CogBlogged from ‘April, 2010’

cc licensed flickr photo shared by [cine]diego While I see the value of screencasts to explain technology or web sites, I don’t do them very often– there is something about having something explained to me at someone else’s pace that scratches me a little sideways. But a reason did come up lately over at NMC for our Horizon Projects. Since 2006, the work on these have been done in wikis- first in a Confluence one hosted at MIT, then when I came on board we did a few years in MediaWiki, and now we run several a year in our hosted Wikispaces area. A few clicks back, we had to provide wiki orientations, sometimes in webinar style, but lately, it seems most people don’t need instructions on finding the “Edit This Page” button…. yet I’ve been seeing that people are missing a few key points or missing some key resources. [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by M.H.ick9s Arrgh, just spent about an hour and half chasing myself in silly code circles. Not that it matters, but just to document my sanity/lack thereof… I have a few WordPress pages hanging off the top banner, and I’d previously had them use PHP code in the pages, using one of the plugins that allow you to put executable PHP in your stuff (yes all warnings apply, you need to know what you are doing, security panic yadda yadda). I think I was using PHP Execution which, like Exec PHP just lets you put the code in the page including all the <?php … ?gt; stuff and let it go. However, I often write posts that have PHp code in them, and I really like using the way the Syntax Highlghiter Plus plugin displays code, e.g. <?php // array of all years data to [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog From an information source outside my normal education and technology readings, Shareable is a real gem– Shareable is a nonprofit online magazine that tells the story of sharing. We cover the people, places, and projects that are bringing a shareable world to life. And we share tools and tips to help you make a shareable world real in your life. In a shareable world, things like clothing swaps, childcare coops, potlucks, carsharing, community gardening, and cohousing bring us together, make life more fun, and free up time and money for the important things in life. When we share, not only is a better life possible, but so is a better world. The remarkable successes of Zipcar, Wikipedia, Kiva, open source software, Freecycle, and Creative Commons prove this. They tell a hopeful story about human nature and our future, one we don’t hear enough [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by ex_magician Wow, does anyone remember 43 Things? It was one of the early social networking apps, and to me, still a nifty idea. You list 43 things you want to do, it connects you with other people who have the same goal or have completed it. You can post your success or ask questions of people with the same goal. I’d not been there is well over 2 years, but I did remember tossing out the goal “Write a Novel”. It was not “publish a novel” or “work as an author”, it was just write one. I had no idea where to start so I didn’t because I told myself I could not do it. That was the same thinking I had about running, but by committing to a goal where there is a deadline (like run a marathon on a given date), and [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by jbelluch I’m hopeful I have an optimum (or optimummer) search solution for my blog- not that I care if you can find anything here, but its important that I do. Back in March I vented my frustration about the limits of WordPress search, yet despite the experiments with plugins, none of them really worked for me, and one of them just spun wheels trying to index my site, and just ended up bloating the database. But in about 45 minutes of tinkering this afternoon, I have an approach that gives me exactly what I wanted, and does not need any plugins. This will work only for a self hosted WordPress blog, and you will have to do a little bit of manual page creation, touch the code, and edit your templates. Is anyone still there?

cc licensed flickr photo shared by J. Star This has to be so common an experience I almost don;t have to trot out the narrative I contrived below. Can there be anything more inefficient, annoying, cumbersome, time sucking, exasperating, numb headed than… group scheduling a meeting by e-mail? No, then why the bleeping bleepity bleep does it happen all the D’Arcy Norman fracking time? I can hear heads nodding in agreement, but how common is this? It’s not for lack of tools, I’m afraid, it’s lack of will. It’s stupid. Stop doing it. Right now. No? Then just keep spending your precious time working through exchanges like: From: Howard <howie@bigdeal.com> To: sandy.biggs@sandies.net, fred@bedrock.org, jt521@gmail.com Date: March 27, 2010 at 9:30 AM Subject: Conference Planning Meeting Hi there, We need to schedule a conference call to flesh out the agenda for the meeting here at headquarters next month. Can you let [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Jon Bradley Photography Yay! Just minutes ago, I got a phone call from Michelle from Canon, who apparently caught wind of my blogged descent into Canon Rebate Hell. She apologized for the frustration, and is FedEx-ing my rebate check. So what say you, are blogs dead? Is there no value here?

cc licensed flickr photo shared by kisses are a better fate than wisdom I’m just a little pup on the web. A one dog show. I’ve got no ads on my blog, no sponsors, no income here. I pay for everything myself. But I sure as hell take the steps to provide attribution credit for images I use here. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the right behavior to model. It’s the golden rule. It’s easy. Perhaps if you are an outfit like GigaOM you don’t have to bother with such trivial annoyances. Tonight I came across their post on Open vs. Closed: In the Ongoing Battle Over Control, How Much Is Too Much? and right away I recognized the left side photo in the collage they used: or you can find directly on their site at http://gigaom.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/open-vs-closed.jpg I recognized that one right away as a creative commons one [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by mastrobiggo Technically, it was OMPL, but who cares what the ML it is– I’ve got a tip to share on how I’ve been using one single file to drive two dynamic resources. This is hardly in the realm of Tony Hirst mashup magic, but here it goes… Since we are running several Horizon Projects a year, we’ve been setting up wikis in our hosted Wikispaces account, starting with a master wiki template, but customizing them as needed. Just in 2010 we’ve run one for the main Horizon Report, the K-12 Horizon Project, Iberoamerican Horizon Project (all in Spanish, that was fun), and just around the corner, the Museum Horizon Project. Each one has a series of resources, and I’ve found what I think is a clever way to power two different ones from that double downing XML file. Here’s how. The first way I [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Giampaolo Macorig