twitter and word of mouth.

The sessions were great. I enjoyed the first session I attended - Podcasting in Plain English by David Jackson. It covered all the basics you need for podcasting. Sometimes I think these podcasting experts forget that if you're just experimenting with the idea, you shouldn't go out and buy expensive equipment. Jackson made sure to mention that. Make sure it's something you like and enjoy before investing.

I also attended What Not to Do: Social Media Anti-Tips by Paull Young and Luke Armour. It was probably my favorite session of the day, although I didn't attend too many. In this session they covered all sorts of social media mistakes, particularly pertaining to marketing. They interspersed their presentation with Great Moments in Twitter, which showcased some more embarrassing tweets. Remember folks, Twitter is forever.

My session on Twitter went quite well - or so I've heard. I'm trying to get a full presentation together for some upcoming conferences and this was sort of a practice run for me. I got enough feedback that I've already started "upgrading" my presentation, although many have told me it's fine as is. I had a complicated mix in the room of Twitter skeptics and Twitter diehards. It's hard to gear a presentation to both, but hopefully I carried it off.

For me, the best part of Podcamp was the time I spent networking. Perhaps I'm a bad camper, but I missed about two sessions because I was getting to know people in the cafe and hallway. I particularly enjoyed conversations with Shawn Morton of Profilactic and Doug Petch. In fact, Podcamp drove home a point for me about social networking. In my various speaking engagements, I always try to push the fact that while we're all making friends online, our real goal is face to face networking. For a lot of people, myself included, it's easier to network semi-anonymously online and then meet someone in person. Meeting so many of my Twitter friends "in real life" at Podcamp was fantastic. Meeting Doug Dockery, Julie Niesen, and others, well, it was like meeting old friends.

There were several folks video/audio recording each of the sessions. (I'm camera shy, so I found this unnerving). The sessions should be online sometime soon.

And to the organizers, congratulations on a successful event!

Cheers!
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Find Michelle Lentz here on Write Technology, on Twitter, or on Pownce.

Are We Learning Smarter?

Note: This is cross-posted from bub.blicio.us, where I posted it first, and then decided to share here as well.

image by Darren Hester thru Creative Commons

There's a lot of discussion happening right now about Nick Carr's controversial article in The Atlantic Monthly: Is Google Making Us Stupid?

In addition to Carr, there are other voices chiming in, including Maggie Jackson (Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age) and Rick Shenkman (Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter). I heard these two speak, in particular about how the Information Age is really an "ignorant age" on the Diane Rehm show on Tuesday.

I take issue. I think we're getting smarter.

I work a lot in instructional design and eLearning. The world of adult learning is changing. We learn faster and can take in more types of information - we have access to more types of information. It's a fascinating time to work in the industry.

There's a buzzphrase you hear now at all the eLearning conferences: informal learning. I call it watercooler learning. People have all this information about their jobs tucked away inside their heads. With Web 2.0 tools and content sharing, we can not only get people to share that information, we've got people willing to teach each other in an informal setting. It's a wonderful thing to be able to tap that previously hidden knowledge.

There is a lot of reference in the article, and in other supporting articles, to a lack of picking up a book and reading. I still read. In fact, I try to devour a new work of fiction every other weekend. It's an escape mechanism for me. I will never stop loving the feel of the traditional, paper-bound book. No Kindle for me, thanks. I want to smell musty pages and turn the crunchy paper. I love it. I can't imagine wanting to read less. I would go so far as to say that I now have easier access to things like the NY Times Book Review, as well as Amazon.com, which I wouldn't have without the Internet. Those two sites, in particular, often guide me to new books.

Is my attention span shorter? I don't know if it was ever long. Growing up, Sesame Street (you know, the TV) was my babysitter. I'm of the TV generation - I don't know life without it and it was the dominant technology of my youth. Do I now skim web pages to grab relevant information? Yes! Because I'm smart enough to be able to pull out the relevant information. If an article really grabs me, I'll read the whole thing. Do I twitter constantly? Yes! But it has actually improved my technical writing, helping me better condense relevant information into short concise sentences. Not everything you read needs to be lovely prose, after all. Not only that, Twitter has introduced me to a whole community of people, many of whom I've gone out of my way to meet in person and then carry on in-person, intelligent communication.

I don't disagree that there is now a plethora of information out there. For the last two weeks I've only managed about one post a day on this blog because I'm suffering from a bit of information overload - or maybe information fatigue. I'm almost bored with the idea that there is a new startup every day. You've got to really dazzle me now, I guess. But times like this ebb and flow. Whether my mind is a bit jaded or not does not mean that "Google" has made me stupid. It means I need to work harder at separating the signal from the noise.

I'm a big fan of Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You. I honestly believe that the strategic thinking employed in video games is a useful type of learning. I believe that honing my research skills both in a library and online is a good use of my time. And I believe that although we are learning differently now, and parsing information differently, that difference isn't a bad thing. It's evolution of information, and thinking. And I enjoy it.

I want to close with a quote from Stephen Downes on Stephen's Web, in reference to the Carr article:

Sigh. My response is very simple. I read constantly. I write constantly. I also work in images and multimedia. If Google is making me stupid, then I am forced to conclude that without Google I would have been some kind of super Einstein or something.

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Find Michelle Lentz here on Write Technology, on Twitter, or on Pownce.

 

Live Blogging the Apple WWDC Keynote

Later today, right here in this post, I'm going to attempt to live-blog the Apple WWDC keynote that everyone (myself included) is so excited about. One of the reasons I'm doing this is because I want to test out CoveritLive.com, a nifty live-blogging application. Now, I say I'm going to attempt the live blog. It depends on a couple of things. I need to at least HEAR the keynote, and iPhone Alley is delivering that. However, The Digital Lifestyle is videostreaming the event, and SEEING is better than just hearing. I'm not the only one tuned into this information though, which means that I could lose the connection, the streaming could be down, and all sorts of technical things could go wrong, which means the live blog won't happen.

But I'll try. For those of you on a feed, the liveblogging shows up as an embeddable widget. To read the liveblog transcript, at the moment, you'll need to actually visit the blog.

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Find Michelle Lentz here at Write Technology, on bub.blicio.us, on Twitter, or Pownce.

Edmodo for Education

I've submitted to a few conferences to speak on microblogging. The Twitter scalability issues have me worried that we might lose Twitter before the conferences roll around, but at least I know things like Plurk, Jaiku, and Pownce will rise up to take its place. Microblogging is here to stay, even if Twitter might not be.

With that in mind, I'd like to talk a little about alpha-stage startup Edmodo. When I'm done with this post, you'll know as much as I do, but believe me, I intend to find out more.

I've blogged before about potential uses for microblogging (Twitter or otherwise) in education. Well, Edmodo takes some of those ideas and turns them into reality in one easy-to-use software app geared at the classroom.

Some of the more interesting features, beyond the standard community and conversation, are the ability to tag a post for future reference. As you may be familiar, in Twitter, you can favorite something. This is a step above that, adding a del.icio.us-like capability to the app. You can also share media files, such as images or videos. Media sharing is one of the advantages that Pownce has over Twitter, and I'm glad to see that Edmodo incorporated this option for education.

I'm not yet sure when they're going live. The video you see here, from early March, says "a few weeks," so I guess that didn't happen. I hope to get in touch with the developers soon and see how things are going. I think this is a fantastic tool.

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Find Michelle Lentz here at Write Technology, on bub.blicio.us, on Twitter, or Pownce.

YouTube Insight

Yesterday, Google announced YouTube Insight. Ever wondered who, or why, people are watching your monkey video on YouTube?

Today we're taking our first step towards answering these questions with YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account -- users, partners, and advertisers -- to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload. For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks. For now, you can find currently available metrics by clicking under the "About this Video" button under My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos.

So off I went, to check out the metrics for my ridiculous YouTube videos.

Now, let me preface these screenshots with the fact that I am a poor videographer. I cannot hold a camera steady to save my life. Add to that I get sidetracked and forget I'm filming, so the camera veers off occasionally. My YouTube videos are not high-quality, but they are fun.

Here are the metrics:

click to view the full-size image

Microblogging in the Classroom (Part 2)

Twitter is already being used in academia. I think we could easily adapt some of those uses for the corporate training room.

ChitChat: Students may continue the conversations outside of class using Twitter. This is especially important when the class is spread out via elearning. The students have a shared experience - your classroom. This conversation and experience now continue outside, the same as with a wiki, yet with less effort.

Connection with VIPs: You can follow the big names. For instance, when it comes to Web 2.0, I follow Geoff Livingston, Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, and Jason Falls, amongst others. What is often surprising to me is when they follow me back. Twitter flattens the org chart. Your CEO can twitter and in the process, chat with employees that also Twitter. Suddenly, everyone is just a Twitterer. It's a great way to learn from the experts or access the executive tier.

Question and Answer: Twitter can provide instant feedback. It's great for question and answer. Recently, Geoff Livingston was guest lecturing at University of Maryland. He asked Twitter - what advice would you give students for graduation? He received tons of responses, live, which were shared with his students instantly. Another Twitterer once demonstrated the power of instant feedback by asking Twitterers to call him on his cell phone while he was giving a presentation. The constant flow of calls was  so much he had to beg folks to stop calling him. His point was well proven. This can also be used with GroupTweet to pick a specific distribution list for your question tweets.

Twitter Tracking: I actually have a few issues with this one. I don't use Twitter on my phone very much. I set up phone notifications for a few folks for one month, and it was too much. Not being 22 or younger, I don't like getting constant text messages. Maybe I just need an unlimited texting plan. So now I just get Direct Messages only via text. Twitter Tracking is a cool feature that needs to be expanded to the Web. Currently, you can send Track Instructional Design (for example) to Twitter via SMS and you will recieve an update whenever someone tweets using the phrase "instructional design." You get the update via your phone. The concept of tracking, however, is fantastic. Want to know what's up with the latest iPhone update? Track iPhone. To turn it off, simply send "Untrack iPhone" via SMS. A nifty web-optimized replacement tool for Twitter Tracking is TweetScan.
For education, Twitter Tracking (even through TweetScan) could be used to track instances of language use, specific conferences, and so forth.

Note Taking/Sharing: You can ping specific tweets/thoughts as Notes using TwitterNotes. You can then share the notes with the world - or with your class.

Microblogging in the Classroom (Part 1)

I'm using Twitter so much that I thought it was high time I explored how it might be used professionally within a learning environment.

Microblogging (whether Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, or something that isn't here yet) has endless possibilities for the classroom. How much can you do in 140 characters? A lot, it would seem. The #1 advantage to microblogging is that it breaks boundaries - you are no longer confined to a computer and can explore the world. Twitter (et al) allows you to use any number of third party programs or simple text messaging on your mobile phone, no matter where you are.

Here's a video from the Chronicle of Higher Education that I found via Brightcove. Tomorrow I'll post on other uses I've found for applying Twitter for learning.

Twitter Humour

I love this cartoon from the prolific Hugh at the Gaping Void:

Click the image to view in full size.

Hugh posted this back in April. I think that's around when I first found Twitter, although it took a lot longer than that to allow my micro-blogging to often substitute for my real blogging on one of my personal blogs. I do blame Twitter for my lack of blog posts. All my thoughts now get written, stream of consciousness style, to Twitter. The cartoon, however, is incredibly dead-on. Makes you wonder about 2008.

You Just Need to Know How to Type

One blog post can affect everything from marketing to spamming to other bloggers. Wired has taken the time to detail the blogging ecosystem in an interactive (read: Flash-based) flowchart. Check it out - it's very accurate with one exception. No matter how many keywords and tags I use, it tends to take anywhere from a few hours to 1 day in order to pop up on Technorati and Google and the like. Now sploggers (spam bloggers) and scrapers seem to move much faster.

Check out the blog ecosystem here.

Ning: Build Your Own Social Network

Last week I heard about a couple of sites where you could build your own social network. Pretty fascinating stuff. I checked out Zude and Ning.

Zude is cool, but I didn't find it user friendly. It's one to watch, though, as I think those ease of use features are coming. It's still too obviously a content management system for my taste and truthfully, some experiences I had with some open-source CMSs have instilled a slight fear in me of the CMS.

Ning, however, is incredibly user friendly. I re-designed our family web site, KevinandShel.com, using Ning. For me, it was useful to bring in several of my blog feeds and my photos - all in one place for our family to see. That is really one of the minor benefits to Ning. I failed miserably at explaining it to my husband because I used it, used it well, and yet used none of the really cool features.

With Ning, you can build your own community. In a way, you're building your own Facebook.

If I ran a book club, or owned a small store, or had a knitting group or any sort of group, I'd want to build my site on Ning. First off, it's free. Second, they have amazing technical support. I got incredibly fast and personalized responses. (I found a bug, now fixed.)

What does it offer? Basically Ning is a content management system. You can build pages and sections for your actual web site. You can also have a forum. You can bring in RSS feeds. Your readers can join, becoming part of a community. They can comment on pages, on photos. Once someone is a member, they can then contribute their own information. You can create groups within your network. Each member gets their own blog. If you as an admin want to feature their blog or their photos, you can. Your own member profile can be used for whatever Ning community of which you are a part. You can customize your profile for each Ning community, pulling from your basic information, but changing the look and feel per network.

It's quick. It's easy. And I'm really impressed. It's an easy way to bring a Web 1.0 web site into Web 2.0. Ning specializes in customization/personalization for each user. And that is a huge part of Web 2.0.

The beauty of any social network is the ability to have your members/users interact not just with you, but with each other. Ning allows that through forums, comments, photos, and more. It's worth checking out.

Some great sites using Ning include the Wine Spies, Broadway Space, and Ask a Ninja.

Introducing our Mobile Sites

Write Tech mobile is now available at http://writetech.mobi, with a link to this blog in "mobilized" format.

The My Wine Education blog is now available at http://winegirl.mobi.

A Little More Mobile: Repurposing RSS Feeds with Winksite

Yesterday I talked about creating a mobile web site using MobiSiteGalore. Once I created a mobile version of the Write Technology main web site, I got curious. Was there a way to take my Typepad blogs, such as this one, and create mobile versions using the same content? It seemed to me like an easy and great way to repurpose RSS feeds.

My research led me to Winksite. Winksite is a product of Wireless Ink, run by David Harper. Winksite is a free service allowing you to build a mobile web site. Like MobiSiteGalore, it's customizable. There isn't much yet in the way of Help or published Support (hey guys, I'm free at the moment!), but I assume it's coming. Although Web 2.0 apps in general aren't very good at providing documentation.

Winksite differs from MobiSiteGalore in several ways. Winksite depends a lot on RSS feeds, which is a pretty fantastic idea. First, content is controlled via channels, in addition to being able to create pages. I haven't yet found a way to combine multiple channels on pages or more importantly to me, reorder predefined channels. However, with a little help from David Harper, I was able to easily reorder custom channels. Although it does allow you to set a background and color, you can't customize the site with logos, headers, and footers as you can with MobiSiteGalore. Both sites are quite easy to use. When I needed support at MobiSiteGalore, I found my answer in their user forums. When I needed support at Winksite, I sent an email through their site and received rapid support.

The two sites seem to be aimed at different audiences. Whereas MobiSiteGalore sticks to strict site building for the mobile set, Winksite has broader aims. WinkSite allows you to build a mobile community.You can implement mobile messaging and collect "friends." You can also, as I did, easily "mobilize" your blog. That feature alone makes Winksite worth using. It simply takes your RSS feed and turns it into a mobile page. You lose all the fun stuff, such as the information in the right column on this blog, but it's mobile. You don't want all that stuff in the way.

I'm intrigued by the idea of creating a Winksite for mobile learning. You could create a community of similar learners or a class of students, all able to communicate on-the-go through this one, easy to use mobile web site.

For the Write Tech site, I'm using MobiSiteGalore to create the content web pages for the business site. Within that mobile site, I link out to a mobile version of this blog, created and hosted by Winksite. It' s a perfect combination for me.

I also "mobilized" our wine site. For that particular site, I'm strictly using Winksite to pull in RSS feeds from both the wine blog and the wine Twitter feed.

Creating a Mobile Web Site

I created a mobile web site for Write Technology. In fact, I created it in less than an hour. It's taking longer to redirect a subdomain to the site than it did to create it.

More and more folks are accessing the internet on the go, from mobile phones. When I had my Blackberry, I surfed the web a lot. Big companies, like Delta or Typepad, would positively annoy me if they didn't have a mobile site. The Blackberry just wasn't conducive to graphic intensive web sites. In fact, neither is the iPhone if I'm not near a wireless connection. EDGE is just pretty darned slow, but still useful. 

Creating a mobile site just got easy. Today I got an email from the Masie Center that pointed out a new, free tool that allows you to create your own mobile website. The company, mobiSiteGalore, offers an online tool for mobile site creation. After you create your site, you plug in your FTP information and the mobile site is automatically uploaded.

The online tools are pretty easy to use, and they have a rather useful Help Video that explains everything. Remember that mobile phones are often on limited bandwidth, like EDGE, and that loading a lot of graphics is terribly slow. It also helps when mobile sites are number enabled. If you press a 2 from my mobile Home Page, it should take you to the About Us page.

All pages created at MobiSiteGalore are run through the dotMobi  standards checker, ensuring each page meets appropriate standards. According to MobiSiteGalore, "The newly introduced WAP 2.0 standards are more flexible, and universal in nature and will overwrite the earlier standards for mobile websites. mobiSiteGalore allows you to quickly and easily create a complete mobile website fully compliant with the latest WAP 2.0 standards and the Mobile Web Best Practices as laid out by W3C."

All that's left for you to do is design the page, using their easy to modify templates, and upload it to your site. If you want to take it a step further, you might want to register a .mobi domain name. I just registered writetech.mobi, but it will take a few days to be active. (A .mobi domain is not necessary for mobile visitors though.)

Tech Travel

Hotel Chatter just posted their annual feature on the best wi-fi hotels. Because I travel frequently, I always try to look for a hotel that offers free wi-fi, or at least free wired access.

As long as the Internet is free, I don't care whether it is wired or not. I'm a savvy tech traveler. I carry an Apple Airport Express and an Ethernet cable. I simply plug the Airport into the wall, plug in the network cable, and just like that I have wireless in my room.

I agree with several of Hotel Chatter's selections. In particular, the lower-end hotels offer the best wi-fi service. Whether I'm at a Holiday Inn Express, a La Quinta, a Hampton Inn, or something comparable, I can always find free wi-fi in my room.

If I'm in a more expensive hotel, I generally have to pay for any Internet access. Whether it's a Hyatt, a Sheraton, a hotel at Disney or in Las Vegas, I'm always trying to maximize the 24 hour period for which I'm paying at least $9.99 or more, up to $24.99. I really hate that. Honestly, it wouldn't cost them too much to make each floor wireless. I'm not a fan of hotels, such as the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, which offer free wi-fi, but only in the lobby. In a busy, urban hotel, you are rarely going to lug your laptop from your room to the lobby just to get online. Of course, the hotels know this, and that's when you pay the surcharge. I see lobby wi-fi as simply a backup plan when in-room access is down.

Hotel Chatter also mentions the Kimpton boutique hotels. I've always been a fan of Kimptons, but admittedly, I haven't stayed in a Kimpton since 2005. As a club member (it's free to join), I've always had access to free wi-fi in the room. Use of the access code never bothered me. It's how they secure their network, and I get that. Because I don't use VPN, a charge for that service also doesn't affect me.

My favorite hotel chain, and one Hotel Chatter neglected to mention, is the Wyndham. In fact, I bet the Wyndham shows up on the "worst" list because their service is often wired. Whether at a low-end Wyndham Garden or high-end Wyndham Resort, I've always received great service. With their free club membership, you get free wi-fi and/or wired access, wine, and cheese, all ready and waiting for you when you walk into your room.

Technorati Tags: tech travel, travel, free wifi hotels, Airport Express

Tag, you're it!

I was shocked today when I realized I hadn't ever written a post on tagging. At the ASTD TechKnowledge conference, when I explained Web 2.0 to a group, tagging was an integral part of the conversation. But tagging requires you to take a step back from the web, and consider how you think.

Folksonomy: a type of classification system for online content, created by an individual user who tags information with freely chosen keywords; also, the cooperation of a group of people to create such a classification system (Webster's New Millenium Dictionary of English)

When we're tagging things, we're creating a folksonomy. The key word in the definition above is individual. That's the key to tagging - it's your individual thoughts and thought processes defining the things in your world. In fact, I've bet you've used tagging and you didn't even realize it. According to the Pew Internet Project, in December 2006, 28% of Americans had tagged online content. According to David Weinberger, in an interview for the Pew Internet Project report,

"Tagging lets us organize the vastness of the web ... using the categories that matter to us as individuals.
...Tagging also allows social groups to form around similarities of interests and points of view. If you're using the same tags as I do, we probably share some deep commonalities."

Tagging in the Real World
Let's back up a little further and go off-line. When you're arranging things in your planner, or your file cabinets, perhaps you categorize them. You assign key words that make sense to you, based on the content in the folder. Assigning that contextual key word allows you to find that folder again easily. You've just created a folksonomy - you've just tagged.

Tagging Online
Now, let's take that concept online. For each blog post I create, I try to also create tags, or descriptive key words. Why? Tagging blog posts provides several things - it allows me to better search my own posts and it also allows search engines to better search my posts. Tagging adds findability to something.

Within the last year, Amazon added tagging to its web site.

In the above example, people have tagged the new Harry Potter novel with tags such as "harry potter," "magic," and "best book ever." These are all individual tags, reflecting the individual thoughts and feelings on that book. Do you want to find more items tagged "magic"? Just click on the tag. View the most popular tags used across Amazon.com. Add your own tag to this or other items.

I often tag items on Amazon.com. My tags may or may not be useful to you. If I'm searching on curtains for my new home, I might tag an item "new house," which I can then search on later.

Tagging is beautiful in its simplicity. It's something we've been doing all our lives. We're just moving it online. A large part of the Web 2.0 and collaborative learning movement is understanding that we have a lot to learn from each other as individuals. Web 2.0, through its varied tools, gives us the opportunity to share that knowledge. Tagging is only the beginning.

After the jump, see some more examples and uses of tagging, as well as the sites that depend on it.

Speed up your machine

Yesterday I sat down to write a quick review of my laptop for something and ended up spending a fair amount of time disabling unnecessary processes and services. I wanted to mention it here for two reasons:

1. There's a really easy, harmless way to do this.
2. It really made a difference in my processing speed.

I'm not going to go into a full job aid on the blog. I just want to point you in some great directions. You can easily view all the processes and services from the Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del). You can't do much with them though. You have a lot more control in the System Configuration Utility.

Warning: This is not for the faint-of-heart. If it makes you nervous, don't do it.

To access the System Configuration Utility, type MSCONFIG in the Run dialog box. If you don't know where the Run dialog box can be found, you probably shouldn't be playing with this stuff anyway.

The last two tabs in the System Configuration Utility display the Services and Startup functions. You can disable and enable these processes here. Once you have clicked Apply and are done, you will need to restart your computer. Once your computer is up and running again, you'll get a warning box stating that you are now using a custom - or selective - Startup file. Make sure you click the box to ignore the warning in the future or you'll see that every time you start your machine. The good news is that if something goes wrong, you have the option to return to your original Startup file.

One of the hardest parts of this procedure is identifying the processes. I discovered several web sites out there that exist for no other reason than to help you through. These sites helped me identify what might be a virus, what was necessary and should not be disabled, and what was simply using up my processor for no reason. Each site listed has a useful search feature, making it easy to find what I needed.

• The Elder Geek
• Process Library
• File.Net

Just to let you know, the key offenders in my system were Apple, Tivo, and Adobe.

Gateway CX2610 Review

I had to whip up a review of a laptop today and I figured, why not post it here as well? I purchased the laptop a year ago - you'll notice it is not a dual-core processor. Yet. I'm eyeing a Macbook Pro this summer. I can run my PC-based Help applications on those now.
The review, of a convertible tablet, is after the jump. Forgive the fonts. That's what happens when you pull HTML from Word.

Mosquito Tones, KFC, and Marketing

KFC recently embedded a mosquito tone in their commercial. A mosquito tone is a tone that supposedly only teenagers and younger can hear. I can hear it though. In fact, when the commercial comes on, it about deafens me. Ugh.

My question is this - is this successful marketing on KFC's part? It seems to me that there is a lot of hubbub about the commercial, but I doubt anyone is actually thinking, "oh! That's the mosquito tone ad. I want to go buy some chicken."

Technorati Tags:kentucky fried chicken, kfc mosquito tone marketing

We're not always on top

A new report from the World Economic Forum states that the US has lost its top position as the primary engine of worldwide technology innovation. In fact, we fell to 7th place. The new rankings are as follows:

1: Denmark (3)

2: Sweden (8)

3: Singapore (2)

4: Finland (5)

5: Switzerland (9)

6: Netherlands (12)

7: US (1)

8: Iceland (4)

9: UK (10)

10: Norway (13)

Number in parentheses is previous ranking.

I try to stay apolitical on this blog, but there are a few paragraphs in the article that caught my eye:

A deterioration of the political and regulatory environment in the US prompted the fall, the report said.

We're not all bad though.

Despite losing its top position, the US still maintained a strong focus on innovation, driven by one of the world's best tertiary education systems and its high degree of co-operation with industry, the report said.

The country's efficient market environment, conducive to the availability of venture capital, and the sophistication of financial markets, was also given recognition.

I find it interesting, although not surprising, that so many of the top countries are Scandinavian. After all, DVD Jon is from Norway and The Pirate Bay originated in Sweden. There's a certain freedom in the laws of those countries.

"Denmark, in particular, has benefited from the very effective government e-leadership, reflected in early liberalisation of the telecommunications sector, a first-rate regulatory environment and large availability of e-government services," said Irene Mia, senior economist at World Economic Forum.

Perhaps we can learn something from this list. Perhaps we can learn something from Denmark.

I've recently started reading The World is Flat. From the first few chapters, I would have expected India to be in the top 10. However, so much of India is still rural. People are engineers and programmers and places like Bangalore are fully wired in their business districts, but that's it. For the size of the nation, the amount of connectivity is still small and personal computers in the homes are not common. India is ranked 44th.

From the BBC

Tags: World Economic Forum, WEF, technology innovation, US technology, Denmark technology, India technology

Catch a free firefly + marketing smarts

I believe that software simulations are a huge part of the future of corporate training. Used in conjunction with a guru-blog or a department or company wiki, a simulation will complete and fulfill a lot of technical training needs. They can also be created in short bursts, making them quick to study and easily accessible, delivering information when and if the user needs it.

When I attended the ASTD TechKnowledge conference last month, there were several products on the floor that attracted my attention. I've already told you about Veotag, which brings video to life. Now I want to talk about KnowledgePlanet's Firefly.

Firefly is perhaps the best software simulation tool I've seen. It's deep simulation, completely immersing your user in the environment. It's very real - so real it's hard to tell whether you're in training, or the actual software product on which you're training. That realistic touch makes Firefly extremely effective.

On top of that, when we sat through the demonstration of the product, Firefly seemed extremely easy to use. Have you used Captivate? Then you'll have little problem with Firefly. In fact, Captivate is probably their biggest competitor, if only due to distribution channels, and there's really no comparison.

There was one problem. When I finally mustered up the courage to ask how much a license would cost, I was given an unrealistic answer. I believe they said $10K. I'm lucky I remained standing. It makes other elearning software I think is overpriced suddenly seem inexpensive. I was crushed by the price tag and walked away shocked and sad.

Apparently, I'm not the only one who had that same shocked and sad experience. But here's the crazy thing - Knowledge Planet paid attention. They are now offering a slightly scaled down but FREE version of their product...

How many terabytes for you?

I had a motherboard go out on me this weekend. It didn't take me entirely by surprise, so I had already done some serious backup of my files. However, there are always those little files you didn't know you needed ... so last night and this morning I was pulling miscellaneous files out of my two resurrected hard drives, slipped into little cases and hooked up to a spare machine on a temporary basis. I put all of these files, and all my backups at the moment, onto a nice Seagate USB 2.0 150 GB external hard drive. The drive is over a year old - at the time, I was thrilled with 150 GB.

Today, I was doing a little online browsing, and was seriously considering investing in a 500 GB Fantom external drive. Why do I need 500 GB? Honestly, I'm just thinking ahead. I use, and create, a lot more video and audio than I previously did.

As our world continues to evolve digitally, our files and so much of our daily activities, are not going to be paper based. Everything is moving to digital. We need a place to keep it all. For instance, I haven't had photos printed in several years. I originally kept our photos in scrapbooks. Those took up too much space and too much time. So I moved to scrap boxes. From there, I started publishing the files manually to our personal family web space. In the last two years, I've moved to Flickr, which is even easier. In a way, I consider Flickr my photo backup location, and all the original digital files are on a single machine at home. A Macintosh devoted entirely to digital photos.  We've also boxed up our CD collection and put it in storage. All of our music is now digital. We lost that drive a while back and learned the value of backing up data then. All of my wedding video is digital. All of these things in my life that are personal, not work related, are digital. 500 GB is not out of the question.

Then I came across this. It's a 1 terabyte external hard drive.1 TB is 1,024 GB. I didn't know you could buy these yet. I remember in 1999 when I was excited that my tangerine iBook had a 10 GB hard drive. Now I'm contemplating 1000 GB?! But taking into account how digital our lives are now, is a 1 TB hard drive really that far of a stretch?

How digital is your world?

Tags: terabyte, backup, external hard drive, digital world

"Encylodictionalmanacapedia"

I have a wonderful new blog widget embedded in this blog, as well as my other blogs, called Answer Tips. I'm pretty thrilled with it, and it's given me some neat ideas for implementing it in a corporate environment.

First, a little exercise. Pick a non-hyperlinked word in this blog (ANY WORD) and double-click it. A little pop-up window should appear with the definition of that word. If the word is near a recognizable phrase, the phrase itself will be defined.

Now, think of the implications for learning. Humor me, and imagine you don't have a firewall and your students can always access the magical world of the Internet. Picture Answer Tips embedded in an elearning course, internal or external web site, or group wiki. It's an effective, just-in-time delivery of learning, right there at your user's fingertips - meaningful, memorable, and relevant.

It gets better. Answer Tips is a widget provided by the free service, Answers.com. Answers.com allows you to integrate their tool into your desktop, so much so that the pop-ups are even available when you read your email. It's all free. Even more importantly, they are using licensed content from brand-name information providers. The academic in me loves that they give you the tools to offically cite each piece of information you find in APA or MLA format.

Downsides? Well, I haven't yet installed the desktop tool, so I haven't yet read the license agreement. I don't know how much of your life they may - or may not - be paying attention to. In theory, they should be tracking what information is referenced in order to bulk up the most popular areas. In theory, they are also doing this with anonymous user data, which is good.

Other downside? You're stuck with Answers.com. I couldn't find anyplace on their web site where they mentioned internal customizations. If you're a healthcare company, for example, with specific and difficult terms and phrases, wouldn't it be wonderful to build your own customized content and have that information pop up for your employees? Just in time learning, when and where they need it.

Overall, Answer Tips and Answers.com is a nifty, free toolset. Spread the word. A tool like this has great potential, but we have to use it!

Technorati Tags: Answer Tips, blog widgets, Answers.com, Web 2.0

Google Apps in your learning world

At the end of August, Google released "Google Apps for Your Domain," or GAFYD. It's a rather unwieldy name for a product with a lot of promise. I've waited until now for it to evolve some more, but it is still truly in beta. Heck, sometimes I'm not quite sure it's ready for beta. Regardless, it's still got a lot of promise.

At first it seems unimpressive. It's a suite of products with which we're already familiar, including GMail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, and a personalized start page. It also includes Google Page Creator, which is a WYSIWYG web page creator.

The great part of all this is the domain name. GAFYD is the familiar suite of products, customized to your domain. For instance, I also own the wine-girl.net domain. I now have email at that domain, accessed via Gmail (e.g., xxx@wine-girl.net). The GMail is personalized with my wine-girl.net logo. There is a personalized start page, displaying the wine-girl.net logo and pre-defined topics and news feeds. You can create 50 email addresses and users, and share contacts across all of your users. It's all free, for now at least. It's all personalized.

Google needs to market this product heavily to small businesses. Why? Imagine the possibilities for learning and knowledge distribution. Everyday your users log into their email, which they reach via their personalized home page. The personalized home page is pre-loaded with the latest news from inside the company and relevant outside news. All of your users' contacts are shared. The Web page creation tool means that each of your users can create their own content, sharing their knowledge via RSS feeds published to the home page. There is so much potential as to what this can do; so much informal learning at your fingertips.

What's next for Google Apps? It seems inevitable that Google should roll in their office-style apps, such as Writely, Spreadsheets, and SketchUp. However, GAFYD is not, at least in its current incarnation, a competitor for Office and/or OpenOffice. It's more of a content management system or collaborative tool.  I would think that Google would add access to Blogger, which it now owns. I also would think Google would be hard at work at integrating the Google AdWords marketing feature into GAFYD. Assuming that these various Google tools all converge into GAFYD, and remain a free tool, there is no reason that small businesses shouldn't adopt the suite. The only thing you need to buy is a domain name.

Technorati Tags: Google Apps, GAFYD, Google, Web 2.0, informal learning

Web 2.0 is friendly - I promise

Don't be scared of Web 2.0. It's like that big shaggy sheepdog that you love. It's big, but it's cuddly and friendly. More importantly, it wants to love you and be loved in return.
Poor analogy, eh?

So many times this week I had to stop and explain Web 2.0, so I thought I'd pop those thougts onto the blog as well.

Over the last decade or so, the Web has been this wonderful, evolving creature. Most of us go to the Web to get something, be it travel information, a book from Amazon, weather reports, news ... The Web gave and we took away. Just like a living creature, however, the Web has evolved. Now there is the opportunity to give something back. The world just got smaller. In Web 2.0, there is a give and take on all sides.

Blogs and wikis are the current big tools of the Web 2.0 revolution. Why? Well, with a blog, there is commentary on an editorial. Except a blog is usually moderated, and it becomes sort of a conversation in regards to the most recent post, or editorial. Wikis are even more collaborative. Wikis are dynamic, with all users participating, contributing their knowledge. Conversations can happen in the comments, but the actual knowledge grows and changes with each edit to the page. Are wikis always accurate? No, but they are self-correcting. Eventually, a wiki will become accurate.

Does that help at all? The point of these tools, and others like them, is to leverage existing knowledge. We've all got knowledge locked away inside our heads. This allows us to get that knowledge out there, share it with our friends and colleagues. Imagine the power of all that existing knowledge applied to learning!

Wiki wiki wiki

As mentioned previously, I'll be co-moderating an Instructional Design-focused Learning Lab at the upcoming ASTD TechKnowledge conference in Las Vegas. ASTD has launched wikis in conjunction with each Learning Lab. Unless you're attending the conference, as of right now I can't give you the password for editing. However, feel free to take a look around the wiki. Since we're starting from scratch, this is a great way to watch a wiki [hopefully] grow and to understand more about how wikis can help build an online community.
Enjoy!

Synching GMail with Outlook

Problem solved? Last April, with the release of Google Calendar, I wondered if there was an easy way to automatically sync my Google Calendar with my Outlook Calendar. From there, I could sync my Blackberry with my Outlook. I never found a way.

Turns out there are a couple of solutions out there now. There's this brilliant solution for syncing many different items together, but it sort of gives me a headache.
Then I came across GSyncIt, on DavesWebSite.com. It's a freeware plug-in for Outlook (2003 or higher) that synchs both ways. I like this idea. I'm running it right now. Because it synchs 365 days out and 365 days past, this first synch is taking a while. But I think it's working, so that's a start. I fear I'm going to end up with duplicate Birthdays and such in Outlook though.

I'll let you know. This is, however, a good thing. And it's freeware, people!

- As an update, it worked wonderfully! Now, because I haven't used my GCal in ages (since I couldn't sync it), I had no problems going in and wiping out all the data. When I used GSyncIt to sync with Outlook, I had no duplicates. I do not know if this would have been a problem or not.

GSyncIt also allows for automatic or manual updating, which is nice. I'll probably remain on manual
until I get into the swing of using my GCal again.

Finally, I was also able to pull in my husband's data. It's not my primary calendar, so it's read-only. (I can't change his calendar from Outlook, but that's fine.) It's still great to see his schedule on my calendar. It looks like Programmer Dave is working on categorizing/color coding so that you can tell what event came from what calendar. I do believe that little upgrade would make this a perfect program.

I do want to note that GSyncIt does require you to run .Net 2.0. This isn't  an issue for most folks, and I'm always running the latest .Net due to a few apps I document. But some folks just won't go near .Net.

Hey Dave, if you need some help with the documentation/Help files. Let me know. It's what I do!

Technorati Tag: GSyncIt

Plugged In

About two years ago, my husband and I were on vacation in Jamaica when we got slammed by Hurricane Ivan. We were trapped on the island in a resort without water, electricity, or phone. (It was much worse than it sounds.) During that time, I realized that I don't cope well when I'm disconnected. We had no access to news - we didn't know when the airport would re-open or how much damage Negril, much less the island, had taken. I actually had a panic attack. I simply could not cope without being connected to some news source, whether a phone call or a computer or even a newspaper.

After that experience, I went overboard with connectivity. A fitting caricature would have been me, sitting in front of a computer, with a headset on, and my finger plugged directly into a network jack. Last year I tried to scale back on the connectivity, cut back on bringing my computer everywhere. This year, I seem to have escalated again. My Blackberry gives me instant access to the Internet, email, and phone calls, not to mention text messaging. My iBook is small enough to travel every where with me, even on vacation.

How much is too much? Is there a point where an individual is too connected? As a society, are we moving towards connecting with each other virtually and losing out on the unique relationships brought about by face to face meetings?

Just a thought.

Learning 2006 Recaps: Jim Louderback, PC Magazine

Perhaps my favorite keynote speaker, and session leader, was Jim Louderback, Editor of PC Magazine. I've never seen anyone with so much energy so early in the morning. The man is a great speaker, but not because of his speaking skills. He truly loves what he does and loves sharing new gadgets with the rest of the world. He is on top of the latest technology.
I was thrilled that I was already in touch with most of the technology he talked about. I suppose I'm not as out-of-touch as I sometimes worry I am.  At one point in his smaller session, he had everyone in the room pull out every gadget they carried. I pulled out my tablet PC, my blackberry, my Nintendo DS Lite (with Nintendogs), and my digital camera. I was definitely in the top 10 of folks with gadgets in the room, but there were several folks with more, or newer, gadgets than mine.
I got several things out of Jim's presentations though. I suppose the most important thing, and perhaps the unintended thing, was how important it is to love what you do. His excitement literally spilled out into the room. I'm definitely going to take some time to re-focus a bit on journalistic writing. Hopefully I can still keep it technical in nature. After all, Jim Louderback was just a programmer when he landed a job as a technology writer. I see that as a hopeful story. (Don't worry folks, I'm not giving up technical writing just yet!)
In my notes after the jump, you can read about Jim's latest technology favorites - everything from bunnies to the Nintendo Wiii.

Laughing Out Loud

I thought Friday and Saturday's Foxtrot were incredibly appropriate - and funny - considering my 9/22/06 post on blogs and Web 2.0 Enjoy!

Click to view full-size images in a new window/tab or visit http://www.foxtrot.com for more comics.

And of course, the up and coming younger generation ...

Code Search

Not being a coder by trade, I can't completely appreciate the value of this. However, I'm married to one of those programmer guys and he can certainly appreciate the value.

Krugle is a new search engine. However, it is different from Google or Yahoo. Krugle is a search engine for open source code. I don't think there is a limit on the kind of code - whether you're stalled because you're missing a piece of Java or you can't figure out a piece of PHP, I imagine you could find what you need on Krugle.

It's a fascinating idea - organizing and linking to the world's pieces of open source code. Suddenly code that is useful, but had been hidden, is now easy to find. Krugle also allows you to search for code-related technical information so that you can find the answer to that nagging question. I think the most interesting thing is the ability to save and annotate your findings. It's the search engine taken to Web 2.0 and it's a great idea.

As you proceed through a search session, Krugle creates tabbed “pages” for each result viewed, whether code, web pages or other documents. This makes flipping back and forth between code and related information easy.
Krugle also lets you add your own comments to entire code files or specific lines of code, allowing for useful code-centric communication between developers.

So if you're a programmer, you might want to check out Krugle.

Technorati Tags: Krugle, Search Engine, Programming

User Input: My Little Dream

Technical Writing and Wikis

I think a lot of technical writers are sort of steeped in the past. Even if we're not personally refusing to move forward, a lot of our companies tend to think of training and documentation as that little group of people in the basement. Let's get the facts to them last and cut their budgets constantly. I experienced it as a cubicle and office dweller. As an independent contractor, many of my clients find me because they realize - at the last minute - they need some sort of documentation. My best clients allow me to document as the software is being developed, factoring the documentation into the life cycle of the product.  I'd like to take it one step further.

Currently, I might create a Help system. Despite prodding, most of my clients are still attached to basic CHM files. I'm currently using Flare to develop Help systems. Because Flare is XML based, it single sources my content. I create User Guides in Word 2007 (Beta) directly from the Help. Because Word 2007 is also XML based, the transition is seamless. Once the Help and User Guide are developed, my job is done until the client decides to issue an update to the software, usually a year later.

I don't want my job to necessarily end when the release date comes around. My little dream is to post my Help (or User Guide) topic by topic on a Wiki hosted in the same spot as the product knowledge base. Maybe the customer support reps for the software have access to the Wiki; maybe the consumers access it as well. Regardless of who accesses it, the minute someone does, it becomes a live document. Users post to the topic, mentioning what was forgotten or a tip or trick that they learned. When the time comes for the next generation of product and documentation, I can refer to the Wiki to learn what else really needs to be in my Help/User Guide and what extraneous information needs to be removed. 

User input into the documentation.
Learning, and understanding, how your documentation is used.

For underappreciated technical writers, what more could they ask for? 

Oh yeah, the budget to do it. Well guess what, there are a lot of open-source and free wikis out there that are either hosted or that you can host. (TiddlyWiki is a favorite of mine, partially because of the name, I admit.)

Wikis have amazing uses beyond just user documentation. I've attended conferences where the session discussions are continued for month by accessing wikis. My husband uses wikis extensively, as a live compository of knowledge in his workplace and as an interactive guide for a role-playing game.

Web 2.0. The technical writers are ready. We just need to bring our employers/clients along with us.

Technorati Tags: technical writing, wikis, Madcap Flare, documentation

This is a Beta Test

I’m testing the Beta of Microsoft Office 2007. Talk about evolving software. It’s a lot more intuitive – once you figure it out. I know, that sounds contradictory. It’s just that everything we’re used to has been rearranged into a tabbed format. It’s a big difference. There are no menus – just tabs. I looked forever to find table formatting and the File menu. Once you adjust to the changes though, its incredibly easy to use. For people who haven’t been using Word since the beginning (and I have), this will seem simple. For the rest of us, it’s a huge change.

It has a built-in blogging feature that will, supposedly, automatically post this to my Typepad blog.  I do a lot of my blog posts in Word anyway because Typepad tends to crash on my longer posts. Word has autosave.  In theory, I can now write and post from the same location.

The changed tabbed interface is evident in everything I’ve looked at in the Office Suite thus far. I’ve played a little with Excel and OneNoteand am using Outlook and Word. I really like the new Outlook. It also builds RSS feeds into your InBox and polls them once an hour on a Send/Receive. Excel has a nifty new feature that I appreciate. Remember how when you edit a square in Excel you must edit up in the Editing line? Now you can edit directly in the square itself. Such a small change, but a big difference in ease of use.

That’s my brief overview of the Office Beta, but so far, I think Microsoft is really on the right track.