CogBlogged from ‘September, 2009’

cc licensed flickr photo shared by WadeB Flickr was quietly introduced a new feature that will be interesting to use- Galleries. Think of it as a way to build collections of photos from other flickr users. It was always hard to do this before; the ost viable route was tagging photos, most people do not allow other people to tag their photos, or the other route was creating a group and asking people to add their photos to their group (No offense, but I don’t want to join 100 different groups just because you want my photo- believe me I am flattered, but I am also lazy). Flickr galleries does that. It allows you to visit other people’s photos, and if there is a photo you like, you can add (or crate a brand new gallery on the spot) with a new button above the photo:. I decided to surf [...]

originally published over at NMC…. Me playing web paleontologist! As an appendix to the history of the NMC, I've been researching the evolution of its web site. With the aid of the invaluable Internet Archive Wayback Machine I've been able to identify, like in Geology, the major stratigraphic layers that marks this history. Join me on this journey (and let me know if something is wrong, as much of this was before my time!) Paleolithic Period (circa mid 1990s) The very first NMC web site was very much a single HTML file and an image. Carbon dating has not been definitive in identifying the exact page it appeared (best guess is 1994), and this copy was found at a URL from Wayne Carlson at Ohio State University.The organization was described as: The New Media Centers program is a non-profit* organization committed to helping institutions of higher education enhance teaching and [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by voss You would think in an advanced electronic era that has brought us tools to broadcast our breakfast dilemmas and make our rock and roll dreams come alive that we might perhaps… maybe… improve the collection of information via @$#%#ing paper forms. There is no excuse for wasting my time with bad forms. I am putting my paw down on these offenses: Badly Designed Paper Forms My handwriting is already bad enough for me to masquerade as an MD, but forms that do not allow appropriate space, ones that have me repeat information already entered, or request information hardly relevant is a huge waste. My time is wasted chicken scratching in tiny boxes and some poor staff person’s time is wasted trying to interpret what I wrote and re-enter it into some computer system. Fax Me That Electronic Form I find alot of forms [...]

cc licensed flickr photo modified by one shared by alexik Don’t belittle me for not knowing how the great Google Machine works, but I am feeling like someone took my piece of pie. For more than a year, at NMC we’ve been running Google Apps Enterprise Edition for Education. I am more than happy not running desktop mail applications, we have the office sharing calendars and doing collaborative work in docs. That’s great. Yet, I am baffled why in this Enterprise Application package, we are missing a key tool for collaboration- Google Groups. Along with Maps and Google Reader, it requires us to keep an “out of enterprise” account open at Google to use these orphaned services. Where it gets really goofy, and twisted, is that for many of its own services, Google runs support through Google Groups- so to get help for Enterprise Apps, I have to access this [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog You can always count on someone sooner or later warning about the dangers of what you put online since "one day someone will google your past". I’ve already blogged about this fear, and how ridiculous the concept is if you spin it around to the suggestion– it thus says we should all aim to construct false personas of perfection online, so that one day when I am seeking a job, my employer will look back and find 27 years of clean living. Who in their right mind will weigh your current achievements with the same consideration as what you were doing 20 years ago? It makes no sense to me, So I decided to create my own Falsebook presence as a model for others to do- only generate perfect representations online of them "because one day someone will google your past." C’mon, create [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by mnlamberson Thanks to the Jimbo Groom for pointing me to this priceless photo at the Open Education Conference last month in Vancouver (and thank Michelle for grabbing a great moment). it’s a fake prayer, the Reverend knows, and Gardner just want us to read a poem ;-)

re-posted from I Hate Running… cc licensed flickr photo shared by swissrolli With a week of successful training under my ….. well I don’t wear a belt while running, so there goes the metaphor. But I am feeling ready to put the running shoes on for the next 20 weeks of training leading up to the January 17, 2010 PF Changs Half Marathon in Phoenix (does anyone remember 2007 when it was 24 degrees at the start, yikes!). And I’ve been tweaking my I Hate Running web site enough, and everything is set, but one thing. You. I need your help. Right now, my fund raising for the cause I am running for is at $0. (that is because today is the opening of the nagging season). If you want to know more about what I am doing keep reading- if you know the story, you can jump 3 steps [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I wandered down today to the Pine (AZ) Labor Day Festival- one of my favorite things at these summer fairs are the library’s used book sale. I wandered all the tables, and hit the jackpot on the last table, with Neil Gaimian’s Neverwhere and William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. Each one set me back 50 cents. So one (I don’t know who…) might ask, what does the author get out of this book resale? On the surface, at the moment, nothing. But that’s the most narrow economic viewpoint. There is more value in me becoming a fan, inspired by these books to perhaps buy others through official channels, or to broadcast my love of the books to my contacts, who in turn may buy or redistribute. You have to think about networks and flow, not one time transactions. And I love this portable technology. [...]

Darn, I should have gone by my usual route of trying things before I blog about them. In a previous post, I speculated about using WordPress and the Twitter Tools Plugin to add a hashtag to posts to either aggregate them (among multiple bloggers) or segrate them (for a single blogger with several sites). My idea was to insert the hash tag on all posts. Tony Hirst speculated it would be better if on each post you could optionally add a new, different tag. I looked at the newest version of Twitter Tools plugin and noticed that there was a field now to add a hashtag. My first thought was “this is nice, but what good is it to add the same tag on every post?” So I set out to use this on my side blog, my I Hate Running one. I set it up so that every post [...]

It seems as easy as Spot. I was playing around with blip.fm and had the eye brow arching experience of seeing media jump around the net. I see people blip in twitter, and I made an account a while ago, but barely dip in. It’s more or less like being your own DJ in a place that is kind of like twitter for music. You use the search box to find a song and if it is found, you can “blip it” meaning, the music starts playing (I have no idea where the music files are but they must be legal, right?), and your selection goes on the blip stream with every one else. So I was in a rockin mood and looked for the great Irish rocker Rory Gallagher (bingo!) and better, one of my favorite songs of his, “Bought and Sold”. So I can hear the song. But [...]