Making Sense

Week 11 - eBooks & aBooks

2009-05-16T20:21:00.004+10:00

Well this wasn't particularly hard but time consuming. Every time I looked I came across something interesting and would get distracted; start reading or listening then whoosh. Guest that's why I am not a librarian, I would be like a chocaholic trying to sell chocolate.
I found an interesting recipe book and started to reformat it, install a full index, highlight the tips etc this is still a work in progress, but you can see the listing in my LibraryThing. (had to stop as I was spending all my time doing this and not my homework). This also highlighted another reason why I am learning so much more from this course that I have been able to on my personal explorations.

Another thing I noticed and it annoyed me, was to discover that most of the sites did NOT have much more than an alpha list. My wish would be to have eBooks accessible as a search-able catalogue available to LibraryThing. In fact why aren't they just in the library catalogues like every other book? After-all they are just another format that doesn't take up shelf space (nor collect dust).
The intention would be to have the entry as a hot link and thus available for immediate recall when I needed access to it again. (I think a majority of books will end up this way before long, especially "text" books).

Audiobooks (why aren't they called aBooks?) was a bit of a revelation; another one of the shocks to my once neat and tidy picture of the world. For some reason I still had audiobooks pictured as cassettes. That they have evolved onto the web & MP3 etc had not entered my consciousness; another time consuming distraction. Plan is to investigate this further and burn a CD (my player will play MP3 CD's which makes it a lot easier).

Once the readers develop to a similar quality (contract & brightness & Full colour) to "real" books (will we then have a catagory call rBooks?) I think they will really take off.

Current tech articles indicate that this need is well understood (google has released an A4 better contrast Kindle in the last few weeks) and much better units are in the labs.

Looking forward to a bright exciting future.

2009 Winner | The Buckminster Fuller Challenge

2009-05-06T21:54:00.000+10:00

2009 Winner | The Buckminster Fuller Challenge: "the Buckminster Fuller Challenge"

Week 9 Wikis

2009-05-03T16:49:00.007+10:00

n interesting subject. I have (like anyone else who searches the web) used Wikipedia and always found it useful. I have been aware of the concept and thought in passing of areas that could gain value from its use.

I found the NZ goverment post extra interesting. Maybe there is a guide here for how Mr Rudd can address some of the negative feedback from his 2020 gabfest. (I also found the New Zealand Police Act Wiki link is broken and should be -
http://www.policeact.govt.nz/wiki/ )

However, I have never seriously looked at implementing one. I was fascinated to find, as I dug into the subject and viewed many Wiki's, that I clearly considered reliable and accurate, that my mindset was "this would not work". I seemed to have lots of worries that fundamentally boiled down to - the effort of keeping it accurate would be too large. This despite the many references I found that highlighted the many tools that were in place to make the job easy, plus the evidence in front of my eyes that it works.
Slowly, I realised that I was thinking more of putting up a subject that I considered I knew about and allowing others to edit it. I realised this is more what a blog is about. Thus week one got a little clearer.

As I thought about it a little more I realised that the value of a Wiki arises from the pooling of knowledge & information in areas where knowledge & information is diverse and fragmented; where no one individual has the total picture.

So synergy is at its core.
In these circumstances the effort involved in keeping the integrity of the production is rewarded (and balanced) by the value gained.

I would expect also that to retain value there will need to be a defined process for resolving conflicts. In some fields, especially where knowledge is still evolving, there will be bodies of thought that are opposed to each other. A clear, well understood mechanism for managing this must be in place as by definition they cannot yet be resolved. A quick search showed that there has actually been a conference & set of papers on this. (but not being a librarian I wasn't able to get to the details)

"He says, she says: conflict and coordination in Wikipedia
Source	Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems archive Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems

ROLLYO
This was less than the expected experience.
My expectation was that it would search the websites I specified and only those. I tried it with a very restricted base so I would be able to check its results. I choose my blog and it couldn't even find it, let alone something in my blog. Okay so a blog is not technically a web site so back to the drawing board.

So then I searched my personal web site and found I couldn't get it to just search my web site it insisted on adding the rest of the web and I could find out how to get rid of it. Anyway, it did find it and returned the entries I expected. Here it is

http://rollyo.com/ibpservice/ibpservice/

give it a try.
Another thing I found annoying was that it gave no indication of the number of hits. the reason for this is that when I search for something common it is handy to know if I have only a few pages of hits; then I will look at them all to find the obscure ones. If I have 30 pages then 1 pages is sufficient before I tighten the search criteria.
And I could not find a way to have it start in a new tag.

New Virtual World

2009-04-30T13:06:00.002+10:00

Flickr is generating a new virtual world
http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn17017-maps-in-flickr-photos

Week 8: Delicious

2009-04-20T13:14:00.008+10:00

Loved this. I have not been a great collector of Favourites as having too many defeats the purpose of quick easy access. When I am chasing a topic I often print sites as I expect to have trouble relocating them. (then cannot find the hardcopy anyway). I expect this tool to minimise the printing.
Delicious seems to be a tool to enable the eating of cake and keeping it.
Noticed (Margaret) that there is a button that enables the resorting of the web sites to a variety of sequences including Alpha.
Found this explaination very helpful in explaining the concept & value of the various components http://tinyurl.com/d3kj24
Had a quick look at Digg and didn't much like the philosophy. Furl however I Want to explore as it seems to address a few issues I have found with web sites not being the same when I return to them (and its not just my memory).
Still searching for a content bookmarker!

Week 7 - iGoogle

2009-04-15T21:36:00.003+10:00

I enjoyed this weeks exercise. After an initial bit of circling around the concept Dorothy pointed me at the web site to read the instructions (Well I am a male). Once the process was clearer, away I went. With the previous experience of setting up a blog the process was clearer and much quicker and it enables a lot more flexibility in position (size is still predetermined tho). The fundamental difference being - a blog is an evolving discourse but the iGoogle page is a more static display of reference material. The blogger site however seems more mature with more tools and cleaner process.
Love the ability to pull together a number of the items we have experimented with over the previous weeks especially the multiple email services and subscription feeds. I suspect it is a more suitable vehicle for displaying the types of things I have been building on my Blog.
Next step work out if I can share it with the world?

Week 6 Googling

2009-04-05T18:44:00.009+10:00

I use Google a lot and have used docs and the spreadsheet program so this week has been a bit easier (I am getting an early start cause of Easter). However, there is a lot more available then I realised.
I added the Google Map Street View of my local cafe to my Blog by creating a Zoho doc and pasting the pic & Web link in (the web Link doesn't seem to be live).
I Searched with Google books and found an obscure Australian publication (it didn't have the cover which is on my Library Thing account).
So now for some study of all the different aspects I haven't looked at yet.
An issues I find challenging is there is just too much of this stuff and its hard to find until you know of it. But even then as there is more and more it gets too much to keep linked and sorted (internally); so maybe there is a role for librarians to have these maps and effective paths mapped out for people (along the lines of this course!).
Microsoft labs is working on a product called Silverlight that is intended to enable a more knowledge oriented accessing of information and I assume this will eventually extend to applications. (The photosynth and deepzoom sites I have on my Blog are subsets of this work. Check it out http://silverlight.net/world/ ). This would mean all the books papers and quotes etc referred to in a text would be visually linked with cross reference, relationship and relativity connections. This would facilitate an exploration of the details behind many of the things we read.
I think we are in for some interesting times.

CHoo Choo

2009-04-05T18:21:00.001+10:00

Directions to CHoo CHoo Cafe

Drive down McKinnon Rd

Its next to the newsagent opposite the T-intersection.

http://maps.google.com.au/?q=choo%20choo%20mckinnon%20rd%20mckinnon%20australia&t=h&utm_campaign=en_AU&utm_medium=ha&utm_source=en_AU-ha-apac-au-gns-ssm&utm_term=add

How to Achieve our GOALS

2009-04-04T11:48:00.009+11:00

(Okay, so now we have a flicker account and photos and a link to my blog).

Choosing a path requires
1. Making a choice to go somewhere...
2. A clear INTENTION;

Sounds simple, however, I have often found that what seemed obvious to me is far from obvious to others. This results in lots of confusion and arguments about what should have happened. Then as the questions fly I usually find that I was not clear about what it is was that I actually wanted. This lead me to wonder - "what actually is a clear intention and how do I know that I have a clear intention"?

I also have a lot of examples of when my intention was clear and the desired result was achieved quickly and easily. What follows is my understanding of the necessary components to communicate (and understand) a person’s intention.

An intention is the clarification of a proposition, thus an intention requires a proposition.
We will take as an example the proposition "A journey of 1000 miles begins with one step".
Now what is implicit in this proposition?
a) we have a goal - Our goal is a destination 1000 miles away.
b) There is a choice involved (isn't there always?) “to start or not to start"? So we know there is uncertainty involved.

c) We must have a reason or purpose for going on this journey. It is reasonable to believe it the difficulty of deciding if the achievement of the purpose will outweigh the cost of the journey that is making us hesitant?
d) To make this determination we must have a measure of the reward (of arriving at the destination) and a limit on the cost (of the journey). And it will make our choice easier if we decide on a few things like the maximum time for the journey.

Okay we have – a goal, a purpose and a measure. Is this sufficient for a clear intention?
No; this is not enough; we also need to have some idea of the necessary actions required.
We may not be prepared to walk 1000 miles; so a means of transport may be required. If it takes more than 1 day, where do we stay? Will we camp, thus needing a tent etc and the means of carrying it or will we stay in motels and need extra funds etc? Assuming we want our partner to do some of the preparation, unless we have agreed on these types of things an argument will result. This tells me we have not yet made our intention clear.

e) For a clear intention the general process must also be clear.
f) Plus, there is another thing we need to have some clarity on. What could be the risk of our journey being too successful? Maybe we have so much fun on the journey we become travel junkies and forget the destination and just go on travelling. Or we like the destination so much we never come home. If our purpose was to improve our relationship, a difference of opinion in these choices could break up the relationship. Thus, identifying the Risks of Success helps refine our measures so they are consistent with our purpose.

Now we know we have a CLEAR INTENTION; instructions we can pass to a 3^rd party and have them implement for us and produce what we wanted to have.

Making a goal happen
Originally uploaded by IBPservice

Okay, with all that sorted, we are now in the position to decide if we want to go on this journey. We have a good idea of what will be involved, how we will know if it is worthwhile and what we will get out of it at the end. We can make an informed choice.

This gives us a nice test of a clear intention.

A clear intention enables me to make an informed choice about my involvement in a planned action.

This leads us to the time frame for all of this. We still may not be able to participate if it clashes with something else we have planned. Once we know the plan (Who will do what and when, we can take the 1st (and subsequent) steps as the proposition says; we can begin.

Week 5 Facebook Etc

2009-04-03T17:45:00.003+11:00

Okay, yet again, took me a while to get what this is all about (so many new concepts, hey!). I believe it is really an implementation of six degrees of separation in operation. Once I opened up and logged in it showed me a bunch of "friends" who were already on facebook. (I assume it got this from my Google contact list which I uploaded once I realised I could upload my calendar). Interestingly this included a few people I had lost contact with; and some I didn't really want to make contact with again! FOund it useful to ba able to visit their sites.
One friend's facebook I looked at had an interesting little video so next step was to add a youtube video to my facebook and from there to add one to my Blog so have jumped a bit to exercise 20.
Looked at myspace on yrl and wasn't impressed. Opened an account on myspace and found it similar in lots of ways to facebook but not as good. It boomed out alot of times and I found not real value in it so will stick with Facebook.

Also renewed my entry in LinkiID and checked soem contacts
The ease of doing all this continues to amaze me.

Zoom-in Photos

2009-04-03T16:21:00.002+11:00

This Class takes me a lot of time as I keep finding & exploring exciting new stuff. I believe I now have a zoom-able image from Microsoft labs Photozoom.
Click on the Image at the side here - if you have a scroll wheel rotate it to Zoom the Image in /out - move your mouse around to move the image around.
- Check out just ho much definition & detail you can see from a simple little set of photos.

Forget the Milk

2009-03-30T17:57:00.000+11:00

Well some concepts just don't workout. Finally get back to "Remember the Milk". Well it just wasn't very good. I found the interface very hard to drive and after an hr or so of fruitless effort gave up.

Google calendar is great and I expect to use it as it has useful sync features and the add a friends calendar has interesting possibilities.
but Forget the Milk!

Benifits of following

2009-03-29T14:25:00.003+11:00

Having followed all the blogs in the group (mainly so I knew I had done my homework). I received an added benefit. Under Google reader Settings there is a button that enables a feed from all my followed blogs.
Now, I automatically get all the changes the group makes - At last a valuable feature, and I can see other areas like this that are starting to show me the power of this capability.

Extra Bits

2009-03-28T17:12:00.003+11:00

Interesting where a small enquiry can lead. I though I would check out remember the milk. This lead me to Google calendars. synchronization and multiple calendars, friends calendars and embedding calendars in your Blog.
Somewhere in there the milk got lost.
But I now have a calender on my site!
However, its not showing what I want so need to do some research into permissions sharing etc.

Currently its good for public holidays. Check it out.

Week 4 Progress

2009-03-24T16:13:00.011+11:00

Okay, so here I go with RSS feeds. No problem adding a bunch of feeds but not really clear on the value yet. On first glance it looks just like another bunch of stuff I will get behind on reading!

Meanwhile have been distracted by a few discoveries as I trolled for Feeds. Have added a new way at looking at maps.
And also a link to PhotoSynth.
You have to try this if you are into images. for example a common need is to show people how to find the toilet (verbal instructions never work for some people)! Snap a few photos synth them together and they can see how it would look approached from all the different doors!!!! Check it out http://photosynth.net/

Have a feed from my Blog and that seems to load it all in. I still seem to be missing a factor on amalgamation?
Much searching later and back to the help files I am slowly learning how the pieces fit together. Found the Google help gave me information that assisted with this.
Now have a list of 30 or so components to test out all the little bits.

Okay I have set up a google calendar and synchronised it with my Outlook calendar and vis versa (watch out for this one as Unless you follow the instructions of setting 1 way snyc to start with you get everything duplicated!!! not nice). Can even set it up to SMS appointment changes; will see how this works out.
Discovered the link chicklet on the blog edit page and hypered some links.
Plus I have monetised my Blog to learn how this works. (think they are pretty safe as it takes 1000 viewings to get anywhere and even with a captive group I'm not getting many visits. So only 27 more components to test.

Buckminster Fuller Assemble Dymaxion Globe. 1987.

2009-03-23T17:28:00.003+11:00

Buckminster Fuller Assemble Dymaxion Globe. 1987.
Originally uploaded by fantomaster

A different way of looking at everyday reality.

And for a really interesting World Map have a look at this site. http://teczno.com/faumaxion/

Its a similar concept and it allows you to move around the world and keep the continental relationships true to their actual dimensions (rather than the normal maps that make the areas closer to the poles look much bigger than they really are). Its also very interesting the way it handles the pieces as you Zoom in & out.

Nefertiti

2009-03-19T21:12:00.001+11:00

Nefertiti
Originally uploaded by IBPservice

Nefertiti co-regent of Akhetaten. A different ruler & change manager.

Week 3 - Learning 2.0

2009-03-19T17:42:00.007+11:00

Again the value of the course structure comes forward. I have been trying a lot of bits and pieces and found variable quality.
I created an Avatar figure but couldn't get it onto my site. Gave up on this as I wasn't all that amoured by the concept anyway.

Librarything is a dream come true.
Got my Librarything Gadget up and going but also wanted to add a Search Widget. Cannot get this to work and it seems that a widget is different to a gadget and cannot find a search gadget.
I could do with some help on this as I also want to add a cloud; clearly this is possible as I have seen several.

Added snapit with my own button, a connection button and a site linklist plus a quote generator to my site.
Also cleaned it up a bit by working out how to display my slideshow rather than individual slides (but its resolution is too low to really read it).
Realised that my site is a hodge-podge and lacks a theme, but I recon that is for the master class; this class is about learning the possibilities.

Overall just love the ease of all this and noticing how much more integrated the process of implementation is just a few years after I last looked at this stuff. Its magic.

Sunbringer Rose

2009-03-17T15:12:00.002+11:00

Sunbringer Rose
Originally uploaded by Tirau Dan

Deep beauty connects straight to the Heart and lights a light that uplifts. I think this rose could have been called light bringer!
Real change is a change of heart. We can think about how to change what to change and when to change in great detail but it only reflects in new behaviour when we change our attitude.

don't believe me check it out!

2090320 IBP Tag Cloud

2009-03-10T23:09:00.001+11:00

2090320 IBP Tag Cloud

My book subject Tags cloud

Learning 2.0 Comments

2009-03-07T13:48:00.007+11:00

A useful week of learning. I have found just having a list of activities to follow and the awareness that my progress is being monitored has been a useful stimulus to overcome my past reluctance to explore the web 2.0 space.
Once started it is easy to continue as the excitement of uncovering the new possibilities becomes apparent. So my blog is up and running, have received comments and given some. As usual all the new terminology needs to be populated with personal context/experience so that it actually means something.
(In terms of my Blog I have not had a Paradigm for this "space"). Once started the capabilities, implications and boundaries start to flesh out. "following" is one of these terms and I am slowly learning what it is about.

I am also aware that I have other commitments that will take me right away from the Internet for most of next week so will need to do most of my next weeks work this weekend.

2009-03-04T16:42:00.005+11:00

Generally, people (myself included) seem to suffer from having a personal blind spot. There are many things that in hindsight are obvious and still at the time we denied that it was so.

Currently, the "Western world" seems to be deep in a group of these. There are so many I don't know where to start.
I expect you have a list of your own -
the financial crisis
climate change
executive salaries
our pension services
my spelling
etc
etc.

So what is this and How does it happen?

An over view is that people are good at developing generalisations. These serve us well and make us more efficient. They are not quiet habits but more short cuts - we know the way things "work" so we can save a lot of time and energy by assuming that that is the way things actually are. Much of the time this is true. However, there are times when it isn't and there comes a time when it is dangerous to keep using it.

Unfortunately, this requires us to let go of the shortcut and expend time and effort creating a new one that works in the "new" world. AND when the pressure is on is the worst time to be testing and developing a new shortcut. This can result in disaster.

So why do we find this so hard to make these changes?