Category: Technology

Tagging: The Book

taggingbook1.jpgWell, it should not come as a surprise that a new book on tagging was just released: Tagging: People-powered Metadata for the Social Web. I have not read it yet, but thought the review on LibraryThingmade the book seem interesting enough to warrant my ordering it. As tagging is something about which I am both very interested as well as somewhat confused. Perhaps Gene Smith, the author, will be able to help me demystify it.

I wonder if he is planning to attend Northern Voice 2008, too?

WordPress Upgrade, Again

I just upgraded my blog to the latest stable release of WordPress (Version 2.3.2), and updated my theme Royaleto its current version, 1.4, as well. Upgrades like these always seem easier before they actually begin . Strange how they tend to show problems and inconsistencies with other widgets, plug-ins, and the like. WordPress is much easier than MovableType to upgrade, as even with the tweaks and hiccups, I was still able to do it myself and without the need of hiring a developer!

One of the cool features in the current theme is the toggle buttons on the upper right of each post. The posts can be individually toggled opened and closed. This does not effect functionality much outside of printing, but anything to add interactive possibilities (such as to print a post without the sidebars) is a nice feature.

Twitter Champion

I just read a fascinating post from Richard Azia, where he described some of his thoughts having recently Tweeted 10,000 times (in under a year!). He had some really thoughtful reflections about Twitter as a truly social media. I commented on his page about this, sharing my own thoughts about why I started to Tweet more. To quote my own reply:

. . . I have started using it [Twitter] again a lot more because of 3 reasons–I have a BlackBerry and started using TwitterBerry, since it makes it easier to Tweet while on the run. Secondly, I find myself more open to sharing things in my day as my own public reflective practice (like autoethnographic and narrative studies). Thirdly, I recently switched my blog from MovableType to WordPress, and use Twitter Tools–this allows me to have my daily Twitter feeds get automatically added to my blog (so I do not lose my thoughts if Twitter decides it wants to become a walled garden).

I here so many people argue for or against Twitter, that is is nice to here somebody share a rather humble explanation of how they use it. I like to see such examples, especially after hearing all the arguments.  

Northern Voice 2008

I am considering attending Northern Voice 2008 in February. This is a Canadian blogging and social media conference that is very personal and personable. I met wonderful people there and had the opportunity to learn from many people who are very active in blogging, educational technology, and technology / social media consulting. I am considering proposing two ideas for discussion for the conference, both issues that I would like to discuss with others and learn more about (not to mention eventually research):

  1. Liveblogging – lots of people blog about events and conference while they are happening in real time, but there is little research about it. What do we know and what can we learn about this? Are there standards we can follow? Is there a way to make this more efficient or effective or useful for people? Are there limits in and around this?
  2. Tagging – we can tag blog posts, images, and even personal information. Are there any standards out there that can universally help people find this information? Should there be? How are people handling this now, and what else can we learn about this to make it more useful for others in our increasingly “social media” society? This issue was recently raised during a session in SCoPE, and I hope we can continue it F2F with others who could not join us online.

I hope others are interested in these two topics as well! I will propose them and hope for the best.

Northern Voice 2008

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MySpace & Facebook and their Evolving Social Ads

I read the interesting article by Jeremiah Owyang, the Web Strategist and Sr. Analyst at Forrester Research (Social Computing). He discussed the evolving advertising models that Facebook and MySpace are creating, and it made me think about the work I am doing with my undergraduate students in the Organizational Communication course I am teaching. This article by Jeremiah was all about stakeholder analysis and how the various organizations and populations involved need to communicate their messages while addressing the concerns and issues the stakeholders raise. I thus created an assignment around this article to help explore these issues and relate them to the real-world (as nearly all of my students use FB or MS). We will look at the article and then work and share within small groups / the class what we learn and consider:

  1. What is the article about?
  2. Who are the stakeholder groups identified / involved?
  3. What are the stakeholder issues for each of these?
  4. Choose one of the issues, and determine toward whom or what the issue is directed.
  5. How may that “whom or what” respond to the issue and that stakeholder?

It is nice when our topic of study in the class can relate directly with things happening in the real world. Isn’t that what education should be about? 

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