Everything that does not have a home, just a big old stinking pile of posts.
Tired: Doing a google on your own name. Wired: Reading a Googlism on your own name. Expired: Looking up your name in a phone book. What is Googlism? The best why to find out is to explore, but more or less, it uses the “collective” wisdom of the Google API to extract a list of […]
The URL declares what RSS stands for? http://www.reallysimplesyndication.com/ peeked open just recently, Dave Winer’s effort (I llike the initial tone) to have a place to talk more about what RSS can do rather than what it stands for or the intracacies of XML. The revolution of RSS is what people are doing with it, what […]
From some previous visits with excellent learning leaders in Australia and continued contacts with colleagues there, I was asked to be audio interviewed online June 2 (here) via the LearningTimes site “Live Session: RSS, Blogging and What it Means for Teaching and Learning” (It is free, but you need to join LearningTimes): Participate in this […]
It’s been nice getting wide and praising notes, comments, trackbask about the new Feed2RSS— I must admit being eager to rush it out and while the MagpieRSS seems to be running smoothly, I had a few minor goofs that others have nicely pointed out. If you started using the new version or have downloaded it, […]
Just in a few hours of announcing yesterday our new version of the Feed2JS (RSS to JavaScript service/code), David Carter-Tod zoomed out the gate, downloaded the code, and had it up and running in Virginia. As well, he found a minor bug (pesky missing semi-colon) and reminded me to deal with the server parameters for […]
As hinted, I have just posted an updated version of the RSS to JavaScript service/code we created in April 2003. The new one is now called Feed2JS and features a number of enhancements- primarily an adoption of the open-source Magpie RSS parser, to replace the unsupported OnysRSS parser previously used. Magpie allows us to provide […]
This dog will not blog… for the next 4 days. I’m off for some backpack time around the edge of the Mogollon Rim, in the Coconino National Forest. Given drought conditions of the last several years, a rather dry winter, it will only be maybe a week or two before fire restrictions and closures shut […]
Today is my big catered affair. The 2004 Ocotillo Retreatis the 17th one for the Maricopa Community College’s “Ocotillo” program— something started to provide a faculty-led focus on issues of instructional technology. Ocotillo is a desert plant that is also the creative metaphor for what has been a dynamic and evolving organization over the years […]
Again, I should be working on something important, but for idle curiosity I was fishing in the Ocean Google to try and find where other folks have been using our RSS To Javascript code/service: http://www.google.com/search?q=rss2js.php%3Fsrc%3D It is an interesting mmix of people running off of our server as well as running it on their own […]
I’ve been in a number of collaboration initiatives that aim to use online collaboration tools or “virtual community building” and sometimes it feels like the frustration of combing through one of those 90 function multi-tools when all you really need is a basic knife.
While not convinced the tools make or break the projects (it has more to do with the people, the motivation, a shared purpose, the gravitational pull of Saturn ;-), it sure seems like the tools often get in the way rather than enabling. The creaky 1990s vintage “Worktools” used, or attempted in use last year by the Learning Objects Virtual Community of Practice (LOVCOP) as well as the ePortfolios VCOP (E-PAC) had brief pulses of activity last year, but are now online ghost-towns. Was it the tools fault? I would not know, but I can vouch that the sheer tediousness of using them compelled me not to extend an effort (email notifications of discussions posted- you had to log in, navigate and open threads to even find them) and not many others spent time inside these multi-tool. sites. Worktools was likely a fine effort in the early days of web-based forums, but to me it was the equivalent of a Model T on the autobahn.
So what has happened?
