CogBlogged from ‘May, 2010’

This is the newest Dominoe story created in a tool so new and exciting I don’t have a category. I heard of Zooburst first in March 2010 at the NMC Symposium on New Media & Learning when Craig Kapp did one of the most outstanding presentations I’d seen anywhere, a session on the Augmented Reality projects he has done in a year at NYU (see the presentation materials, including a YouTube video of the whole session). We’ve also been pegging Zooburst it as an example in the recent NMC Horizon Reports. It is a web-based content creation tool for making a 3D story that pops up on a page when viewed on the screen. You can have 10 pages in a story, each with a caption. Even viewed on the web it is impressive, you can spin the book around and view it from different angles. Any object can have [...]

WikiMedia Commons photo posted by Donald Swanson I caught the NPR story on the radio this morning that today was the 30th year since the major volcanic eruption at Mount St. Helens (what do you buy a volcano on its birthday, and technically, no not really its birthday). What was I doing May 18, 1980? I was a junior in high school, and probably was day dreaming in English class or fretting over a pimple. (I was a dork, really). My blog archives do not go back that far. I cannot even remember if I heard it about it, maybe in the newspaper? Volcanoes loom big, sleeping giants, til they blow and ruin your airplane flight plans. They don’t really care if their ash affects your day planner. The US Geological Survey (USGS) has an incredible mass shared image archive of the history of Mount St Helens – in all [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I’ve had a string of audio recorder devices over the years- one of the first portable MP3 recorders by iRiver, another white plastic one I already forgot the name, a great workhorse in an Edirol R-09. I don’t think I need hardware anymore, though, for basic interviews and audio recording. It’s on my iPhone in the Griffin iTalk app. My NMC colleague Keene Haywood has recommended it after he used it in a pinch to record a keynote session at a recent meeting. I had the free version on my iPhone but had never used it, so I splurged for the $1.99 version, though in retrospect, you can do fine with the free one. I did a ~10 minute recording as a little demo (iTalk Demo (8MB mp3)): In my test I neglected in important step- put the iPhone into airport mode while [...]

Wouldn’t you give anything to be the fly on the wall in the Facebook boardroom as they scramble to put of the little sparks of fire? I’m not even going to dredge up all the links of people citing why they are quitting facebook, why they are not, why they are begrudgingly staying. I think danah boyd has truly nailed well the issues, which are not just privacy. Facebook seems like that pathetic story of child with a growth-defect of abnormal physical size growth and not the corresponding intellectual development, hence the big blob of the visualization of Facebook privacy. Yet it’s not just this change, its the lack of awareness of its users on how to even understand what they are sharing, much less find it on a repeated basis. The Facebook conundrum is that they have created something that is truly easy for everyday folks, cousin Ernie, Aunt [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Swiss Bones Arizona is a state bombarded by a free source of untapped energy. Our electric companies have been offering incentives in the forms of rebates and tax credits. it’s not out of the goodness of their heart or their long term vision on the future of energy- it was mandated by law, and funded by extra fees everyone has been paying each month. For more than a year I have been putting money away towards getting a solar electric system for my house in Strawberry. I have an ideal spot, a south facing roof with no trees obstructing it. Last month, I spec-ed out a system with a firm from Flagstaff, and started the paperwork. I knew the timing was important as the news was that the programs were running out of money, they had already dropped the rebate rate in March. I [...]

modified from cc licensed flickr photo shared by pfala Sneaky. Damn sneaky. I got a nice $100 Visa gift card for my birthday last month.( I am not looking you in the mouth, Gift Horse). These look like credit card numbers, have numbers like credit cards. But there is is something tricky there- it’s nearly impossible to spend them down to zero. I ordered well over the amount on Amazon, thinking I could pay the rest with my regular credit card. However, my order of 4 items was split to two retailers, so one part was processed ($57 worth) but because the rest was more than what was left on the card, Amazon asked for a new card. So the only way to use up the card is keep chipping away at it until it is next to nothing (or nothing). But how many people really do that? I read [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Punchup I got to Austin airport ridiculously early this morning mainly because all I want to do is to get home, which I have not seen since April 28. I hope I remember where it is, much less, where my car is at the Phoenix airport (much less if I remember how to drive). My virtual hat is off to those edu Road Warriors like Will Richardson and David Warlick who seem like they live out of a suitcase, or George Siemens, who can rattle off two presentations a day (or an hour it seems). I do a fair bit of travel, but this last cross country zig zag has been more than I prefer… when you plan these things months ahead, it all seems doable and sensible, and then in the middle of it, racing through Houston airport to catch a connnection, you wonder, “What [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Like ISPs, cell phone companies, I am fairly convinced that ask enough people or fly long enough, and you will find that All Airlines Suck- sooner or later they will jerk you around, lose your luggage, route you through North Dakota when flying from New York to Miami. When I started work at NMC, my flight plans were not loyal to any one airlines; I booked what was most direct and cheapest… and then I saw my colleagues getting all the upgrades and royal treatment on Continental, so I played sheep and became “loyal”.. and must admit, I got to like the perks once inside the velvet ropes. While I knew that they were not excited incensed by the news of Continental merging with United, I was remaining not fired up, heck, it might mean a route to the west coast could be done [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Vancouver is indeed a special place for me. I’ll take any bait to attend a conference there, though no incentive is needed for Northern Voice. It always has been, and even with its growth this year to over 500 attendees, more than your garden variety slap a name tag on my and call me Joe kind of conference. [Medieval Latin cnferentia, from Latin cnferns, cnferent-, present participle of cnferre, to bring together; see confer.] The Latin origin for the word for this event mentions nothing of bludgeoning by PowerPoint or Conference Chicken, so none of the normal conference stuff that makes my fur itch really happens at Northern Voice. Proof? Check out the kind of chicken that they served here: tise cc licensed flickr photo shared by Ariane Colenbrander At my first MooseFest in 2006 I remember then the compulsion to try and capture via blogging every bit [...]

mashup of flickr cc licensed photos by digital_trash and by h.koppdelaney I had a blast with this session from Northern Voice that I arm twisted Brian Lamb and Chris Lott to be part of, which I had pitched originally as Every few months some pundit posts something online stating that blogging is dead (invariably posted in a blog). The only thing truly dead is a statement that “X is dead”. Yes, blogging defined as publishing in blog software may be on a downslope, but blogging as the act of self publishing online has just diffused to more outlets from status messaging to YouTube dialogues. That said, there are deep problems with all the forms that are eclipsing blogs in the social media space. Blogging may yet emerge as the only hope in preserving what is best in human intellectual endeavor. Come debate us, and bring out your dead (there will [...]