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 What We Actually Know About Software Development, and Why We Believe It's True

You can read here a summery of the talk.

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Some reactions:

• "Holy crap, that was a good talk. Thanks a lot."
• "Brilliant."
• "Just the best ever. Go go go."

Watch it.

Bret Victor – Inventing on Principle from CUSEC on Vimeo.

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Other tools and resources for crowdsourcing of emergency and disaster relief:

• CrisisCommons and CrisisCommons Wiki - "CrisisCommons seeks to advance and support the use of open data and volunteer technology communities to catalyze innovation in crisis management and global development."
• InSTEDD - "InSTEDD has a unique niche — we design and use open source technology tools to help partners enhance collaboration and improve information flow and knowledge sharing to better deliver critical services to vulnerable populations."
• Ushahidi - "We built the Ushahidi platform as a tool to easily crowdsource information using multiple channels, including SMS, email, Twitter and the web."

Video - Google I/O 2011: Crisis Response 2.0 – Empowering Developers in Times of Crisis

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Machine readable?

Machines, like search engines and any other computer on the internet, can't understand the content of webpages. They can only present it to human beings to make sense of. There are several ways to make this content more structured, allowing machines to better 'understand' it.

The concept of adding meaning to webpages in not new. In a way, it has been around since the web was invented. However, the combination of lack of the right technology, and more importantly, incentives for websites owners to take the extra effort in making the pages more readable to machines, has left this field obscure.

Machine readability of webpages, called by some The Semantic Web, got a major push last year when Facebook announced about the Open Graph protocol. The Open Graph uses structured information in webpages to make better use of their content.

For example, presenting the correct image and name of a website when it is liked and added to a user's stream on Facebook. Facebook announcement of the Open Graph protocol caused lots of websites owners to add structured information to webpages, including some of the top ranked websites.

Now, an even stronger force – search engines – is taking this factor into account, officially.

How will you be affected

Web users

As a web user, you can expect new, smarter applications and extensions that use the structured information (like the demo-extension Creative Commons Laser Highlighter does). For example, your browser might be able to automatically detect events in webpages and ask if you wish to add them to your calendar.

People mentioned in articles could be detected and offered more information about, such as their profiles on social networks or other items about them from across the web.

Products showing up in webpages will be added extra information that was not written by the original author, maybe even a comparison to similar products in other websites. The potential is huge.

Google Recipes is an example of an existing service that takes advantage of the structured information in webpages. It offers faceted browsing, searching recipes by their ingredients, and more.

Websites owners

As a website owner, you should start thinking about enriching webpages with semantic information. Expected results include better recognition by search engine, potentially leading to more visits. These visits will be more focused, since visitors will be more informed about what they're about to see.

To sum up

I think that this initiative has a lot of potential, and I hope we will see its fruits soon. However, as great projects can fail (see the Google Wave case for example), you should exercise caution with decisions you take about your website's markup.

As users of the web, we only need to wait and see if indeed Sechema.org get's picked up by websites owners. I hope that within a few months I'll be writing here about new apps and services that leverage these new capabilities. 

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She also talks about several points of view about net neutrality, and the importance of preserving the characteristics of the internet that led to innovation. She emphasize that it doesn't mean preserving the same architecture, but identifying the things that enable anyone to innovate.

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This is a guest post by Maria Rainier. Maria is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education where she writes about education, online degrees, and what it takes to succeed as a student getting an online masters degree from home. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

General Search Guidelines

• Be specific in your choice of keywords, i.e. a search for “Libya protests” will yield more relevant results to the current situation than simply searching for “Libya”.
• Use parentheses to group phrases. This will cause the search engine to give results that contain that specific phrase. Without the parentheses, all pages containing any of the search terms will be returned, and you will have more off-topic results.
• Use the add and subtract operators to narrow the results. For example, say you are interested in Gaddafi’s response to the protests. A Google search for Gaddafi will yield few relevant pages, but by using the add operator, “Gaddafi+protests”, pertinent results will be obtained.
•  Use a wildcard operator If you find that your search results are too narrow. Typically an asterisk is used for this purpose. Each asterisk represents a single unknown keyword in a search. This can be particularly useful for finding what phrases others are writing about.

Sources for Finding the Latest News

• Facebook has a large number of news profiles with up to the minute posts.
• Twitter has an up to the minute feed as well and is similar in content to Facebook.
• Twittergrid allows multiple twitter feeds to be displayed at once.
• User created Google maps provides useful geographic information along with the news.
• Flickr and Google Images are useful sources for finding photographs.
• YouTube and Google Video are useful for finding video of current events.
• Most corporate news organizations provide a live RSS feed.

Chaos in the Middle East

• Libya is the latest country in the Middle East to experience social unrest, this news profile is from Facebook and provides news on the situation. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Libya-Protest-News/184318354937923
• This Twitter feed, found using the search term “Twitter Libya protests” provides news on the situation in Libya. http://twitter.com/libya
• This Twitter feed contains news on the situation in Egypt, returned from the Google search “Twitter Egypt”. http://twitter.com/egyTweets
• Here is an image from Flickr for the search term “Libya unrest”. http://www.flickr.com/photos/21862466@N06/5480290158/
• Here is an image from Flickr for the search term “Egypt unrest”. http://www.flickr.com/photos/amnesty-international/5415754207/

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Flickr Images

maching the quary christchurch earthquake.

Live tweets

in a three column layout webpage via Tweet Grid with these quaries: #eqnz OR #Chch filter:links | #eqnz OR #Chch twitpic OR video |  near:"christchurch, new zealand" within:15mi

A map showing reports

from Ushahidi (a crowdsourcing desaster reporting tool) and other sources (Twitter, YouTube, Flickr)

A google map

called  'Christchurch earthquake: Map of the destruction' – contiatning "Information about what's been damaged in the aftermath of the magnitude 6.3 earthquake on February 22nd, 2011, and where people can get help".

More resources and meta-resources 

1. eqnz – Earthquake New Zealand Information Page
2. Christchurch 22 Feb 2011 Earthquake
3. #EQNZ: The Web Mobilizes for New Zealand Earthquake
4. New Zealand Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management: – Homepage
5. google crisis response – Christchurch Earthquake

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The keyboard shortcut for inserting the current date into a Word Document is ALT+SHIFT+D. The problem is that the inserted date is a live filed, so it is being updated every time you open the document.

To insert the current date without it ever being updated (that is, to insert the current date as simple text) – press CTRL+SHIFT+F9 when the cursor is inside the added field.

So, to add the current date as simple text:
press ALT+SHIFT+D > press the left arrow (to stand inside the field) > press CTRL+SHIFT+F9.

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Find Videos

drag the link to your bookmarks or right click  and choose "Bookmark This Link"

image by By The Pug Fathe, licensed CC BY 2.0

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Short answer

Save the link below to your bookmarks. When you think of an interesting topic, just write it in the search box and click search. You will get back  videos from across the Web (not only YouTube), published since 2007, and longer than 20 minutes.

Find full length videos

Answer explained

The link above takes you to an advanced search on Google. The results match your search query and the following criteria:

1. Find videos,
2. published since 2007 (this is an arbitrary time frame, you can change it), and that are
3. longer than 20 minutes.

Note that you can search for topics, people, or any other thing that you find interesting.

Some search terms to get you started

Here are some topics I got interesting results for: 

• creativity
• information retrieval
• PayPal
• Lawrence Lessig
• internet future
• Clay Shirky
•  Identity and Trust
•  Social engineering
•  network security
• interpersonal communication
• Wikipedia

image courtesy of Arto Teräs (licensed CC-by-SA)

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If you’re a typical web user, you’re unintentionally sending your browsing and search history with your name and other personal information to third parties and search engines whenever you’re online.

Take control of the data you share with Disconnect!

• Disable tracking by third parties like Digg, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Yahoo, without requiring any setup or significantly degrading the usability of the web.
• Truly depersonalize searches on search engines like Google and Yahoo (by blocking identifying cookies not just changing the appearance of results pages), while staying logged into other services — e.g., so you can search anonymously on Google and access iGoogle at once.
• See how many resource and cookie requests are blocked, in real time.
• Easily unblock services, by clicking the toolbar button then services (and reloading current pages) — e.g., so you can play games on Facebook.

Get Disconnect.

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To see your site's 'In-Page Analytics' click this option under the 'Content' section in Google analytics.

See Google's review of the new feature in the video below (5:20 minutes).

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Subscribe to the feed of the podcasts I listen to: Daily email | RSS | iTunes (lunches iTunes).

Note that I hand pick each episode (according to my preferences, of course). I'm subscribed to lots of podcast channels. Every  time a new episode is published, I read what it is about and decide if I want to download it – and now, share it with you.

Topics

These are the topics you can expect to hear about:

To share an episode, I add to it a tag that generates a public RSS feed. You can find more public feeds in the bottom of the 'Recommended Reading' section.

please let me know if I can improve it in any way – I'd be glad to get your feedback.

P.S there is an audio  version of this blog as well, you are invited to subscribe to it.

​

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Incognito Mode

In Google Chrome, to get to Incognito mode press CTRL+SHIFT+N in the keyboard, or click the wrench icon on the browser toolbar and select New incognito window.

In Incognito mode, pages won't appear in your browser history or search history, and they won't leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window. Any files you download or bookmarks you create will be preserved, however" (quote from the opening page of incognito mode).  

 Since no session data is stored or transfered between the regular window and incognito window, you can stay loged in to all your accounts, and in addition log in to other accounts in the incognito window.

Better then Google's 'Multiple sign-in'

There are tow main advantages to using an Incognito window to access two accounts:

1. It's less error prone. I figured it when I tryed to activate this feature (in https://www.google.com/accounts/MultipleSessions), and was asked to sign these conditions:
   

   • The account you’re currently using is displayed at the top of most Google product pages, or at the bottom of most pages on mobile devices. Always check to make sure you’re using the account you want.
   • Not all Google products support multiple sign-in. When switching between Google products, the account you’re currently using may change.
   • Google products not listed above will default to the first account that you signed in to using your current web browser session.

2. You can access other accounts, not Google's. For example, you can access another Facebook account or any other services.

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Example

I'm subscribed to some big websites that publish several posts a day. The thing with big websites is that they tend to publish things like "time wasters" or popular topics, and not just high quality content (in my opinion, of course). To identify them faster, I add a series of hyphens before and after their name, like this:

 —————————– site's name ——————————–

You can do the same with very important websites (but remember to use a different visual cue, like the plus sign  '+' or the ampersand sign  '&' ).

I've explained the idea behind changing the name of RSS feeds, and how to do it, in the section 'Prefix feeds for Second level categorization' in Google Reader Tips and Practices for Power Users.

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Images might change

Instead of just uploading an image and adding it to the email, when you create your rich signature you are asked to give a link to the image (see screenshot below). The link is of a web address, not a location on your computer. When you send an email, the link is a live link.

This mean that whenever someone opens an email you sent, the image is retrieved from it's original location on the web. If the image changed in the meantime – your recipient will see the changed image, and if it no longer exists – he will see no image at all.

This is a Huge problem!  You can't really be safe when using images in your signature: If you host the images on your servers – you will have to keep them alive forever, and if you link to someone else's image (say, on Flickr) – they might decide to change it or remove it one day.

I discovered it the hard way

After using a rich signature for about a month, I noticed that one of the images I used have changed on all the emails I sent(!). It changed to a huge, gray image saying that the the trial period of the image hosting has ended! this happened because I used a link I got from a chrome extension that takes a screenshot and automatically uploads it to the web. It seams that the image was only hosted for a short time. Of course, I did not know that the image is not beeing actually added to the emails I send…

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• Autonomy - the ability to be self directed, that is, control our activities rather than being managed.
• Mastery – the urge to be better at stuff we do. The example given in the video is of people who play instruments just for fun, and not for money.
• Purpose – making a contribution to something transcendent.

I think that the most interesting practical suggestion in the video is this:

Pay people enough so that monIey is not a consideration anymore, and then making sure the three motivation factors are satisfied.

Image by by laverrue

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