February 2011 Archives

Currently, my special interest centers around preserving access to instructional content while using intermittently-connected mobile devices. In addition to some of the resources others have mentioned, I utilize the following links in the course of my work:

* Engadget ------- http://www.engadget.com
* Redmond Pie ---- http://www.redmondpie.com
* Gizmodo -------- http://www.gizmodo.com
* Slashdot ------- http://www.slashdot.org
* modmyi.com ----- http://modmyi.com
* O'REILLY ------- http://oreilly.com
* w3schools ------ http://www.w3schools.com
* DevGuru -------- http://www.devguru.com
* gizmo fee ------ http://www.techsupportalert.com
* All News Blog -- http://frenchpugblues.blogspot.com
* iPhoneHacks ---- http://www.iphonehacks.com/

MSDN Programming Reference:
JScript
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hbxc2t98.aspx
HTML Reference
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms533050.aspx
CSS
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms531205.aspx
XML DOM
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms757828.aspx
FSO
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6tkce7xa.aspx
ASP.NET
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/9k6k3k4a.aspx
C#.NET
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/618ayhy6.aspx

Many of the people and organizations I follow on Twitter point me in the direction of news about emerging technologies and practices. Some of those people are: Eszter Hargittai, Larry Lessig, Glenda Morgan, Bryan Alexander, danah boyd and Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of the recently released The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry). I also follow googlepublicpolicy, EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), Nieman Lab (Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard), Copyright Law, Privacy Law. I follow a lot of people here at the U, including Nancy Sims and Eli Sagor.

When I look into specific educational technologies, I search the Educause website as one of my first steps but of course conduct the usual searches on library databases. I regularly check publishers such as MIT Press for new books on technology and related topics. MIT publishes the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning, which you can either purchase or download free of charge. I also read the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed.

I love Boing Boing, which often features science fiction and "science factual" from the past, present and future. Reading about technology in this way gives me perspective and helps me imagine the possibilities.

The tech that I'm currently culling have a lot to do with how to sift through and organize all the different information streams I have. Email, Facebook, Twitter, and RSS feeds all have their own home if you don't jump out of the services proper and into some sort of aggregator/facilitator.
I'd been experimenting with Tweetdeck (wwww.tweetdeck.com) for a while, which was nice for parsing my Twitter feeds into separate, themed streams and pairing them with Facebook, but I've sense found it too limiting. I'm currently trying to dig deeper into more capable tools like the following:

Flock (www.flock.com)
A web browser with social media arms that pulls from all the major sources and displays feeds in a sidebar.

Hootsuite (www.hootsuite.com)
A cloud aggregator that lets you pars you feeds into collections for better organization and easier, more focused consumption. Has the ability to post out to the connected networks as well. I'm currently using this one as my primary aggregator, and it's working out okay, though I'm finding some annoying limitations. It integrates with OpenID as well (a plus for me), though that makes it's iPad/iPhone app unusable, at least for the time being.

Seesmic (sessmic.com)
I don't have a lot of experience with this one, but it's one of the most popular, from my understanding, and similar to Hootsuite in approach. It also has desktop clients for Win/Mac/Linux, and mobile apps that hit all the major mobile OSs.

They all have pretty similar features, but go about things somewhat differently.

I've yet to find an aggregator that can also serve as a capable email client, which I think would be one step closer to a holy grail. That's one think Flock has on the rest, not only is it a social aggregator, it's also a fully featured web browser built on Chromium (the core of Google Chrome). You can run gmail in it and have a one stop shop for all your communication needs.

Does anyone have experience with these, or similar tools?

How have you all found a balance, or are finding a balance, between acquiring great sources of information and communication while keeping the flow of content manageable?

Howdy everybody.

I prowl a few sources for tech news, but not many dedicated to academic technology in higher ed, which is looking like a trend.

Of the sources I'll list here, the ones I think warrant the most attention are CNet, Webware, and Profhacker.

Here are the feeds that get most of my eye-ball time:

CNet News (news.cnet.com)
A pretty main stream collection of what's jiving in the tech industry, but it's normally a second tier source, commenting on breaking news from other places around the net. This is by far my most relied apron source.

Webware (news.cnet.com/webware)
A subdivision of CNet that focus exclusively on the web and cloud computing.

iPhone Atlas (reviews.cnet.com/iphone-atlas) and Android Atlas (reviews.cnet.com/android-atlas)
Two more sources associated with CNet, but these are focused exclusively on iOS and Android. Good info, but also not a source for breaking news, per se.

The Open Road (news.cnet.com/openroad)
Yet another CNet associated source, this one focusing on open source trends. Sometimes a little less relevant to what I'm doing than others I follow, but still pretty interesting.

Mashable (mashable.com)
A site about emerging and colliding technologies and culture. I really only follow the social media wing, mashable.com/social-media.

Lifehacker (lifehacker.com)
Like Tanya, I also enjoy this resource for its breath of topics and ideas. More about technology in everyday life, but a good source for feeling out the tech zeitgeist of the moment.

Profhacker (chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker)
I haven't been following this one for too long - had it recommended to me in one of my recent classes - but it looks very similar to Lifehacker, except with a focus on higher ed instead of general day-to-day life. Some interesting stuff.

Gizmodo (gizmodo.com) and Endgadget (engadget.com)
Tanya has these as well. Very gadget focused. I don't turn to them all that often, but when a big gadget announcement is on the way or has just happened, I check them out for their analysis and opinions.

A List Apart (alistapart.com)
A fantastic site on web design and development. It's a very approachable resource for novices, but covers current topics in enough depth to be useful for even experts at web tech.

Technorati (technorati.com)
A blog aggregator of sorts. I don't follow these guys either, but every now and then I go to see what's new and what emerging blogs I may want to pay some attention to.

I also follow many of these and others on Twitter all wrapped up with a bow in a list that itself be followed: http://twitter.com/#!/pjhaggerty/tech-news

So, thems be it.

How I learn about technology

I've always had a need, so I usually Google it (doh), experiment, read reviews, visit forums. This is the first time for me to explore technology with no one particular need in mind!

These tech blogs are supposed to be pretty good:

* Slashdot - www.slashdot.org
* BoingBoing - www.boingboing.net
* Engadget - www.engadget.com
* Gizmodo - www.gizmodo.com
* Kuro5hin - www.kuro5hin.org
* Lifehacker - lifehacker.com
* O'Reilly Network - www.oreillynet.com
* Think Secret - www.thinksecret.com

Gizmodo and Lifehacker is what I have experience with, as well as Wired!

My new interest is in cloud apps that allow for web clipping and note sharing. Unlike with Delicious, which allows to link to pages, apps like Evernote and 'Spring pad' clip and save web content, so no more broken links! It's also a way to share notes - possibly class notes, as they have similar text editing functionality as Google Docs.

I've also been looking into apps like Dropbox that allow seamless sync, back-up, collaboration and file management. It's a lot faster and has more functionality than backing up to a HD or uploading to NetFiles.
NetFiles works fine at the U level, but I wouldn't integrate it with my personal life. And right now, it would be nice to have that flexibility. ;)

In my regular surfing habits, I don't have a go-to source for information about academic technology. Instead, I try to connect the dots from various sources about design, typography, content, code, branding, and usability. Here are three of my favorites.

EduStyle
When university development teams go through a major redesign, they're often featured here.

CollegeWebEditor
This blog goes beyond featuring examples to write about web, marketing and public relations in higher education.

FlowingData
Data, as a topic, is hard to categorize. So is this blog. It's run by a Ph.D. candidate in statistics and it looks at how data visualization affects our lives.

Interuserface
The author of this blog attempted to rethink the mouse with his 10/GUI project. Today he presents articles about the conventions of modern interface design and the assumptions that come with them.

Brain Traffic
This company is just up the road from us. Their topics center around their argument that it's impossible to design a good user experience for bad content.

Boxes and Arrows
This blog gets into the nuts and bolts of building technology to make great user experiences.

UX Magazine
User experience is a cross-disciplinary mode of thinking. This blog covers some of the fresh thinking on design, strategy, technology and their influence on modern life.

UX Booth
Yep, it's another blog by and for the user experience community. Topics discussed here could, like a lot of given topics, be applied to the classroom.

Mendeley is a reference manager and academic "social" network, with a web-face as well as native apps (with reduced functionality) for macs, pcs, and linux.

Prezi and Prezi Meeting are interesting presentation tools.

So far these have been most interesting...

Weekly Discussion Topic for Feb. 14, 2011 to Feb. 20, 2011

What roles do we think social media should play in the formal communications that take place at the University of Minnesota, and why?

Some places we might want to take this:

• Publicly available services vs. internal services
• University wide profiles: yes, no, what would they look like
• Integration with other University services
• Relationship to existing communication services at the university -- e.g. email, listservs