Facebook's plan to hook up the world - May. 24, 2007
"Imagine that when you shopped online for a digital camera, you could see whether anyone you knew already owned it and ask them what they thought. Imagine that when you searched for a concert ticket you could learn if friends were headed to the same show. Or that you knew which sites - or what news stories - people you trust found useful and which they disliked. Or maybe you could find out where all your friends and relatives are, right now (at least those who want to be found)." Or maybe rumours become fact in the flash of a pixel...
24 million members - growing at 150,000 a day - a ready made audience that connects, prods and advises each other is now available to any application developer. Facebook is aiming to be the social networking platform offering multiple applications and interlinked referrals...I don't know - it just seems the idea of loosely connected is getting tightly connected, and mass is going to impact upon social capital, and localization is going to crash against internationalism, and dominant cultures will prevail...and those in the loop will continue to benefit and a new class (or a continuation of) of disaffected and disenfranchised will appear.
And the idea of everybody in the world (the goal) being connected into the same platform (wait a minute isn't that Microsoft?) seems to bring up some sort of Gibson generated cyber nightmare waiting to happen. Am I missing the desire to connect? To paraphrase Gibson -Maybe the future is already here. It's just not widely distributed yet - to every human being - to me?
Friday, May 25, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Star Wars Mash up
STAR WARS TO MAKE HUNDREDS OF CLIPS AVAILABLE FOR MASHUPS Lucasfilm plans to make clips of "Star Wars" available to fans on the Internet to mash up at will. The clips -- about 250 of them, from all six Star Wars movies -- will land on the Starwars.com Web site tomorrow, part of this week's 30th-anniversary celebrations of the release of his hit movie. Working with an easy-to-use editing program from Eyespot Corp. of San Diego, fans can cut, add to and retool the clips. Then they can post their creations to blogs or social-networking sites like MySpace. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117997273760812981.html
Monday, May 14, 2007
Star Trek Scotty’s Space Ashes Lost Up A Hill - Hecklerspray: Music, Movies, TV, Celebs, Games and Gossip
Star Trek Scotty’s Space Ashes Lost Up A Hill - A rocket that blasted into suborbital space two weeks ago from a remote area in New Mexico and contained ashes of late Star Trek star James Doohan has fallen back to Earth and landed in a mountainous region of the state that's made it difficult to recover, according to a spokeswoman for the company … "It's not like Mr. Doohan's lost. The rocket did hit its landing target, but it's in a very mountainous and rugged terrain. They can't get to it by foot or by vehicle. They have to take a helicopter up there."
Captain Kirk never did listen to Scotty's plaintiff cry about the ship['s ability - "She can't take anymore cap'n" - and sadly in his last trip technology failed him yet again. Warp drives aren't what they used to be.
Captain Kirk never did listen to Scotty's plaintiff cry about the ship['s ability - "She can't take anymore cap'n" - and sadly in his last trip technology failed him yet again. Warp drives aren't what they used to be.
Pentagon blocks websites from staff and troops
New York Times, May 14 - This is yet another case of institutional censorship that is just not going to work. The Pentagon has banned access to MySpace, YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos, FileCabi, BlackPlanet, Hi5, Pandora, MTV, 1.fm, live365 and Photobucket. They cited technical and security concerns - “We’ve got to have the networks open to do our mission. They have to be reliable, timely and secure.” Private internet connections still have access, but most troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are limited to Pentagon service, Stars and Stripes notes.
"Today’s Web site ban and last month’s revision of military blogging policy were partly justified by operational security concerns. Howevere in reality this is just a censorsjip issue - seeking to reduce the voices of individual soldiers by making it more difficult to publish their own material and not allowing them to see or hear information that the Pentagon doesn't want them to see or hear.
Oddly, the ban also arrived as the American military started to increase its profile on YouTube, posting official footage that seeks to counter other footage on YouTube that is less than supportive of the Pentagon and US military actions.
Through their blogging policy and this comprehnsive site ban they have muffled free speech, evn free speech in support of their policies and actions. It is a loss for everyone, and will prove to be an example of great folly - many will find a way around this, and many will still find access to these sites.
"Today’s Web site ban and last month’s revision of military blogging policy were partly justified by operational security concerns. Howevere in reality this is just a censorsjip issue - seeking to reduce the voices of individual soldiers by making it more difficult to publish their own material and not allowing them to see or hear information that the Pentagon doesn't want them to see or hear.
Oddly, the ban also arrived as the American military started to increase its profile on YouTube, posting official footage that seeks to counter other footage on YouTube that is less than supportive of the Pentagon and US military actions.
Through their blogging policy and this comprehnsive site ban they have muffled free speech, evn free speech in support of their policies and actions. It is a loss for everyone, and will prove to be an example of great folly - many will find a way around this, and many will still find access to these sites.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Using Wiki in Education » Blog Archive » Why “computer time” and “cheating” are good for students
Why “computer time” and “cheating” are good for students Stewart Mader is so right in this exhortation of the educational system and its inexplicable banning of Ipods in the classroom because students are "cheating". Students are not cheating when they are using technology to find answers and assistance in responding to questions. "Putting facts at your fingertips" is the sort of skill they will be prized for in the workplace. If educational institutions truly want to fight cheating they would beef up their assessment strategies. Why not develop more challenging assessments - something other than true and false and fact based. Why not try to create application questions, project activities, cases studies. These are the sort of real life assessments that need the sort of skills demonstrated when students use technology to assist them in the determination of appropriate answers.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Ont. government bans Facebook
Ont. government workers told to log off Facebook
What a throwback this is - did anyone actually do a study to determine who and how often and what they are doing on these site? This issue is so important that the Premier - the leader of the province -had to make the announcement? It reminds of the 1950's and 60's when you couldn't use a company phone to make a personal call.
Among the things that bothers me about this are:
1.Premier Dalton McGuinty says he doesn't see how Facebook adds value to a workplace environment.
2. Facebook joins YouTube, gambling websites and hard-core sex sites as forbidden fruit in any provincial government office.
3. Lack of respect for employees as responsible, discerning adults.
4. Government deciding on a "site" - why not ban all social networking sites? Why not ban web conferencing?
Can Facebook add value to a workplace? Arguably, it can. It is a social networking site - groups are formed for various reasons, professional and personal. The opportunity to network, connect - and stay in touch with people that may be of assistance to your work activities - why not?
What about messenger services or Skype - do the contacts list always have to be work related? How to define that? Facebook is now equivalent to a porn site? A total lack of respect for employees - what actually prompted this? Did all employees join up to facebook - were they meeting online? Oh, my God! Were they networking and getting things done? Was their productivity diminished?
And finally, if the government wants to start picking sites to block the IT folks will be very busy indeed. Monitoring all employees on a minute by minute basis to see what other social software toolset they are accessing - they'll be blocking Eduspaces, LinkedIn, Guesse, Orkit, Skype - the list goes on and on and change by the hour. Good luck to the IT censors! What a soul sucking job that would be.
What a throwback this is - did anyone actually do a study to determine who and how often and what they are doing on these site? This issue is so important that the Premier - the leader of the province -had to make the announcement? It reminds of the 1950's and 60's when you couldn't use a company phone to make a personal call.
Among the things that bothers me about this are:
1.Premier Dalton McGuinty says he doesn't see how Facebook adds value to a workplace environment.
2. Facebook joins YouTube, gambling websites and hard-core sex sites as forbidden fruit in any provincial government office.
3. Lack of respect for employees as responsible, discerning adults.
4. Government deciding on a "site" - why not ban all social networking sites? Why not ban web conferencing?
Can Facebook add value to a workplace? Arguably, it can. It is a social networking site - groups are formed for various reasons, professional and personal. The opportunity to network, connect - and stay in touch with people that may be of assistance to your work activities - why not?
What about messenger services or Skype - do the contacts list always have to be work related? How to define that? Facebook is now equivalent to a porn site? A total lack of respect for employees - what actually prompted this? Did all employees join up to facebook - were they meeting online? Oh, my God! Were they networking and getting things done? Was their productivity diminished?
And finally, if the government wants to start picking sites to block the IT folks will be very busy indeed. Monitoring all employees on a minute by minute basis to see what other social software toolset they are accessing - they'll be blocking Eduspaces, LinkedIn, Guesse, Orkit, Skype - the list goes on and on and change by the hour. Good luck to the IT censors! What a soul sucking job that would be.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Disney hijacks social networking for kids
globeandmail.com: Disney unveils social networking for kids
Well with MySpace owned by News Corp. and a myriad of other social networking sites being groped by investors it isn't suprising that Disney would want to step in and protect my children. Hmmm. A safe, social nirvanna where preteens create personal mini websites like , with parental controls. A chat feature requiring parental approval for kids to go beyond trading canned messages ("hey Mickey, where's Goofy", Ariel, have you lost your voice?") and preventing users from revealing personal information, or from using profanity ("Holy !#%^ Batman).
And hey, "Kids can gather games, videos and music files from Disney's promotions-rich website and place them on a page that they decorate with a selection of motifs from the company's character library. “There is a weaving together of entertainment and promotion and marketing,” he added. “It's difficult to say where one ends and the other begins.”
Yeh, right. It's also difficult to see where blatant advertising and propoganda stops and a desire to protect my child begins. Why not protect my child from brazen advertising, gluttonous consumerism and sickly cuteness? Good idea - bad execution; wouldn't it be nice if one of these media conglomerates wanted to really contribute to social networking by doing something without expecting more in return? Disney did this for themselves - the kids are just tools for their marketing. No thanks.
I'll keep an eye on my own kids, set my own restrictions and take responsibility for ensuring they have a healthy, beneficial upbringing.
Well with MySpace owned by News Corp. and a myriad of other social networking sites being groped by investors it isn't suprising that Disney would want to step in and protect my children. Hmmm. A safe, social nirvanna where preteens create personal mini websites like , with parental controls. A chat feature requiring parental approval for kids to go beyond trading canned messages ("hey Mickey, where's Goofy", Ariel, have you lost your voice?") and preventing users from revealing personal information, or from using profanity ("Holy !#%^ Batman).
And hey, "Kids can gather games, videos and music files from Disney's promotions-rich website and place them on a page that they decorate with a selection of motifs from the company's character library. “There is a weaving together of entertainment and promotion and marketing,” he added. “It's difficult to say where one ends and the other begins.”
Yeh, right. It's also difficult to see where blatant advertising and propoganda stops and a desire to protect my child begins. Why not protect my child from brazen advertising, gluttonous consumerism and sickly cuteness? Good idea - bad execution; wouldn't it be nice if one of these media conglomerates wanted to really contribute to social networking by doing something without expecting more in return? Disney did this for themselves - the kids are just tools for their marketing. No thanks.
I'll keep an eye on my own kids, set my own restrictions and take responsibility for ensuring they have a healthy, beneficial upbringing.
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