Blog or Twitter? Twit or Blogger? Will Ever the Twain Shall Meet? Hmmm...

I've been blogging now for over three years and I really like doing it - it gives me an outlet to say what's on my mind - literally the things that make me go Hmmm... But there is a new sheriff in town and that sheriff is Twitter.

I've been twittering (tweeting? the language is so cool :-)) for well over a year now, but until recently it's mostly been "Home after work", "it's raining out", "off to do laundry" - after all, the primary question that Twitter asks is "What are you doing?". But in the past few months I've noticed a change in how many of my friends (followers, followed?) are using Twitter. They are using it to share information, send links, talk about conferences or meetings they are attending (live in real-time too - very cool) and generally using it for lots more than just a "What are you doing?" tool.

Twitter has become a microblogging tool - a way to blog in 140 characters or less - now for those who know me, and for those who read my posts you know that getting me to say anything coherent in 140 characters or less is a herculean task :-). I'm like Blaise Pascal (or Mark Twain, or T.S. Eliot - someone said it...) - "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter". I was never one of those students who EVER had to worry about not hitting the word count on an essay assignment, and talking for 30 minutes is easy - it's the 5 minute speech that takes so much time.

For me that is the conundrum of Twitter and Blogging. It's easy for me to answer the "What are you doing?" question within the 140 character limit, but how do I say anything meaningful? That is a skill that I need to learn and to follow the example of several of my friends and colleagues who do an amazing job of saying meaningful things and sharing great stuff (stuff is the universal technical term) with Twitter.

I really like the real-time "live" nature of Twitter. When I attend conferences I blog the days events - keynotes, sessions I attend, things I did or noticed - it's my way of absorbing the day and reflecting on it (and a great way to share the experience too). With Twitter I can do that as it happens - now that is so cool - I just need to develop some concision (yes it is a word :-)).

The other piece that has made Twitter more relevant to me as an information sharing and discussion tool is the technology I'm now using. I've gone from a simple digital text-based SMS cell phone to an iPhone using an application called Twittelator Pro that gives me an easy way to "tweet" no matter where I am. With these tools I can connect live from anywhere. I'm off to a couple of conferences this Spring (one as a co-presenter - CNIE), and I plan on tweeting from both theoughout the day, and then blogging each evening on the day's events - to me the perfect combination of tools...

So is this the end of blogging as I know it? I don't think so - I will still write scads on things that make me go Hmmm... I will never be able to do that to my satisfaction in 140 characters or less. I still have the need to be wordy and verbose (sorry it's in my nature), but I see Twitter as a valuable addition to my tool set of information gathering and sharing and I can tell you that from now on when I tweet (yes I am a Twit :-)), it will be more than answering "what are you doing"? With Twitter I will be able to find and share information in real-time - then I can use my blog to expand upon (and dare I say pontificate) on those subjects that still make me go Hmmm... in more than 140 characters...

(Images - Twitter logo from Twitter.com and Blogger logo from Blogger.com)

Getting To Know You... Are Online Friends Real?

I know several people that I consider friends that I have never met face to face (F2F). Some I have know for several years - we correspond through text, e-mails, or hang out represented by our avatars in places like Second Life. Are these people any less my friends than those I see regularly F2F in the "real world"? The only differences are that in many cases I probably say more and open up more to my online friends than my F2F friends, and I can't visually see my online friends.

Can you have friends that you have never actually met in the physical world? I think you can.

I've been doing a lot of thinking on this one - can you get to know someone better online than you can in a F2F (face to face) environment? Just think of the people who met online and ended up together in the "real world". Many of the couples like that I know say that one of the advantages was they "knew" each other before they met F2F.

Here is my premise:

• It's easier to get to know someone on line because a lot of the social strictures are gone - it's not bosses and employees or peers it's just a group of people doing the same thing
• It's sort of like the opposite of Cheers - "where NO ONE (instead of every one) knows your name...". People who would be too shy to say something F2F are comfortable to share online - they are not hampered by appearance, or position, or place...

Do you think this is true or is it just my fevered imagination? I've become so comfortable online that I no longer really differentiate between the two - I have friends - it's just that some of them I have only met in text. Hmmm...

How Many Web 2.0 Tools Are Too Many?...

I've been hooked on all things Web 2.0 since even before Tim O'Reilly coined the phrase. Just within my bookmarks on my browser (Firefox, the perfect Web 2.0 browser), I have 85 Web 2.0 tools and applications bookmarked, along with literally hundreds more in my Delicious tags. Those 85 are bookmarked in my browser because I have actually registered with those sites (a common Web 2.0 ploy) in order to try them out and actually used them, at least once. They go from Aviary to Zui Prezi, a compendium of tools and apps that have changed the way I compute. I'm not even counting apps like iTunes and sites like audible.com which have bcome huge parts of my life (and that I consider part of the Web 2.0 space)

You can argue exactly what constitutes a Web 2.0 tool, but in my mind it is anything that pushes information to me or allows me to collaboratively work and share on the Web while using a Web-based interface - the browser as operating system...

My question is how many Web 2.0 tools are too many? Obviously the 85 that I have tried is way too many - besides many of those tools are long gone (have you noticed that another feature of Web 2.0 tools is that the word "Beta" must appear on their Web site somewhere?), Pownce being one of the latest casualties, or been absorbed or morphed by competition. Having tried them as they appear does not mean that they are being used or even useful. Here is a list of the Web 2.0 tools that I use regularly, in no particular order:

1. Blogspot - blogging
2. PBWiki - wiki
3. GMail - mail, chat, video chat, and so much more...
   
4. NetVibes - RSS etc. aggregator
5. Google Docs - office application suite, collaborative groupware and so much more
   
6. Flickr - photos
7. Photobucket - photos
8. Twitter - micro-blogging and social networking
   
9. Delicious - tagging
10. Facebook - social networking
11. LinkedIn - social networking
12. Joost - online video and TV

And I know there are others that I visit on a less regular basis. Not bad - 12 down from 85 - but even with 12, it's become a full time job just keeping up trying to remain a cool Web 2.0 dude. The thing is, do I really need 12 Web 2.0 tools to do what I do on the Web (and what I do is more and more all on the Web, I think my desktop has cobwebs on it...)? I look at that list and it seems all I have done is transferred how I work with desktop apps to Web 2.0 apps - do I need to develop new skills and ways of integrating what I do, or am I looking for that one killer Web 2.0 (or Web 3.0, or Web 4.0...) app that will do it all (and I am becoming more and more convinced that the whole Google Apps/GMail/Google Labs mashup may just become that killer app)? Hmmm...

What Web 2.0 apps are you using and how are you using them? Have they changed the way you get and use information?...

Convergence Culture and Education...

I've just finished reading Henry Jenkins's book "Convergence Culture", and let me just say that if you have not yet read it that you should. His blog "Confessions of an Aca-Fan" should also be required reading for anyone interested in modern media, culture and their impact on what we do day to day. Essential reading for educators.

The book is full of useful information and insights, and I had several "AHA!" moments while reading it. The central theme of the book is that we are in a new media era where it is the consumer that is dictating the content, style and presentation of media and its content, not the traditional "old media" of large companies and defined media steams (radio, TV, newspapers, etc.) dictating when, where, what, and how we receive our content. Henry Jenkins presents a clear picture of the way our learners look at media as a tool that they can and should control, with them dictating the when, where, what, and how of content. Here are some of the highlights of the book for me (all attribution for excerpts from the book to Henry Jenkins):

1. The distinction between mass culture and popular culture - mass culture is a category of production while popular culture is a category of consumption. Popular culture happens when the materials of mass culture get into the hands of consumers - Henry's example is a song becoming an "our song" for example. I like this definition and in my mind there is a definite shift towards popular culture as consumers take things on board for themselves and have much more creative freedom because of the Web and the tools now available to create and consume culture.
2. How the smart media companies seized on convergence culture and became successful because of it and the best example is probably the "Star Wars" juggernaut. Part of the massive appeal of Star Wars and the mythology that has grown up around it has to do with how George Lucas has allowed consumers to craft their own visions of the legend and to expand upon the legend through the creation of their own movies and stories. the book also cites examples of old media organizations who didn't quite get it right by zealously "protecting" their brand and copyrights (we know who you are, don't we?)
3. How convergence culture, and in particular blogging had an impact on the 2004 US presidential campaign. Blogging changed the dynamic of traditional news and public opinion (anyone could now be a political commentator), and changes to campaign funding rules shifted control of the campaigns from the candidates to independent action groups (remember "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth"?). The political scene in the US (and I suspect everywhere in the developed world at least) has been forever changed by the shift to consumer engagement in the use of the media.
4. The biggest "AHA" moment for me was when Henry Jenkins stated that one of his book's central arguments is that the biggest change occurring with media is the shift from individualized and personalized media consumption towards consumption as a networked practice. Boy is this so true! Just listen to a group of learners discussing what they have watched or read, or how the are telling each other about what they found on the Web last night - it's one of the most powerful learning tools we have today - collaborative learning.
5. One of the final thoughts n the book is about education - historically public education in the US (and the same can be said for the education system in Canada) was meant to distribute the skills and knowledge necessary to train informed citizens. This doesn't work anymore - we have a participation gap and citizens today need to be more than informed, they need to be monitorial - not just being able to read and write but being able to participate in the deliberation over what issues matter, what knowledge counts, and what ways of knowing command authority and respect. The ideal of the informed citizen is in trouble because there is simply too much to know. The ideal of monitorial citizenship depends on developing new collaboration skills and a new ethic of knowledge sharing that will allow people to deliberate together. (page 259). This describes for me exactly the issues I am seeing in the classroom with learners - they need these "new literacy" skills of collaboration and information sharing in order to manage the sheer volume of information available today.
6. The problem is that people for the most part are learning these new skills outside of any formal educational institution - they are developing their skills through affinity sites, newsgroups, social networking sites and other new media opportunities - Henry Jenkins actually points out that many schools are openly hostile to these developing skills and go out of their way to stop their development (anyone blocked Facebook recently?). This HAS to stop - it does a disservice to learners - we need to foster and develop these collaborative skills - they are essential to the future of our learners and our educational process.

As you can see Convergence Culture has had an effect on me that I think will improve what I do as an educator - I cannot recommend too highly it or anything else that Henry Jenkins does - if you have an opportunity to read what he writes or listen to what he says, take it...

The Future Of Media...

Wednesday night I attended the ITANS (Information Technology Industry Alliance Of Nova Scotia) annual dinner. The guest speaker was Ken Rutkowski, media personality, strategist and consultant. The theme of his talk was on the future of media. A couple of cool things came out - one - it's gonna be a busy future, and two - I'm mostly there now!

Ken started his talk by describing old media (TV, newspapers etc.) and new media (Web, RSS, blogs, YouTube etc.) and their products - old media's product is content, while new media's product is the audience - the customer is the advertiser (makes sense - hits is one of the measures of success for an online presence). This distinction may be a little simplistic, but it allows for an identification f new media.

Mobile devices, in particular cell phones (smart devices) is where it is at for the future of media. By 2010 there will 2 billion Nokia cell phones alone in circulation - cell phone penetration is growing and in some nations is well over 90%. I've talked about this in past posts and it's interesting to here an industry expert say the same thing. In my mind it's mobile devices that are the future of education, allowing learners to learn where, when, what, and how they want to.

Ken went on to talk about RSS and push technology, how RSS is pushing information - the customer is the product. I'm a big fan of RSS - push technology is the only way these days to make sense of the sea of information that we are swimming in. Content is everywhere - podcasts, YouTube etc.

Ken then did something very cool- the rest of his presentation consisted of him using Skype to contact "some of his friends", industry experts and personalities who shared their thoughts with us on the future of media. His friends included:

• Ralph Simon - creator of the ring tone
• Johnathan Wendel - professional gamer (Fatality)
• James Sun - CEO of Zoodango - a social networking site that facilitates both online and F2F social networking
• Scott Page - former member of Pink Floyd and Supertramp, now involved in Web-based technology allowing bands to communicate with their fans

The common thread from each of these incredible people is that it's content and mobility, along with penetration that is going to be the future of social media. Businesses and individuals need to get out there and be active parts of this always on environment - be part of community.

Thanks to ITANS and the organizers for a great evening and a wonderful dinner. I know that the students that we brought along had an amazing time - they saw a glimpse into the future - where they will be working and living, and that is too cool...

I Am Blogger - Hear Me Roar!...

This whole blogging thing may just be here to stay :-). I've been blogging seriously now for a couple of years and I have friends like Randommind who have been blogging for considerably longer, saying amazing things and sharing their insights and wisdom with the world.

But what is even more amazing are those bloggers who don't always have important or profound things to say - the ones that are simply sharing their lives and momentary thoughts (like this post) with the world. Blogging has become a conversational method and opportunity - I can actually carry on a conversation with people from all over the world through my blog or their blog. Blogs have become, for me, an essential source of information and research - they are probably my primary source of a lot of the information, and inspiration that I get every day - blogs are immediate, relevant and in some instances even intimate as i share thoughts and opinions back and forth with fellow bloggers. Blogs are also a great way to get noticed out there in cyberspace as blogs have built-in search engine optimization (SEO) - you appear in the first couple of pages of results from a search engine. If you want to be visible online - blog!

I get a lot of my daily information from blogs - i literally have hundreds of feeds that I receive daily through Netvibes that I look at - several I read religiously, many I just scan the title for interest, but the point is I am getting my information from a sea of individuals and what they are sharing with the world. Th sheer power of the blog and it's ability to communicate information, opinion, passion, and knowledge is very powerful.

Even institutions and organizations are blogging - at my college, a new blog has just been started to discusses educational technologies - what a cool way for people to get out of their silos and share what they know with others. Together we all get better at what we do. I attended the Atlantic Internet Marketing conference last spring and one of the tips given there was for all companies to have a blog - be part of the process, talk to your customers and clients - build that personal relationship with them through blogs and just as importantly, get to the top of the search engine heap with SEO.

Many of my friends are blogging and you can see some of their links on my blogroll and my Feevy feed off to the right side of my blog - it's this ability to network and feed off of each other,to engage in conversations that makes blogging such a cool experience for me - it's not that I actually have anything profound or important to say, it's that I have SOMETHING to say and so do the millions of others out there who blog, and occasionally someone listens and comments back the conversation... It's very cool to hear what they have to say. We are bloggers - hear US ROAR!!...


(Photo - Lion by tgraham)

The Death Of The Chemistry Set...

An interesting post at The 12 Angry Men Blog - "Endangered Species - The Chemistry Set". That prized toy of my youth, those vials and bottles, and tubes of elemental mystery is about as safe as the dodo on the road to extinction. Yet one more casualty of the war on terrorism. Or is it?

I remember my chemistry set with some fondness and I am sure that like most pre-teen boys who had one, the most fun was making smoke and things that went BANG!!, which is of course the last thing that people want happening today. I know that as a society we want to be safe, and ensure a certain amount of security for all, so getting the chemicals that do go BANG!! should be a little more difficult than going to Toys R'Us. But is the impending death of the chemistry set just a result of the socio-political climate we live in or something else as well? Could it be that the chemistry set is slipping into history because it doesn't come with batteries and a joystick and in fact, is the chemistry set another casualty of the Internet Age?

Book reading is down, TV-watching is down and time on the Internet is up. Between games, IM, social networking, and surfing, where does today's child have time to play with a chemistry set, unless of course it's 3-D Flash movies of chemical reactions, molecules, and compounds on a fully-interactive, dynamic web site. When I studied the Table of Elements it was a wall poster or a page in a textbook - now it's a full-colour animated, hyper-link work of Internet art. So while the main cause of the demise of the chemistry set may be the times we live in, a co-conspiratorin the death of the chemsirty set has to be the life kids lead today - indoors, exploring the world through electronics and technology - how can a chemistry set compete with that? Now go out and play! Hmmm...

(Picture - "DSCF0040 by Improbcat)

When Does a Blog Become a Web Site?...

When does a blog become a Web site? I've been asking myself that question the last little while as I take a look at my blog and at the blogs of friends and those that I read on a regular basis. When I started writing my blog it was just that - a place to write down some thoughts - sort of a blank journal. It had a couple of extras - my profile, a picture of me and the Blog archive - neat, clean, no fuss, no muss.

Now look at my blog - at last count there were 19 different things, widgets, components, add-ons, whatever you want to call them - from links to blogs I read, my wiki, my Flickr site, my Facebook profile, blog aggregator sites like Technorati, Feedburner, Netvibes, PageFlakes, and EduSpaces. I can chat through Meebo and stay in touch with Twitter. I can tell how many people are reading my blog through ClustrMaps (come on people where are you?), and I even have pictures of my favourite bloggers on my blog through Feevy.

When did my blog get so crowded anyway? It all just sort of snuck up on me. The other thing is now whenever I set up a profile in Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn or any other social media site, I always put my blog as my web site. I own a domain but haven't done anything with it (I really should) because I'm not a really big fan of "vanity" Web sites. But if you take a look at my blog - vanity thy name is...Me! Hmmm...

We Need A Meebo For Social Networks

A year or two ago if you had asked me what the most social tool that I was using, I would have said instant messaging (IM) software. I used ICQ, MSN (now Windows Live Messenger), and Google Talk to communicate with learners, colleagues, and friends. Thing was, I used all three separately, and had separate lists of contacts on each application.

But that changed with Meebo which allows me to have one single interface regardless of the IM client I was using - I broke down the IM silos (there is also Trillian, but it is an application that needs to be installed on individual computers - not quite as portable as Meebo). With Meebo I can be on a PC or Mac, and I can be in just any type of Web browser or device - universal chat - it has significantly expanded the IM horizon for me, extending the life and application of IM as a social tool that I can use.

But I am not using IM much these days (although with Meebo and now iChat in OS X Leopard I may be using it more...) my main social networking tools these days are social networking sites - the ones I use on a regular basis include Facebook, LinkedIn, Bebo, Orkut, EduSpaces (ELGG), Ning, and Google Groups (not to mention my blogs and wikis). that's seven different clients, all Web browser-based, but all with their own interface, own friends list, and own way of doing things. None of them can talk to each other - social networking silos.

We need a Meebo for social networking sites - a killer application that will allow me to communicate with all my fiends across all seven of the social networking sites that I now use - a completely transparent experience that will simply let me be social, not have to worry about what friend is on what service - that would be true social networking. As social networking continues to be a big part of people's online lives and becomes a bigger component of education, we need to be able to break down the silos of proprietary applications and interfaces and simply get people networking.

According to Wikipedia, there are currently 116 (and counting) different social networking Web sites - so if there is someone out there thinking that they would like to create the next great application, start thinking about a Meebo for social networking...