My personal blog pretty much lies dormant. With so many other blogs
to write for, I'm often at my wit's end. What on earth is left to write
about on this last little blog? Plinky has arrived to put an end to that.
Plinky is a microblogging service that intends to put an end to
blogger writer's block. Plinky offers a series of prompts – questions -
that you can answer. So far I've answered the equivalent of "What was
your first job?" and "What do you wear when you get home from work?"
When you answer the question, you have the option to expand upon
your thoughts and even add an introduction. After you publish to
Plinky, you can still come back and edit your answer.
Like any good social network, you can follow others and people can
follow you. On Plinky, interacting with others is sort of like a
virtual brainstorming session, helping you to piggyback and learn from
the ideas of your friends.
When you've written your short Plink, you can publish it to Twitter, Facebook, or your blog.
Founder Jason Shellen told VentureBeat that he started Plinky to help fight blogger’s block. “After years of blogging, it turns out I’m that person.”
When I teach my class on using Twitter in Business, I always spend a
fair amount of time on Twitter Search. After all, where else can you
watch comments on your brand in real time?
So I really like Twingly. Previously a blog search engine, they've expanded to microblogging.
Twingly searches Twitter, but it also searches other microblogging
sites, including Jaiku, Identi.ca, the Pownce archives, and
microblogging options I haven't even heard of.
I like being able to aggregate the information from all the sites.
However, my only complaint is that the results are not real-time
updates, as in Search.Twitter.com. It functions more like a Google for microblogging, but that's not always a bad thing.
So my number one "Want" on my Christmas List is a Kindle, but apparently Santa's elves and Amazon are not on the same page this year.
The over-priced eReader is SOLD OUT. Obviously someone is
getting a Kindle for Christmas. If you order one now, you'll be put on
a wait list. Estimated delivery is a whopping 11-13 weeks away.
According a TechCrunch article at the beginning of December, the Kindle 2.0 will be released in the early first quarter
of 2009 (would that be 11-13 weeks from now?). I have high hopes that
the price might drop a little. Heck, drop it to $299 and it makes a
psychological jump from almost $400 to less than $300.
Maybe the Valentine's Day fairy will bring me a Kindle.
I'm a social media consultant but really, in Cincinnati, that doesn't get me a lot of traction at the moment. So my bread and butter is instructional design and technical writing. It's not always the most exciting work, but it helps pay the bills. In the process of technical documentation, I may get two or three versions of the same document, edited by developers, SMEs, and overzealous copyeditors. I then have to incorporate all those changes into my master document. In the past, that's involved some hard copies, where I check things off as I integrate the changes.
It looks like that's all about to change. TextFlow by Nordic River made some news early last summer, but they've released their Adobe Air application in a new beta, and it looks pretty awesome. I haven't tried it out yet, but I'll be taking it for a test run in early January when I expect a documentation nightmare to appear on my desk.
TextFlow allows you to drag different versions of a document into their app. It will merge them, highlighting the differences, and allow you to show the changes, hide them, and integrate them. From the perspective of a technical writer, this is a real timesaver. They have a fantastic (but non embeddable) demo video on their site, but here's a great video from C|Net's Josh Lowensohn demonstrating the product.
I moderated an unconference this year at the Wine Bloggers Conference. I rapidly followed that up with speaking at DevLearn, so I couldn’t make it to Elliot Masie’s Learning 2008 for the first time since the event started. Truly, the Wine Bloggers Conference was probably more fun, as far as that goes, but I still missed a lot of things about the Masie event.
I think I’ve compared and contrasted these conferences before, but with a new ASTD technology for the upcoming TechKnowledge, I wanted to do it again.
I enjoy ASTD TechKnowledge, and every year it gets just a tiny bit more technical, which makes me happy. In the past, there was no real way to communicate with the speakers, beyond recording their email address at a session. Well, ASTD has now implemented their Speaker Feedback System. You enter the speaker’s first name, last name, and session number. You can then fill out the form and it sends an email to the speaker.
Now, more often than not, I’m a speaker at these events. I already have an inbox of 431 work related emails, not to mention my other email accounts. I am not overly thrilled that this is the tact that ASTD has taken. Sure, it opens up a dialogue with the speaker, which is more than we had before, but email does not open up that big of a dialogue. It’s one on one and does not include group discussion.
This brings me to Masie’s conferences. For every conference, Masie offers a Wiki. Each session has a wiki page, complete with speaker bio and session information. You don’t need to have knowledge of the speaker’s name or session number. You can search on what you’re interested in.
At Learning 2007, I spoke on Blogs. Had you searched the conference wiki for blogs, I would have popped up. It was topic-based search, which is amazingly useful. Not only that, but conversations about the topic could start on the wiki (anyone could participate) before the conference started and continue after the conference ended. As opposed to using handouts, I put all of my resources – most of which were hyperlinks – on the wiki. Folks thought this was brilliant. It’s so much easier to click than to type out a long, nonsensical hyperlink. And because it was a wiki, anyone and everyone could contribute to group discussion beforehand.
Alternatively (and just as easily), ASTD could build a community group on Ning where each session has its own discussion group. Again, this site could be chock full of information and build itself on group input and collaboration. Not only would this help the speakers with their presentations and audience, it would help the attendees by generating useful discussion.
ASTD already requires that speakers create tree-killing handouts that include job aids and workbooks. Now we’re getting direct email as well. Wouldn’t a wiki or discussion forum, where everyone could join into the conversation work better? ASTD also offers fantastic Learning Labs – basically unconferences – where people discuss what they’ve learned so far. These sessions have individual wikis. Imagine integrating these sessions into an overall wiki, where they were searchable and easy to find for everyone.
Again, I really enjoy the ASTD conferences, and I particularly enjoy the people I meet there. I appreciate the opportunity to speak at TechKnowledge. But I would love to somehow work with them to tweak their conference tools. I love that they’re trying to get attendees and speakers more connected, but I feel like they’re missing out on the opportunity for great discussion.
UPDATE: Just heard from ASTD, and they don’t want a group discussion. This baffles me completely. Group learning, group discussion, INFORMAL LEARNING – that’s the future. Not email. They are also setting up a social network via LinkedIn, so I’m not sure how well that will work. My money is on the idea that they’ll use the built-in discussion group features in LinkedIn and call that ASTD Connect.
Also, they hadn’t thought of a Twitter backchannel. Of course, the great thing about that is we can set it up ourselves if need be. I can’t even describe the amazing DevLearn Twitter backchannel and how much it brought to the conference for me.
I appreciate the effort, but somehow feel like they are missing out on the important points. I often feel like ASTD, and I include my local chapter in this, facilitates Learning 1.0 and sort of looks at Learning 2.0 but shies away like a scared bunny.
What do you think? As a speaker, would you rather have attendees email you or participate in a pre-session discussion? How about as an attendee? Would you rather send an email or participate in an informal, online discussion? I ask because I’m fully willing to admit that I’m wrong on this. Let me know.
Disclaimer: This is my third year leading a session of some sort at TechKnowledge. I am the frustrated webmaster (and recently the VP of Technology) for our local chapter. I’ve tried repeatedly to get on the Planning Committee for TechKnowledge as well – apparently I don’t know the right people. I want to fix this – not complain about it on my blog – but they make it difficult.
The
conference draws thousands from within and without the industry,
worldwide. It follows on the heels of last week’s DevLearn, and I
suspect it builds on the energy from that event, as well as making it
easy for folks who didn’t get to attend. After all, this one is free
and can be participated in from your desk. It fits into most corporate
training budgets at the moment.
Here are just a sampling of the speakers and topics over the next week:
Alvaro Fernandez: Brain Fitness for Peak Health and Performance
Kevin Wheeler: The Future of Talent
Dave Wilkins – The Amazon Model and Forum Model – the intersection of LMS and Learning 2.0
Nancy White – Online Social Architectures – Networks and Communities
Marcia Conner and Jon Husband: ROI of Web Learning
Allison Anderson: Corporate Learning Ecology
So many of the sessions are relative to more than just the learning
industry, so I hope you’ll join us for this free event. Follow the conference Twitter account (you can also tweet to it by direct
messaging the account), and participate in any way that you can. Note that all sessions are on Pacific Coast Time.
The Twitter presentation I’m giving at DevLearn evolved from a rather free-form presentation I gave at Podcamp Ohio back in June. In the way of technology, a lot of what I said then has changed (Summize is now Search.Twitter.com, Jott is no longer free, and so on …).
When I present, I love to get the audience involved. I want your questions; I want your input: I want your suggestions. I do not want to just get up there and talk at you. It worked fairly well in this presentation, but I would have loved more additional input.
Of course, being that I was presenting and things always go wrong, we had no Internet access for the first half of the session, and I was soaked in the rain on my way into Podcamp that morning. I don’t recover well from being drenched. But, the session got some pretty good reviews and I look forward to returning to Podcamp Ohio next year.
The Podcamp video is 20 minutes long. This is only the first half of the presentation. You can also view the second half, which is where most of the conversation takes place. I promise, I come off much better live and in person.
cross-posted and slightly modifed from bub.blicio.us
Over at bub.blicio.us, I’ve writtena coupleof posts on how you could track and participate in the election on the Internet. Last night, however, was monumental in a number of ways. Not only did we create a potentially new and different America yesterday, we also impacted the way future elections should be run.
The use of the Web by campaigns, news organizations, interest groups, and just interested parties, was a sign of how much the Internet has affected our daily lives. Whether it was interactive electoral maps on CNN.com or Katie Couric moving from newscast to webcast at 2 am, technology was evident on and off the air.
I was at an election party where we watched Comedy Central and CNN as well as tracked the election via Twitter. Twitter, by the way, was calling states for the respective winner just slightly before the actual news channels it seems. I left a party early and learned of the election being called for Obama by watching my Twitter feed on my phone.
Sarah Perez at Read Write Web has put together a fantastic Flickr slide show on how the Web was used by all of us last evening as we tracked election results.
How did you use the Web throughout the election results last evening?
(I originally posted this on bub.blicio.us, but I want everyone’s input)
Since it’s Banned Book Week,
and because we should all step away from our computers and read some
books, I thought I’d talk about eBook readers. Really, I want your opinion on them.
I’ve
gone on record several times and in several places as saying I could
never use an eBook Reader like the Kindle. Then I wandered into Borders
Books over the weekend and ran smack into a display for the Sony eBook Reader.
My husband had a heck of a time dragging me away from the display unit,
as it was my first hands-on encounter with an eBook device.
I was impressed – amazingly impressed – by the size of the unit. It
was slightly larger than a paperback book, but amazingly thin and
light. The screen, with the special e-ink (my husband said something
about solid state graphics or something), was easy to read. It was just
like looking at a page in a book. In fact, I found it slightly easier
to read than a page in a book.
I found myself wanting one. I can’t believe it. I love books. I love
the feel of a book in my hand and the musty smell of old books. So I’m
surprised at myself. It comes down to this. As a Web Worker, I’m on the
go a lot. I’ve always got a book, newspaper, or magazine (or all of the
above) in my briefcase, along with my Macbook and it’s necessary
accessories. An eBook device would cut down on the number of things
shoved into my briefcase. With the Kindle, in particular, I could
actually download and read the newspaper without getting covered in
news ink or dealing with the unweildy and impractical size. With either
device, I could easily bookmark my place.
I’ll be traveling a lot (for me), over the next year, including two
trips to California, a trip to Las Vegas, and quite possibly a trip to
Seattle / Alaska. None of these places are close to Cincinnati, so I’ll
be spending a lot of time on a plane. In my carry-on, I usually have at
least one newspaper, two magazines, and two books, with more books in
my checked luggage. An eBook device would free up that carry-on space
for something else – or for nothing, which is even better.
I haven’t read a blogger review of the Sony eBook Reader, although I’d like to. My friend Jason, however, has written a rather glowing review of the Kindle.
His review has made quite an impact on me – he’s a librarian. Granted,
he’s a bit more digital than a lot of librarians I know, but really,
his world is books and he loves his Kindle.
My biggest issue right now is price. The Kindle,
in particular, seems extravagant at almost $400. I’d love to get my
hands on a sample machine to use for a bit to see if it’s even worth
$400 to the average user. Would I really use it all the time or just
for travel? $400 is a lot if I’m not going to use it on a daily basis.
So tell me, would you switch to an eBook device? Do you have
thoughts on whether you’d use a Kindle or Sony or something I haven’t
yet stumbled across? Tell me what you think in the comments below.
__ Cheers! Find Michelle Lentz here on Write Technology, on Twitter, Pownce, and FriendFeed. You can also catch Michelle presenting on Twitter at the upcoming DevLearn ’08 in San Jose.
Intel has a child-proof laptop. I love that concept. Originally created for use in developing countries, Intel is now focusing on slightly "more mature" markets, according to this article from the BBC. The Intel deal provides laptops to school children between the ages of 6 and 10 years old.
The deal will change the way education works in Portugal, according
to Paulo Campos, the Portuguese government’s secretary of state
assistant for public works.
"It will change the educational system, change the way that
students look upon school and how we communicate with parents," he
said.
They want to take a "holistic approach," admitting that the hardware is just one part of the puzzle, which includes a relatively low use of broadband in the country. The biggest hurdle they expect, however, is how to train the teachers.
According to Intel, they have "already trained five million teachers to make better use of
technology and aimed to train millions more in the coming years."
As stated in the article, thsi will change the educational system. How would you approach the problem of teacher training?
I’ve