Blog Pile

Deciphering the Wired/iPad Tea Leaves

I was thumbing through the current issue of Wired Magazine (yes, my analog, arrived in snail mail, maybe delivered by Pony Express version). In very small print on the table of contents, under “New Media” was an interesting note. We’ve collaborated with Adobe to develop the Wired Reader, which will run on pretty much any […]

Blog Pile, Wordpress

Roundabout the WordPress Hackery


cc licensed flickr photo shared by theilr

It’s been a while since I did some WordPress hacking, and today I think it showed. Like a good bone I could not let go of a niggling little problem, and then after going around in circles, I found an obvious way that was much more simpler than where I was headed.

But there are things even learned in a few trips around the roundabout.

Here’s where I drove around in circles today… for a while, I have been publishing web versions of the NMC Horizon Reports in CommentPress format at http://wp.nmc.org — this is very useful for publications since it allows comments to be attached to individual paragraphs, so they are tied at a more micro level to the content. (Yeah they are in the old CommentPress mode, I know I should be using the newer digress.it and am ready to publish the new one there this week).

Since Mobiles have been part of the Horizon Reports since like 1776, and there is the nifty WPtouch plugin that elegantly makes WordPress sites display cleanly on not just iPhones, but other mobile platforms (my first play was last year and I have rolled into most of my WordPress sites).

Presenting, Random Musing

It’s Easy to Throw Real Stones at Virtual Glass Houses

My, how virtual worlds have tarnished. From all the high expectations of 2006, people calling for the coming of the “3D web”, and its been a year since the crows on the wire started sqwaking the “Second Life is Dead” as the big corporations who responded to the flash of light packed up their virtual buildings and left. Or, now it is relegated as a niche or that it is only good for 50 people.

Here is a code phrase to look out for- any statement that X is dead is suspect unless X is that skunk you ran over on the highway and has been flattened. Always question such assertions; ask to see the corpse.

I’m just coming off of a two day utterly engaging experience in what we do at the NMC as online conferences- these are not your webinar slideshow brigades- for 3 and a half years, we have run two to four conferences per year in a virtual world space, ones where people pay money to attend, and I can say first hand that the ones we have run are a completely different, and from what I have seen, more participatory experience from your typical web-based conference.

This is going to be a monster long post, maybe the longest I have ever lobbed on my server…

But before I make a case about this, which I am setting up for the rock throwers, I’d like first to rave about the NMC 2010 Symposium on New Media & Learning — from behind the curtain, it is an utterly exhausting affar, and usually by the time it is over, I have decompressed, and lack the energy to really capture the experience. But this one, may have been the best one we have every done, for the range and quality of the sessions and the discussions we saw bubbling around it.

Blog Pile

Stomped by Lawyers

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Jeremy Brooks There is a imprint from that boot labeled “copyright violation” across my face. I got stomped… and likely deserved it. I had a eight-baked idea to do a video response to Dave Cormier and George Siemens in their call for videos about the future of education for […]

Blog Pile

Comic Adventures of Bavaman and Norman!

So you can’t get enough twitter action of the smackdowns of Reverend Jim “Bavaman” and his sidekicked D’Arcy Bike Wonder Norman? The Cabed Blogsader abhors anyone who dares to change out their blog theme, especially Norman! Stay tuned as the story unfolds! Make your own addition to this talke at http://www.batmancomic.info/

Blog Pile

Mind Flips

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Zach Dischner Did you ever have one of those experiences where you were struggling with a problem, and somehow your mind completely flipped it around to a solution you could never see on the first side? It’s more than a light bulb going off, it’s like turning your brain […]

Blog Pile

Memory Mapping

Stephen Downes highlighted today one of those wonderful simple ideas that can go (and has gone) a long way. In An Idea That Keeps Growing Doug Peterson shows how his simple idea took off– to use online maps to create a walking tour of the place he grew up. As Stephen suggested where he plotted […]