Keene on Tech

As the social networking scene continues to explode, developers are increasingly finding novel ways to use services such as Facebook and Twitter. Through the Facebook Connect technology, the developers of a web app called Aardvark seem to be onto something. Their service basically crowd sources your contacts and contacts of contacts in Facebook to help answer any question you may have. Any question. So how good would this be for students? Probably pretty good unless you are taking a test, in which case asking the Vark might not be a good idea.

For getting answers to questions stumping you, you can submit your question to Aardvark which is then interpreted by the system’s artificial intelligence system. It then sends the message out to people in your extended social network who might be able to answer your question. The question is sent out anonymously and the replies back are as well (as far as I can tell), so no question is too ridiculous. Your identity should not be revealed. A average response time is about 5 minutes. And of course an iPhone app was just released. This is an intriguing application that will be interesting to see how it matures, especially in higher education circles.

Keene

Late yesterday and this morning, the blogosphere and twittersphere have been abuzz at Twitter’s announcement that it will incorporate geospatial capabilities into the next iteration of the Twitter API to be released soon. This will give developers an opportunity to incorporate lat-log data into user’s tweets to see specific locations of where the tweets are being posted. While this will be an optional feature for privacy reasons, having this capability will open up the doors for some very interesting use of Twitter for real time events such as natural disasters, breaking news, and whole host of other uses. Students and teachers in the field can use this to their advantage as well for fieldwork and data gathering adding an entirely new context to real time microblogging. Remember, its all about location, location, location…

Read the official announcement at the Twitter Blog.

Keene

How many ways can one write something in 140 characters or less? It seems more and more these days. As Twitter flits into the lives of just about everyone online, the challenge has been how to manage, organize and keep track of all the short attention span chatter. Initially, there was really just your plain vanilla browser and the Twitter.com website. You created an account, you logged in and you began posting snippets about whatever you could in 140 characters or less. People followed and you followed others. It all quickly became something like managing your email InBox without a lot of order. But this has changed and now Twitter users have many options to manage the micro-blogging tool. These tools give you the ability to better visualize the tweets, search, flag favorites, retweet something, send direct tweets etc.

So here is a brief rundown of a few Twitter applications that you might want to check out. Many of them are Mac apps but this is the platform I compute on so there is a bias here. Still, there are a few cross platform options. Please let me know if there are others I have missed or more options on Windows.

TweetDeck (Mac/PC) – This is the poster child Twitter app that was created with Adobe Air so its a cross platform offering. This app offers configurable multi-pane view of Twitter activity which you can see your friends, create and see groups, see search results, see twitter trends and even load up 12 second videos via 12seconds.tv. It also integrates into your Facebook page for status update monitoring.

TweetDeck for the iPhone – Quickly becoming the favorite Twitter app on the iPhone. Its unique in that it brings the multi column feature to the hand held device which is a nice touch (sorry for the pun).

Seesmic Desktop (Mac/PC) – Another Adobe Air app that is cross platform. Seesmic used to be a poster child for video sharing and posting but it is moving away from this to focus on its Twitter application which as become a favorite. It supports multiple twitter accounts and can hook into Facebook updates. It also supports multiple columns. Still, I find the Adobe Air app interface a little sterile but it works.

Twhirl (Mac/PC) – Another Adobe AIR app that can support multiple Twitter accounts and taps into other social networking sites. I have not experimented too much with Twhirl but it does support multiple accounts and supports various other social networking services. It appears Twhril is also developed by Seesmic.

Tweetie – This was the de facto standard on the iPhone but its losing some ground to the excellent TweetDeck iphone version. In addition, there is a desktop version of Tweetie which is nice, but it can’t display multiple columns of data the way some of the other apps can but it has a slick, modern interface.

Twitterific (Mac) – This was one of the first Mac Twitter apps and its still very good. There is a desktop and iPhone version. Its very minimal (sort of like Twitter!) but people like it because it got a minimal interface and does not distract you (as much).

Nambu (Mac) – This is a nice desktop app that lets you access your multiple Twitter accounts and configure things in one view with multiple columns, including popular posts, Favorites, etc. Nicely done. Early versions had bad memory leaks, but the developer seems to be actively patching these and issuing regular updates.

Beak (Mac) – Beak is fairly new to the Twitter app arena. It has some promise. I have not played around with it too much. The interface is very Mac modern, but it seems to lack some features of the other apps (but it looks nice!).

Twittelator Pro – This is a full featured iphone/ipod Touch only Twitter app that is well polished. If find it a little slower than other Twitter clients, but its got a lot of nice features. Its developed by Stone Design, an experienced and long developer who began developing for the NeXT platform.

Eventbox – EventBox is a great app for managing several different social networking applications such as FaceBook, RSS feeds, Reddit news, Diig, Flickr feeds and more. I like this app and use it fairly often. Its got good potential. The downfall again is that because it taps into multiple services, it does not really shine for any particular one. But if you use multiple services in addition to Twitter, it might work for you.

If I had to go and choose one app for Twitter, I would go with Nambu because its got a Mac like interface, supports multi-column views and multiple accounts. A close second is TweetDeck, but I am still getting used to the Adobe Air interface. I also like Tweetie and it might be included to use it more if it supported multi-column views.

Honorable Mention – Monitter is not a Twitter app but it is a great way to monitor (get it?) multiple Twitter searches. This is a great tool for researching trends on Twitter and covering breaking news or other time sensitive topics. Check it out. Its pretty interesting.

Double Honorable Mention- Twitter is not the only 140 character micro-blogging solution out there. Identi.ca is rapidly gaining some traction and many of the apps above support Identi.ca accounts now. You can go to their website for more info, but its basically similar to Twitter, with one big exception. Its open source unlike Twitter. Also, there is Yammer, a micro-blogging service like Twitter but aimed at the corporate business world.

This should be more than enough to get one Twittering away. And now back to old school blogging… ahh that oh so early 21st century technology equivalent of the chalkboard.

Keene

The wave. It paints a great image whether you are a surfer (real world, not web) or a football fanatic (you know, when everyone does the wave). The wave essentially forces you to participate, whether in a group or one on one. You wave and hopefully someone waves back. Today Google threw out their Wave at the I/O Conference in hopes of getting some developers waving back. And its unveiling has plenty of people talking about what this means for the evolution of online communication. So what is it?… Wave is basically a new Google service that allows users to combine email, IM, photo sharing and social networking into one seamless framework (and interface) integrating all the ways we mainly communicate online. In doing this, Wave has the potential to make us more efficient (or more distracted perhaps) by keeping all your comings and goings online together in one place. But its much more than this. Its a new way to think about how we communicate by blending together all the disparate communication tools and evolving it into something more. The service has a long way to go before its ready for public prime time (late 2009 release perhaps?). However, now that the APIs are going to be released to the developer public, Google has high hopes of getting feedback and more ideas of how to further develop the service. For a nice summary of Wave and what its all about, see this Cnet story. Incidentally, the folks who have given birth to Wave are the brothers Rasmussen (Lars and Jens) whose claim to fame is the creation of Google Maps, a service that was bought by Google thus bringing the Rasussens into the Google family.

Keene

Sometimes if you can’t do something in the real world, you just build it in the virtual world. Well, today an innovative Flash application arrived on the scene that allows one to virtually apply graffitti art to real world images. Built by Earthmine and using what looks like Google’s StreetView (not sure where exactly they are getting this data) scenery from San Francisco, one can dive into neighboorhoods and apply graffitti art. Its one of those things that you need to see to fully appreciate. It is very cool and quite innovative. If you have ever had the urge to try you hand at some street art, now is your chance. Check it out at http://www.wildstylecity.com.

Keene

eComma is an innovative project that was partially born out of DIIA’s FastTex grant program. Developed by UT student Travis Brown, eComma is the shortened name for eCommentary Machine. This is a web application that gives students, scholars and literature aficionados the ability to collaboratively mark up literature with comments, tags and analysis of text. This unique application enables literature to enter the Web 2.0 in a way that helps others to understand, study and explore timeless texts as well as modern works. The technology driving this project is PHP, XML, mySQL and a model view controller framework(MVC). It is currently being deployed for an exhibit in UT’s Harry Ransom Center featuring an exploration of Omar Khayyam’s poem the Rubaiyat. eComma is displayed in the exhibit area via a large touch screen monitor that allows viewers to explore the text of the poem, comments and tags. This project is filling a void in the Web 2.0 world better known for its blogs and user generated video and photographs by allowing one of the world’s first forms of expression, text, to come alive again in a collaborative and innovative way. Check it out. Its worth writing about

PS – This project was seen by visiting NMC Directors at the Harry Ransom Center as part of the 2009 UT campus tour for the Directors.

There is a gold rush underway and thankfully it does not involve any long slogs out West with pans and pickaxes. This rush is for data which is increasingly becoming the bedrock of much of what the Web 2.0 and future developments will rely upon for dishing out increasingly complex and hyper specific information for just about everything. One of the hotspots in this data mining is information not only about one’s online self, but about one’s self in the real world, particularly one’s habits and movements. Some may say this is getting too close to information on a personal level, akin to the digital equivalent of the close talker from the Seinfeld era. MIT researcher, Sandy Petland in an MIT Technology Review article offers that this is not the case. Instead, such data about one’s activities in the real world can be tracked collectively at the level of the masses rather than specific individuals. This mining of “reality” can give one a very good look at patterns with particular applications in tracking disease outbreaks for instance and patterns that can better help people in the real world. Petland’s work uses data from cell phone logs and proximity data from bluetooth enable modules on the phones. However, as we see more and more robust mobile devices, connecting in the cloud and tracking myriad information about ourselves, such reality mining can expand to other devices not currently available. The ability to aggregate data from mobile devices is key to all of this. As location based services and GPS become mainstream and embedded in just about anything not tethered to a desk, the ability to collect this type of data will become more pervasive. In terms of education, this type of work can lead to some creative looks at human communication and mobility patterns and can offer students of social sciences new streams of information to analyze. Michael Wesch also commented on this study on his MediatedCultures website where he noted that MIT has identified Petland’s reality mining as one of notable emerging technologies in 2008. Increasingly, data is all around us. And now we create it by just moving around. Instead of panning we are now developing the tools and creativity to dip into the digital river and pull almost anything swimming in it. Some will find digital gold dust, but inevitably one will also find considerable nuggets (brought to my attention by Wesch’s Library of Congress YouTube talk).

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)

Is now online. This presentation focuses primarily on taking a cultural anthropological look at YouTube but also expands into a wider new media discussion.

Its well worth 55 minutes of your time. Ponder and enjoy.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@DIIA)

Many of you have undoubtedly heard of Dr. Michael Wesch by now. His Web 2.0 YouTube videos have been viewed millions of times. His work is rapidly breaking the traditional education mold of how today’s students learn (or don’t learn as the case may be). He has embraced many of the emerging social networking tools and has taken a critical look at the brief history of YouTube. A cultural anthropologist by training, Wesch is applying this to how students learn in this new digital media age and what it means for the future of education. Recently, Wesch posted another stellar video of a presentation titled A Portal to Media Literacy he gave at the University of Manitoba on June 17, 2008. The YouTube video is just over an hour long but well worth watching in its entirety… I think the ideas, techniques and tools Wesch presents in this talk deserve active discussion and experimentation in the educational community. With higher education at a crossroads in terms of how digital media is changing and challenging educational institutions it is important that educators understand not only the technologies causing these changes, but how students and can utilize these developments and fold them into true learning tools and experiences rather than mere entertainment. Wesch points out that there are no natives to these technologies. Old and young alike are being exposed to these very new and rapidly changing social technologies. Due to this, both groups are learning how to use these technologies at the same time and each can offer the other group something from their collective knowledge. Teachers should not assume that their students are complete experts with these tools. I would urge you to look at all of Wesch’s videos on YouTube. They all offer unique insights into the current issues at hand with higher education and technology. AND Wesch gives a nod to NMC’s Horizon Report in particular as a good source for seeing what is coming down the road.

Michael Wesch’s Netvibes website is mentioned in the talk and demonstrates some of the information aggregation aspects he discusses. It can be viewed here.

Wesch’s Digital Ethnography Working Group blog at Kansas State University (where he teaches) can be found here.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)

This article on TechCrunch about the slew of new community aggregation and portability services that sites like Facebook, MySpace and Google are about to launch (or have launched) is very interesting and perhaps indicative of where things are headed when (or if) we ever get away from the Web 2.0 version. (Tim O’Reilly please help us move on to a new version!). The article is well written so no need to really re-state the case, but the take-aways from these new developments are summarized by quoting from Google’s press release that discusses their new FriendConnect service.

any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming — picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community…

Visitors to any site using Google Friend Connect will be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more.

Similar features/services are offered by MySpace utilizing the Data Portability project into its development. Facebook has Connect (Google and Facebook should really reach for a thesaurus regarding the word connect). These are the big dogs on the social web block so all eyes will be watching. Essentially what these services do is allow you to connect your Facebook, Google or MySpace data (and those linked to you at these sites) to other sites and services. This more tightly integrates many different kinds of sites and information across the web linked by users’ information. The big question may very well be security and authentication. And one answer is oAuth which is an open source project dedicated to protecting identifies across websites.

This is a new step and some more evolution as we start to see the still very new social networks begin to grow-up a little and move beyond the cozy confines of their own domains. Take a deep breath and get ready. Web 2.0 is about to get an upgrade. Not a full version upgrade but perhaps a bump up the ladder to Web 2.5.

It will be interesting to see how these new services play out in the education world once (or if) these capabilities become broadly adopted by the myriad social sites now on the web.

Keene (University of Texas @ Austin)