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First OU Facebook app
I’ve been working with Tony Hirst, Stuart Brown and Liam Green-Hughes at the OU to develop some applications for Facebook (okay, they’ve been working, I’ve been talking about it). We now have a semi-official OU Facebook project, the aim of which is to develop some applications we think will be interesting to OU people in Facebook. The aims of the project are to: Gain experience in developing tools for a platform such as Facebook Gain knowledge as to the type of tools and widgets that are popular Observe patterns of use of these tools Generate traffic and students for openlearn and the Open University Gain an understanding of how learning…
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All together now: Correlation does not imply causation
I’ve moaned about this before, and I agree with D’Arcy Norman who rants that it should be taught to every child. So when on the radio yesterday I heard a BBC reporter talking about a new report that looks at marriage, cohabiting and single parents in the UK, it inevitably got another airing. One of the findings was that children of married couples were more likely to stay on in education. ‘So,’ the reporter concluded, ‘it seems that being married has benefits for the children over just cohabiting.’ No, no, no – there will undoubtedly be a number of other factors here. For example, maybe married couples are more conformist…
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Slifeshare and my startup idea
(hat tip: Tony Hirst) Rev2 reviews this web 2.0 service, Slifeshare, saying "Do you really want to know what your friends are doing online right now? Do you fancy a bit of online friend espionage? What article they are reading in the New York Times online or what iTunes track they are listening to in real-time? If so, Slifeshare is the new social network for you." The idea is that you remove the need to actually contact friends or post things about yourself, you simply track each others activities. So I can see what videos, blogs, music you access. Here’s the pitch "Slifeshare is an activity network for you and…
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What I don’t get about fashion
Watching TV last night they were interviewing up and coming Welsh fashion designer Ross Jenkins. They mentioned, rather casually, that his last collection was ‘based on the holocaust’. I spluttered my tea at this point as they showed skinny models in stylishly distressed black and grey robes. And no-one seemed to think there was anything wrong with this. I see now he is claiming it is a ‘tribute’. Oh yeah, of course. It’s a tribute in the same way an Auschwitz inspired breakfast cereal would be a tribute, and in no way insulting, shallow and disrespectful. It leads to such deep analysis as: "Ross Jenkins’ moth eaten brogues are refreshing…
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Radiohead explore pricing models
Almost as if they’ve been reading the Future of content debate here (hey, it’s a nice thought), one of my favourite miserable groups (okay, all my favourite groups are miserable), Radiohead have announced they are releasing their new album next week. It will be available for download direct from their own website and the price box is left blank for the purchaser to enter an amount. Assuming it’s not another hoax, this is further evidence of record companies being disintermediated and content shuffling towards the freedom it so achingly longs for.
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Twitter dreams
While I agree with Henry James in "tell a dream, lose a reader" I thought I’d share a rather scary development. For the past two nights I have dreamt in twitter mode. I haven’t dreamt of Twitter, I’ve dreamt in Twitter, that is my dream has constituted lots of short update messages from various people (some dead, some alive, some imaginary). I’m sure there’s a piece of modernistic fiction ‘The twitters of the dead’ to be written by someone, but not me. I’m just concerned that I’m now having dreams 2.0. Psychotherapists need not comment.
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Twitter potential
Okay, having done a negative, now on to the positives of using Twitter. The social/professional mix is intriguing. People will post links and quotes, but also comments about their hotel room. I follow Scott Leslie, D’Arcy Norman and Brian Lamb, so feel as though I was almost present at the Open Education conference. I have found some good sites through people such as Guy Kawasaki (who I am convinced never sleeps, or is in fact an artificial intelligence program). I have also used it for work, sending someone a message who I saw was online and was supposed to be in a virtual meeting with. But I’ve been struggling to…
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Twitter – elitist?
I’ve been using twitter for the past couple of weeks, so thought I’d post some thoughts on it. The next one will be positive (see AJ, I’m keeping my posts short), but in this one I’ll look at the negatives. My big issue with Twitter is that it’s not symmetrical in the way it forms relationships. In Facebook, if I make you my friend, then I am automatically your friend as well, ie we see each other’s profile, so it’s a mutual trust and respect. This is not the case in Twitter. I can follow you, but you are under no obligation to follow me. The result of this is…
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Reflections on the distributed blog experiment
Having set up a distributed blog article this week, and just concluded it I thought I’d reflect on the process. Overall I thought it worked well, in that it got at some interesting points and covered some different perspectives. Some negatives: It will be hard for a reader to read it as a whole. I will try and formulate it into a real article for publication somewhere. The time pressure (which I created) meant that you didn’t have sufficient time to always get the references you wanted, or to check it through as thoroughly as you might, or to redraft it. They were long posts. Alan Cann has said that…
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Future of content – Conclusions
This is the conclusion to the Future of Content distributed article: In Part 1 I argued that content would move towards being free and widely available, from an economic and quality argument. In Part 2, Ray Corrigan argued that in fact online content gave new types power and control to large institutions and they would have the weight of the law behind them to prevent the open access I outlined. In Part 3 Patrick McAndrew focused on education, and the openlearn project specifically and examined the motivations for universities to give away content, and what this meant for the university business model. He also warned that free, open content may…
